I think you have gained a lot of ground with this challenge you have faced with your wife. It’s clearly not in your nature to gaslight or manipulate others. Instead you prefer to be part of a team and work towards solutions and you try very hard to respect others.

From what you have shared of your wife, she doesn’t understand intimacy, instead she has used sex and still does now, to gain power and get her needs met. This is something practiced by narcissistic individuals. They often will engage sex quickly thinking it’s a quick way to gain control and is good bait to gain interest and possession over. If you behave you get sex. This is NOT intimacy and it’s not love. Instead it all about power and control.

Individuals that are narcissistic will demand certain things and are only good at FAKING they care but they don’t and they are like this with their partners and their children. Unfortunately, the worst thing a person can do is get trapped into the unhealthy cycle of loving someone who cannot love back no matter how much effort is put into loving. Instead it’s a transactional relationship and there is no diversity. With unhealthy narcissistic individuals there is an absence of love and they are not very diverse so they are often jealous of or threatened by anyone who is diverse.

When you step back and evaluate and learn you will begin to recognize the red flags that reveal the true nature of another person. They often have a method for using sex for power over and they don’t respect the intimacies of a partner and will openly state inadequacies. Someone who is capable of true intimacy NEVER does that. Your wife wants men to desire her because she wants POWER. Her friends are the same way. And they especially love having more than one man pursuing them. This is one reason they can’t wait to have a new guy and often begin looking even before leaving a relationship.

If a man happens to find any other way of maintaining some kind of release or assurance they will face the wrath and rage from the partner that feels their grip on control is threatened. There is NO caring and intimacy what so ever, instead it’s about controlling.

You were so trapped you were willing to die trying to please someone who is not capable of ever seeing you the way you hoped or deeply desired. Instead you were constantly lead to feel it was your fault. Yes, it sounds like your wife may very well be a covert narcissist as they paint themselves as the victim constantly and will even convince themselves of it. All of this gets magnified if alcohol and or drug abuse is involved.

It’s a good thing your wife moved out of the home so you and your children had time to feel safe and heal and also get to have your own identities.

You have come a long way towards seeing the reality, it’s not an easy journey.