[Jannaku]

I've just been reading back over my past threads and realise that it has been almost 2 years since I had my epiphany and realised that my husband had NPD.

In the last 2 years, I have been to hell and back, but I'm still alive and surviving (at times only just). I just thought I would share my experience, or journey, to date in the hope that other victims can benefit from it in some way.

Life has been hard ..... very, very hard. My newfound strength and change of direction, which was born out of my realisation that my marriage was an abusive, dysfunctional one, has created serious repercussions on the domestic scene.

My NPD husband sensed the shift in me and upped his bad behaviour. He knew that he had lost a lot of control over me and that translated immediately into being a threat to him. His behaviour deteriorated to the point where he started decompensating and that saw him becoming increasingly abusive but with a more delusional, paranoid twist. I've been through some seriously concerning times with him whereby he felt that he was at the epicentre of a conspiracy to bring him down that I was instrumental in, I was accused of having an affair with a mutual friend who he rang and abused, his conspiracy theory escalated to the point where he openly told people (family and friends) that he felt that I may try to kill him, etc, etc. I was ready to run, but still trapped by the circumstances.

As a result of his pathological behaviour I struggled myself. Have been depressed, even suicidal at times, because of the insanity of it all and because I felt trapped. So not only did I have him to contend with, I also had my own internal demons to deal with as well.

In the meantime, my son (who is now 15) started being seriously affected by it all as well and his behaviour began deteriorating as well. Depression, ODD, angry aggressive outbursts. He's put me through the wringer emotionally as well.

I've been in psychotherapy for almost 2 years now trying to deal with this and to date there has been little progress. Most of our sessions have dealt with the many, and varied, crises that have occurred and safety planning etc. I also took my husband to relationship counselling in a last ditch attempt to possibly rectify some of his bad behaviour. I thought that an external professional may be able to get through to him ..... wrong. We lasted 2 sessions, she refused to continue and never wanted to see him again. Her feedback to me following this was that he was the worst she had encountered in over two decades of work, that he was in complete denial, delusional and she was very concerned for my safety. That was good and bad. Good that someone validated my experience and bad that things really were as bad as I thought.

I then started looking at the whole thing for what it was - domestic violence and sought counselling from that perspective. After several months of that we have progressed nowhere because of the severe entanglement (emotionally & physically) that exists. Remember, he's had 25 years to work his abusive, manipulative magic on me.

All was bad, very, very bad and I was not doing well at all and then the unthinkable happened. He was diagnosed with lung cancer. Yep, let's just throw a curve ball into the already mixed up mix and see how you go. Don't even ask about how that affected me psychologically. It was a battle and one which saw me take a dive into depression land. He's now 3 weeks post op after having surgery.

Life goes on through these major ups and downs (more downs than ups I must say) and I straddle between being in control and losing it. I feel like my life is an ongoing nightmare Still feel trapped and still don't know what tomorrow will bring. This is the very short version of it all as well. So there, I've updated you all and hope you've enjoyed reading my plight.

[marmaduke]

I'm confused. Do you still love him?

[Jannaku]

Your confused? I'm even more confused. There is a part of me (the empath) that still loves him, despite his abhorrent abusive behaviour. There is also a part of me that hates him for everything he has done. If you would have asked this same question at the time when he was a delusional abusive azzhole then I would have said "No". But now, since his cancer diagnosis, I have pity for him. I'm not going there ... it's too hard. The emotional roller coaster I'm on is too crazy for words. The answer is: yes sometimes (pity based) and no!!!