Trying to move forward

If your wife drank steadily throughout the day, then in my view it is likely that her driving was affected by alcohol, even though she did not appear to be intoxicated.

I agree.

But, it was concurrent with her starting ADD meds, and hanging around with this new group of women.

It became a way to assert her power and independence. Passing a long line of traffic and cutting in quickly to an exit ramp, and flipping people off when they blew the horn, was all her being "a powerful assertive woman". She told our kids that people wouldn't have honked if she was a man. People just don't like seeing a strong, assertive woman.

Wow. I'm so glad that your kids refuse to ride with her. Good for them!

RDM, healing from any kind of abuse is hard. Coming to terms with the idea that the person you loved and trusted the most was so self serving and didn't feel the same way in return, that's just hard to wrap your head around

That last thing you said about outlasting your abuser? Just about brought tears to me eyes. How many people can't or don't make it?

My DH is also one who drives poorly. He may have some ADHD, but in the past, he also had more sense and wouldn't. It's another thing that's chalked up to passive aggressiveness, because he's much better behaved with other people DD and I haven't ridden with him driving since mid 2020. Good thing I like to drive... Oh, and he's quite the backseat driver too...

Keep on rockin' it.

Oh I hate when people do that to me, especially when I have my horse trailer with my ponies in it.

It sounds like she became manic after taking the ADD med. Was this a drastic change in her personality?

His wife has been abusive towards him for many, many years. She has abused him sexually, mentally, verbally, and emotionally. She blames everything on him, all of her own hurt and harm that SHE has caused. The kids even turned against her because she was abusive towards the kids. They want nothing to do with her. She had been drinking daily as well, and went on ADD medication. But her personality all along has been abusive.

Well.... It kind of looks like Hope has my back

Yeah, things were bad for a long time.

There was a perfect storm of things that came together in the last few years. Me and the kids are separately in counselling, and decompressing together on stuff.

My daughter is doing a class in school on family life. One of the topics now is relationship red flags and recognizing abuse. She comes home and tells me about the ways mom verbally, emotionally, and financially abused me and our family. Good times.

Tish, this Board helped me to recognize that I wasn't at the root of all evil in my home. At every turn, every escalation in stuff at home, there was something else about myself I was supposed to examine more deeply and apologize to her for.

Our oldest was a state level athlete in middle school and early high school. We were at state championships in 2018, and he remembers me sitting on the floor in the hotel room while mom was on the bed, telling me how she couldn't wait to get home to divorce me. He was competing that day.

On the topic of sex.....

Beware of triggering material.... This is big.

On the topic of sex.......

Things that impacted our ability to be intimate.

Sex was painful, in part because she wanted it over with. There was no foreplay and no warm up. So, I knew I was hurting her whenever we were together. I wanted to have sex with my wife and didn't want to hurt her.

She went for over a year worried that she had breast cancer. Our doctor told her repeatedly there was no reason to believe that. She had small benign cysts that grew and shrank with her menstrual cycle. Fibrocystic breast changes. After over a year she had a mammogram done and then we celebrated for a week that she didn't have cancer.

And.... The one I have never talked to anyone about, ever. She told me for years that she was sexually traumatized when she was in middle school. She hinted strongly at abuse and told me repeatedly that she didn't want to talk about it.

Then one day she told me she was over it. Just.... Over it.

Um. Ok. Why?

Because she talked to one of the women at her work and she told my wife that what she experienced was normal, so it was normal, and therefore OK.

WTF?? So, are you actually going to tell me what this was about all these years? Because this is over 10 years into our marriage, and a couple of years into marriage counselling.

In middle school the girls had to change for gym class. One day the girls began teasing each other about who had pubic hair yet or not. The girls began chasing each other around the locker room trying to pull each other's underwear down to see who had started puberty.

So, that was the traumatic event that shaped our sex life for years, that went away after another adult woman told her that was fairly typical behavior for middle schoolers.

Then we just acted like she had never said this to me and it had never been a barrier to intimacy.

RDM

Oh, I should say....

In order of events.

1. Wanting sex over with quickly, that happened very early on in our marriage. Within a year or so after we got married. I felt like I was injuring my wife whenever we had sex.

2. The story of traumatization came out. That made me really reign in sexual desires.

3. After she "got over" the above trauma, the breast cancer scare and anxiety around that became a reason to not be intimate for a period of time.

I am so glad to hear they are teaching about avoiding abuse in school!

There is a lot of strange and not right in the head about her behavior in the examples you give. Her wanting sex to be quick and over, and saying it is painful is very strange. “Painful” due to her not being aroused, I assume. It sounds like she was too repressed to be able to discuss sex at all. Some women feel pain during intercourse due to other internal reasons, like the way their bodies are built. But it is as simple as using a lubricant sometimes. But it sounds like you both couldn’t be open enough to discuss and try that. No one would want to have intercourse hurt and continue to do it like that. Maybe she just told you it hurts because she wanted it over with quickly, and wanted for you to feel bad about it.

It’s clear she sounds not mentally well. The things you described are not necessarily the behaviors of anyone with ADD or a PD or an alcoholic. They are just faulty thinking and terrible communication. Maybe she wants to be seen as a victim, maybe she gets some advantage by that. But it sounds like she destroyed her life and her family. Maybe the (subconscious?) drive to destroy your life is the link to a PD or mood disorder, which she exacerbates with alcoholism.

How are you moving forward with her at this point? Is she just living estranged from you and the kids?

Me and the kids are all in counselling separately. Four counselors, separately, flagged either borderline personality disorder, or covert narcissistic personality disorder, based on our experiences. Once I began learning about covert NPD, I thought I was going to vomit. It really resonated with me and the descriptions I have found really mirror my life expriences, including the intermittent reinforcement.

The sexual issues..... Very early on my wife was very interested in me, then it changed suddenly in our first year married, maybe our second. Yes, we struggled to talk about sex openly early on, but that definitely progressed and changed over the years. Intermittent reinforcement - once in a while, or for brief stretches at a time, we would have totally in-sync mind blowing sex. Then it would go away again.

We entered marriage counselling on several occasions.

Anyway. That has all been deeply explored on here over the years.

We are living estranged, separation is in progress. The kids are with my all the time.

It kind of seems like she used a lot of convenient excuses to keep herself in the position of control.

I struggled a lot with feeling like dh was some kind of mastermind, with always seeming to have things in his favor. Then one day I realized I was overthinking it, because to a narc, sloppy living is its own reward. When you do the right thing, you chose from a handful of actions, when you just want to maintain your power, you can shoot in all directions to see what sticks. It's convenient excuses and accusations that keep the relationships off balance. It's wild little kid logic . There's not much point in trying to understand why on a deeper level, because there may not be a level deeper than straight up self serving control- at least that's my experience.

A couple of things I read about that resonated with me were the ability to find or create situations that have no solution, and giving you a choice of how you will fail.

A simple example:

"My car isn't working. It runs like crap and I'm not driving it like this."

Possible solutions and responses:

1. I'll get you into work for a few days. "No, I'm not going to be dependent on you or go to work on your schedule."

2. Well, let me see what is going on with it. I can free up a couple of evenings and get it fixed, I'm sure. "No. You need to be around in the evening. I'm not doing everything here by myself."

3. OK, then let's see how quickly we can get it into a shop. But you'll have to count on it that it will be a few days. "No. I'm not waiting and not having a car, and I'm not paying that much to get it fixed."

4. OK, well I can ask a mechanic friend of mine to take a look at it some evening after work, but he'll get to it when he can. "No. That means I'm stuck waiting. I told you, I'm not waiting."

5. OK, then I'll go out after supper and take a look. If I can get it sorted tonight I will. "Great. So I'm here by myself while you're doing your hobby of being in the garage again. I'm always alone.. Just stuck in this house doing homework with the kids."

What a telling comment..."Just stuck in this house doing homework with the kids."

Bill

It didn't happen much.

I was the homework guy for all of them. Still am.

The thing was, there was always a way to be wrong.

We borrowed money to renovate the house. It was work that should have been done regardless, but the idea was it would also increase the value of the house in the event we had to sell it.

Well, labor is expensive. So I undertook all the renovations. Which meant estimating all materials, scheduling delivery, getting staging and ladders, and calling in help from friends to borrow tools and a truck to pick up materials that were taking too long to get delivered.

She wasn't working at the time, but had a disrupted sleep schedule.

There was a point in the project where I told her I was going to have to make a big push for two days to ensure the house was weather tight. I scheduled this in accordance with the weather, and lined up three guys to help me.. One donated his time, and two I paid.

I scheduled a late morning start for both days to accomodate her sleep schedule.

The rest of that project took weeks, and I used all my available vacation to complete it, as well as working evenings and every weekend. At different times the house was again subject to the weather, so I stopped and started and weather-tighted it based on my availability and the weather. Ladders, tools and some staging were taken down daily as I often didn't know when I was going to return to the project.

All of it was done around her schedule. I started late to accomodate her sleep, and still made meals, and still did a lot of stuff with the kids. In fact, the kids were often with me. If they couldn't help, they played music and hung out with me.

There was never a thank you or any appreciation for this. Not even a "It looks really good".

Several years ago one of the kids got very sick. He needed to be home for a while. My wife became very angry at this, at how it was going to effect her and her ability to go to work. At that time she was working about 18-20 hours a week, often afternoons and evenings. That he was sick wasn't a concern. That she couldn't cope with the situation was the concern. So, I went to the doctor and asked for four weeks of medical leave, which he gave me.

I stayed home with the sick kid, and the youngest was home too (summer), and undertook a major repair at the same time. Part of the sill of the house had water ingress. I took the deck off the house, jacked that end of the house off the foundation and replaced the sill and put it all back. I also continued to make all meals and entertain the not sick kid.

Again... I received complaints about all of that. How long it was taking, etc. If I was working on the project, I wasn't doing enough in the house and wasn't caring for the kids. If I was with the kids and cooking etc, then the project was taking too long and she was living in a construction zone too much. I was also subject to the complaints that the yard and front of the house looked unkempt. More than once I was told, "JUST F'ING FIX IT!"

No matter what I did, she was put out and annoyed by it.

And you know what? I was a good dad, and a good husband and a good protector, teacher, and provider through all of that.

RDM

I have been researching this myself and it can get confusing. When it comes to ADD/ADHD the person can experience hypo sexuality where the person behaves like your wife in showing lack of interest in sex. This is due to experiencing so many thought distractions that the person gets frustrated and doesn’t like to be touched and wants it over quickly.

Given how a person can retain a lot of knowledge in the back of their brain they can learn. However because of the weakness in the frontal executive part of the brain they struggle with “doing” tasks. So they like to have others do for them. Yet, that doesn’t mean they appreciate it. In fact they can get mean and bossy and complain about time in how they can be inconvenienced. They lack patience and can come across as very entitled. There is a need to have attention and like to run the show.

Also due to the way the brain stores information it is actually possible to dream about sex and orgasm and at the same time not care to engage with a partner.

Then there is the ADD type that is hyper sexual where they use sex for a dopamine high. This type is more prone to clubbing and drinking and engaging in sex because they are eager to chase the dopamine high.

They are known to be terrible drivers and are impatient and YES will cut a line of drivers off and act like they are in the right. They are prone to tail gating and even road rage.

They have a problem with time and can have strange sleep patterns. They can self medicate with alcohol, coffee, nicotine and cocaine but also use marijuana too. They can have short tempers and be very needy. And they are wrestles yet women are often overlooked as they tend to hide it better.

My main concern is that if she has it that it’s very hereditary. Yes they can also be bossy impatient parents.

Given what you have shared, there is no way YOU can ever attain the ideal you have in your mind. Instead you deserve to be free of the weight she brings down on you and have some actual peace in your life.

I am sorry because from what you share of her it must have been hard on your children. I hope they get so they understand her behavior had and has nothing to do with them not being good enough. You all need to know that to the depths of you.

It's been hard.

She was very hard on our oldest. He's a good young man. He's a big, tall, strong kid working in a construction trade hoping to do an engineering diploma. He's been very good to, and respectful of, the girls he's dated. And his mom has treated him like she's treated me. He's just no good.

It really gets him down.

He sounds like he takes after you. ❤️

There are traits I've seen in him since he was a boy. He's better than me in a number of ways. Like... Inherently a better person. He's more emotionally intelligent for sure.

I'm good at school and more of a reader than him. He's very adept with visual spatial stuff and he can turn that into action quickly. Which means I can teach him how to do something, like roofing, or mechanic work, and then he quickly out paces me.

He's very protective by nature. He gave up team sports years ago because he liked the team work and physicality but didn't care who won. I could see him thriving in a team environment where they are trying to achieve something truly good. He's volunteered for local search and rescue and firefighting, for example.

He's anxious to work and make money, but I've said to him that I hope he doesn't give away his heart and soul doing that. He's extremely patient and happy to see small kids. He'd be an excellent elementary teacher instead of what he's doing.

I was actually thinking he may make a good psychologist.

I totally agree with him in disliking competing and who is better etc. I don’t even think it’s good to praise children who get high grades over others who may work hard but don’t happen to get the best grades.

I had one brief, reasonable interaction with my wife yesterday, just regarding health insurance for the kids.

I came away wondering if I had overstated everything, questioning my own reality, questioning my memories, worried that I should apologize for all this again.

WTF is wrong with me.

It's called cognitive dissonance, which is where their nicer behavior makes you question your perceptions of reality. Please don't do that to yourself. Please stay grounded in your perceptions of her and your children's perceptions of her. Remember and know that she is abusive, which is the feedback we have all been giving you. Don't question yourself.

The compounding factor was...

I went to a 1.5 hour counselljng session with my daughter last night.

I came away going:

Ok, so mom's driving wasn't AS bad as I had thought, but she definitely didn't feel safe. Did I overstate that to my wife?

My daughter received some anger from her mom, but not as much as I thought.

She recounted stories of neglect that I wasn't aware of.

She recounted stories of very odd behavior from her mom, which her brother confirmed later; literally, sneaking through the house. Like... trying to tiptoe, peeking around corners and asking questions about if the kids are spying on her. Coming home with tons of jewelry purchases that I never knew about and that I don't know where the money came from. Money has been tight. Even something modest, like a $150 bracelet would be very noticeable. And our daughter talked about being angry at seeing her mom abuse me.

So, I had an evening of re-weighing my perceptions.

AND feeling like I had to apologize for ones I may have over reacted on, like her driving.

The way you are second guessing yourself is normal.

When it comes to abuse, abusers are very good at just seeming to be able to tune into their victim's level of tolerance. They rarely push their actions into the place of no-turning-back unacceptable, because that would be... well, unacceptable. So they feel out that threshold where they feel the power and control they seek, but it's not so bad that the victim thinks it's a deal breaker.

With my own dh, it's often not about the stupid, thoughtless things he's done as it is that there's no having a rational adult conversation about it. He drives fast? Maybe he's not such a bad driver at times, maybe it wasn't that fast, but if I was uncomfortable and wanted to discuss my needs to feel safe and anxiety free while on a trip, the subsequent conversation would leave me reeling as though I was a terrible person with no idea how to drive a car.

If he loves and cares about me, wouldn't he want me to feel comfortable and have a nice experience while riding with him? Wouldn't that be in his best interest? In the best interest of our relationship?

Maybe your wife has the same inappropriate and covertly power tripping pattern? Key word being 'pattern.' The behaviors aren't a problem in and of themselves, it's the pattern of those behaviors and the treatment toward you that develops over time. It's never a one time problem with them, but we generously pass it off time and time again as though it were.

Omg, mine sneaks too. Paranoia? Intel gathering? It's messed up.

Love should communicate, not confuse.