Posted by amh on December 22, 2010, at 11:46:36
About a year ago my husband suffered through quite a few set-backs. He closed a business that he loved and had worked on for 10 years, declared bankruptcy after I discovered that he had hidden $300,000+ of debt from me, lost his Grandfather to cancer, had his father diagnosed with cancer, had his 11 year old daughter diagnosed with depression and put on medication. This ALL happened in a few months time. The year before he went through a contentious custody battle with his ex-wife and lost, even after she was involved in a DUI in which a man died. Suffice to say, it has been a tough couple of years. He seemed depressed around this time, understandably so.
Then in the beginning of April we were sleeping and he jumped up in the middle of the night and went crazy, screaming and yelling obscenities at me. We had not been fighting that night, nor drinking. It was a regular evening at home. He then went and took a shower and got out his suitcase and started to pack. I asked him where was he going and why. Then he got even angrier, hitting me and grabbing my neck to choke me. He called me a loser and said that I would never amount to anything important in my life and that I was a horrible wife and mother. This is a man who previously wouldn't have hurt a fly. In marriage counseling, he says I hit him and yelled at him but he seemed confused like he doesnt really remember that night. He keeps trying to get me to say that I am lying about that night and that it did not really happen. His parents, my two children, his child, my ex-husband along with his girlfriend all saw me with a bruise on my face at my daughters play and during Easter dinner that I cooked at my house a few days after this incident.
From that night on my kind, sensitive, loving Christian husband literally became a different man. He is now extremely negative, irrationally critical and judging of the kids & I, cruel, narcissisticand he blames me for everything. He has no empathy or kindness for me anymore. His personality is 100% different. He is constantly baiting me into fights. He gets very angry for insignificant things, like if I ask him what he wants for dinner. He once mentioned that he wanted to take me on a trip and when I asked where, he was set off in a rage for hours calling me ungrateful and unappreciative and that no wonder my kids do not appreciate or respect him. He now sees nothing positive about me or our marriage which before this all started I would have described as a good, if not great, marriage. We used to be best friends.
He thinks there is nothing different or wrong with his behavior. He has twisted all of this around to make it seem like I am the one that is causing the trouble. I am not sure what he has told his parents but they will not communicate with me anymore. He has been making up stories about me to my family and is telling everyone that I am filing for divorce. One day he says I have a personality disorder and I am a narcissist, the next day he is saying that he thinks I was sexually abused as a child, the next he is saying I have a spiritual problem. As far as I know, none of this is true.He is suspicious, distrustful, and thinks I am out to get him. When he found out that I tried to speak to his parents voicing my worries about all this, he called me his enemy. He says I have never done anything nice for him and even if I point out the nice things I have done he says I am a liar and that I am crazy and delusional. He says that I have no friends, that nobody likes me because I am stubborn, willful, arrogant, prideful, opinionated, selfish, mean and abusive. I am involved in many activites (book club, volunteer work) and have a lot of people in my life so I don't understand what he is saying. He says he has always felt this way but that now he has awoken to reality and won't accept my horrible behaviors anymore. When I mention how happy we used to be, he says I bullied him into acting that way, that I bullied him into marrying me. That this is his true self, his real self, the old husband was an act. When I ask him why he would even want to be married to a woman who is as horrible as he says I am, he has no answer.
He has become extremely religious over the past year and is now saying that he is going to be famous someday as a spiritual leader. I have never heard him talk like this in the past. He has never been a pastor before and his degree is in English.
There is a tremendous amount of Jekyll/Hyde behavior going on. Throughout all of this, he maintains to others that he does love me and wants to be married to me. But that I am the one with the problems, making all the trouble.
It has been a painful and confusing situation for the children and I but my husband says he has never felt more spiritually alive or happy in his entire life. This has been going on for close to one year now and I am at a loss and way beyond worry to the point of alarm.My husband says I am a sick woman. Could it be possible that I am making this all up & don't even know it? Does anyone have any ideas what is happening?
Ps. There are also some strange sexual issues happening but I am not comfortable writing them here.
poster:amh
thread:974294
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/newbs/20100514/msgs/974294.html