Hi Rysmom--I have often wondered if my H has narcissistic tendencies. It sounds like your H may be this way as well.
Mine is very intellegent as well--he completely charmed the socks off of one gal that we went to for counseling. She just couldn't see him as abusive and he promised he'd be a good boy and that was that--of course it didn't change anything.
I have been online looking at the narcissism sites and I have come to the conclusion that I don't think he is. He has a very good job and makes very good money and works very hard for us. I think true narcissists have a lot of trouble in the work place, and tend to sponge off people rather than doing actual work.
I don't think he's had an affair--I could only make comments about the verbal stuff because--duh--I let it go on so long! I thought a good Christian W submitted to that (and validating is pretty similar to submitting--but I didn't realize validating and submittins is NOT letting them be verbally abusive).
While submission IS a two way street, it is easy for the one that is trying to "fix" things to be the bigger person and model this behaviour to the other. But it has to stop at abuse--you just can't model submission in the face of that. That is probably modeling cowardice or something but not submssion.
**I** got it wrong--I see now why it didn't get better all these years. But I'm hopeful because lately things have been getting a LOT BETTER!!
