MLC or Passive Aggressive or Narcissism

[AntoniaB]

This thread is just shooting off epiphanies left and right.

Look at this illustration: I flew in 1999 with my colleague and was nervous but totally fine. She sat on the other side of the aisle and just smiled and said, "you're fine." It was a good enough experience that a year or two later, I booked me and XH a flight to New Orleans so I could give a paper at a conference. NO PROBLEM. After my MRI experience, I suddenly was a person living with extraordinary anxiety. Even a small shower would unnerve me. The MRI experience I was told was VERY normal. The transference of it to other situations was not. When he and I next flew, I was a terrible anxious wreck with panic attacks. He would look scared out of his wits at me. He didn't know what to do. The look in HIS eyes made it worse. So at one point he said, look, you know that tv show we saw last week, where that guy had to smuggle his sister through the airport, get her past the guards? Let's pretend. I'm going to save you. I'm going to get you through this flight and get you out of this airport.

Any time I had anxiety issues, he went into the role of the savior. I needed to be "saved." I thought this was romantic. I didn't realize it only made me completely dependent on him.

When he first met me he said I reminded him of Scarlet O'Hara. He in fact once said "You need to be kissed, and often, by someone who knows how to kiss" (I'm ruining the line but there is a Rhett Butler line like that in the film). We played the roles of those characters. He had several pics of Vivien Leigh as Scarlet in his room. He just kept saying I was like the living embodiment of her. What I think he failed to realize is that Scarlet changes in the story. She becomes quite different and very self-sufficient.

But here is the scary part that is part of the P-A: the minute I started to have anxiety problems, he started to say that I was going to end up like the real Vivien Leigh--not the character--but the actress, who became highly neurotic apparently and this is all documented in some biography. That she became this tragic neurotic actress with mental problems. He kept saying he feared that this would be me someday. My father has some mental issues of agoraphobia. He kept saying I'd end up like my father, unable to leave the house, afraid of people, etc. All these accusations that I was a "crazy" person came out in full force when he left me. They were "the reason" he left.

When HE started to have MLC issues, I mobilized the troops. I said look, this is the kind of thing a person needs a good therapist for. In fact, you shoudl probably have bloodwork done. At your age a simple shift in testosterone levels can cause the anxiety and depression you feel. It can cause insomnia, and with insomnia comes feelings of despair and low self-worth, because you're just exhausted.

His response? "You're trying to make me out to be crazy and neurotic and I'm not. I'm not the heroine in "The Yellow Wallpaper" (a short story about a woman with postpartum depression who is told by her husband to need "rest" as he believes she suffers from hysteria). I'm not crazy or neurotic. I don't need a shrink. I love you but I'm not in love with you."

The thing is I was basically saying at the time that I thought his MLC was BIOLOGICAL, that he had hormonal imbalances, that he had insomnia that was leading to him feeling terrible.

And to get back to Scarlett, when I was the older, wiser Scarlett, who became more take charge and trying to really FIX the problem of his health (I always lose my anxiety and become quite strong if someone else is in need), he could not take it.

He "needs" a passive woman who is needy to function. It's the way that he is able to deflect the attention from himself and his own needs. As long as there is a princess who needs saving, he can spend his time rescuing her and not himself.

Gosh I'm sorry to go on so long but this all makes so much sense now that I cannot believe it.

All this time. I was living with a P-A person.