a question posed to HaWho but also for all of you, dear readers --
I am thinking a lot about my past with my H, and I was thinking about your sitch too -- as once someone said something to you about how it seemed like your H had a psychotic break of some kind, in addition to MLC. I always thought this of mine too. But lately I am sifting a little bit through some of my past with my H because he is conducting such a horrifically vicious divorce (to the point that I wonder at times if he is capable of violence) that I started to wonder if there were seeds I missed along the way. For one thing, I started to think about how his obsession through MLC was over money and thinking I was hiding his money or controlling it, etc. but with no basis in reality. Looking back over the years, I realized I could not say that this seed wasn't there from our first days dating. I realized that when I met him, he was deeply in debt and had run up a huge debt on his mother's credit card to pay tuition. His father had just found out and he and his mom were in big trouble about it. It caused a real rift with his already estranged father -- and his wounds are all father-based. During MLC once I found the OW's credit card info scrawled in a notebook, he had already convinced her to pay for something -- this pattern of convincing people to help him out of his financial messes. He convinced his friend, the godfather of our kids, to PAY FOR HIS DIVORCE LAWYER!!!
Once we were a couple, I helped him pay off his debts -- not with money, but I mean by organizing payment schedules for him, etc. Early in our relationship, I remembered that I had paid off ALL my debts, including student loans, and I felt so free and so light. I was a teacher, not making much, and had gone to grad school that I had to pay for most of, but I worked a lot, and I was very frugal. And then the blur of my life with him began and it was a life of financial risk that got us into property ownership and businesses but that kept us in debt. He was always talking about what a whiz he was but looking back, I realized it was always me who made things happen, he had ideas but no facility with money. He would never do bill paying stuff with me, wouldn't help with taxes and would freak out whenever I tried to explain financial realities, even before MLC. Once MLC hit and he stopped working, started stealing money from our biz and our home, all financial reality checks would end with him screaming to sell our house, so I stopped telling him anything, and he began saying I was hiding and controlling all money, even if I did try to show him again and the house-selling-yelling would begin again. We own two properties and both mortgages are in my name only because his credit was so bad -- our rental place upstate doesn't even have him on the deed! I realized he never worked to get out of debt, let alone to buy me something I needed, like a coat, and was always pushing us to the next thing. This is just one example, and I don't want to believe the history rewriting either, but I can't deny this truth. And I have started to wonder if he was always NPD and that I just had my own wounds and didn't see it. I know he was different, looked different, acted different, but I have started to wonder if there was some mental illness all along, and it was so much like the mental illness in my house growing up that I somehow was drawn to it without realizing it was the same.
So I was wondering if you have had thoughts like these about your H and whatever his big issue was, that the seed was there all along, or was it a complete alien to whom you had known.
I don't mean to obsess over the past, but I am sifting in order to understand my own wounds and the choices I made, so I wanted to ask you about it, as our sitches have been so similar and even started around the same time.[quote][/quote]
Last edited by Gerda; 05/19/2009:03 PM.
I believe I will see the bounty of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord with courage. Be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord.
