When I think back over this last summer, and remember how he acted, and the fights he started, then the times when he would seem to be coming back to the M only to turn away again. All just a complete mind F***.... I can see his struggle now, at the time I just thought I was losing my mind. Makes me angry, yet sad for how lost he was and is.
Reading your account of the trajectory of your marriage is so eerie Stella. I could have written it about me and XH. Emotionally checking out but then denying it when you ask about it...providing a reason that seems plausible but doesn't quite explain it. And then the anger and "hate"...when it all comes out...I remember being so confused and incredulous at his attitude towards me. In February, we'd gone to a boat show on the mainland and had looked at boats...daydreaming about which one we might buy after retirement...one month later...his running behaviour started and by the time I found out what was going on, he was so so so angry and when I looked in his eyes, I saw nothing but contempt. You would think that I was the one who had cheated on him. It was just so unbelievable. To this day, I still find it hard to believe. I was not the perfect wife, by any stretch of the imagination, but I always supported him in anything he wanted to do and I loved him unconditionally...even when he was a moody, irritable jerk and had all of us walking on egg shells. I was not oblivious...I knew he was going through something...I just thought it was chronic pain from Shingles...not chronic pain from a f'd up psyche.
Originally Posted by Andrew
One thing that might perhaps be helpful to think about and I think is going to be the case in your situation, is that people with the fundamental character flaw that allows them to cheat get worse over time. My father-in-law was a charming cheerful man when I met him in his 60s. In his 70s and 80s he was just grossly creepy.
OMG... This is my XFIL to a tee. My D14 told me on Wednesday that she was sitting with him at her dad's wedding and was talking to her aunt who is a nurse. She told her aunt she thinks she might like to be a nurse one day too and her grandfather said something to the effect that he wished he was looked after by nurses who look like them (aunt is in her mid 20's). D14 said she was totally creeped out by how he said it. Ugh...one of my biggest sources of sadness is that my kids never got to meet my dad and their only experience of a grandfather is XFIL...serial cheater and womanizer. Gross.
