Been a while since I have been around and I have been going through pretty much the same stuff you have. Funny how our lives just seem to run along parallel lines
H sleeps a fair bit too, when he is not sleeping he is in his den playing on the PC. He also drinks too much I mean 6 beers a night - not your lite beers either but Kronenbourg.
I too have recently come to the conclusion he is a narcissist and started reading up stuff on the web about narcissism. Trouble is nearly all of it is really negative and pretty much says they are incurable.
But wait... I ordered some books off Amazon and the first one to come through was Narcissism - a denial of the true self by Alexander Lowen. I read it over the weekend and it kind of blew my mind. For one thing it is not totally negative about a person being narcissistic there can be hope For another thing although it confirmed my belief that H is a narcissist or even borderline personality disorder I also noticed that I too have several narcissist tendencies.
To cut a long story short Lowen is one of the founders of Bioenergetic therapy and I tried a couple of the exercises he gives in the book to release pain and anger that is stored in the body. I did this while the kids were out with H. Lucky I did because you could have heard the sobs and wails that came out across the other side of town.
Since then I have been feeling so different in my skin I can't explain it - just easier. The wild thing is that the difference in feeling within me is affecting H. In the last few days our R just seems to have turned around without me feeling like I am doing anything. Not doing anything different - just being different. That is the crux it is being rather than doing. Some of what is said in the book is about being rather than doing and you can't make that happen by thinking about it, that is where the exercises come in.
The other night we were talking about the camping trip we have planned for the end of August. H seemed like he was just talking about taking S(6) and just kind of jokingly saying you and D can go and do girly things together. I was annoyed about this because it seemed like he had been planning this with S behind my back and that what he was basically saying was with my one week of vacation this year I would rather spend time with S than with you. So I said this to him and he sighed and started saying I don't really feel like having this conversation. So I said just tell me what you really think and he started saying all this stuff which before I would have had to really struggle not to throw right back at him. I just sat and listened to him, but I wasn't trying to listen I just was listening. So he said what's wrong why aren't you arguing and I just said I'm listening. So he said some more stuff and it turned into a long and fairly honest account of how he felt our marriage had gone and his part in it and how he had given up everything for me. All this stuff would have just sent me wild before with the injustice of it, but I just felt totally able to give him the space to be heard.
We have ML - good ML not just sex a couple of times since. We have had a long intimate fun-loving chat about anything and everything. I can't remember the last time that happened. We even reminisced about happy times, we could not have done that before it felt like the happy times were gone forever.
I think H will read the book too, he is saving it for when I take the kids to see my Dad.
Read the book LL, You were the first person I thought of to post to on this board. I pray you get something out of it.
take care
Fran
if we can be sufficient to ourselves, we need fear no entangling webs Erica Jong
For another thing although it confirmed my belief that H is a narcissist or even borderline personality disorder I also noticed that I too have several narcissist tendencies.
