Quote: Have you told you wife about the diagnosis?
No. I’ve been stalling going back to the C for far too long, but I needed some time. I probably should talk to him about telling her. In my heart of hearts, I really feel like W would just blow him off, deny that she has any such problem, and continue on her merry way. IOW, I’m afraid that it would blow the R with the only person who has ever shown any possibility of getting through to her. And I don’t want to sabotage that.
Quote: I will say, since you choose not to leave ZB, and I do respect that, have you tried ANY of the boundary setting and 180's people have offered?
I won’t go into detail here, at least not right now, but I have been working on them. The dog things are just hard since I’m not willing to turn out the dogs she already has, but W has agreed not to bring any more in without my agreement. We’ll see.
Quote: Only if your wife decides this really matters to her will you ever get your turn.' Every sucess story on this board has taken both partners working towards a common goal and both partners willing to come out of there comfort zones to met each other needs.
But according to what I know of NPD, and what the C told me, that isn’t going to happen. That’s my problem. That’s why I’m presently having such a problem with anger and resentment.
Quote: In the reading you've done on the NPD message boards, are there any happily married couples? CAN this work in some as-yet-untried fashion, with you two?
OK, this is getting philosophical, but happiness is a relative term. I see that some couples do manage to get to a place when the non-NPD partner finds some modicum of happiness. But I have to admit that I haven’t seen any other cases of NPD combined with the ND. If W had some interest in sex, I would be reasonably happy – i.e. I have learned to live with the NPD. A people-pleaser and conflict-avoider is the perfect mate for someone with NPD. During that all too brief stretch when we were ML once a week, I was really pretty satisfied. That’s when I changed my name to ZB: zufriedengestellter = content or satisfied. The biggest obstacle to my happiness is the lack of sex. The NPD just explains why W won’t discuss the SSM or try to work on it. It basically says to me that she’s never going to try.
Chrissy, I agree with what you’ve said about CeMar’s sitch. As I said to BF, I just saw parallels between CeMar’s sitch and mine and let my anger and frustration spill out. I’m sorry.
Quote: Sounds like she loves you and adores you. But is really just a ND person. Who is comfortable with the fact that you have accepted her as is.
Not exactly. Well, I guess that depends on what you mean by “accepted”. I’ve made it clear that I’m not happy with the sitch, but since I’m committed to staying there, there’s not a lot I can do if she simply refuses to work with me on this. I still haven’t given up completely, but I’m more or less resigned to spending the rest of my life working on this and seeing little or no progress. My only consolation is that I’m getting to know myself better, getting more accepting and comfortable with who I am, and I’m becoming a better person.
Quote: Bottom line is it is a way of coping but as you already stated you know it is not going to make you happy. So that is going to help you how in the long run?
Like I told HP, happiness is a relative term. I will probably never have a fulfilling SL with W – which is what I would need in order to be truly happy. But by acknowledging that ours isn’t a sexual R and finding some way to come to terms with that, I can alleviate some of the pressure I’m feeling in the R and thereby increase my own level of happiness in it. I think Lil put it better when she talked about dwelling on the things that are wrong with her R. I’ve been deluding myself that this is a sexual R for 30 years and then been unhappy with not getting it. My feeling that I’m being shortchanged has tainted my own happiness. I’m not having sex with any of my daughters, but I love them all dearly and have great R’s with all three of them. Why is that? Because those aren’t sexual R’s and I have no expectation of them being sexual. I’m thinking that if I can redefine my M as a non-sexual R, letting go of that expectation will change the R. And in reality, I think that that’s just acknowledging something that already exists. I won’t be happy without sex, but my R with W will be better when I lose the expectations and the reactions to not having those expectations addressed.
