Family reported my husband to Adult Social Services

[LucyLoo1972]

Its a long story but eight years ago I suffered an absolutely devastating psychotic breakdown after I submitted my PhD. Before this time I had what a thought was an amazing and near perfect marriage. I love my husband very very much. Over the time I have been unwell things have been very difficult. We had never really had a row before my breakdown (at the time I thought this was good but now I see it was a sign of lack of honesty and communication). Since being unwell I have seen a lot of things that were putting a serious strain on me which have come out in therapy. My doctors have been fairly certain though that at root the extreme and total breakdown is rooted in childhood trauma. My father, mother and sister were all abusive especially my father.

I have spoken to my sister about some of the issues that are difficult in my marriage as my husband has not responded well to my illness. I am a totally changed person and having never said a word about anything before, after the breakdown it was like a volcano of rage and anger and frustration coming out for my husbands neglect of me and my needs.

I spoke to my sister about the difficulties which have included my husband's hoarding, verbal abuse (in response though to my anger which has been out of control at times of which I am not proud), him not transferring money into my account on time sometimes so I don't have access to money, him not wanting to eat in the same room as me or be with me, him not engaging with my therapy and my abusive family with whom we have had little interaction on a regular basis are frustrated that he refuses to answer phonically.

Yesterday Adult Social Services phones me to say my father and my sister had made a report of concern for my wellbeing and safety at home. This morning I had to go to a meeting and explain the concerns to them.

AIBU in feeling this is an overreach by the state? I was there for two hours explaining everything to them and my husband os devastated as for eight years he has tried to care for me when I have been seriously unwell and devastated and angry that my whole life has been taken from me and Im not really getting better. Im especially angry that the report came from my original abuser.my life is in utter and complete ruins.

This statement is why you allowed him to dictate your life.

I bet you've said this many times,in your head, when your needs have been pushed aside.

You're filled with rage that you allowed this all to happen because " he doesn't beat me up "

This.

A thousand times this.

I personally feel a few things have changed. In my opinion these are:

• the music issue
• therapist vs psychologist (you said you used therapist for ease but it took a lot of questioning from posters for this)
• whether your husband was withholding money or not
• the hoarding is unclear as pointed out by PP

OP, you seem quite focused on the past and how wonderful things were before your breakdown. But, they weren't wonderful... you were living a partial life because of your CPTSD without even realising it. To move forward, I think you have to let go of your fantasy of this 'lost past'. You don't want to return to a life where you are bottled up out of fear of rocking the boat. You want to move forward with your life. I think you can do it. You seem to have a very good view of what's going on.

I do think a change of therapist may help to get a new perspective and try something different. As you do seem to have been stuck in a rut for a while now. Being together with DH may not be helpful for either of you at the moment.

@Mirabai his extreme extreme frugality led to extreme stress on me in our marriage and my therapists things was a factor in my breakdown

Take the therapist aspect out as they appear dubious and you are left with his extreme frugality. HIS frugality. At some point there is/was a choice to join in on this. OP can’t identify anything (with 8 years of therapy to assist in teasing this out) that made him controlling, and says so. Maybe it’s you thinking in stereotypes?

My DH could come on here and give a story, that would be true to him. I’m sure you’d be the first to call out controlling abuse on my part. I could come on here and give a different story about the exact same situation and most people would say he is a completely unreasonable dickhead. As the saying goes, there’s someone’s story, and then there’s reality and the truth generally lies somewhere inbetween. So how you are so certain of everything from anyone’s story about anything on the Internet is amazing.

A good example is DH could come on here and lament that whenever we go away I won’t spend any money on decent accommodation but make him stay in horrible hotels. He’s tried booking himself in the past but I’ve made my displeasure known and now I take over and book first. It’s not as though we don’t have the money to spend on something decent but she (being I) insists on making us stay in very crappy places instead. That is the truth in his head as he sees it.

I would come on here and write that my husband is a complete dickhead who insists we spend thousands (yes, you read that correctly) on a room for the night that we would spend no time in other than to sleep. Think checking in, going straight out to see a place or shopping, having 30min back in room to dump shopping before going to dinner and concert, back to room late, straight into bed, sleep in until latest possible, go down to breakfast, race back as we now only have a very short time to have a 2min shower before making check out. So I believe we should stay in an average 5 star hotel as opposed to an uber luxe one so I try and snipe in and book something before he gets the chance so we can avoid wasting money unnecessarily. That’s the truth in my head as I see it.

As I said above the truth generally lies between someone’s story and reality because it’s all a matter of how they see/perceive it in their head. You just have to look at people like Harry for that to be blindingly obvious, someone’s story and truth as they honestly see and believe it is not necessarily the same as the reality of the situation.

I agree. In my own marriage, both me and my husband have been sole providers for periods of time.
Both of us made comments like “Do we really need this?” in the past.
If anything, I’m probably the more frugal one in our relationship.
That doesn’t mean my husband just has to agree with me if I’m not being over enthusiastic about getting a fan or whatever (and the same applies vice versa).
Less than perfect behaviour from your partner and things like being overly cautious with money/ procrastinating/ forgetting things/ hoarding and similar aren’t necessarily signs of abuse.
People aren’t perfect.

But how do you know with such certainty that there were abusive dynamics at play in OP’s case?
Why did her husband saying “do we really need this” stop her from purchasing the things she wanted when she had a good income?

Exactly.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Women-Who-Love-Too-Much/dp/0099474123

Need for approval is one thing - but a normal functioning man with good boundaries would not ask you to live in a hoard, insist he will not pay for cleaners so you have to do it, make you live without blinds, music, desktop computers etc.

He has very serious mental health problems - and you are incorporated into, indeed the casualty of, his mechanisms to control his environment.

He’s had 30 years to seek help and gain insight into his behaviours but he prefers to carry on regardless at whatever cost to you. He cannot and chooses not to see your needs.

Now this may be coming from a place of helplessness rather than malice but it’s a chosen helplessness that sacrifices you.

You are stuck.

The past is done but you are looping it over and over.

You have had 8 years of therapy and you are still stuck. You are not moving forwards.

You need a new psychologist.

That much I think every single person who has commented can agree on.

For what it’s worth I am very unsure on the benefits of therapy for someone presenting in this way. You remind me hugely from the way you post of 2 people I know IRL. One is my young adult child. His reality and his ‘trauma’ doesn’t actually match reality. He is traumatised from being a neurodivergent person in a neurotypical world. Attempts with therapy were like a loop because the therapist was looking for things that didn’t exist and missing the glaringly obvious fact - a large source of the trauma was from being neurodivergent.

I wholeheartedly agree with others who said they think your PhD has left you in severe burnout.

Because I’ve read all her posts in detail. He has significant mental health problems which leads him to tightly yet disorderedly control his environment which sadly includes the OP.

Again, what OP labels frugality is actually financial control rooted a disordered approach to money. OP can’t identify exactly what makes him controlling lists many controlling behaviours that most women could not cope with and would not accept.

If don’t believe OP’s “story” why are you here?

If don’t believe OP’s “story” why are you here

Because I believe OP believes their (presuming but not sure, ‘her’) story. Because I believe OP’s therapist is questionable. Because in these cases it’s perfectly natural to want to try and put things forward to an OP that they may need to think about - such as what they believe as truth and whether it is (it well may be, or it may not be), and whether considering another therapist may be a possibility. Surely, the only reason to be in any thread is not only if you agree with an OP and wish to be an echo chamber - or is that the criteria you believe should be applicable to be on a thread?

I’ve read all of her posts too. It seems like her husband has his own mental health issues.
The fact that things like his “hoarding” (unsure about the extent of it) are creating stress for OP doesn’t automatically make him abusive in my opinion. I’m sure you’ll disagree though.
Another poster described it well using the example of booking more or less expensive hotel rooms.
In every relationship you can find certain behaviours that could be framed as abuse if you start including things like asking “do we really need new towels”.

But he hasn’t done those things - you’re feeding that narrative.

• if Op wants music she evidently has access to it - she’s on MN - she can get YouTube/spotify whatever
• he procrastinated over the blinds - so has OP
• Op had a job - she could have purchased the desktop computer at that time
• Op doesn’t work - I’d be questioning the need for a cleaner (but to be honest you’d need to sort the hoarding before getting a cleaner anyway)

you say the therapist is trying EDMR now. It doesn’t sound as if they are qualified or have any experience in this area if they are only now trying it after 8 years. Try it with an experienced EDMR specialist. You might be surprised what this technique will uncover. And a new therapist is a good idea anyway.

well the childhood trauma was certainly real. it was very severe although somehow I managed to be extremely high functioning unitil 44. the Phd was insanely stressful and was the immediate trigger fro the breakdown for sure and for complicated reasons.

in my case the therapist is not looking for things that don't exist in relation to my childhood. there was trauma there which no doubt wired my brain to be neurodivergent. and make for an unhealthy dynamic with my husband although I felt so happy at the time with my life as it was so fulfilled with him and my work. it was a very happy relationship in so so many ways. he is a kind and good person.

what the peculiar things that I was exceptionally high functioning all round - socially, professionally, as far as I could do making a beautiful home, entertaining, a charity trustee, travelling internationally multiple times a year. and completing a phd with no corrections over six years without missing a single deadline. it didn't seem like neurodivergnece was holding me back in any way. I never felt overwhelmed at the time and I never consciously felt frustrated with my husband and yet the psychotic breakdown and delusions were so so severe my life was in danger - I mean I believed I was an actual snake for a period of time.

Yes - I should have bought Spotify I see that now but I went along with my husbands thoughts more than I should have fro the sake of seeking approval. I know it is insane behaviour.

yes - I allowed him to deter me getting on with. stuff that needed doing.

everyone here is saying I had a job but I didn't - I was on a PhD stipend.

im not suggesting we have a cleaner now at all. I barely leave the house. But a cleaner could have helped when we were both working 60-70 hour weeks. and yes we are right that was never a viable possibility because my husband wouldn't allow that because of the hoard.no way anybody could have come in to clean. I wasn't a lazy bum sitting on my ass - I was a phd student at an elite university.

yes - I keep saying to them something is not working. believe me I hate this state more than anybody. in fact I didn't even know it was possible for a person to get sick in this way. psychosis is no joke.

the hoarding is not like hoarders tv or anything at all like that. it is clean. having said that every magazine that has been bought since the 1990s has been kept and there are multiple kinds of music magazines.
not one article of his clothing has been thrown away.
he has an attachment to things with information even ifs t is not relevant to him- so for example, he has kept every one of my magazines and will not let me throw them out. so cosmo from 20 years ago. I find that level of clutter overwhelming. the more stuff you have the harder it is to manage a household.
he would bring home from holiday empty paper ice cream cups for example. it is a mental health condition. he won't move it to a storage facility which we could afford or let me touch it. and in the midst of this I don't have clear space to work and wrote my thesis sitting on my bed. with not one clear bookshelf for my academic books.

the towels things is an example of how he doesn't like replacing old things ever.

im intersted to know whether your son has ever been able to function like that? I was also on the senior leadership team of a large national charity prior with all the professional demands that that entails.

I also found the hotel example interesting - because it was never a choice between thousands on a hotel or a basic five star - in our case I love beautiful places and hotels and he knew that as my mum was very generous and would often gift us weeks in a five star Tuscan resort - which would be hundreds a night but we weren't allowed to have breakfast because it cost 7 euros which was too expensive. the choices for us for accommodation was either 60 motel or 100 euro B and B. and id have to push for the 100 euro option. that makes you feel worthless after a while. especially when all your friends on similar wages stay in lovely places.

it helps me to hear other views honestly. because I never saw any of this as problematic until completely breaking down. I am a her. I am honestly trying to be as truthful as I can be. and people forget that on my original post I am actually arguing to SS that my husband is NOT abusive even with these behaviours. i posted because it seems to me an over reaction. I was very happy with my husband before my breakdown which was due to stress from many many quarters.