Dear all
Hope you're enjoying some sunshine. I posted late last year/early this when I was trying to get up the courage to leave husband of 21 years inc 12 years of gradual descent into right wing conspiracy madness. Well with your help I did it in January but it's been tough since then.
He is behaving really badly - we are still cohabiting basically because he won't go and I am too stubborn/scared to move out as there are literally no rental properties in our close area that would fit me and my three teenage kids. We own two properties and have agreed to sell both and make a fresh start so until we sell one of them we are stuck here together which is hell.
He started a new 'job' - he was actually taken on as a self-employed consultant so that they could avoid employment conditions - right after we separated but only last a couple weeks before he claimed mental health breakdown and was signed off. He is being very secretive with me about this but never seemed to restart working and each time I asked about it he said he had been signed of 'for another two weeks'. Eventually he admitted that his new company had terminated his contract.
Since the separation he has claimed - incredibly - that I am a narcissist - that I have NPD and that I have narcissistically abused him for 20 years. It's just mad - and my friends say he is 'projecting'. But I am getting really worried about what he's up to strategically. He has hired a hot shot lawyer.
Earlier on in the process there were some huge and explosive horrible arguments and he drew our 14yo autistic son into them (will be subject of a different thread) and on one occasion I called the police - it was near midnight, as usual he had been drinking, and he started an argument about money. He followed me to my room and continued to accuse me of 'stealing' money. I asked him many many times to leave, to stop, that I had no idea what he was talking about, and that I was feeling very intimidated as he was standing in my doorway, arms crossed, taller and strong than me, and would not go. Eventually I threatened to call the police and when he still refused to go I called them.
After those arguments, he sent me an email saying that I should stop 'abusing' him - he had had a mental health assessment and copied extracts into the email saying he was severely depressed, that he was showing signs of PTSD, and it repeated a number of allegations he always makes like he is the only one to have worked hard on the marriage etc etc.
So, I am now really worried that this is a strategy devised by him and his solicitor to discredit me, or maybe claim that he is now totally incapable of work - he has worked his entire life up til now with no problem albeit he has been on anti-depressants the whole time I've known him - and that somehow this means he should get more of the settlement money to provide for himself as he is somehow considered disabled.
I'm actually scared, he spends all his time researching NPD and I know he is trying to build up some case against me - it's bizarre and totally untrue - but I'm frightened now about what he intends to do.
Does anyone have any thoughts or similar experience?
My friends all tell me to calm down as it looks so convenient - apparently fine up until the separation but then claims years of 'abuse', has a MH breakdown, signed of work, fired. He is 55 years old and I suspect he intends never to work again.
Thanks for reading and sorry it's so long.