I lost my closest friend to my husband (no affair involved!)

[revolution909]

Basically my closest friend and my DH have become so close that it's impossible to rant about him with her as she feels she's right in the middle. I also realised she clearly has more friends than me (she used to claim she didn't) and basically have felt like a bit of a loser the past few days. I actually have no more friends than her and that realisation makes me want to cry. I work full time from home.. so that makes things a lot more difficult. I've tried with the mums from school and we just don't click. i think my best bet is joining my local running club as I spent most of my free time running. But yes in a nutshell I'm kind of sad I've lost her to my husband! I was happier with her being primarily my friend and that she was just "friendly" with DH.

There's been some excellent posts in this thread.

I'm now questioning your PM mood disorder - I think you're shouting at your husband because he's a nightmare.

Please go back to the Lundy Bancroft book and over-ride all your impulses to blame yourself, and whatever your husband has told you.

I'm struggling today with my moods today and it's very hard to know who's being unreasonable.

To me, it sounds like he knows exactly how to push your buttons and cause you to react. Sometimes he may do it very calmly, so that when you lose it, you look like the crazy one. Then he tells you that you are the problem.

But he is the one starting this stuff. He is VERY manipulative. He is isolating you. He has caused you to change how you see yourself.

Your reactions are your effort to stay who you are, to hold on to yourself.

Above anything else he needs treatment of what sort or another. He has some sort of stress related pain that is just making him moodier than usual. What happened today I understand why he was annoyed I probably would be as well. We ended up at the race place with no cash and no breakfast and no way to get either.

He was embarrassed of the t-shirt I packed for him and basically after the race just wanted to head back home. I stood my ground about not leaving as soon as we could and instead had a lovely day sightseeing. All great until it turned out that he was in such pain that he couldn't move a finger once we got home.

Funny that, I stopped myself writing 'wait and see if he sabotages your running today' when I posted earlier.

His only stress related to the fact that you were doing something for you, which made you happy, against his guidance and suggestions that you should not bother.

Surprise, surprise. He develops stress-related pain, complains about the clothes you packed for him and there is a misunderstanding about breakfast when the weekend is about something for you.

The only thing he needs is a boot up the arse and I don't usually use language like that.

The aim being it is all too much trouble and you feel too guilty to do it again.

Keep on running.

So he ruined the day.

It isn't your job to pack for him. He's an adult. It isn't your job to make sure he eats breakfast, or brings cash. He makes you do things, and then criticizes the way you do them TO KEEP YOU POWERLESS.

TO KEEP YOU FOCUSED ON PLEASING HIM RATHER THAN BUILDING YOUR LIFE

He is very, very toxic.

I know, it is like he has read the textbook of manipulation, power and control and swallowed it.

I have just got this vision of OP all happy about her competition and that they are all there together and this big manchild bully taking a series of pins and popping her balloons.

Seriously, revolution if your mind is full of all the little things you need to do to keep him from having a tantrum, or some other form of sabotage, then you cannot think about yourself. At a very basic level, he should be taking responsibility for his own clothes, money and food, as TrailingWife has said. I can understand if you are doing competitive running, why you might not take your purse, presuming your husband would take his wallet. I cannot understand why a man off to support his wife running, and with DC, would go off for a day without his wallet.

There used to be a long-running support thread on here for people in emotionally abusive relationships. At the start, there is a list of reading (thanks to foolonthehill).

Useful thread

I genuinely didn't let me. Yes, he started going of all the negatives things (he almost made me cry but this time were definitely the hormones), I told him I don't need him there, than in fact he just makes it worse and that I'd he ever behaves exactly the same way he's not welcome. So off I went to run my race, I had a PB and enjoyed myself so much that I was smiling the whole time. Once I finished we all regrouped he tried to make a comment (which was actually a positive one) into a negative a out himself. Did the let him and we went on with our day, which was lovely! Overall we had a really good day.

He's the type that let's one thing big or small wreck a day. I'm not. So it's very rare that he's been able to wreck full days.

Oh and tomorrow I join the running club :)

It was didn't stupid phone!

So he had a go at you before the race and was so nasty that it nearly made you cry.

How unkind of him .

Can you explain why this was caused by hormones - I don't understand this bit ? Because to me it sounds like he did it to try and sabotage your race.

Congrats on the PB.

I'd like to echo what others have said and beg you to please have a think about the real role of emotions and hormones here.

It feels like your understandable emotions - distress, hurt, frustration, anger etc - are being pathologised as being signs that you are 'crazy' rather than a normal reaction to living with a controlling, manipulative, isolating manchild.

I can tell the difference between hormonal and non hormonal. For example it's not the same type of frustration with my daughter.

Hormones also affect my relationship with my daughter, on a bad day even her voice annoys me. What I'm trying to say is the symptoms are not only relates to my husband.

On Saturday, my daughter kept making fun of me, something I really don't like and I have no idea where she got it from. She keeps telling "no mum that's not funny stop doing it" or "blah blah blah" like an annoyed teenager she's not even 7 yet! That's why I got pissed off. My husband said that simply we shouldn't talk about what we were doing the following day as it was pissing me off, but no it was her attitude.

One thing to bear in mind is that in this house there's always some sort of misunderstanding because my husband never truly understands what I tell to my daughter (we speak in my mother tongue) and he thinks he understands stuff but usually it's always wrong or at least half wrong.

On a bad day my kids drive me up the bloody wall. Isn't that the same for most parents , especially those who spent a lot of time with them like SAHM?

Your 7yo was being rude and cheeky, they all do it sometimes , it's ok to be pissed off.

As long as you can deal with your feelings in an appropriate way, it's entirely normal.

Like others I don't understand why you think you are odd or ill or there's something wrong with your hormones.

Sorry if I'm not understanding .

BTW I think I can guess where your child has leaned to make fun of you.

I understand that the different languages are a different issue, but isn't it the same for him? Do you always misunderstand what he says to her ?

I assume you and he always speak to her in your own mother tongue, as do most bi lingual families.

When I was with my xH, who was psychologically abusive and controlling, yes, there were days when my DC's voices annoyed me. There were times when everything annoyed me because I was living in the edge of my nerves.

On my own, these things do not annoy me.

You do seem very determined to keep looking for fault in yourself. Why? Relationships in marriage and families are dynamic. Even if it is hormonal, then why was your husband not supportive, rather than trying to shut you down ( which he was by saying to you to stop talking about your plans, rather than telling your DD to improve her behaviour).

Is it because you don't have a solution other than blaming yourself? That you think if you change enough and fix enough, it will somehow be okay? Or do you genuinely feel like somehow you deserve this kind of behaviour from your husband and now it seems your DD? Because you don't. But you seem to tie yourself in knots trying to make it your fault somehow.

I think you are doing all the right things by seeing a therapist and joining the running club, what is he doing?

Nope, I never do as I'm fully bilingual, I was raised with both. It's hard to explain but where this feelings come from and I how I feel them are very different. And that happens with everyone not just my husband or daughter. Plus I have the other symptoms so I know (and the doctors I've seen agree to this).

My dad is an abusive alcoholic, my uncle had several mental health issues. I could see the "abuse" they subjected my mum to. I can tell the issues my husband has are more akin to what my uncle had than my dad. That's why I'm inclined to think that my husband's MH is the root of this.

It doesn't actually matter what's at the root of the abuse.Many abusive people have mental health issues.

The key issue is the impact.

Your dad likely has mental health issues underneath the alcoholism.

What I mean is that when my uncle was medicated he was a completely different person. Something my dad was never able to change. My dad had a very traumatic upbringing which explains the cycle of abuse. My husband didn't, he always had a very sheltered life. I'm actually starting to think he might have some sort of dissociative disorder given how much he changes his mind about certain things (mostly people).

You can't count on medication to change people's personalities.

Meds don't work for a lot of people, even when they do they don't necessarily alter that much to the external viewer.

Many, if not most, people with mental health issues are not abusive. It's quite frankly offensive to suggest otherwise. Mental health issues may be caused by abuse, which is a different thing. Stop stigmatising mental health, for goodness sake.

Dissociative disorders have nothing to do with changing your mind about things. Anxiety does not make people abusive. And putting 'abuse' in quotation marks does not make it less real.

Good luck with it all anyway.

I'm sorry if I offended you. I've lived very closely with people with severe mental health issues. Seeing my beloved uncle in a straight jacket in a mental institution is not something I cherished. My best friend of 17 years went through something very similar. I was able to the see the similarities between both of them. The former had borderline personality disorder and my best friend has OCD. I see some of their behavior in my husband that's why I theorize that some of it might be helped with medication. And yes they can be abusive, my uncle was violent towards my grandma and definitely towards my sister (at an airport of all places). My best friend is extremely manipulative but also naive in many ways. I can tell when he's on his meds or has changed them.

I'm just saying that my husband definitely has something going on and that he needs help. I'm on my last straw and he knows it. I'm aware he is abusive but he didn't used to be this way. He didn't use to be so useless either. Something changed. What I don't know.

Most people with mental health issues are not abusive. Depression and anxiety do not cause abuse. Although there a variety of mental health conditions that can cause violent behaviour. But equally, many people who are abusive also have mental health issues as well. Quite often they've been abused themselves.

However, some people are just arseholes. I've certainly seen way too much abuse excused as a mental health issue.

In this case I don't think the OP is excusing it so much as hoping it can be fixed with medication, which is highly unlikely imo.

Exactly Tatiana that is my hope. And if not medication, therapy or any sort of professional intervention should do some good. And I'm not excusing but some my own cultural baggage (mostly being raised around machismo and it not just being OK but expected) might have enabled some of his behavior.