Husband is preparing for "end of world"

[Keira8]

This is my first thread. I am so unsure on how to even start with my issue....well I think it's an issue. Very confused!
I have been with my Husband for 19 years, married for 13. Have 3 wonderful daughters aging between 11 years and 6 years. I was very much besotted with my husband, but over the past few years he has changed, and I honestly don't know what to do.
Whilst I was pregnant with my youngest, my husband started to tell me that within 6 months a world war was going to happen, and so we had to store as much food as possible so that we could survive. 6 months went past, nothing happened, then the date changed and we had to carry on storing food and essentials. I was on maternity leave and couldn't afford this extra "just in case" food.
Then a year later, he brought a weapon (I have no clue where it is kept) incase we get attacked!
Basically from this, it has gone from bad to worse. I have tried for years to get him to see a doctor, but he thinks I am mad for not believing him. He constantly sends me videos on how the terrorist attacks are in fact propaganda, and the government are doing this to scare us!
He doesn't talk to me, he preaches and belittles me about it.
He now tells our eldest about what he believes, and I am worried its affecting her. I am on anti-depressants, and I now think he is the reason.
I have fallen out of love with him, but in his state I am worried leaving him will send him over the edge. I haven't been happy for a long time now, but have always tried talking to him and sorting our issues out. I feel like I am the bad person, as I honestly believes he needs help, and I don't want my girls being raised in an broken home.
Has anyone else ever had this situation? I feel so alone. I am always walking on egg shells with him. Not sure how much more I can take. x

Yes 7days but the physical threat you would have posed to your husband is non-comparable to the risk the op and her kids are at. Family annihilators are almost exclusively male - and a sudden mental breakdown is the usual explanation given.

@Keira8 Are you ok? What are your plans?

@Shesalittlemadam I’m ok, very overwhelmed with all the messages, but taken everything on board.

You need to get away and get safe with dc.
You cannot solve this he needs to be reported. Report the weapons.

I don't think reporting him is op's priority right now, it's getting to a place of safety with the kids

Please leave him,,the situation you are in is dangerous..there is no positive outcome by remaining in the house with your husband..he is unwell and needs professional help..leave with children and in time perhaps ye can reunite as a family once he gets the help he urgently needs..

OP my mum was like this. I'm an adult and we aren't in touch now. Obviously it's a different situation because I wasn't ever physically in fear of her because she had no weapons stashed around the house. (Which is really the thing here isn't it, otherwise people would be alarmed and telling you to leave, but less urgently.) But I was frightened by her, if that makes any sense. Or frightened of the things she said/believed.

It crept up on me super slowly. I can't even be certain when it started. I can say that there were various stressors which contributed; a house move when I was still living at home, me moving in my first BF who she was very attached too and then our break up which affected her badly as she was so fond of him. She started drinking in the evenings which she never had done really, and seemed a bit down and just not herself. Then she started with the end of the world stuff.
Thing is, she's always been a conspiracy theorist I think, but also a happy person as well IYSWIM. Once she started feeling sad or that life had become bad, well it was almost like she was looking for something to hang that on, and the end of days seemed to fit. She stopped spending much time with friends because they didn't understand, stopped reading her favourite crime novels and just changed personality, but slowly over time so it was imperceptible.
That was around 15 years ago, maybe more. Like you, there were lots of 'this is going to happen on such and such a date' and the date would come and go and she would be all 'yeah the plans changed, they (God, angels or whatever) are giving us one last chance to raise our vibration but it is going to happen soon'. After about 5 times of this I started to switch off. It wasn't it not happening that was the issue, it was her reaction to it not happening - that was what made me think she was irrational and I couldn't trust her. That she basically had faulty info or insight. Because the person I knew would have been suspicious after so many false starts and postponements. Once she even told me categorically I could take out all my life savings and spend them she was so certain we are all going to cop it. I didn't. She did apologise later for telling me to do that, but not with any degree of understanding the seriousness of what she was saying.

In the end I went no contact, for other reasons. It has been nice not having to be around it, although I'm sad I needed to do that. Almost ever time I would see her there would be a new date, a new upset, a new thing on the horizon to be feared. I feel very sad for her as she started to lose her friends partly or mostly because of this stuff and eventually had nobody left but me. And then I gave up on her too. It is really hard, it's also insidious and creeps up on you and on them so it takes ages to realise something is off.

I would take note of how many friends he has, who he is getting his ideas from, which boards online or whatever. Does he work and hold down a job? Is he typically credulous and/or gullible? My mum is and this just made things worse. Some people are more easily swayed than others I think.
I think anxiety about the end of the world as we know it is understandable in some ways but often seems to be a symptom of more generalised anxiety or deeper mental health problems. It's a form of obsessive rumination where you get trapped in the endless spiral of your own thoughts. It's also an attempt to gain control over a situation where you feel powerless.

As he has weapons that obviously changes the situation and you do need to be extremely cautious and think about how easily that could escalate. I know this thread will seem shocking and alarmist to you, but we just care and want you and your kids to be safe. You don't sound happy in the relationship anyway, and would be quite within your rights to leave it regardless of any weapons hidden around the house.

Keira8, I don't know if you have heard of 'pre-incident indicators', but they are actions that are a high risk for subsequent violence.
Buying a weapon is one of the most high risk pre-incident indicators. Paranoia is another.

Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker
tinyurl.com/GiftoFear

You can't be in a place/relationship you wouldn't want your daughter to be in. They'll do as you do. Worry about yourself and your children, they relly on you.
I think your husband is potentially very dangerous.
Get evidence, speak to professionals, plan your way out. He is bonkers but that will need to be proved. You don't want court not having right information (or not believing you because what you are saying is too crazy to be true) and order unsupervised visits or even shared custody.

I haven’t read the whole thread, however OP please contact women’s aid - they will guide you through everything.

An ex of mine bought a cross bow into the house, I went mental and asked him to remove it although I’m not sure if he did. I left anyway soon after. He was starting to be a bit paranoid too. Looking back he was becoming abusive.

I hope you can get out to a place of safety. Everything should be around you and your kids safety at the moment. Read another thread here in relationships... it is of someone who has left too. Will post link if you can’t find it. Lots of good advice there and here.

I had to contact the police recently as partner became verbally abusive in extreme and one of their key questions was ‘does he have any weapons or firearms?’ Makes you think.

@littlepaddypaws

As it happens, I don't live on Mumsnet waiting to answer your questions & haven't had a notification that there were replies on this thread.

I know preppers from all over the world, quite a few have weapons all of which are legal in their country of residence so it would be different depending on where they live.
A lot of them learn to make things as they get more into prepping & generally at some stage will learn to work with metal so they will learn to make knives because they are relatively simple.
Country dependant they may also learn to cast bullets etc..

Their wives (the ones I know) are either just as into prepping as they are or they roll their eyes because their husband is in his workshop fiddling away with his latest attempt at a faraday cage or whatever, but as their husbands are sane they view it the way other women view their husbands incomprehensible hobbies.
Most of them are never anywhere near as extreme as those guys on the American tv shows.

I know a (non prepper) wife of a man into historical re-enactments who has to put up with her husband sitting there night after night making links for his chainmail coat.
People do strange things.

I personally think painting yourself in an untested mixture of chemicals is strange, yet most women do it everyday.

We live in a world full of weapons.
I grew up in a house in this country with guns, axes, knives, foils & bows that all got used pretty much every week.
All the neighbours had guns.

Sounds all very melodramatic, but actually my father went clay pigeon shooting every weekend (yes, they were locked in a gun cabinet when he wasn't out with them) & took my brother with him, we all chopped wood to put in the fire places so we had axes around, my brother fenced (still keeps it up to this day) then went through a phase of collecting other sword type things. Now that I think about it he also went through a phase of collecting nun chucks etc... whilst doing martial arts so they are probably still around in one of the attics.
At my boarding school we did archery so I had bows.
There was also the fishing with it's attendant gutting knives etc... & my father grew up hunting (for food not sport) so had a complete set of butchery tools.
He could start with a pig (purchased from the farm down the hill) & end up with a cured ham.

Perfectly normal & innocent reasons for a house full of weapons.
Every farmer in the area (aka all our neighbours) had shotguns & they weren't preppers (neither were my family)
It's not uncommon.

Personally I'm now old, I'm also short, female & going blind.
The place I live nowadays is nowhere near as isolated as my childhood home.
I don't bother keeping weapons because unless I've got a tank & someone to point me in the right direction I'm going to lose any physical confrontation.
All the guy next door has to do to beat me is grab a spoon from the kitchen & I'm outmatched.
I wouldn't even be able to see it until he got within arms reach.
First however, he would have to have a reason to come looking & I don't give people a reason.

As for the OP, there is a very common prepper saying I've even seen quoted on here before & Mumsnet is prepper lite.

Two is one, one is none.

Preppers like to have (multiple) back ups, especially the Doomsday guys.

You probably don't know about half of the things he has stashed.

Farmers with gun licences have nothing in common with a paranoid man with a crossbow hidden in the family home. You've completely missed the point.

@Snugglepumpkin 'I personally think painting yourself in an untested mixture of chemicals is strange, yet most women do it everyday.'

All chemicals in makeup are tested. They have to be.

I suppose if a husband is a bit of a prepper that's one thing (my ex/bestie is into it- he does have many weapons, knives etc which is slightly disturbing) but it's a different level of obsession if a person is so obsessed with it that they have to go on about it to their family, and with a specific date in mind etc.

The thing that strikes me is that you can't know what he is thinking. He might be saying one thing (he'd never hurt anyone, the weapons are just for protection) and sounding rational, but in his head it could be a very different thing. He might just not be telling you what he's really thinking, because he knows the end is here and he doesn't want you to be afraid/worried.

You can't rationalise what he will and won't do. He is mentally ill.

Your husband is already damaging your eldest by sharing this stuff with her.

You need to recognise that being away from him is better for them than being with him. You're focusing on the wrong sort of upset. Yes, a broken family isn't what any of us wish for, but living with your husband is eventually going to break your children mentally, (and possibly physically) which is very very much worse.
You have to understand this, take responsibility and save them from who he is at the moment.

Seconding the recommendation for The Gift Of Fear. Your spidey senses have been tingling for a reason, OP - listen to them. It may be that in some point in the future, with treatment and time, your husband will become the person you thought you married again and will be safe to live with, but he isn't now. You need to get yourself and the kids out of that house before things escalate further than they already have.

Also, I know how to shoot a bow because I learned at school and have friends who're historical reenactment, fantasy novel loving types. Their owning bows doesn't worry me, because they're not displaying signs of paranoia and mental illness. It's the combination of factors here that's making the hair on the back of everyone's neck stand up, because there is a pattern here and it end very very badly often enough to make "get out, as soon as you can" the smartest option.

How many men have killed their children and wife and the headlines have all been about what a gentle loving caring family community man he was?
I couldn’t risk my children. I know this is scary op but if he is having a mental health episode this is not him.

@Zofloramummy My uncle has just been sectioned for exactly this. Trying to kill his wife so that she didn't have to suffer when the bad thing happened.

There were signs but no warning that it would escalate so badly. Our family are in bits at the moment - OP, PLEASE don't let it happen to you.

I think you will really regret staying with him. He's going to start brainwashing your kids with this tripe and they'll turn out to be weirdos with no friends etc
Then they will move out for uni etc and you'll be left with him.
His happiness isn't dependant on you. He is choosing to keep on with these crazy stories and he is making YOU unhappy! Does he care about your happiness? No.

Bloody leave him, you will feel better for it!

Oh and I would definitely report the weapons. As a bloody minimum if you are going to do anything, one thing, that would be it.
People in the USA say "oh I have a gun to protect me from some crazy shooter" but don't understand that if their mental health deteriorates that THEY can become the crazy shooter.

sorry snuggle but some of your responses are a bit loopy too, normal every day sane people do not arm themselves with machetes, knives and cross bows because the world is going to end.
i know my way around a gun and knives but i sure as heck aren't going to keep them in the house, because some idiot said the world is ending next tuesday.

horehound totally agree, i would report anyone i knew if they were talking / bragging about stocking up weapons, [and questioning their sanity]

@Keira8

Hi OP

As you can see, we are all thinking of you this morning and wishing you all the best in getting yourself and your DCs out of the house and to safety ASAP. You can look into helping your DH once you are safe but he is the one who is making home a dangerous place to be and your first duty is to protect your DCs, not him.

Have you spoken to the police? If possible, that should be the first thing you do (even before calling your GP) and hopefully the police will have some helpful advice for you on how they, the police that is, will approach visiting your house and, hopefully, seizing the weapons. This is something the police will have to approach with care as it could be a trigger for action by your DH, especially since his issues are currently with the government. But you still need to involve the police because anything could be a trigger and your DH needs to be separated from his weapons and, ideally, sectioned, because he is a danger to everyone in his current state.

Stress to the police that your DH appears to be suffering from paranoia, engaging in conspiracy theories to the effect that the government is staging terrorist attacks to that it can spy on the citizens of this country and behaving irrationally (it is irrational to say that the world is going to end on a certain date and then ignore the key piece of evidence provided by that date having passed without the world ending). State it clearly and loudly so that the police are very clear that there are MH issues in play – as other posters have said, it is the combination of MH issues and lethal weaponry which is so very worrying in your case. And this may also be relevant in relation to your DH having access to your DCs in the future and whether or not it is supervised and so forth.

You and your DCs must be safely away when the police do visit and ideally go somewhere where your DH cannot find you because he may turn on you.

Good luck.

This poor woman was not so lucky he did spare the children though.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7751439/Jealous-husband-28-told-wife-swallow-wedding-ring-beating-death.html