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

I honestly don't believe he will harm our kids. He has never been violent towards me or children

But OP I assume you didn't think he would ever buy a crossbow, keep it in your family home and lie to you about it?!

why would a prepper need weapons ? what sort of weapons are we talking about ? there are some very strange people out there who watch too many zombie films and think this is the way it ends.

@Keira8 of COURSE you don't think he'll harm your kids. Lots of women would say the same. Some of them have dead children, some are dead themselves. You CANNOT know paranoia from the inside unless you've been inside it yourself.
Two facts are enough to ring massive alarm bells - the weapons, and the thinking the govt are faking terrorism. This is a man who has lost it. Get out first, worry about him ONCE YOU AND YOUR CHILDREN ARE SAFE.

Sorry to shout at you lovely.

Leaving aside the fact that your husband seems unstable and mentally ill, try talking to people whose parents stayed together "for the sake of the children". My friend stayed in an unhappy marriage until her two children were grown up, and they both say they wish their parents had separated years before. They said their parents didn't even really row or argue, there was just an undercurrent of discontent, and there was no joy in the house. The younger child was six, when her father came home and her mother said "I brought your washing in, I've left the ironing board out for you". She said that even as a little girl, she had thought that was not a very loving way to behave towards your husband. If you were my daughter, even if he was a son in law that I loved, I'd be begging you to take the children and leave.

@littlepaddypaws - scary isn't it?

OP, you say you’re worried about making your children unhappy, but children can’t be expected to understand such behaviour or assess potential risks. You are the person who has to do that. Their happiness matters but in this scary situation it has to take second place. Manage the risk. Get help.

You clearly think something’s wrong with your DH because you’ve been trying to get him to see a doctor. Nobody here can judge his mental health - but it sounds like he needs some kind of assessment.

You say he lied to you about the weapons he has. How do you know he hasn’t got other weapons that he’s not mentioned to you? How do you know that you, by arguing and disputing his claims, won’t suddenly become ‘the enemy’? A threat to the children he’s besotted with?

Please get support in real life. This sounds a frightening situation.

@Keira8

Of couse you don't believe he will harm your kids. He may well never do so. But what if you're wrong? What if he does? As other posters have said - he is not himself; he appears to have severe MH issues which have caused him to hide lethal weapons in the house - presumably with a view to using them if necessary. If not against his own family, then it could be someone else who visits the house or passes by in the street. He is not thinking rationally. There are mental health professionals on this thread who are warning you that this is a potentially very dangerous situation. Why take the risk? You removing the DCs from this situation might actually motivate your DH to accept treatment and/or he will get sectioned and hopefully get treatment as a result of that.

Just allowing the current situation to continue cannot be the answer because, unfortunately, in his current state your H potentially poses a serious threat to you, your DCs, your family and friends and indeed anyone who comes into contact with him. And unless he gets treatment, the situation is likely to escalate.

It is also potentially very damaging for your DCs to be raised around someone with these beliefs. I'm not sure how many MN threads you have read but many posters who were raised in unhappy relationships post that they wish their parents had separated instead of staying together.

It is so hard for you to be in this situation. You have done nothing wrong and you have tried very hard to put the situation right. But you can't fix your H. You need to protect your DCs.

Keira, apologies for not reading the whole thread, but another voice to say you must prioritize the childrens’ safety and go to a refuge. You don’t know what he’s capable of in his delusional state. The children will thank you for it when they are older. So sorry you are in this position.

snuggle what sort of weapons do your prepper pals keep ? it's a straight forward question.

19 years is a really long time to know someone...was he always prone to paranoia or did it just surface out of the blue? Aside from the more serious diagnoses people have mentioned there's also paranoid personality disorder which is not officially an illness but definitely causes worrying behaviour. The sufferer does not realise their irrationality therefore trying to "correct" them only results in confrontation.

It sounds like he's being fueled by an echo chamber of conspiracy content online. Is there any way you can limit his access to those? Or at least try to negotiate baby steps such as no online browsing late at night or no phones in bed? Did he have other hobbies at some point that you can attempt to revive? Any time spent doing other things other than reading/watching crazy stuff online is a tiny step in the right direction.

This must be so unsettling for you. Can only echo what some others have said - put yours and your children's safety first and leave. And report the weapons to the police. It might even help him a bit with a reality check. Going along with his paranoia might make him feel like he's perfectly right about it all.

I've read some of the 'prepper' sites. Vert scary. A whole underground belief system that's anti society, weapons based, riddled with conspiracy theories - very macho and paranoid.

I realise there is stigma around mental health issues, BUT

Your DH is likely to be in a downward spiral that has a strong possibility of ending tragically, either just for him, or for all of you. If he was physically injured, you would insist on getting him help. MH should be no different.

I would find out about how to have an emergency assessment
I would find out about how to get people sectioned under the MHA

If you carry on living with this, what happens when he stops trusting you? Does he murder you to save the children that he loves? Does he murder the children to keep them save from an increasingly oppressive govt? You CANNOT preempt what his thought process and behaviour will be, because he is severely unwell and unpredictable.

By doing something, you risk your children being disappointed until they’re old enough to understand.

By doing nothing, you risk your life, your children’s lives, your husbands life. Your children’s current and future mental health, the possibility of future conversations at school alerting SS to problems at home that you haven’t made any effort to protect your DC from.

There is too much at stake to do nothing

I think I would report the weapons to the police, it maybe a way of getting him help. It’s very hard to get someone help if they don’t want it unless sectioned and that’s not likely to happen (almost impossible) until it’s too late.

I work in mental health and some of his behaviour are similar to what I have seen in people with with psychosis, paranoia and schizophrenia. There could be a number of things going on but without seeing anyone it’s impossible to help him.

You have to put your kids first and keep them safe, I could not stay in a house where there are weapons and someone who is obviously mentally ill. It’s a ticking time bomb.

This can be incredibley damaging to children, my father had mental health issues and was forever talking about nostradamus and the end of the world when I was a child, I was petrified for years and years, it done me no good, unfortunately its your husband or your childrens state of mind.

I honestly don't believe he will harm our kids. He has never been violent towards me or children. If I had ever thought they were in danger then I would never seek advice, I would have left years ago without even thinking about it

I know someone who thought that. They were a lovely middle class family with two children, he was a lecturer. Not the violent or controlling type at all.

He even sought help from his GP for his strange thoughts about the children not being his. Then he stabbed her 27 times and made himself himself a cup of tea before he phoned the police.

If the air rifle and crossbow are not for use on you and your children, then who would they be used against? The police? Emergency services? Army?

Your husband apparently has weapons that he says he would use. You need to tell someone more qualified than you about this, if not for your family's protection, then for other families.

That is your civil responsibility.

Wow, he sounds like a terrorist attack and/or murder-suicide waiting to happen. This is one of the most frightening things I've ever read on this site.

You need to get yourself and the children away from him NOW. Do it as secretly and quickly as possible because there is a chance, as others have said, he will become violent if he thinks you are all about to escape.

Growing up the children of divorced parents is really nowhere near as damaging as growing up in a household of abuse (or not growing up at all because your paranoid father killed you).

I met a lovely woman in NZ. Her husband decided he needed to protect the family too, and made made noone could ever hurt them again. He killed their 4 children and then himself. Please, your DH is not in his right mind, he has weapons and he has paranoid thoughts. Out of deranged love, he may do terrible things. Protect your children, remove them from him, and seek help for yourselves and for him.

Whether you can see it or not, your DCs are in danger. They're already suffering from his paranoid delusions and from an atmosphere where you have to walk on eggshells.

Part of the problem with the normalisation of conspiracy theories and prepper culture is that it creates an environment where people start to think it's normal. Your DH's behaviour isn't normal. Has he ever talked about how he plans to use the weapons? It's difficult to get MH support but if there is an immediate threat or threats have been uttered, you can call the police. They can get him assessed. Your DCs are in danger - I can't stress this enough.

I am a Christian now and know that not one of us knows when the end day will be. Although we do live in the end days and many people feel it and see it. The fact is nobody will know when it will be. I've heard people say thing's like England is the city of babylon and Armigedion is on its way. Also people have dictated that the world was going to end in 99. Then it was 2001. And the last one I've heard of was in 2016. Your dh would probably benefit from reading the Bible

That is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever read on Mumsnet. He has serious mental health problems and you suggest reading the bible? He might as well sit and watch Coronation Street in the hope that that will 'cure' him.

Apart from all the relevant posts about the danger (possible future event) and the damage (current - being done now to you and your children - do not kid yourself) that your husband's beliefs can and will do, what about your husband? He is obviously in some sort of torment. Why would you not intervene to help bring that to an end?

I think you’re being very naive to think that he would never hurt the children because he is besotted with them. I have become extremely worried and panicked in the recent past and ended up thinking about how I might kill my children. It wasn’t a plan for now, but for the future, if things got as bad as I was scared they might. I would kill them first and then myself. Not because I wanted to hurt them, but because I love them so much and wanted to save them from the fear/misery/painful deaths I was convinced they would face. That was a last resort, I had been thinking of other solutions such as taking them to a safer part of the world, but there was nowhere safe from the situation worrying me. Another part if it was thinking that I don’t want to live through that scenario and would kill myself, but then I wouldn’t be here to protect them and they would have to live with the knowledge that I had killed myself and think I don’t care about them.

Just wanted to give you a little insight into how a person could consider harming their children because they love them so much. It didn’t seem like harm to me at the time. It felt like saving them from a living nightmare.

@Keira8

I honestly don't believe he will harm our kids. He has never been violent towards me or children. If I had ever thought they were in danger then I would never seek advice, I would have left years ago without even thinking about it

I'm an ex mental health nurse. ALL the families say that about their partners never hurting them. Until they then do.

Your husband wouldn't hurt anyone. Your husband isn't currently your husband.

I have nursed parents who have killed their children whilst unwell, thinking they were saving their kids from prolonged torture. It's an action done out of love.

OP, you might not want to believe your husband could ever be capable of this. But you are knowingly risking your children's safety by keeping them at home with your husband, and failing to contact social care direct for them to do an assessment under the mental health act.

It really is THAT dangerous, OP. Either leave with the kids or, if you won't, contact social care direct and have then come and assess him.

I am afraid that failure to do this could well lead to tragedy and your failure to take appropriate steps to safeguard the children, could well be viewed adversely by the social workers.

well, snuggles you've either disappeared for good or your prep friends are stashing illegal or potential dangerous weapons, but then it could be total bull shit on their part or yours.

I also wanted to say that I grew up in a household with very religious parents. Our church openly talked about how we were living in the end times and were going to live to see the end times. I was absolutely terrified by it. It has greatly affected me. I don’t think about it in a daily basis but I think it is why I get so worried about extreme scenarios so quickly. I never felt completely safe and secure in the world. You don’t want that for your children.