I’m beginning to think there is something strange about my partner!.

[GinIsForBreakfast84]

I have recently come to realise that there is something very ‘off’ about my partner. I genuinely think there may be a underlying personality disorder of some type going on. Can anyone help me understand what might be at play or is he just hard work!! He’s always been like this but I couldn’t see it until after I’d had my daughter and we were at home together a lot.

My friends and family universally dislike him but can’t say why, he makes them all very uncomfortable. He is very very needy for attention and love and will give me the silent treatment for days if he perceives it’s not being met. Historically very controlling, monitoring my phone for how long it takes me to get places etc. Moody if feels he’s not getting what he thinks he deserves. Overly permissive and treats his daughter from previous marriage like his best friend (she’s now 7) whilst putting me down in front of her.

Lied to me about her existence for the first year we were together and then somehow I felt sorry for him about him having to hide it! He did not have to hide it it’s crazy! Also lied about being married and has only ever claimed they ‘drifted apart’ but this seems unlikely when they had a 1 year old together.

However all this goes by the way side compared to the endless low level lying and manipulation of conversations back to how I am the one who wronged him.
I regularly feel like screaming over just extracting basic information.

Example would be - are you in for dinner tonight ?
Answer - well if you don’t want me here, I’ll go out, if it’s too much trouble I’ll just have toast I’m not hungry anyway ahhhhhh all I wanted to know was whether I should cook more sausages ! I can not describe how much I feel I am going mad, can’t get a single straight answer to any question. I’ve totally shut down and try to barely speak

Any insights gratefully received and yes I now see the many red flags, I was totally taken in by his persuasive arguments at the start and now I’m in deep as have a young child.

@spotcheck

Many many people say it on MN: He's not a wonderful complex puzzle that you need to figure out. It doesn't matter why he's broken- he is.

You won't be rewarded with gratitude or good behaviour if you figure it out.

Lightbulb moment!

@BrilliantBetty i don’t fear for her safety with him so realise compared to many I’m lucky. I think that It’s mainly I worry he would put himself and older daughter first. He already hates it if she naps and it disrupts plans. Plus they treat her like she’s there as entertainment rather than a small child who has needs and routines. Plus the massive degree of emotional ‘neediness’ that be exhibits towards both his children and trying to win them over by never saying no, junk food, keeping them up all hours of day and night.
Plus she screams the place down if he does anything for her in the evenings (bath, clothes, bed etc). He blames me for this however I think she’d be very very unhappy away from me for nights or even extended days and she wouldn’t have boundaries or security with him.
There’s more around hygiene, cleanliness and just basic care of a young child when paired with an attitude that he knows everything already so doesn’t need to hear it!

OMG that’s fucked up. Please don’t waste your life OP. Leave, save your child if you won’t save yourself. Even reading this makes me feel sad.

A lot of people do this as it makes them feel good , knowing your feeling bad.
You can only keep saying to yourself , his problem not yours.
But if your writing on here for advice, then in your head you want him gone,

Come on! You know you cannot stay with this man FFS!

Do not make the mistake I made and put up with this over years and years until it seems normal (see my user name). It’s absolutely not and will wreck your mental health, slowly but very surely.

Insight? You need to leave. I appreciate that is sometimes easier to say than to do, but it's clear from your posts that you're not happy and there are serious issues in this relationship.

You need to make a practical plan, OP, for how to move forward for yourself and your daughtter. If he's controlling, I would be cautious about sharing it, too.

Read the first two lines of your description and it was a nope - get out. Then I read on.
There is no question OP.
Get out while your child is young and you have a chance to minimise the damage to yourself and them.

Tell me.. What's good about him?

His mental condition is irrelevant, OP. You need to leave this abusive man, for your daughter’s sake as well as your own.

I hope you can protect her from unsupervised access. But anything would be better than having her grow up thinking his dreadful behaviour is normal.

I'm afraid there isn't likely to be an easy answer. My son's father was like this, and I think it's likely it was partly a paranoid personality disorder/ childhood trauma that led him to be controlling and coercive.
Personality disorders aren't as easily treated as mental illnesses as they tend to be a lot more complex. If they have an element of paranoia or grandiosity even more so, as it isn't likely he'd agree that there's anything wrong/ would see it as you being against him.

Please try and speak to your local domestic abuse service for some support. I completely understand your fears about him having to look after your daughter unsupervised, but she deserves a happy healthy mother. It doesn't sound like you're able to be one as things are. Sending lots of love.

https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/YouDonntHaveetoTakeeitAnymore.html?id=C65n51nwGqEC&printsec=frontcover&source=kpp_readbutton&hl=en&newbks=1&newbkssredir=1&redir_esc=y
This book, plus lots of reading Mumsnet, helped me see how unhealthy my relationship was x

Forget the psychoanalysing of this man. He is not your partner, but a co-dependent leech who will drain you in every way. Knowing that, why do you stay with him? Single life is lovely compared to being with someone with issues who makes you feel bad.

Make plans to leave.

There's not a single redeeming feature apparently that you can find about this man. And you know it enough to relay it all to strangers on the internet who, rightly, are a bit horrified for you. Now, what are you going to do about it? To have written all this and know that it's hopeless with this man and then not do anything about it would mean that you've begun knowingly doing this to yourself by allowing it to continue. You're woefully unhappy but fully in charge of making moves to change that. Make them.

OP what are you doing with this guy. Hes completly toxic. Lies lies and more lies. Get the hell out of the relationship.

In your original post there are at least 5 things about him where one of them would be enough reason to end this relationship. He’s a controlling, abusive, manipulative, gaslighting piece of shit. Please dump him.

Sounds like some variety of narcissist to me. But in complete seriousness... unless you are aiming to get a psychology qualification and become his (free) therapist, don't bother trying to figure him out.

With a great deal of reading, you can probably learn to understand quite well why he does what he does (bad childhood is usually the short answer), but once you grasp the scale of his issues, you will almost certainly decide a relationship with him is not worth your time and effort.

You already know he is hard work, lies, can't communicate well and doesn't trust anyone. Those are HIS problems, NOT your problems to solve or accommodate.

Your problem is that you didn't immediately walk away from this relationship:

• as soon as you realised he had a habit of giving you the silent treatment
• the first time you realised he monitored your phone to see how long it took you to get somewhere
• when he insulted you in front of his daughter
• when he blamed you for something you knew was really his fault
• when you realised he had a pattern of lying

You think you put up with all these things because relationships take work and tolerance but actually you put up with them all because you have unrecognised self-esteem or codependency issues. (I've been there and done that.)

Don't spend a second more trying to figure out HIS problems or fix them for him. Figure out your own problems and fix them for YOU. The first step is leaving a relationship where you are treated with continual disrespect.

@litterbird

Ermmmm.....get out of this relationship now!!!! Dont try and analyse this its pointless....just run as fast as you can!

This

Why are you with this man OP? Run for the hills, you can do much better than this. When family and friends take a dislike to someone there is usually a good reason.

Um, well it’s clear you know damn well he’s controlling, manipulative and cruel - and you’ve identified the evidence for this - so, you aren’t just ‘beginning to think there’s something strange’ are you??

I’m challenging you because you need to stop kidding yourself. There is nothing here you can fix with a pill or attention. He’s a thoroughly nasty piece of work. And if you think you’re in deep now - you have no idea how deep you will be in 2 years.

You need to leave ASAP for your sake and that of your child. I’d start a new post detailing any advice you need to start that process - lots of people here with good advice.

Run like the wind.

It doesn't really matter if we call it a personality disorders or not- he's not a nice person and not a good partner. It would give me the horrors and/or be very draining to be around him. I can't believe he lied about his child. 😮 Please separate from him ASAP. X

Well I can certainly see why nobody likes him.
He's no big cash prize puzzle to solve. There's nothing worth solving.
Just get yourself and your little girl out of this relationship. There are no healthy or worthwhile reasons for you to live like this.
Don't look for reasons, answers, explanations or justifications to him... He's really nothing special to warrant that level of care or interest.
I hope you and your little girl move on to a happier, healthier life away from this guy. I'd sort it sooner rather than later if I were you.
Good luck!

What difference would a diagnosis make to you, OP? If someone could magically wave a wand and say with total authority, "your partner has a personality disorder," would you say "oh, well, in that case I guess it's fine"? Because it's not.