@Whatachliche you are a victim of abuse and need to reach out for whatever support you need.
Educate yourself on gaslighting and the mechanics of lying and narcissistic tendencies and you’ll realise that being capable of doing this to this level, even and especially when faced with indisputable facts, is indicative of a personality disorder and nothing to do with you.
He would have brought his disordered personality along with him to whoever he had married. A disordered personality doesn’t excuse what he did, many who do this are aware that the control mechanisms they use to their benefit are wrong and unethical, so they mask it with deception or denial that they are doing this when confronted. Add a dash of narcissism and entitlement and what you get is this:
lies,
minimisation,
exaggeration,
twisting of events and facts or outright denial, intimating that it’s you, your memory is poor, you ‘remembered it wrong’,
telling you that you overthink,
telling you you have jumped to conclusions,
you would say that wouldn’t you,
and often a grand finale of: you are crazy.
They can do it to somebody they love (although it doesn’t look like love to us) through wrestling with a deep internal fight between insecurity and grandiosity, driving them to try to control everything.
Life is unpredictable and other people have their own minds and wants and desires which don’t always match up with our own. Other people don’t always do what we want them to do. We’d like other people to do what we want them to but realise they have their own needs, those with narcissistic tendencies need other people to do what they want them to.
Life has rules and morals and ethics which can clash with their belief that they can do/ have what they want. A disordered personality will dial down their stress and anxiety around not being adored and obeyed by others by trying to control them so that they get the supply and security, obeisance and predictability they need.
The ‘how can somebody who loves me do this to me?” question arises because love to us means supporting and being loving and loyal. These people see love as a possession and an absolute right, no matter how they behave. They see others as either being useful or not useful, as validating their superiority or challenging it, as being in the way of the belief that they are so special that they can do/ have whatever they want, they think social norms and morals are for other lesser people, not them.
Don’t try to understand this from a normal perspective, you never will, because you don’t have a disordered personality and from what you have written I’d guess that he has.
Look up gaslighting and narcissistic abuse and coercive control and to a greater or lesser degree you’ll find your husband.
Don’t whatever you do turn this inwards and berate yourself for not seeing it or not realising, these people are often very clever, often they are high flyers who are also very clever at masking their behaviour and making you think it’s you, making you think it’s better to give in to keep the peace, making you think they’re right and somehow it was you who fucked up.
Apply the ‘rules’ around narcissistic and controlling behaviour to your “How could he..?” question and it makes sense. At present you can’t get your head round it because you are applying the normal ‘rules’ of how a normal, loving person would behave. It’s a big leap for a random on the internet like me to tell you he’s got narcissistic tendencies and a personality disorder but if he isn’t, from what you say about how you feel now and from what he is saying and doing, I’d bet real money that he’s on the spectrum of one.
Research this stuff and you’ll see that none of this, including not recognising his behaviour, was because you were stupid or gullible, it was because you were operating under one set of beliefs that you thought he shared, he was operating covertly under quite another set of rules and very skilled at masking it.
Take great care and reach out for help, this doesn’t go away on its own.