Husband has completely written history to paint me badly and I am hurt and I don't know what to do.
During the pandemic my marriage almost fell apart. He had to work from home and I developed Long Covid after getting very sick with covid and was bed bound for 10 months, I still did some things but I had to spend hours in bed I was so unwell and it took a couple of years to regain full physical ability. This caused our marriage to become extremely strained, of which the situation in the house became very toxic, we are argued all the time, things became very heated, he resented me for being sick and felt I was a burden, I resented him for how badly he was treating me for being sick. The situation resulted in me having a serious mental breakdown which required hospital admission, he never visited me and we separated. I was unwell and stayed elsewhere as we felt it was in the childrens interest that I was the one to move out as I was too ill at the time to be their main carer and they needed some stability.
After time apart we rekindled our relationship. We felt this was in the best interest of our children and also we were getting on really well. The passion returned and I feel like now we have a good relationship. Or so I thought.
A year ago I went back into education to get a career of my own. This has meant that the dynamic in the house has changed, and whilst I once was the childrens primary caregiver, he now is, as my university is a 4 hour round commute away. This is not ideal however he did not wish to move and this is the closest uni that did the course I wanted. We both agreed to do this.
At the weekend we were talking and I mentioned something I had been upset about, he asked me to elaborate and I said " actually I think it's best we don't talk about this you will get defensive and I don't want to fight". Although we get on now we don't really discuss what happened during the pandemic. He always gets very defensive and it's not worth the fight. My friends believe this is because he has a hard time accepting that he didn't handle things well and behaved abusively at times during that period. Unfortunately this has meant that I have been left with some painful things I carry about it I feel have never had a resolve. He said "no it's ok let's talk about it I won't get defensive".
So we did talk. He didn't get defensive. What he did do was present a history that is entirely rewritten.
Before i got sick I was the childrens primary care giver. I ran a childcare business from home and was a stay at home mum. I wanted to get a carer of my own but he said we couldn't afford the childcare. I did majority of the cooking in the week, often having dinner cooking for when he got in and all the emotional labour and care around the kids. The house would get on top of me alot so he would often come home to a mess, sometimes a huge mess due to me trying to juggle dinner for lots of children, kids reading and homework and the last few hours of the day always seemed to get away with me and he would have to help me tidy up when he came home. I did most of the cleaning that wasn't these daily reset tasks however he would do the big pull everything out feel cleans. I tried to follow that organised mum thing. I would say he did more in the house then many men do but it was fairly balanced between us. We had a night pack down routine where I would settle the kids and he would wash up etc. the kids mostly were my job but he did look after them so I could do a hobby or go on a night out with friends etc. I think white balanced. The pandemic did change they due to how ill I got and that is a huge grief of mine.
We also had a joint account (that we no longer have). I organised the account because we had got into some debt and I had asked if I could try organising it. We each had an allowance out of it to spend on what we liked and the rest was joint.
In his version of events
I was never the primary care giver to the children, he apparently has always been.
That he has always done " atleast 85% of everything" even before I got sick.
That I "controlled the finances" and spent it all on clothes and things I wanted (we did sometimes argue about me buying things, but I never ever bought out of our joint money and he had full access to our joint account I just organised payments to things)
And he claims that his reaction in the pandemic was more then reasonable considering all of this and I should be grateful that he wanted to make things work and not seperate because he insists if we had "all it would have taken is me to see a solicitor and you would have lost everything" ( I got legal advice at the time and this is not true). He thinks he was entirely justified in the way he treated me because of this.
I am so hurt. This is a huge distortion of reality.
To me the pandemic was a huge life stressers that we both handled badly. He behaved pretty shockingly towards me being so sick, however I understand that it was very difficult and a huge life shift and he was very stressed and I also didn't handle things well at times...and we've moved past it and my health has recovered. To me it was a painful 3 years and things are better now.
He does have a habit of rewriting history on a day to day if he's done something wrong. For example he'll regularly deny he said something or did something or exaggerate about timings or amounts until you show him evidence he did such as screenshots or whatever. He openly admitted for a while his long term memory isn't great and was doing brain training stuff as he was worried about it (which he now also denies he ever said it did).
I don't know what to do or how to move forward now. I'm so hurt he believes such a distorted reality of our pre pandemic life, especially as I gave up my personal goals for a decade to be the stay at home parent.etc.
I feel heavily gasslit. Like I'm going insane. I've been sat going through old bank statements trying to prove to him I never spent from the joint account.
I feel so hurt part of me wants to leave. But also like I don't wish to explode my life or my childrens life right now. When we were thinking of separating before things did get messy and I don't trust it would be a calm seperation. I don't think I would be able to continue my course, and I definitely would have to suspend it as I would be devastated and I don't think I would cope with a seperation and the travel and heavy work load.
And like the children are happy and I want them to have a happy family, and I mean until this conversation I was the happiest I have been since all this happened. Like actually thinking we had saved our marriage.
But I don't know how to carry the hurt from this completely delusional narrative about the past.
Sorry if this was a long read. I just don't know who to talk to about it. My friends developed a dislike of him due to how he was treating me during the pandemic and so everything they say is quite biased, where I have felt like we had moved on from all that.