Signs, signs everywhere a sign

I get asked all the time, "Did you know he was a narcissist?"  and "Why did you stay?"

No, I didn't know what a narcissist was.  My father, I believe is a narcissist, but also undiagnosed Bi-Polar. But my ex?  No.  I didn't even know what a narcissist in this capacity (Covert Narcissist) was.  I thought a narcissist was someone who started at their own reflection all the time.  Vain and self centered.  And while he did have moments of these attributes, he was also very kind, attentive and he projected to be a good husband and father.  Until he wasn't.  

I can check nearly every box on this list and as years went by, things became more and more apparent to me.  I just didn't know what it was!  Also, during this time, I was being gaslit and stonewalled by him and his family.  They ganged up on me, silent treatments, judgements without asking what was going on, just deemed "emotional" or too sensitive. 

I met him when I was 16.  I grew up in the 70's and 80's.  Women were starting to come forward as breadwinners in the household and going into the work force.  I am GenX and caught between the 1950's idealization of home and the 70's modernization of the role of wife and mother.  

As we grew up, there were signs.  A hellacious temper, an addictive personality, FIERCLY competitive and extremely judgemental of others.  He had road rage and would scare me in the car sometimes. We both were in the same sport and I did better than him and he quickly became very aggressive to intimidate me during practices. He idealized being a fighter pilot or a member of the ski patrol, but was never able to make either.  He turned to cycling and dreamt that he was Lance Armstrong but got  lapped so badly in a local criterium that he gave up that idea too and stuck to clubs and riding partners that he could reign superior over. 

There were signs as our relationship went from friends to the next level.  He moved quickly.  Proposing in less than 6 months claiming we had all this history.  We moved in quickly and he showered me with attention and love.  But even then, there were signs.  Like when I had a family function with MY family.  His son's soccer team made it into the finals for the LOCAL teams.  Which means they played all the other teams on their level within this organization.  It wasn't state, nationals or anything.  Just within this organization.  I waited.  And I waited.  No call. No text.  Didn't answer any of my calls.  I could have gone with my parents and they could have come later, but he didn't let me know. So I ended up missing my family event. When they came in at 7pm, (they were supposed to have been home by 1pm) and found out they were knocked out in an earlier round but stuck around to "support" another team, I was upset. When I expressed this, he turned on me, with hostility about how he was teaching his son how to be a good sport!  When I asked where the lesson was about honoring prior commitments, he told me I was over reacting and that I should have just gone by myself. This was supposed to be with ALL of us, and why didn't he call?  Text?  He was "caught up" in the moment and didn't look at his phone which was in the car. 

When I was having our daughter, his dad's new wife's daughter was killed evading police after she and her boyfriend stole a car.  The funeral for her was the day after I got home from the hospital from having a Csection.  I wasn't supposed to lift anything heavier than 8 pounds (our daughter was just over that) and I was so very sore from the incision.  He insisted on going to the funeral.  Left me home alone, with our newborn for over eight hours.  Again, I called and texted and he ignored me.  He was too busy being the center of attention at the reception showing off pictures of our daughter. When he got home, I was in tears, bleeding, and trying to nurse.  He didn't even ask how I was.  Just chattered on about how everyone said congratulations and that they all thought his daughter was beautiful.  I expressed I was hungry because I hadn't been able to eat all day.  Could he make dinner?  He said he wasn't hungry. He ate at the reception and proceeded to sit his ass on the sofa and watch TV. 

Then there was when my mom entered hospice.  His brother came to town and my ex wanted to have a BIG BBQ with all the family at OUR house. I was a mess. I didn't have the energy or the state of mind to have a house full of people and asked if maybe we could go to a restaurant or maybe someone else could host?  He got aggressive and angry at me again because I didn't want to host.  I said that I was not in the position to host a large party.  My mom was DYING and I needed to be with her.  He is on the phone with his brother telling him we can't have the BBQ because I don't want them at the house. Never said why, never told them what was happening.  The next day I was drug along as we all went downtown to the aquarium and my sister in law asked what was going on?  Why didn't I want everyone at the house?  I broke down. I told her what was happening.  She was shocked. She said no one mentioned my mom or what was happening and of course she understood why I wasn't up for a huge party.  Eight days later, my mother died. I called him at work and told him what happened and he told me he couldn't leave. I screamed at him that I needed him there with me and he told me he would come when he could.  Hours later, he came.  At the funeral, he wasn't by my side, but was being Mr. Social with others. My MIL only stayed for 45 minutes and left and didn't come to the funeral. This was right before Halloween.  On Christmas Eve, he got mad at me because I didn't want to go to HIS family.  Christmas Eve was the big holiday with my mom.  I was mourning her.  He told me I was being unfair to our daughter by denying her a chance to be with her cousins.  So he took her and left.  I was home alone until 1AM.  

So many other signs as it became more an more clear that he was tired of keeping up his facade.  He'd leave our daughter and I to set up our canopy at tournaments while he went off to help others.  He would disappear to talk to his "friends" or he would leave the house to go help someone else.  But if we needed help, he wasn't there.  He started being less and less responsive to texts.  He would get aggressive and back me into corners or closets trigging a fight or flight reaction. He would gaslight, stonewall or give me the silent treatment.  He would tell me how awful I was as a wife and mother and soon, he stopped coming home during any decent hour, claiming he had to work. He'd stroll in at 2am or he'd leave unexpectedly.  He'd make excuses to not be home and went from never missing a single school event, practice or tournament to missing every single one. 

At the end it was painfully obvious to me he was done with me.  He'd used me for what he needed and then when I started holding him accountable for his bad behavior, he lost interest.  When his mistress started playing mommy to our daughter, I drew the line and then I incurred the wrath of his whole family as they formed an alliance against me to get me out.  And it worked.  

Right now I am sitting in my "bedroom" which is really my dad's living room with an air mattress because we sold our home and he his preventing distribution of funds so I can't get anything else to live in until I get my money.  He is now purposely dragging his feet so that it makes it as uncomfortable for me as he can.  But what is also happening is that he's doing this to his daughter too.  Because she dared to go no contact with him and refuses to believe his lies. 

He's just digging deeper. 

Just a Puppet on a String

 And i finally understand... 

I was always the little puppy who followed him around.  Until his antics and deception became too much and the consequences threatened our home and our family. Everything changed when I held him accountable.  He discarded me when I found out about the affair. 

It is all my fault.  I refused to allow the bad behavior.  I started asking questions.  I didn't believe him anymore.  As long as I was blind to his horrible deeds, I was worthy.  But as soon as I started to question, I became a $#it wife and mother who was destroying lives. 

And now that I have the audacity to go no contact because I refused his request to remain friends and because I told him I did not want to know him anymore, he has gone on a smear campaign to prove to the casual observers that he HAD to divorce me because I was the abusive one. 

I've lost friends,  but the people who chose to believe him aren't people who should be in my life anyway.  He's now made it his life's mission to destroy me... and if that means it takes D with me?  So be it. His daughter is just a consequence in our relationship. He uses her to try to get to me.  But all it does is push her farther away. 

I've been discarded because I held him accountable.

I'm The Problem, It's Me.

The one thing that I suffer from the most since the separation is self-doubt.  Trying to understand that all the things he and his family called me (Broken, evil, horrible etc.) isn't because of me, but because of them.  I suffer greatly with the feeling that I'm always doing something or saying something wrong.  Whenever I spoke up about something with my husband or Mother-in-law, I was told how unhinged or out of line I was.  Like when my MIL took my 3 year old out after midnight in January to the grocery store when the windchill was -24!  I was wrong for getting upset about that. 

I was also wrong for accusing my husband of an affair.  I shouldn't have done that. I was destroying lives by putting it out there that he and his mother's BFF were hooking up.  I was wrong to get mad when the AP showed up at my daughter's tournament.  I was wrong for calling my husband out on a bold faced lie when I was looking at a picture that absolutely proved otherwise.  I wasn't supposed to feel hurt that I didn't get to go to my Step Son's graduation.  I wasn't supposed to be upset that he was never home and always too busy to text me back or even CALL me back for that matter.  

I was always wrong.  I was always made to feel insignificant and if I stepped out of line, I was shunned.  I was put in the silent treatment.  I was left out and ignored. For 20+ years I was always out of line.  I came from a family of Sicilians who dealt with things head on and then hugged and kissed before we departed.  His family pretended problems didn't exist and anything was swept quietly under the rug.  That is unless they ALL got behind something and then it was a scene from the Wizard of Oz with my MIL the WWotW commanding her flying monkeys to FLY!

And so now, I am left to try to sort out my conditioning vs reality.  What part of my now self doubt is because of the brainwashing I went through and how much of it is reality.  Like, I am truly off base with my thinking or reasoning.  I struggle with this through my sessions.  I bounce things of other people and they start to laugh because when I say it out loud, it really sounds like I have lost my damned mind.  Friends are quick to let me know that what I am saying or thinking is HIS conditioning of me, that I know better.  But do I?  I have a hard time sorting through what is right and what is wrong and what I though was right is wrong and what I thought was wrong was right and the next thing I know I am in a corner trying to make the world stop spinning.  

With my ex, everything was black...or white.  There was no gray. There was no off white.  There was no room for interpretation or in the moment.  It was..."You said you liked tuna salad, so I will make it for you everyday!" Then, after six months, when I tell him I am tired of tuna salad, I am treated like I just killed his puppy and told, "You are a moving target!  I can't win with you!"  So then I feel like crap because I only thought of myself.  And this was a very bad thing.

Christmas was always horrible for me.  I only really asked for one thing.  Some little thing I wanted. It was rarely expensive, but sometimes it was. But it was always cheaper than what I got for him.  There were times he absolutely refused to get me what I asked for.  Four years running I got a Pioneer woman Cookbook (Sorry, Ree) and not that I didn't like it, I just got what I wanted of hers off the internet.  I asked for ONE book, once (See tuna example).  So it became a source of shame for me when I opened his gift and it was anything but what I wanted, asked for or even liked. And then I would feel shame. And he would ignore me and just act like everything was ok.  So I learned not to ask for anything.  Because he never had any intention of getting it for me anyway.  

So now my daughter asks me what I want. I say nothing. She's like, I'm not dad.  And I cry.

Same went for my birthday, our anniversary, valentine's day or any other event.  

I wasn't allowed to speak my mind about anything I found unfair, out of line.  I wasn't supposed to talk about his lies, betrayals or his secrets and how they hurt me.  He would sit in stone silence, not looking at me, acknowledging me or even answering any questions I had.  I researched, bought books, sent articles that I thought could help us. He wouldn't read them. He wouldn't talk about them.  But he used the love language to bolster his relationship with his AP...so I guess that's a good thing. 

Now that I am away from all that, I still revert to how I was trained to be.  If I see something unfair, I struggle to speak up.  If I need to do something, I second and third guess myself.  Am I doing the right thing?  What motives am I using to make this decision?  Am I sure that this is right and not just my distorted view?  When I look in the mirror, why do I see a sad, insecure person who can't decide to do anything because it might make him mad?  Why do I see everything through the glasses that he put on me?  That everything he and his family do is perfect and mine is equal to The Soprano's.  

The other day, I had to return to the house because he had forgotten to remove some items over the garage door.  They called me because he didn't respond. I texted him to ask him if he wanted the items and asked what I should do with them. Also, he'd left the paint cans and other items in the garage and didn't take his grill.  He came back and said that I didn't say he should clear that shelf off. Oh, sorry.  My bad. He also said I only said about the INTERIOR of the house, not what was outside of the house. Black....meet White.   What did I do?  I apologized and said, Yes, I realize that's what I said, but I thought he wanted his grill.  He firmly put it back in my lap.  He would have if I had indicated that it was his to take.  *bangs head*

So we called a scavenger to come take everything.  Now he's mad he can't have his grill and refuses to respond to me. 

So back I go into no-contact.  I was only forced to deal with him over the house because I don't want to pay my attorney $350/hr to ask if he wants a flipping grill. 

However, even no-contact has caused issues.  I'm the cold hearted beeotch who cut him off. Who filed an OP that made him take off his wedding ring.  I'm the person who is taking everything from him.  But yet I hit HIM with a baseball bat.  Honey, if I did that, you wouldn't be around to lie about it.  So let's just put that one away.  

But then I turn around and doubt myself.  Did I do that?  Was I so outraged that I did this to someone I love?  No.  I didn't.  But here I am actually questioning myself!  I mean if I did...I would be in jail. There would be a hospital visit (I played softball afterall) and a police report.  None of which exist. But he likes to make me believe I did this. 

My daughter and I are crammed into my dad's house.  Garage is full and we are spilling over into the house.  There is very little room to walk and two huge air mattresses fill the bedroom and the living room.  We are living out of boxes and suitcases while we figure out where we will live. This process has me guessing what will be suitable for us or...and wait for it...what won't make him upset.  WTF?  I'm embarrassed to type that. Why should I care what he thinks?  All I should care about is if I can live there and be happy there and D and I will be able to make happy memories there. But no. I'm wondering what my stbx inlaws are going to think and wonder what my motives were during the divorce for settlement?

Right now, they don't have to worry about it because there is VERY little in my price range.

But this is what I struggle with.  Constant wondering if what I think or feel is right or wrong or even should be a thought at all!  

I've lost my sense of self and my ability to know what is good and correct and what is acceptable behavior and what is me being wrong.  

Decompressing and decoding after brainwashing is a very confusing state to be in.