Eating disorder and more - need a shoulder ......

Oh my goodness @Faith-and-Hope reading between the lines because you can't say much given its still to go to court......oh dear, your heart must be broken that he willfully and purposefully calculated all of this....it sounds like he has been in over drive in the background for a few years, manipulating lots of strings to come out the other side looking like a great guy...and with all the cash in his hot little hand and another women on his arm. Gobsmacking I am sure it is. It would be close to impossible to ever trust again.

The abuse was deliberate, it definitely was. Your exhusband knew what he was doing, he was not delusional. Realising that abuse is intentional is something that has literally taken me 10 and a half years of non stop constant therapy & 5 hospitalisations to get through. It's really only now, almost 11 years later that I have actually reached rock bottom and I am sitting in the ashes of my life. I have literally lost everything. It's going to be a long and slow road @Faith-and-Hope with so much hurt and frustrations along the way.....you need a boxing bag on the veranda or a cheap set of dinner plates you can smash...

As you say some people thrive on hurting people and embroiling them in their drama and it is absurd how on earth they stay together, but yeah, maybe they find it thrilling. I was only quite young at the time when I met this couple but it was such an eye opener for me, I guess I projected my past and assumed that only men are capable of violence and get-you-back-with-some-of-your-own-medicine like sexual conquests to make their partner jealous to get a reaction......there are cases when it isn't the typical case, I have more life exposure now and I do pause and consider.

Its hard to know how all of this will affect the cubs but you must be so worried. They have resources and are older now which hopefully will help them stay healthy......you can only take one day at a time, and rest regularly when you can because it takes so much stamina to get through a life changing trauma like this humiliation you have suffered.

I have found myself weeping quietly to myself in my apartment. But they have been tears of peace & tears of relief that the worst of it is over. I have my own little sanctuary in my unit where I can close the door and not be scared I will be hurt, with the knowledge that I don't have to have anything to do with my abusers or their complicit helpers and secret keepers. I do get lonely at times of course, but a lot of the loneliness feels historical. It isn't present day loneliness, its the deep well of loneliness and alone-ness that I have carried for 40 years that is coursing through me that I was never allowed to feel because my life was threatened daily. To now sit in my little apartment and listen to the little kids play on the swings across the road and see the puppies in the park and to be mostly free......its hard to describe that relief - but I hope you feel it too some day and can share some tears of peacefulness with your art or the kitten.

Corny

I was already grieving the loss of the man I had loved and looked up to so much @Corny, because the "personality change" overtook him fairly rapidly after the sale of our main business.

I struggled to try to support him to see what was happening to us (supply) as his addictions morphed into new ones that were more diverse, but hidden within a sense of community respectability. As they worsened and began to take over our life, and the rages started, I tried harder to reach him which jyst poured fuel into the fire ..... a strange sort of metaphor to use, because supply is often also referred to as fuel. I had probably caused a narc injury by that stage and he had begun exacting revenge.

Because by that stage I didn't like who he had become at all, especially when the public persona remained as it had been, so my shields went up, and I waited for the crash that never came, believing that I would be supporting him through therapy and in a recovery pathway with medical professionals involved .....

Ha.

Its been the legal pathway that is progressively showing up his illness. The spiel and deception didn't result in more pain ..... it capped it. Understanding as I did that a mask had cone off and this was now the "real him", there was nothing at all of "us" to try to hold on to, or grieve any more, or anything .... it was just no. Done.

That point was the finish of the marriage. The rubbish coming out of his mouth made no difference. As the weeks and months passed, with access to accounts and people who had thought his decisions were supporting us as a strong married couple, the web of lies and deceit is revealing itself like it's covered in sun-kissed dew.

There is quite some way to go yet, but I am not angry ..... at least I don't think so. Disgusted is more the feeling I can identify with, and I have a job to get on with ..... cleaning out and cleaning up, then leaving him in my dust.

Thank you for sharing the description of your home, and the park, and the pets, and the kidlets and swings ...... I can picture you there now in my mind's eye ..... and I get the historical loneliness you talked about. I think it is something that I felt in the limbo I was in waiting for the crash, and hopeful of a return of the him I thought he was, and the us I thought we were. It was very short-lived compared to your life experiences @Corny.

You are sharing your knowledge here though, so I hope there is some sense of value in helping me in my situation, and others in theirs, for the pain amd suffering you went through.

Hugs n hugs ..... 🌻💞

@Faith-and-Hope

❤️🌹 @Former-Member ....

Just a quick hello @Faith-and-Hope @Former-Member @Emelia8 @Zoe7 passing through.

I hear ya @Faith-and-Hope about the lies and deception. You read about people in the news lying about having cancer, but not only lying even getting money out of innocent people for their treatment. Its just unbelievable how far people will go. I've had to sort through old paperwork and files that I had stored away in boxes but have been forced to sift though it cos I moved last year. My fathers NPD was just off the scale. I'd forgotten about things he'd done, like registering his traumas with cultural institutes, and various other types of organisations, god I just cringe so bad. I find myself oscillating from cringing with utter embarrassment at my fathers lies, to occasionally bursting out laughing at how brazen but stupid they were. Its quite amazing how long he got away with it, but stupid him embroiled the medical system in his lies as well and by the time I was about 16 a few must have figured out it was all BS and refused to treat him. It was mortifying because a good friend at the time who was heaps older than me was a nurse at the local hospital where he would go......I could just tell by his energy he thought my father was an absolute abusive lunatic that was untreatable. He would argue with the doctors and nurses, scream at them and verbally abuse them. Those were the days before there were 100's of thousands of online forums, chat rooms and social media pages where you can just log in make a fake profile, publicise some BS trauma story that never happened to him, have dozens of people validate him and reply, reinforcing his personality disordered delusions of said BS trauma story, and his whole personal biography is up in lights on the internet for the world to see and give him attention for. He would copy trauma stories from literature. Famous literature as if it was his own. He would mimic other people's histories.....I could go on and on, but I won't I'm just rambling ...any hoo I hope that you are as well as can possibly be expected and that you are dry and cosy. I am sure the legal side of things exhausts the hell out of you, you would still have a long road yet. Are you going to Canberra to see Botticelli to Van Gogh? Can't believe that it is almost April.

@Former-Member I hope that your husband is comfortable and not distressed and that you can rest. I feel pretty cynical that there will be answers to MI in my lifetime but maybe Covid will spur some research, lessen stigma, and change a few minds of those that sit in judgment of peeps like myself and your husband. As upsetting as this article was in bringing back horrible memories I would much rather forget, it is good to see articles about the biology of MI. Something so widespread as Covid may get some ignorant people thinking that MI is no different to physical; illness, in fact it is physical it just impairs the head so they call it mental https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/22/health/covid-psychosis.html

@Emelia8 hope that you are warm and toasty with your flat bears Emelia and maybe a poochie woochie or 2 or 3 or 4. My friend texted me tonight and said that her little pupper has grown an entire 600 grams. She was 900 grams, now she is a whopping 1.5 kg

Corny

Morning @Corny .... 🌽 💕

Its heartbreaking to hear what you went through with your father. I think I will always be grateful that his work commitments and sophisticated triangulations meant that I had remained unaware of what my husband was for most of our marriage and our chukdten's childhoods. It was his absence that was the greatest burden on our relationships until the more recent years when his work hours dropped dramatically and the addictions took over. Now I see his work absence as a blessing, and even wonder sometimes whether he knew what he was, and deliberately kept himself absent so our home bubble would work ..... and work for his purposes in the process. In hindsight I can see how perfectly staged it was, and how perfectly staged it was for him to be able to rock our home bubble and make it appear unavoidable, or not his fault ......

The rages were only in the more recent years too, and designed to prevent any accountability over what or how he was doing anything. These were not full blown in front of any strangers, that Incan recall anyway. All of that is fast becoming water under the bridge now.

Yes, it looks far from over yet, but with the possibility that things could suddenly get finalised. Now is the period of time when his other greatest deception is starting to rise into view ...... and he may choose to try to limit the damage by brokering a deal. Dunno.

Love and hugs @Former-Member ..... I hope it's an okay day for you ..... ❤️

That would be so wonderful @Faith-and-Hope if there was a sudden resolution. I only wish that on top of the financial settlement you could also receive some compensation, but I know that wont happen. It irritates the hell out of me that he is still able to pull strings in his favour to save face, but really, you don't have any control over what other people think. When we are faced with over bearing people maybe in front of him they feign sympathy for his predicament so he won't lose his temper, but once away from him, they may very well be saying to their partner or family, "poor @Faith-and-Hope , what a horrible man. He's done her a favour" which he has!......sure, if he has heaps of money there may be shallow people and associates around him that are enamoured by that, but not everyone. Some will see straight through him. Your husband must still have some social connections if there's a chance he will cave and theres a financial settlement. What made my father so threatening and agro was that he had 0. He knew no one else would have him and this made his main obsession & addiction to be control over us - he had a particular hatred for me, apparently this is quite common that one child is singled out. He actually didn't want us. He would much rather have been off with other women getting as mcuh attention as possible, but once you're in your 40s/50s/60s too much damage has been done to your social image and people stay away.

In hindsight I can see how perfectly staged it was -

I've read stories in books and magazines of people that have been in a relationship with someone that faked their sexuality for financial gain....I mean it doesn't top faking cancer, that is an absolute whopper, but its up there in the Top 10 most absurd lies.

I guarantee you @Faith-and-Hope your husband knows that he is narcissistic, and he was out to get as much as he could. If he had never been independently wealthy, he would have made a claim over someone else's money that wasn't his. My father stole his father's estate from his own mother and siblings. What on earth he did with that money I will never know. Never think that he has no self awareness. They are traits, not episodic psychosis, he has insight and what is so disturbing is when you realise it was all on purpose, and on rare occassions they even admit it! If he wasn't doing it to you, it would be someone else eventaully.

Keep rested where you can, and I am hopeful 'his greatest deception' that you speak of will come to light soon, and the coward will scamper away. Parts of Europe have gone back into lockdown and is about to be engulfed with a 3rd wave, good luck with that Mr!

I think the fact that I can burst out laughing is a good sign. I must be moving on.

Corny

I am glad you managed a belly-laugh @Corny 💞

Just finished uni for the day and I am a bit low in energy, so just checking in before I walk home.

Thanks @Faith-and-Hope I swing from laughter to shock & horror. Reading my post back to myself, it dawned on me I don't think I have ever told a friend in real life about my father stealing money from his own mother and siblings via his fathers estate. It must be so low down the list of shocking things he's done in terms of his sense of entitlement that is doesn't even register in my mind during conversations......now that's sayin' something!

Enjoy your art

Just catching up and sending love @Faith-and-Hope

im so glad you've had some great support on this thread from @Corny , @Former-Member , @Emelia8 , @Zoe7 and others.

I really hope things get sorted soon. I completely understand not ever feeling like I you'd want another intimate relationship again. The ones with my family and best friend are really all the ones I need. You will find a strange peace after this has passed. Kidults will work on things in their time. Mine have been thinking about values and how their dad fits with those values. Yours will over time too. I've known of a few situations where over time kidults have worked out the bs parts and the value conflict parts to make choices about contact with separated parents. They often put up boundaries around contact with the parent who 'creates drama'. I think over time yours will too. They know the safe stable place where mum always is there to listen and support them for being them. They will never have to wonder who you are or what might happen next. You'll always be their rock. That will count for more and more as time goes by. It has for mine.

big love and hugs 💜🤗