Is this Manipulation?

[RPR24]

Hello
I am starting to suspect H has either BPD or NPD. He has anger/rage issues, deflecting blame, victim mentality.
About 18 months ago, after another one of his meltdowns, I told him I’d had enough and didn’t feel that way about him anymore.
He said he would die alone if we separated and would have to sell the house. Due to our special needs son, selling the house is not really a viable option.
So I felt guilty about him and selling the house so I stayed. His behaviour hasn’t improved and I have emotionally and physically detached myself from him.

There is no intimacy, he mostly sleeps in another room (he believes it’s because he snores and keeps me awake but I tense up when he does sleep in the bed in case he tries to have sex but thankfully that hasn’t happened for ages). I never say I love you to him but I say it to the kids every night. Occasionally he blows me a kiss goodnight but I never reciprocate. He still calls me ‘hon’, & touches me as he walks past. I do none of that. We never go away or out just the two us, it’s always with the kids or friends or we go out separately.

Surely it must be so obvious to him that I don’t love him anymore and this marriage is dead. Why can’t he see that? He must know on some level I am unhappy. Why does he carry on as if we are still in love and everything is rosy and we will be together forever? How can he even tolerate living like this?

I feel so much contempt/resentment for him but he just seems to live in La La Land and thinks everything is fine. He’s

[EyesUp]

Hello RPR24.

I read your other thread about your husband's behavior over the holiday, so I have some sense of what you're dealing with.  It's good that you're seeking understanding and exploring options.

To your question re: manipulation...

It's hard to say.  In relationships like this, even experienced therapists may take time to truly understand the dynamic.  Is there a pattern of avoidance?  Are there deep-seated behaviors or past traumas that predate the relationship?

From great distance and with minimal information, it's difficult to say if your H's behavior is intentional, deliberate. 

The rages indicate that he's struggling to regulate emotions. He's undoubtedly frustrated. With parenthood in general? With the demands of a special needs child? With the marriage? With a combination of things? That's not to say that he's blameless, or to assign any blame to you - Only to point out that he's raging because he doesn't know how to respond to some set of circumstances in a more productive way.

After a rage, acting like it never happened may be simple avoidance rather than deliberately attempting some sort of manipulation. I say this because someone who doesn't know how to regulate their emotions is also unlikely to know how to be accountable for emotions that they don't understand in the first place...

That leaves you in a very confusing and increasingly fraught position.  I've been there, too.  Like you, I couldn't quite figure out all the moving parts and pieces in order to either improve the situation, or change it via separation and divorce.  I felt trapped for quite a while.

I did come to understand that there are no quick fixes, and even that realization was a bit of a relief because I allowed myself to take time to step back - and to plan slowly, rather than urgently.

Based on my experience, and the experiences of others here that have unfolded over months and years, rather than days and weeks, I encourage you to keep doing what you're doing:  posting questions here.  Exploring.  Learning.   In parallel with attempting to understand your H's behavior, you can also learn more about what it means to separate and divorce.

Discretely, interview a few family law attorneys.  Ask if they will provide a free initial consultation to see if there's a fit with your specific circumstances.  I suggest that you get a Google Voice account and GMail account, or similar - and use only accounts that you control to make calls and communicate with attorneys or other resources.  Make these password protected apps on your phone.  Given your H's behavior, you might also want to keep a voice recorder going in case you need to document this abuse at some point - and it is abuse.  If taking steps like this makes you nervous - which is completely understandable - then you should probably explore these feelings with an individual T, if possible.

Looking out for yourself - and your kids - is nothing to apologize for, and you're already taking steps in this direction.  Follow this instinct - Keep going.   

Please take care and keep us posted.

[kells76]

I am starting to suspect H has either BPD or NPD. He has anger/rage issues, deflecting blame, victim mentality.

...

Surely it must be so obvious to him that I don’t love him anymore and this marriage is dead. Why can’t he see that? He must know on some level I am unhappy. Why does he carry on as if we are still in love and everything is rosy and we will be together forever? How can he even tolerate living like this?

Couple of thoughts about this.

If he has a PD, he is likely so wrapped up and hyperfocused on his own emotional survival that he may not, actually, see how you're feeling or know on any meaningful level whether you're happy or not.

He'll do things that "make sense" to him emotionally, even if those things don't make sense to you.

One approach to consider is to view his behaviors through the lens of "he has a thinking disorder and an emotional regulation disorder... when I see or hear him do or say something that doesn't make sense to me, he is likely doing something to try to meet his overwhelming and unreachably deep emotional needs".

When he's whistling through the house when you're unhappy, and he doesn't seem to notice, it may help, in some way, to recall that he doesn't think like you and doesn't manage his emotions the way you do. He's likely hyperfocused on himself, not you, and isn't doing those things necessarily to get a rise out of you -- though that can be an outcome. It's probably all about him and how he feels.

While that doesn't make things better for you, hopefully it can be a structure for understanding his choices around the house, so that instead of you spending valuable mental energy wondering "why is he being so inexplicable, why is he so checked out, why doesn't he see what's so obvious", you can immediately pivot to: "he is showing his disorder again, and his disorder leads him to focus so much on his own emotional needs that it is normal for him not to notice obvious things".

Maybe with that understanding, you can feel more free to focus on yourself and your needs, as you prioritize taking care of yourself and the kids with a likely upcoming separation.

[JazzSinger]

Surely it must be so obvious to him that I don’t love him anymore and this marriage is dead. Why can’t he see that? He must know on some level I am unhappy. Why does he carry on as if we are still in love and everything is rosy and we will be together forever? How can he even tolerate living like this?

I feel so much contempt/resentment for him but he just seems to live in La La Land and thinks everything is fine.

Hi RPR25,

Your situation sounds a lot like mine, but we don’t have minor children. 

I believe my husband has BPD.  I’ve endured so many of his outbursts that I’ve begun to detach,  and I no longer feel love for him.  I have a lot of pent-up anger. I pull away from him, even at night, in bed.  Meanwhile, he thinks we have a great marriage! He too is in “La La land.”

In my case, I don’t think he’s being manipulative.  I believe that to some extent, he’s lost his grip on reality, while I’m living in the real world.  He actually is not processing my rejection of him. 

I feel for you. It’s a difficult situation and it’s draining. 

You’re in the right place.  Everyone here is very supportive, and there is a great deal of information on how to deal with a person in your life who suffers from BPD.

Good luck. 

[livednlearned]

Many BPD behaviors are instinctive.

We have these instincts too, but less so.

With many of the confounding BPD behaviors, there isn't a lot of thought, it's an instinct to engage safety behaviors.

Your H may also find the emotional distance safer, which makes him feel less dysregulated. Intimacy is tough when you can't source where the emotions are coming from and who is responsible for them.

Do you feel contempt for your H?

[RPR24]

Thank you everyone for your replies.

The rages indicate that he's struggling to regulate emotions. He's undoubtedly frustrated. With parenthood in general? With the demands of a special needs child? With the marriage? With a combination of things? That's not to say that he's blameless, or to assign any blame to you - Only to point out that he's raging because he doesn't know how to respond to some set of circumstances in a more productive way.

The anger/rage issues have been there before we had children. Not as frequent but looking back I remember a couple of instances that were a red flag. The time he told me to F off in front of friends (to this day I still don’t know why he said it, it seem to come out of nowhere) and the time we had a disagreement at the shops (I was pregnant) and he stormed off and I couldn’t find him and he ended up walking home.

[/quote]

I don’t think contempt is the right word (even though I wrote that in my original post). More resentment really, that he thinks it’s ok to treat us this way, that he thinks we will just continue to put up with it, that he can’t see how much it hurts us, that he can’t see how suffocated and trapped I feel in this marriage.

I am such a people pleaser, I can’t even ask people for money that they owe me without feeling uncomfortable or anxious.
How can I even begin to discuss this with H, especially when blame and deflection is his norm? How can I rationally discuss our issues with the person who blamed me for him
saying F you to me, in front of our kids, because he didn’t like what I had suggested (another swearing incident). Not ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have sworn at you, especially in front of the kids’ but ‘you made me swear because….’

Something I’ve been thinking about lately, is all the times I’ve asked him to do something, like pop to the shops, and he would look at me with an incredulous expression on his face and say ‘me?’, as if I was asking him to do something that was beneath him. Or he would do a big sigh. That’s not normal behaviour is it?