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Having a really hard time today, wondering if anyone else is in a similar situation. I tried to see if there were any threads on the I Can Relate forum in regards to this but didn't find any. Mods please redirect me if I'm posting in the wrong place.

In a way, I am really envious of those who are in R. My husband did not even give me the chance to decide if I wanted R or not, he just moved the new bitch right in and said he wants a divorce, no questions asked. Everything is apparently my fault, even though he has been hiding this affair, along with a meth habit, and now I've found evidence of escorts as well.

I am aware that I have a lot of behavior of my own that I need to correct. But I feel like I would have more motivation to do it if I were still in my relationship and trying to make it work. Instead my husband threw me out like garbage, and now I'm left to piece together all the lies he told me throughout our marriage, and in addition have to work on myself too.

Right now I can usually handle about 1 activity per day, if that. If I go to the store to get groceries, I will be exhausted the rest of the day. I went over to my friends house and cooked her and I dinner, but I did not do a single thing leading up to it that day, and then slept in super late the next day. I went on a walk around a nearby lake with my mom, and was sore and exhausted for days afterward. I made dinner for my parents and my brother one night, and was just completely drained from having to sit and make small talk during dinner.

Thanksgiving and Christmas were absolutely terrible. I couldn't even make it through either dinner entirely before I had to excuse myself and go to cry in the spare room upstairs. I don't want to be a burden on my family, or to ruin their holidays, but I also can't just go through the day acting like everything is normal when it's just plain not ok. So I just excuse myself to get away from them so they don't have to see it. My entire life has been turned upside down, and the one person I would always run to for support or advice wants absolutely nothing to do with me.

I have watched so much TV it is mind-blowing, because it seems to be the only thing that can keep my mind from replaying everything over the last 6 months, even if it's just following the lame plot line of predictable sit coms. The two times I was able to drag myself to the gym, I started crying on the treadmill and had to get out of there. I can't listen to music, because that was the thing we always did together, and every song I hear has some sort of tie back to him and our relationship.

Since the A, I have done so much reading on Codependency I feel like my head is going to explode. I listened to Codependent No More in audio book, and could not stop crying the entire time. It feels incredibly unfair that I have so much work to do. I know that I should be doing it for myself. I'm sure I will eventually get there. But right now I can't help but feel like what the hell is the point?

I am usually the person who fixes everything. We don't have enough money? I figure out how to draw up a budget and start saving. We keep forgetting to buy pet food? I set it up on automatic delivery. We need a new apartment? I went out and found options, set up the viewings, filled out all of the paperwork. And it's not that I didn't try to have my husband handle things. But it just always inevitably ended up where if I did not do it, it didn't get done. In some instances there would be years of me not doing anything, like in the case of the budget, and no matter how many times we discussed that he needed to change his spending habits so that we weren't broke at the end of each month, it just never changed. So I had to take matters into my own hands, and then all of a sudden everything was better, and we weren't getting overdraft notices and late fees. Similarly, the girls went years without seeing a dentist. I kept suggesting it, and saying it was important to do, but ultimately left the ball in his court to make it happen. It wasn't until year 4 or so that I finally put my foot down and said look, their dental hygiene is horrendous, and if we don't make this happen they could very well lose some teeth, and even then I'm the one who researched the dentists in our area and set the appointment.

I know that is the heart of codependency, giving too much. But I also keep wracking my brain for how to avoid this when it feels like nobody else would step up to the plate and handle it. Even when I left room for him to step up and do things, he wouldn't do it, or he would just force his daughters to do it instead. So I just resigned myself to the fact that if anything needed to get done, I was going to have to be the one to handle it. I know now that this was an entirely unhealthy relationship. He was thankful for everything I gave, but rarely tried to give anything in return, and even then it was usually because he felt like he would get something out of it (sex was his main motivator). In that regard, I should have left years ago, but that was made all the more complicated by the fact that I did not want to leave his daughters to have to be the responsible ones in place of me. They were/are just kids, that kind of burden should not fall on them. And it's not like they are my biological kids, so if I left, I would have no guarantee to visitation, and I definitely wouldn't be able to help them with things like dentist appointments etc. So I guess in that way I sacrificed myself for their own well being.

I find myself not wanting to do a damn thing except lay in bed and watch TV and sleep. It's like I spent years doing so much for everyone, and now I'm just rebelling and doing absolutely nothing.

It doesn't help that I have always been taught that you should always do things for other people. And I received so much thanks and praise for it, it felt like a positive thing. I felt good about getting up a few minutes earlier every morning to make my husband and my step daughters lunch. It felt like a little something that I could do every day to let them know that I loved them, even when I was working long hours and wouldn't be home for dinner. My husband would tell me how much he appreciated it every single day, whether by phone call or text message. But now I'm questioning myself - did I really do this selflessly, or was I being codependent?

The way he was able to just leave and never look back is forcing me to analyze every aspect of our relationship - it has completely altered my reality. I am going over every one of my own actions to see if they are codependent or not. It has made me question whether I should ever do anything nice for anyone, or if we should all be our own little islands taking care of everything for ourselves. I never thought that's what marriage and love was supposed to be about - I always pictured it as a compromise, and a relationship in which each partner is imperfect, and they each take on the roles that they are better suited for, and in that way their imperfections complement each other and the relationship is better with two parts contributing to one better whole rather than those two individuals separately. I now question every nice thing I have ever done for anyone, and it makes me not want to do anything for anyone anymore. It's a total mindfuck.

My IC keeps telling me that this is my mourning period, and that I need to keep allowing myself to feel my feelings of anger, grief, frustration etc. I just want to fast forward through this. I hate feeling like my WS has turned me into a cynic.

Anyone else who is further along in their recovery than me who can shed any light on this? How to deal with an unremorseful spouse and an exit affair. Is it a pretty common pattern for the exit affair that the BS is a codependent and the WS is an addict/narcissist? It seems to be the case based on all of the literature that I've read, but would love to hear the perspective of those who have been through it.

Anyway, sorry for the lengthy post. Just felt like it would be good to type it out for some clarity.

Thanks!

First off, let me start with, I'm so sorry. Sounds like an awful situation and, while this won't help, I'd also say it sounds pretty typical for an exit A. I've known men on the other side of this (their wives left them because/for an AP) and it's awful. It seems that everyone who does that becomes, automatically a monster. None of these women ever stayed with the AP, but, during the D, all of them became dragon ladies. It's like the love that used to be there in the M is transferred directly into hate during a D. Anyway, wanted to start with your not alone, and yes, having known people who've had this happen, it's awful and I feel for your pain.

It has made me question whether I should ever do anything nice for anyone, or if we should all be our own little islands taking care of everything for ourselves.

Start with being honest with yourself. Most of the time, when someone is doing something nice for another person it's because they are hoping to elicit some reciprocity. No, not always. But some huge percentage of the time, if you're friend is helping you move, it's because they need help fixing their car. Or financial. Or a shoulder to cry on. Something. The ideal of a "selfless" individual that we all hold up is flawed, deeply so, IMHO, to make us into something we're not. And as you point out yourself, even if you're not trying to get something directly through your selfless actions, you may be codependent and trying to fill something in you through your continued "giving" to another person. Very few things in your life, or people, will you find meet an ideal of "selfless action". Everyone has a motivation, even if that motivation is "feel good about myself". And, sadly, most people have motivations beyond that one, speaking personally, when I was single, most of my motivations for "selfless action" with women were sexual. And most of my motivations for "selfless action" with men today are designed to enhance my career and/or status in my community. It's hard to admit that to you, and it was even harder to see that about myself, but, I feel like it's true. If there's nothing for both parties to gain from an interaction then that interaction will cease to occur. And I can see that repeated over and over throughout my life; yes, it's hard, cold and sad, but it also describes the world I see much, MUCH better than "people selflessly give to one another". So, do nice things for other people, but do NOT expect them to react a certain way or offer something in return. Do them because they make you feel good to do them, and, if they don't, stop doing them. The reward isn't changing another person's actions, the reward is the feeling you get inside doing nice things for others.

So I guess in that way I sacrificed myself for their own well being.

I see a lot of my W in this statement (and in your post overall) and I'm going to tell you the same thing I'd say to her/tell her. And it's not going to be easy to hear. Nobody is going to stop you from sacrificing for others for the rest of your life except for you. You only have one life to live; and every moment you throw that life away sacrificing things important to you to people who don't see/care/acknowledge or reciprocate those sacrifices is a moment you lose forever to do something that you actually want to do.

I think a lot of codependent behavior comes from fear and and a defensive posture. It's safe to sacrifice for others because it keeps you from having to examine what you actually want and who you are as a person. That's not a snub, and perhaps isn't at all what you are doing, but think to yourself, if you had nobody to "do something" for today, what would you do? Are you happy thinking about that activity or upset? Does it make you smile to think about the things that drive you or does it scare you because you fear you won't do the right things to bring yourself happiness today? I think a lot of people get caught up in "doing for others" because they honestly don't know what they want and are scared to stop long enough to think about it.

I'll close with this. Your husband sounds like a narcissist. But so do almost all the WS's I've ever read about. And so do most of the people I deal with day to day. And if we go from commonly accepted stats, something like 50% of marriages will have some cheating in them. And who knows how many relationships have cheating in them (that aren't marriages). If we label most cheaters as narcs and then further say that, throughout life, most people will cheat at one time or another (in a marriage or in a BF/GF relationship) well then it follows that some substantial portion of the world are, in fact, narcs. When I read the description of the pathology of narcissism I often think to myself "this just describes the human condition; how can this be a disorder". Because for a lot of us (myself included) there have been times in my life where I clearly met the criteria for narcissism. So I kind of chuckle (or cry, because it's so sad) when people come on here and say "my WH/WW is also a narc". Yeah, no kidding, welcome to the party. It's like saying that "my serial killer husband is a sociopath".. Yes, they do, but so does every other serial killer. It's a bit of a totality, or a near totality.

Stop looking at yourself as codependent. Look at yourself as a victim. This is a story repeated all over the country. He is no longer the person you married. Once someone gets hooked on meth it hijacks the brain. The craving for it takes over everything. Does the OW do meth with him? That relationship is built on drug use if she is. You aren’t the bad guy here. He is.

You have to go through the grieving process but don’t make yourself responsible for his behaviors. He chose them. You didn’t.

Stop. Blaming. Yourself.

You were/are a good person to your family including your H.

He sounds lazy - maybe it’s why he never succeeded in meeting expectations. Or maybe he has ADD or ADHD. Whatever.

Don’t be a victim. Don’t berate or second guess yourself.

Be realistic in that you were a parent and wife and did it all b/c you had no choice. And it needed to get done.

Nothing more than that.

The biggest part of codependency that you are stuck in is that we cannot make someone love us or treat us well, and we shouldn't want to. It should make you angry that he is treating you badly, not sad. (Although I get the sadness, of course.) When people take advantage of us and hurt us, we should not want their love. That is the entire issue that codependency revolves around.

Stop wanting him. Flip the script in your head. HE is not good enough for YOU.

The grief is overwhelming, but your IC is right. You must feel it all to heal it. So very, very sorry, but better days are coming.

P.S. You will find many, many narcissist/codependent situations here. It is the peanut butter and jelly of dysfunctional relationships. Many of those people post in the Divorce forum. Read Furious1 and Barcher for starters. They can be of some inspiration to you. Good luck, sweetie. You can do this.

[This message edited by OwningItNow at 9:13 AM, January 5th (Saturday)]

You need your bitch boots. There are stages of grief. Once I reached ANGEr, I felt much better

Get pissed

My IC keeps telling me that this is my mourning period, and that I need to keep allowing myself to feel my feelings of anger, grief, frustration etc. I just want to fast forward through this.

You can't fast forward. You have to deal with the feelings.

I found that the more I processed my grief, anger, fear, and shame, the better I got at processing feelings - but lots of feelings got dumped on you, and it takes a long time to process them.

How to deal with an unremorseful spouse and an exit affair.

Check out this thread: https://www.survivinginfidelity.com/forums.asp?tid=598080.

I am aware that I have a lot of behavior of my own that I need to correct. But I feel like I would have more motivation to do it if I were still in my relationship and trying to make it work.

But getting out of co-d requires making a life for you. You need to value yourself to be in a good relationship.

Remember - you didn't cheat; he did. You didn't get addicted to meth and hide it; he did. You didn't leave; he did.

An \d that's all due to his issues, not yours.

Getting out of co-d will enable you to survive and thrive. Go for it, sister BS!

Thanks everyone for your insight!

RideitOut, a couple of things you said stuck out to me.

Everyone has a motivation, even if that motivation is "feel good about myself".

I completely agree with the above! I guess that's where it gets confusing for me, because the literature on codependency seems to put shame on the idea of doing things for others because it makes you feel good, as if getting self esteem from an act automatically makes it codependent and therefore bad.

I think it is unrealistic to expect that people act selflessly. Biologically, we do things because they have some kind of benefit for us. In regards to doing nice things for other people, we get seratonin from that, which wires our brain to want to keep doing it.

So, do nice things for other people, but do NOT expect them to react a certain way or offer something in return. Do them because they make you feel good to do them, and, if they don't, stop doing them. The reward isn't changing another person's actions, the reward is the feeling you get inside doing nice things for others.

This is the crux of it. I did a lot of nice things for my husband and for his daughters. I did not expect a tit for tat type of reciprocity. But, I definitely did expect him to do certain things as a spouse, hell, even just as a human, that he just did not live up to, no matter how much I communicated that they were important. So that is on me for not recognizing that our relationship was not working. No matter what I did, he was not going to change unless he wanted to.

Nobody is going to stop you from sacrificing for others for the rest of your life except for you. You only have one life to live; and every moment you throw that life away sacrificing things important to you to people who don't see/care/acknowledge or reciprocate those sacrifices is a moment you lose forever to do something that you actually want to do.

Yes, I see that now. I was in a particularly difficult situation as I could see the shortcomings in how his daughters were being raised - they had been expected to take on WAY too much as the daughters of a single father, and definitely even more than that when they had previously lived with their meth head mother. I had very much taken on the motherly role for these girls, so I naturally felt defensive of them when he would yell, or force them to do things for him because he was too lazy to do it himself. This is why I believe I made so many excuses for him over the years - it would have been difficult to leave if it was just me, of course, but it would have been much easier if I didn't always have the girls in the back of my mind.

I think a lot of people get caught up in "doing for others" because they honestly don't know what they want and are scared to stop long enough to think about it.

I could not have said it better myself. My entire identity is doing things for others. It always has been. I'm the oldest of four siblings, and even though my parents were very involved, when you have that many kids it's like a three ring circus, so I definitely had a lot of pressure put on me to be the one in charge. I've always been called the "mom" of every friend group I've ever been in - I was the one who would volunteer to be designated driver, and who would make sure everybody got home ok. It didn't hurt that I had natural skills like organization and a crazy memory that lent themselves to being put in this type of role. It's a fucked up cycle, because you get praised for these behaviors your whole life, so that is where you learn to get your self esteem from. Also, my two biggest female role models were my maternal grandmother and my mother, both of whom were/are SAHM. So yes, I have a career, and I work crazy long hours, but if someone were to ask me what my goal was in life, having a happy marriage and kids was the number one priority. As long as I had that, the rest of it was just icing on the cake. Even my job, I viewed more as a vehicle for making money that would then in turn provide for my family.

When I caught him in bed with her, he slammed the bedroom door in my face and then said "You need to leave, nobody wants you here, you're making my daughters cry." "I said no, YOU are making them cry because you are cheating on their mother figure!" His response was "Fuck you, you're no mother to them, I've raised them on my own." This is by far the most hurtful thing he could have ever said to me. Through all the years of our relationship, he would always tell me what an awesome mother I had been to the girls. He would write posts to me on Mother's Day on social media, and they would all get me a card and gifts. I never expected them to do these things, but whenever they did, it made me feel so loved and appreciated. To have that thrown back in my face completely shattered me.

Cooley:

He is no longer the person you married. Once someone gets hooked on meth it hijacks the brain. The craving for it takes over everything. Does the OW do meth with him?

It is crazy, because now that I know that empty pens are a sign of drug use, I had been finding those for years, which confirms he has been on drugs for at least that long - I would guess at least 3 years, though I never documented the pens thing because I didn't know it was drug related. I knew he smoked weed for his anxiety, but had absolutely no clue about the meth until others on here mentioned that his behavior could be tied to that. When I went back to the house a few weeks after DDay, he had clearly stopped being so careful about hiding it, so I actually found the remnants of lines on the bookshelf, and even found crystals which I had tested to confirm that they were in fact meth. So I had been living with a meth user for years and just had no idea.

I had always thought that meth heads instantly devolved into skin-picking, crazy people who had rotting teeth and couldn't hold down a job, but after doing research I've found out that apparently there are a ton of people who use it daily and are able to function well enough in normal society that it does not take them down that path. My husband is one of those. And in regards to the OW, I have no definitive proof that she has been using, but given his brazenness in leaving the paraphernalia and the drug residue out in the living room now, whereas with me he always hid it, I'm assuming that she probably does it with him.

I have not spoken to my husband about her, but his daughters and I are still close, and they confide in me when things are happening there. They say that she has some kind of mental health issue that she has been hospitalized for at least twice since DDay on Nov 3rd. Apparently she labels it as "manic episodes," but the girls say she has pre-planned each of her hospital visits, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense. My brother is bipolar, and his manic episodes were never planned in advance, they just happened. There are signs we know to look for, so we can tell when he is beginning to get manic, but those signs are within days/hours. He definitely would not be able to say "Hey, so I think I'm getting manic, so I'll plan on checking myself into the hospital in about a week or so." This is apparently the level of pre-planning she has expressed when the girls have been around, so they are very confused as to what is actually going on with her. They know my brother is bipolar, so they have asked me if this seems normal, and all I can say is that everyone is different, and that her mental health professional would know best, but that no, this does not seem "normal" to me. So it's possible that she is self medicating with meth, who knows.

When people take advantage of us and hurt us, we should not want their love. That is the entire issue that codependency revolves around.

Owning it Now, you are right. I should have left years ago, and I think that is part of why I am feeling so terrible. I allowed myself to be treated terribly, and thought it was my duty as his partner to help him through all of these terrible behaviors, rather than feeling it was my duty to take care of myself and get myself out of a negative situation.

Stop wanting him. Flip the script in your head. HE is not good enough for YOU.

I hope to get to this place soon. I still feel rejected. I am however coming to terms with the fact that his inability to stop his emotional abuse was also a rejection, it just happened over many years.

Of course I go through days where I talk shit on him and can rattle off all of the terrible things he did and continues to do that make him a horrible person. But I also tend to see the good in people, so then I feel guilty for thinking those things, and I make excuses for why he is the way he is (abusive FOO, abandonment issues, all of the shame he feels around sex etc.). I have to keep reminding myself that these are reasons, not excuses.

You need your bitch boots. There are stages of grief. Once I reached ANGEr, I felt much better

Funnily enough, anger was my first emotion. Probably because I was in shock, but still. Sadness came later, and this, along with bargaining, have been the stages of grief I have been waffling back and forth on. I need to move past to anger somehow. I can feel it coming soon, I'm just not quite there yet.

Thank you all for your responses! I am feeling a lot better today after getting a few hours of sleep, and especially after reading here. I've decided to take a break from the Codependency reading for now, and to just focus on trying to feel better first.

When I caught him in bed with her, he slammed the bedroom door in my face and then said "You need to leave, nobody wants you here, you're making my daughters cry." "I said no, YOU are making them cry because you are cheating on their mother figure!" His response was "Fuck you, you're no mother to them, I've raised them on my own." This is by far the most hurtful thing he could have ever said to me. Through all the years of our relationship, he would always tell me what an awesome mother I had been to the girls. He would write posts to me on Mother's Day on social media, and they would all get me a card and gifts. I never expected them to do these things, but whenever they did, it made me feel so loved and appreciated. To have that thrown back in my face completely shattered me.

My previous post was entirely about the co-dependency and how/why. This, however, is another issue, this is really "A issues" and frankly, almost all of us (BS's) have to deal with this crap. It's awful, it's hurtful, it's incredibly selfish (of the WS), but.. Almost all of them do it. It might not be this (attacking your ability to be a mother), in my case is wasn't, it was attacking my masculinity (the typical "you're so much better in bed than my H" drivel that WS's spew) and my sanity ("I never said that" when I'm looking at the TXT message in black in white printed in front of me). But almost all WS's do this stuff and, perhaps, the drug/drunk analogy is most apt here. They are drunk off their asses, perhaps something you can relate to, and talking out of their asses at the same time. How many "I love you man" conversations have you seen with drunks where the guys/girls actually can barely stand each other? It's babbling. That's the only way I can put it. Almost every WS does it, and it makes as much sense to analyze it or dwell on it as it does the drunk friend you picked up who's going on in your back seat about how he wasted his life being a lawyer and should have been a rock star instead. It's fantasy, make believe, and while it hurts like hell, you have to realize, those words aren't those of a rational man (or woman), they are just the babbling of a drunken idiot. Especially, in your case, with drugs involved; those words are going to hurt, nothing anyone can do to change that, but don't let them hurt too much because they honestly carry little/no weight. Remember the first time your child said "I hate you" or "I wish you weren't my mom". Almost all of us do, and, while it hurts, it's tempered by the fact that it's a child saying it, they know not what they are saying and their feelings will change in 10 minutes when your their best friend again. The words said to the AP and BS, IMHO, are just worthless, they are the ravings of a fall down drunk. Try not to dwell on them, look at his actions instead (if you want to R) or just move on (if you want to D).

Here is another book to read:

Why Does He do That? by Lundy Bancroft

He works with violently abusive men. Don't let that deter you from reading this book because the psychology behind emotionally abusive behavior is the same.

This book was a life changer for me. It helped me realize I was a victim, even though I was codependent.

Thank you Chrysalis!

I will add it to my list :)

It took me a while after the A and the swift exit for me to realize that I had been enduring emotional abuse. I’m sure I was aware of it deep down all along, but didn’t want to admit that I had allowed it. Its strange to say that I never felt physically threatened by him, even though he is a big guy and could get VERY angry. Even when he would punch walls or closet doors, I always felt like that rage was directed at himself and not me or the girls. But the emotional abuse, now that shit is insane.

It only took a few minutes of reading up on codependency to realize that many of my codependent behaviors were directly related to the abuse. I thought I was fixing things, when in fact I was making them worse.

The one recurring instance I have been fixated on is our mornings. Most mornings, at least weekday mornings, he would wake up and almost immediately start screaming at all of us to help him find his keys or his wallet, or some other thing he needed before leaving for work. In the beginning, I would tell him it’s unfair for him to expect us to drop everything and look for his things. I would not help look for them. But then inevitably he would rouse the girls to look for the item for him. He would then yell at them for not being ready for school on time, and I would remind him time and time again that they had woken up at the time they thought they needed to in order to get themselves ready, they did not plan on the extra 10 minutes of overturning every couch cushion, opening every cabinet etc. to find something that he misplaced, so it’s unfair for him to yell at them for not being ready.

Through conversations at calmer times, when they weren’t having to deal with his hostility in the moment, I tried to insist to the girls that they did not need to help him, that it was his responsibility. But they didn’t feel that they could say no to him, so they did it anyway. My brain started to go into over drive trying to protect myself and the girls from the yelling.

So then I began gathering things I saw in strange places around the house the night before, trying to preempt it. If I saw that his wallet was in the couch or his keys were on top of the fish tank, I would move them to the table by the door, so that way everything would be in one place. But then he would go crazy looking for it, because he wasn’t used to it being in the same spot. I would tell him it was on the table by the door, and then I would get yelled at for touching/moving his stuff, because it messed with his system and that was the reason he couldn’t find it now. I insisted that simply wasn’t true, because every morning he put us through hell trying to find his stuff, but still got yelled at.

So then I just left everything where it was, but started making mental note of it. So when he would yell in the morning about not knowing where his things were, a lot of times I would be able to say “your keys are on the bookshelf” or “your wallet is in the kitchen”. But then sometimes that would backfire too. I would go to bed earlier than him usually, so I would take mental note of where the items were before I went to bed, but by the time I woke up he had moved them somewhere else. So then I would tell him where I last saw the item, and he would yell and get angry that it wasn’t there. So I would say well that’s the last place that I saw it, but he would still be angry, upset with me for not magically being able to find the items that he had misplaced.

It got to the point where if I wasn’t helping him look for it - say I was busy making lunches - he would yell at me and say “are you even helping to look or what?” On the rare occasion that I just straight up refused to help, he would force the girls to get up and look for it, and would be yelling at them the whole time. It would be their day off from school, and he would make them get out of bed to help him find it. So then, not wanting them to go through that alone, I realized that I really could not just refuse to look. Or rather, not that I couldn’t but that I didn’t want to because I didn’t want the girls to have to deal with that all by themselves. And I thought by helping find the items it would stop the yelling at all of us.

Obviously I know logically that his behavior was never going to change if he kept getting his way. There were a couple of times that I stood up to him and in the moment told the girls no, just stay in your beds, it’s not your responsibility, but they were so scared of him that they would always just end up doing what he wanted. So, I felt like the next best thing was to just try and find the items myself so that they didn’t have to.

He would always call and apologize afterward, saying “I’m sorry I was such an asshole, I’m just so stressed with work and I have so much on my plate.” I used to say “I know, but I have a lot on my plate too, and I don’t treat you or speak to you that way.” He would get defensive, and would be a distant jerk all day. So eventually I just started saying “I know, I’m sorry you’re having such a hard time.”

He grew to resent me for always being the calm and rational one. He would say something nasty, and I would say “It’s obvious you are upset. I’m going to stop speaking with you until you can lower your voice and speak to me more respectfully.” His stock response was “Oh, so here it is again, I’m the asshole and now I have to apologize.” I would say you are not an asshole, but you are acting like one, and when you act that way, yes, you have to apologize.

I realize that is not my responsibility to bear, but it’s not the girls’ either, and if someone is being unreasonable and won’t just do it for themselves, then you’re really stuck between a rock and a hard place. I should have left him years ago because of emotional abuse like that, but then I would have been leaving the girls behind to deal with it on their own.

Having to move in with my parents has given me time to seriously reflect on our relationship and the way I allowed myself to be treated. I’m looking at it and realizing that at least in the beginning, I did stand up for myself and set boundaries. Telling him that it wasn’t fair to expect me or the girls to take pictures of him surfing if I we were having fun doing our own thing - we are not his personal photographers. Insisting that I and the girls did not need to go to the beach with him if we didn’t want to or if we had other things we wanted or needed to do. Or that it was not our responsibility to wake him up, and if he was late to work that’s his own damn fault. But I lost sight of those boundaries. I started giving in to them. And then in an effort to control an uncontrollable situation, my codependency worsened.

I’ve discussed it at length with my therapist, who has reminded me over and over that this behavior is all a reflection of his own issues and not mine or the girls. It’s easier to see that now with more distance, but I would be lying if I didn’t still feel responsible for it. It’s gotten to the point where anyone asking for my help with anything is triggering. My gut reaction is to say, why can’t you do it yourself?

I have a really hard time identifying as a victim. It is our natural inclination as the BS, yes, and I’ve definitely had more than my fair share of feeling sorry for myself. But then I feel guilty for feeling that way. In a way, labeling myself as a victim feels like it’s taking my agency away. I guess I just have to realize that his angry outbursts and unpredictable behavior largely took that away from me anyway. I was in a state of reaction instead of action.

Thank you again everyone. I know my posts are always lengthy. I have always been a wordy person. But even if no one reads all the way through, it helps to get it out. And even though IC is crucial, there’s nothing like knowing that the people you’re talking to have dealt with the same crap.

HeHadADoubleLife,

I can relate to every word of your posts, and I want to second that Lundy Bancroft's book is excellent. It will let you see your Ex as he really is.

Codependency has been the single greatest challenge of my life. It confused me and confused my sense of good/bad, right/wrong and fair/unfair in every relationship I had. Recovering from the thinking that has been normal to you for years does not happen over night. The door to a new way of thinking first opens a crack, then it gets wider and wider as you embrace and implement all of these new philosophies. Give yourself the time and space to take this all in. You will never be 100% 'cured' because being good to others (too good?) is part of who you are, but you definitely can pull way back to question yourself, change your knee jerk responses, and start giving yourself all of the love and kindness you have been showering on others. The disappointment you have most likely grown accustomed to will dimish as you take care of yourself and stop giving more than feels manageable. It does take time, though. And that's ok. Be good to yourself today. A bath? A movie? A pizza? Some kind words? A compliment? You deserve it. It took me years to change fully, but I am still a very nice person. You will continue to be you, just smarter and stronger.

Journey from Abandonment to Healing by Susan Anderson saved my codependent butt. I cried through the entire thing because it's a workbook that gives you exercises at the ends of the chapters. SO helpful. (Lundy Bancroft helped, too.) The first chapter begins with Anderson in a puddle on the floor, begging her H not to leave her. So, you can see she gets it. It's a very helpful book.

I also leaned hard on journaling. When no one wanted to hear about my sadness even one more time, I could talk to myself. I said very little that mattered, but getting things out when I felt them was invaluable. I wrote for about a half hour or more per day. Years later, I burned my journal in a celebratory ritual. It was awesome. Cathartic.

And IC. Lots of it.

The grief I felt was grief I had saved up for years, grief from childhood that I didn't fully realize I had kept in. I cried for my young self that could not seem to get the approval I craved from my self-centered mother, so my grief felt like a tidal wave of hurt that I assumed would drown me. Sure, I was crying over my lost relationship. But that's because I couldn't see that the sadness had been buried inside for nearly my whole life, and I needed to let it out. So that's what your IC means about feeling it all. It may overwhelm you because it's buried deep from old hurts and sadness, things you may have forgotten. But nobody ever died from crying. Keep letting it out, journaling, talking to your IC, reading, and growing. The sadness will slowly lift on its own, and you will feel emotionally lighter than you have felt in many years. I promise.

You will break free from his spell. I do feel for his girls. Can I ask, where is their mother? Your ex is toxically narcissistic. My guess is that he misplaced things on purpose. I have heard that this is a common narcissistic power trick--very common--but have not personally experienced it. You can stay in touch with the girls via email and help them survive that way.

[This message edited by OwningItNow at 3:15 PM, January 5th (Saturday)]

Thanks sisoon for your earlier post! I didn’t see it while I was typing out my other reply.

I definitely connect better with the simplified 180. As with all of the thoughts on codependency, there are a lot of statements that are seemingly in opposition with each other, so it can get confusing.

This, however, is not confusing at all.

Doing nothing grants passive approval and gives up your own power to take charge and make your own choices. If a situation isn’t changing, then action is required to make it change. You have a right and a responsibility to protect what is important to you.

We all instinctively know that we need to stand up for ourselves. Hell, I did for a very long time before I just gave in and gave up.

The above kind of reminds me of that thing Juliette Lewis says to Jennifer Lopez in Enough - “You have a divine animal right to protect your life and the life of your offspring.” Matter of fact, that has always been one of my favorite movies - I might need to break that one out again as a reminder!

Remember - you didn't cheat; he did. You didn't get addicted to meth and hide it; he did. You didn't leave; he did.

I am making sure to remind myself of this every day. It’s my little mantra every morning.

OwningItNow - thank you for your post. I can relate to every single thing. I had been trying to journal for a while and found myself getting frustrated that I couldn’t get the words down on the page fast enough as I had so many thoughts. So I’ve started to type them up in a Google Doc - I am much faster at typing for some reason. A lot of it is copied and pasted from things I post here on SI, or from texts with my therapist. But then there are all of those other things that I feel embarrassed to talk about with anyone else, my deep insecurities with the codependency, issues that are cropping up with my family etc. It is definitely helping.

Your remark on codependency here really hits home

It confused me and confused my sense of good/bad, right/wrong and fair/unfair in every relationship I had.

This is EXACTLY how I feel right now. As anyone working a 12 step program would do, it’s forcing me to take inventory. I just have 32 years of it to cover! At times I feel like I am questioning my sanity. But I guess that is just part of the road to recovery.

I will definitely pick up Journey from Abandonment as well!

ETA:

My guess is that he misplaced things on purpose. I have heard that this is a common narcissistic power trick--very common--but have not personally experienced it.

I never knew this, but it makes a lot of sense! I constantly felt like he never knew where anything was. He would also get paranoid and start saying someone stole these things, even though we hadn’t left all night and nobody else had been in the house - though the paranoia is likely just another fun side effect of the meth use

[This message edited by HeHadADoubleLife at 4:38 PM, January 5th (Saturday)]

And in regards to the girls mother - she is, unfortunately, worse than their father. When they first split they initially lived with her, and she completely neglected them. She was also a meth head, go fucking figure. My husband fought and won sole physical and legal custody - this is almost unheard of for fathers in CA, so you can imagine how bad things were with her to get to that point.

So she has the double whammy of being a narcissist, AND being completely neglectful. I can say a lot about my husband, but there has always been a roof over his daughters head, food in the fridge, and clean clothes for them to wear, which is more than I can say for their mother.

Overall, they did not deserve any of what life threw at them. I really thought I had done a lot to bring them a stable home life. I was the only one to ever truly discipline them. My husband would say he disciplined them by yelling, but I was the only one who ever laid out any consequences I.e if you don’t do your chores, you have to pull an extra chore from the jar. If you don’t call to check in when you are supposed to, then you lose phone privileges for a week, etc. Of course they are teenagers and hate consequences, but they still needed them. I pride myself in knowing that they will be more well-adjusted and prepared for adult life because of it, even if their father will never admit that.

They know it too. I have apologized to them so many times after DDay, and insisted that none of this is their fault, and they don’t deserve any of the repercussions for any of it. Their response has always been “It’s not your fault either.” They are way too mature for their age.

I also miss our girls nights - we would watch movies and do face masks and do our nails. We are working on figuring something out where they can spend a whole night with me, instead of just a few hours. I don’t see why that should be an issue, as I’ve been with them overnight hundreds of times while he’s been away on business trips, but he is resistant to it. Probably because he is still putting up the facade for the OW that I am the crazy one.

On DDay, I told them that they could come with me if they wanted, but that I understood if they felt that they couldn’t. They have since both told me how much they regret not going with me that day. Apparently when they got in the car with him he asked them if they wanted to stay with him or go with me, and they said they would just stay. Last week, they tearfully told me they wish that they hadn’t. I reassured them that in no way do they need to choose sides, and that they did what they felt was best for their safety and well-being at the time. I also told them that I am there for support if and when they ever do decided to confront him.

He continues to lie straight to their faces, and now that this has all been blown wide open, they are finally seeing him as the liar he is, and it has shattered their world completely. Continues to insist that his relationship with OW did not overlap with our marriage, even though they are aware that is completely untrue. The gaslighting on his part is totally messing with them. They younger one keeps asking me, “how am I supposed to trust anything he says anymore when he just keeps lying to my face?”

It is so sad, because they love their dad so much and would do anything for him, but he just can’t see how terrible he is being to them. They have told me they have tried to call him out on a couple of different occasions, like saying that it seems he wants to spend all of his time with this new girl instead of them, and he just says “why does nobody care what I want?”

My therapist has recommended getting them to Al-ateen meetings, and they seem interested, so we are trying to figure out how to get them there without him knowing. Hopefully once school and his work starts back up again on Monday things will start falling into a more regular schedule and they’ll be able to get away more.

[This message edited by HeHadADoubleLife at 2:58 PM, January 6th (Sunday)]

Im Ding....WH had exit affair...he left me in less the 10 seconds, after 35 years...no talking..no explanations...we didn't speak again for 3.5 weeks...then to pick up the rest of his belongings...It is mind blowing...Our marriage was bad...but who leaves this cruelly after 35 years...that will mess with your head...

The evil brutal rejection alone, will mess with your head...

I agree with all the above posts...Yes you are codependant...but that's no the only problem...HE is a meth head...he is NPD...these two are huge...very huge...His mind is not clear now...hasn't been for a long time...the meth will make him more numb and NPD...the NPD will keep him in denial, and unfeeling and uncaring...etc etc etc...its a vicious circle...all while you research yourself...

You may be codependent...but its the least of your problems right now...who wouldn't be? It seems you had to do it all, because you had zero help...

This hurts badly...I know...the abrupt rude ending is absolutely mind blowing...but very common for NPD...Just know...this is all him...he has many symptoms of NPD....as does my WH...it still hurts like hell...

YOu need to read about NPD...you will see him clearly...you will see how hopeless this really is...and how it was a ticking time bomb...you never had a chance...no matter your behavior...

Give yourself a break...you really cannot fix the world...but you can learn hope is different from hopeless...

[This message edited by cancuncrushed at 5:44 PM, January 5th (Saturday)]

This is something you cant fix. You can try and make it less hurtful but as you know, it uses energy and happiness to keep that up. You cant take the responsibility to solve all the family problems forever. The girls are in a rough spot, no denying that. He is using their trust and destroying any chance for happiness and health. Eventually it will take every bit of joy from all of you. N people feed like vampires until the host is no longer useful or desireable, then they move on. Its fine to want to help people but dont allow them to feed off you in a parasitic way. Adding in drugs is putting it into nightmare land.

An important part of healing is to go through the process of understanding where you were and are. I think that's what you've been writing about in this thread.

Are you also working on where you want to be? I'm not asking you to write about it here or even to focus on it now. I'm just asking if you're working on it yet.

IMO, co-d is just a description of how you have behaved. It's not a crime, and it's not a life sentence.

HHADL, You've related a number of great insights here. It takes a lot of effort and time to change habits that one has exercised for years (or longer), but IMO those insights are steps in the way to healing. I wish you the best.

You mentioned that you have behaviors that you need to work on. The things you do that you don't like about yourself will go away when you heal from the abuse and are no longer codependent.

Codependent behaviors are, IMHO, usually things we do as coping mechanisms. Life does X, we learn to cope by doing Y and then Z happens and we cope by switching to A. Anything to keep things calm so that our addict doesn't flip out, get angry, get annoyed, get peeved, get his feelings hurt, have to work too hard, etc., ad nauseum. It happens subtly and over time and it's like the boiling frog thing because by the time you realize the severity of your situation, it's really hard to climb out. They train us well. And it is emotional abuse. And it's often accompanied by PTSD.

The question is, how do you get out of that mindset? AlAnon is a good place to start. Or the similar program for friends and families of drug addicts. There are podcasts and videos on YouTube that are quite helpful. I really like Lisa Romano's approach but there are many who speak and so you can keep trying different ones until you hit on the one whose voice and message work best for you.

You're on the right track and it's great that you can live in your parents house for awhile so you can focus on healing.

Oh, and one more thing. You aren't there yet but the day will come that you truly have that AHA moment and realize that what's he's saying and doing is all straight out of the Cheaters Handbook and that nothing he's doing has anything to do with you. It's all about him. It always has been and it always will be. He's lacking a center core to his being and instead of mourning the loss of such a person, you will eventually realize that the truth of your situation is that you've been freed.

Codependent behaviors are, IMHO, usually things we do as coping mechanisms. Life does X, we learn to cope by doing Y and then Z happens and we cope by switching to A. Anything to keep things calm so that our addict doesn't flip out, get angry, get annoyed, get peeved, get his feelings hurt, have to work too hard, etc., ad nauseum. It happens subtly and over time and it's like the boiling frog thing because by the time you realize the severity of your situation, it's really hard to climb out. They train us well. And it is emotional abuse.

Codependency is a sliding scale, and some people do become more codependent within certain relationships. BUT-

It is widely believed that to even end up in a relationship with a narcissist, you have to be codependent in the first place. I am not talking fault, I am talking understanding how you got in this painful place. Narcissists are takers. Yes, they trick us with love bombing early on, but the love bombing is merely a big red flag to a healthy person! They think, "This person is just too much." For us to avoid ending up with a narcissistic person almost always means that we have to work on our overly generous, forgiving, accommodating nature or we will be narcissistic bait in the future, as Furious1 put it recently. But it's true. Healthy people know that narcissists come on way too strong, but codependent people get sucked right in regardless of the red flags.

We have to find the balance between "everything is my fault" and "none of this is my fault." We have power over those we allow into our lives, and we are responsible for our bad choices in this area. Responsibility looks like learning, growing, and doing better in the future. But we are not bad people because we couldn't see this all coming. You can't know what you don't know!

Good luck, HeHadADoubleLife. I think you seem like a very smart cookie who is going to figure this all out and be fine. It's hard, but you will be ok. Better than ok.

[This message edited by OwningItNow at 11:04 PM, January 6th (Sunday)]

I too had serious problems with codependency. Almost everything you've written about yourself and your struggles I could have written. Like not being able to listen to music. We have so very much in common.

I too had an emotionally abusive, passive-aggressive narcissistic WH. And my identity was centered on giving and helping others, and I was completely taken advantage of by my WH.

I spent over 5 years in therapy and turned my life around. I called it my self improvement project.

I kept a cheap spiral notebook. I would use it for two things. First, was my list of goals and things to do for the day. Second, was to journal thoughts and feelings.

My goals and to-dos helped me recover. I would go to therapy and ask for an assignment to do before the next session. I would write it down in my notebook, and try to work on it during the week. Often it would be to think about things in my youth that led me to become codependent, that led me to fear being abandoned.

The to-dos kept me from beating myself up due to the exhaustion. I would "chunk down" tasks into the tiniest of steps. Laundry wasn't "do laundry" It was a list like this:

Pull basket out of closet

Sort heavies out

Put heavies in washer

Sort mediums from lights

Make pile of dog towels

Move heavies over to dryer

Put mediums in washer

....

You get the idea. Do laundry became a list of 15 or 20 tasks. I could cross each one off when I did it. I could give myself credit for the things I did do.

Your exhaustion and body hurting and the "functional paralysis" of zoning out and watching TV because you just CAN'T, is a symptom of depression. Ask your therapist for a referral to a psychiatrist so that you can be evaluated for medication to help stabilize your stress hormones and other brain chemistry. I went through several different medications and now feel healthy on welbutrin. I'll probably be on it forever I think, sort of like my sister will forever be on thyroid supplements.

Codependency is something you do in relationship with another person (or people). But there are also things that you do (or don't do) for yourself that are related. Learning how to make yourself accountable for your own wellbeing is really hard. To focus your energy on YOU. To do things for YOU. To put yourself first.

That's what my notebook was all about. It was my record of taking care of me. It was my workplan. It was my guidebook, my proof that I was doing the work.

There will be two parts to your healing. One is learning what you were doing, as a codependent in a dysfunctional relationship. And learning why you did that (Family of Origin, or FOO).

Try to spend as much time as you can thinking about how to make yourself healthy today, and build your life for tomorrow. Try to stop focusing on the people around you and all their faults. You need boundaries between you and them so you can focus on your needs first.