fearformysanity's story

8 posts / 0 new
Last post
#1 May 17 - 3AM
fear for my sanity
fear for my sanity's picture

fearformysanity's story

The abuse can be so subtle, you question your sanity
Posted Mon, 04/11/2011 - 08:51

I have joined this forum because I feel like I'm losing my mind. I am 50 years old and have been married for 27 years to the same man. I love him and he is fundamentally a good man but he is a total workoholic. He leaves the house at 7am and often isn't home till 10 or 11pm. Maybe once a week, he might get home by 8pm. This has put a strain on our relationship as I feel that spending time with me is at the bottom of his list of priorities. I used to get quite upset about this but over time I have become resigned to it though I have felt desperately lonely and my self-esteem has suffered as a consequence. I have always put the needs of my family before everything else and now that my children are grown up and have left home, I have tried to fill the gap somehow. I am an artist and I also work part-time at a University for art as a Support Worker for mature students with physical, mental and learning difficulties. For several years this job has helped me to feel like I had a purpose outside of my family. To know that I am helping someone to achieve their goals is very satisfying. It was whilst doing this job that I met the man who has almost destroyed what little self esteem I had left. It is only with hindsight that I realize all the groundwork he put in to be able to abuse me mentally and emotionally afterwards. He was a student (11 years younger than me) on the same degree course as the student that I was supporting (a man of 58 with physical and mental health problems). Due to the nature of my student's disabilities, I had to be with him the whole day. The N gradually befriended my student, V, and seemed to form a strong bond with him, helping him and socializing with him even outside of college. N seemed to have a lot of problems of his own and used this to empathize with V. N seemed to have a great sense of humour but at times would be really depressed and he put this down to the fact that his wife had left him for another man 13 years ago and he had had a breakdown because of it and hadn't been able to work since then. He had had a girlfriend in recent years which seemed to be an on/off relationship and according to him, she was the one who was reluctant to move on with her life and was behaving badly towards him and making his life miserable. All the while, he seemed to be so kind towards V and would hang around with us during the days at college. Needless to say, I was really impressed by his seeming compassion. Looking back, I realize this was all part of the master plan to make me think he was a wonderful person because he needed me to tell him what a wonderful person HE was. He told me I was the most incredible person he'd ever met and he felt that I could really help him get his life sorted out and that he was so grateful to have me as a friend. He knew exactly how to get to me. I am not the sort of woman that would fall for a guy based on superficial things and I have never been unfaithful in 27 years of marriage. We gradually developed a friendship. We had a lot of interests in common - art, music, philosophy etc. In spite of his underprivileged background he was a very intelligent guy - he would have to be to play the games he played with my mind! All this time, I wasn't doing anything underhand, I recounted everything to my husband, I visited art exhibitions with N, he came over to my house and met my husband and children. I even invited him to spend Christmas Eve with us because he said he would have been alone otherwise. He started to text me several times a day and want to talk to me most days on the phone, always about himself, though occasionally he would surprise me by appearing to be concerned for me, and each time he did, I started to think he was more wonderful.It wasn't long before I started to feel guilty because I was having feelings for him . Although we had very deep conversations, we never touched each other. I never even sat close to him. As for V, N completely dropped him and stopped talking to him, telling me that V had taken advantage of his kindness. Really, it was N who had used V to get to me. I should have heeded the warning! He got a part-time job for the first time in years but after a few months he said he couldn't stand it any longer because he was being bullied by a woman at work. He was paranoid that things were being said behind his back and said that the job was making him deeply unhappy. I tried to help him to see that it wasn't like that and to see the benefits of the job for his longterm career prospects. He was a very heavy smoker and said he had started smoking dope again because of the stress of work.He didn't like the fact that I encouraged him to stay in his job. Whilst visiting him once, I met his ex-girlfriend as she would often stay over rather than go to her parents house where she still lived as it was further from her work. They would share the same bed on these occasions as it was the only one in his flat but he said that nothing ever happened between them because he wasn't really interested in sex. Strangely enough, although I had feelings for him, I wasn't even slightly jealous, so I'm not quite sure what the nature of my feelings were. I have never met a more insecure woman in my whole life - she could barely look at me, she was so nervous! N started to tell me that she was extremely jealous of our friendship and was making his life hell. It was like I was supposed to feel bad about that! His ex encouraged him to leave work, said she would help him out, which was exactly what he wanted to hear. I suspected then that he had used our friendship to make her feel even more insecure so that in spite of her past experience of abuse, she wanted to move back in with him and help him out financially so that he didn't have to go back to work. He said that he wouldn't be able to contact me or see me as often any more because he had to keep his ex sweet. All the time he was saying that they were just friends and that he had no other feelings for her. At this point I made the mistake of telling him that I had feelings for him that I felt very bad about and that it was probably a good idea to have less contact.I also questioned him whether it was fair on his ex to invite her to move back in with him when she obviously still had feelings for him and he didn't for her. I thought that once things were out in the open, we could deal with it. I confronted him about what he'd done to his ex and me, the way he deliberately befriended people with low-self esteem and flattered them so that they would in turn tell him what he wanted to hear. He was furious with me and wouldn't talk to me for a while and when he did, he accused me of calling him a psychopath when in fact I had been very gentle and compassionate in the way I told him. I was so naive, thinking I could make him see the error of his ways! We carried on seeing each other once a week in college (only in the lunch break) and about once a month, when we might visit an art exhibition together. The sad thing is that we did genuinely have a lot of interests in common that would have made for a perfectly healthy, normal friendship if he hadn't chosen to mess with my mind instead. Inevitably, things came to a messy end. He kept telling me that his ex, now living with him, was still extremely jealous and making his life hell and why couldn't she be more like me! One evening I had several calls on my cell phone from his cell phone but when I answered, he'd hung up. I thought at first that he must have phoned me by mistake so I texted him to let him know. I had no reply and then another 2 calls where the same thing happened, so I called back because I was worried that something was wrong. He answered and said he'd phone me the next day and explain. The next day he phoned me and said that his ex had snooped in his emails and found emails we had exchanged where he had told me how wonderful I was and I had expressed concerns about my feelings and that she was threatening to tell my husband (she's never met him).She had been the one phoning my cell phone the previous night, according to N. Now I think about it, he could have made up the whole thing, I don't know. By this time I was so emotionally wrung out, both from my husband's neglect and N's mental and emotional manipulation that I even offered to set up the call between them. N said no, but we must never have any contact again. Yet again, he had managed to set himself up as the victim and his ex and myself as the ones that were complicating his life, when we have done nothing but try to help him through difficult times and never demanded anything in return. I feel so sorry for his ex (they are still living together)and fear for her mental state as she is in a far worse position than I've ever been.I gave up my job at the college so that I didn't have to see N again and feel I can no longer work with people with mental health difficulties for fear of being manipulated again. In the last 7 months I have only seen N once, briefly,on a day I had to go into the college. He was cold and distant but hugged me in front of the others. The thing I'm finding hardest to deal with is that I don't know if I can trust my judgement of people anymore. I thought I was quite a discerning person but my lack of self-esteem made it so easy for N to fool me. To feel so happy that somebody seems to appreciate your good qualities and then to find out it was all a lie has hurt me so deeply that I don't know if I'll ever recover. Then the guilt I feel towards my husband for having allowed someone to get under my skin like that. I can't even talk to him about it because I fear he will just see it as weakness and betrayal on my part. Also, since the beginning of the year he has had a health scare which still isn't resolved and which has worried us both terribly so I felt I couldn't add to the worry.I haven't talked to anybody about it because I'm not sure anybody would understand. Sometimes I think I may be starting to get over it and then suddenly I will have a panic attack and I'm back to square one, sleepless, tearful and not wanting to leave the house or see anybody. I'm sorry that this has ended up being such a long story and probably sounds quite mild compared to the abuse that some of you have suffered at the hands of your N. It's so hard to put into words what has happened because the abuse is sometimes so subtle and insidious that it almost sounds like it's not abuse at all. All I know is that what happened to me has left me feeling suicidal at times. Just the fact that I could even think of leaving my family in this way makes me feel so guilty. Last night, I couldn't sleep at all, I really felt I was going mad. I don't know if I'll ever be able to forgive myself for being such a fool. I have always been someone that people feel they can trust but now I don't even know if I can trust myself. There may be no cure for NPD, but is there a cure for me?

May 17 - 7PM
wacaet
wacaet's picture

keep up the NC and keep

keep up the NC and keep reading don't think your pain is any less than anyone else's pain is pain and it sucks and so do these assholes
May 18 - 1AM (Reply to #7)
fear for my sanity
fear for my sanity's picture

Thanks for your understanding, wacaet

I am feeling a little bit better these days, good days and bad days. I'm sure you know how it goes. I'm sorry for the difficult time you had at the hands of your N too. Sometimes I think they prey on married women because they know that some of us can be lonely and also because we are likely to feel guilty about having feelings for them so they can easily manipulate us into blaming ourselves for everything.. Here's to no more blame or shame on us! Take care.
May 17 - 3AM
fear for my sanity
fear for my sanity's picture

Don't know where the words 'Vote up' came from!

Just copied and pasted this now as I realized I hadn't followed instructions for sharing my story properly but don't know where the words 'Vote up' came from. Sorry about that, makes no sense!
May 17 - 3AM (Reply to #2)
michele115 (not verified)
Anonymous's picture

I removed the "vote up"

It's a cut and paste glitch...thanks for the "head's up" Silly question on my part...where WAS your story? Hugs!
May 17 - 4AM (Reply to #5)
fear for my sanity
fear for my sanity's picture

Turns out I'm not very good at following instructions!

Would help if I read them! Thanks for removing the "vote up". I think I was in such a state when I found this forum and wrote my story that I didn't follow the instructions at all and didn't put my user name in the subject line. I must have been so desperate to get it out! I think I put something like "The abuse can be so subtle and insidious" as the subject, so I was just trying to put it right now. Sorry for the confusion on my part! Thanks for your continued support here. Take care.
May 17 - 4AM (Reply to #3)
michele115 (not verified)
Anonymous's picture

I think I figured it out...

Hugs! and Thanks!
May 17 - 4AM (Reply to #4)
fear for my sanity
fear for my sanity's picture

Well done, detective michelle!

You are way ahead of me! Some days I'm not sure what I've done and what I haven't done! Can't blame all of that on the N though, I've always been a bit of a scatterbrain (us artistic types, you know!!) and then there's the age issue....but we won't go there! lol