Tallulah T's Story

As you can see, I’ve been a member of this support group for over 2 years. My initial reason for joining was because I was dissolving the marriage with my now-EXNH of 13 years. You will be able to see from my story, why I took a big detour, but I’m now ready to rid myself of the toxins that I have had consistently in my life for the past 16 years.
I met the EXNH at a training seminar. I was a trainer for a large travel management company and he was a trainer in the military. We had a whirl-wind, long distance romance and even though I was wife number 3, I rushed into marriage with him (my biological clock was ticking). I quit my job, left my friends and family, and moved from California to the Pacific Northwest. Up until our honeymoon, I was deliriously happy and had no clue there might be a problem. I made and paid for all of the honeymoon arrangements through the benefits of working in the travel industry, therefore all of the reservations were in my maiden name. While at a 5 star hotel, he made a huge scene in the lobby because the hotel staff was using my maiden name. In order for him to not continue his tirade, I had to have the reservations changed and they were only to use my new name.
Very shortly into the marriage, I found myself pregnant. He insisted on driving me to the bus so I could commute to work. I was chronically late because of this, which created a lot of stress for me. My pregnancy was difficult, but not terrible. Just more stressful than I had wished. During the pregnancy, he usually went to all the doctor’s visits and many times made inappropriate comments. The only time he was supportive was when we were around others. At home, he was unhelpful, antagonistic and much of the time neglectful. I remember when I was about 6 months pregnant and got bronchitis. I was very sick and couldn’t get out of bed. It was the weekend, he was off work, but didn’t check on me the entire day. Didn’t check to see if I needed food or water – he was too busy playing on the computer or tinkering on his car (which I bought).
I had serious post-partum depression (over-care) and immediately after the baby was born, had zero interest in sex. Once the baby came, I had very definite ideas about how we should raise this precious gift. I convinced him to sell his guns, I breast-fed for an extended period, we had a family bed and I practiced attachment parenting. He was so jealous of the breastfeeding, he almost couldn’t stand it. During one of our frequent arguments, he told me that if I ever left, he would make my life hell. So, for our son’s sake, I tried to stick out the marriage. I was extremely unhappy, as was he, but he compensated by frequent “emotional affairs” (I don’t have any proof one way or the other if he had physical affairs), hoovering, controlling and manipulating and blaming me for everything that wasn’t right in our lives. This went on for years and in the meantime, I drug him to marriage counselor, after marriage counselor. He of course was always on his best, most charming behavior and many of them were taken in by his charm. One, however, suggested that he might have NPD. Of course after doing research, I freaked out and tried to put it out of my mind, even though he fit the description perfectly. We tried a marriage encounter type program for failing marriages and that didn’t work either.
I continued to work on the marriage, work full time, homeschool my son, have a social and spiritual life, support his military career, but felt completely alone. EXNH was retired from the military and couldn’t hold down a job or get a decent one to save his life. He continued his computer game addiction and maintaining relationships with OW. We continued to grow farther and farther apart. When my son reached 7th grade, he wanted to stop homeschooling and go to school. The schools in the city we lived in were more like prisons than schools, so we discussed moving back to California. Since I owned a home and my elderly mother was living in it, we thought it would be a good way to have our son go to school and build a relationship with his grandmother, and make a fresh start. Other than friends and 2 houses, we didn’t have any real ties in the Midwest, where we had ended up. The plan was that the EXNH would stay in the Midwest and get the houses ready for sale, and I would bring my son back to California to start school and I would look for a job. I had daily phone calls, texts, emails from him whining about how he couldn’t do it alone, that I should leave our son with my 90 year old mother and come back to help him. I kept trying to encourage him, but I wasn’t going to leave a 12 year old with my 90 year old mother for an extended period of time, and I was trying to interview for jobs. On my birthday, in November of 2009, just 2 months after we left, he asked me for a divorce. He was very out of control and behaving very erratically. After thinking about it over the weekend, I called him and agreed.
In the meantime, I renewed a friendship with one of my college roommates. This woman and I had a romantic relationship in college and although I went on to have many relationships with men; she struggled with her sexual identity and eventually came out as a lesbian. Our breakup in college was particularly devastating to her, because I began seeing a man, even though she asked me to not date while we were still living together.
She absolutely loved my son and recognized that he had never had a strong male presence in his life and tried to provide some of what she could (athletics, etc.). She had always wanted to have a family and we easily and effortlessly started seeing each other. She assumed the role of my son’s other mother and while he was 12 and pliable, everything went well. She is an extremely creative, dynamic and smart woman. She seemed to make our lives complete. The EXNH found out about her and started custody proceedings, which was beyond stressful. Early on in the relationship, she suggested that I start therapy, because she didn’t know if I was a “happy person”. I complied, although, due to the situations, I was upset and sometimes depressed, but my inner being is primarily optimistic and happy. The one thing that the therapist suggested is that I suffer from Complex Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome from the emotional abuse of the marriage. Would she go to therapy? Uh, no, she didn’t believe in it for herself. No problem, we continued to do pretty much everything together, while retaining separate residences and were building, what I thought was a life together.
As I look back, there were red flags, which I refused to believe. One of the first was early on when she spent the night at my house. I have insomnia and that particular night, I couldn’t sleep, so I went out to the couch as not to disturb her sleep. Remember, I am now living with my 90 year old mother and 12 year old son, in a quite small house. She came out to the living room and started yelling at the top of her lungs at me, that if she had wanted to sleep alone, she would have stayed home. Another time, she was being very bossy and controlling, but sensing that she wouldn’t like to be called that, I very gently, tongue in cheek, suggested playfully that she might just be the tiniest bit bossy. You would have thought I insulted her and everyone and everything near and dear to her. Her reaction was not at all appropriate to the comment. Yet another time was when my son and I were at her house and I inadvertently left the dog gate open and the dogs got in her room and on her bed. She started yelling at me in front of my son, insinuating that I didn’t have a brain. She continued to yell at me till I was crying. This was very confusing for me and my son.
It was also very confusing that one day she would love me, the next hate me. One day she would adore me, the next day despise me. She ran hot and cold and I felt like I was on a perpetual roller coaster. I think that one of the things that kept her coming back were her friends and acquaintances, who really liked me and couldn’t say nicer things about me. We would be together and be doing just fine, everything very compatible, and then she would be by herself and convince herself that we were incompatible.
Things went along mostly well until my son turned 13 and the divorce was final. She had a difficult time with the normal teen things – pulling away from parents and making his own friends and having friends be the most important thing to him, having a messy room, not getting his homework done on time, leaving shoes and socks in the living room, etc. Nothing bad. She couldn’t stand it if his room was messy and he was having company. Appearances are very important to her. She started criticizing my parenting and started saying that we had different values – in a way that was demeaning to my way of doing things. I am not and will never be an authoritarian parent. She thought I was leading my son down the path of destruction because I didn’t “make” him do certain things with strict consequences. The criticism and control started to escalate and got to a point where she was even communicating with EXNH’s new wife #4(yes, he met her online a month after we split and moved her into what was still our home a couple of months later…she left her young daughter in another state to be with him, so I don’t have a lot of respect for her). I asked her to stop, but she continued against my wishes, telling her things about my parenting and how my son was reacting to certain teen issues. I finally got her to go to therapy, but not with me. She met with my therapist. If I understand it correctly, she was trying to have the therapist tell her about all the ways I’m screwed up. That didn’t happen. The therapist told her that she’s not his parent and should defer the discipline to me and for her to “stay in her own lane”. She took this to be that we weren’t a family and I didn’t step up to my parenting obligations after she usurped them.
By year two, she was pretty much constantly criticizing me and I was jumping through hoops for her. The night before Thanksgiving in 2011, she, my son and I went out to dinner. He was 14, sad because his girlfriend was moving away, he wasn’t feeling well and after he spilled his drink, he felt awkward. He wasn’t interacting during dinner because we were at the bar and I was in the middle my Narc was controlling the conversation. He sat quietly waiting with his head down for us to finish our conversation. She stood up and started yelling at him in the middle of the restaurant that he always has to be the center of attention, why couldn’t he sit up and stop being so mopey? I asked her repeatedly to stop, but she just kept going and going. I got the check for our food, paid the bill and son and I walked home. Wow, was I shocked. I don’t treat my enemies like this, much less people I claim to love. I was devastated. She was the love of my life, I was hopelessly in love with her and I was ridiculously loyal to her. I would have done anything to keep her…for my son, it was quite another story. He felt completely betrayed, hurt and bewildered. He started acting out, but experimenting with drugs and cutting himself. I didn’t know this at the time, but now in hindsight, I see where the behaviors started. He wanted nothing to do with her.
We had some contact, but I was miserable for a couple of months. I tried several alternative coping methods, but was completely addicted to her. I went to her in February to tell her my thoughts, desires and dreams for our relationship. She agreed that we should work on the relationship, though she continued to pull away, I believe, because she couldn’t control the parenting situation. She told me that this isn’t what she wanted, but continued to one moment be loving and adoring to me, the next be critical and mean. We danced around our differences, but when it was just the two of us together, we had a marvelous time, albeit mostly non-sexual. In November, I went to her again and told her how much I missed our families together and that I wanted to find a way to make it work. She agreed and we each figured out specific things we would do to work on the relationship. We spent my birthday together, Thanksgiving together, Christmas together and socialized as a couple. It was a very busy time of year with the holidays, finals (she’s a teacher), she was injured in an accident and I took care of her and her dogs for about a week, we spent New Year’s together…which is when I found out about a woman with whom she was having a telephone friendship. We both met this woman at a dinner party (which we went to as a couple) in December and we exchanged email contact information. I had no idea that they were talking on the phone and when I asked her why she didn’t tell me she blathered on about how she doesn’t know who I talk to, etc., etc. You know when you can just feel that there’s more to this story? Well, I felt it and asked her if there was something I should know about the woman and she said she couldn’t believe I was going there after the nice time we had that night. So, I dropped it. A couple of weeks later, she spent time at my house before and after a training she was taking. I kept her dogs and when she got back, she stayed through the weekend. We had what I thought was a lovely time. We got along well and enjoyed each other’s company. We didn’t communicate for a couple of days and when we did talk on Wednesday, she seemed particularly agitated. On Thursday 1/24/13, I got a very long, succinct email about how this isn’t working for her and she wants to move forward in her life and that I’ve known for some time that this isn’t working. I was so upset, yet, oddly relieved that she did this. I didn’t respond because I thought this is enough, she can’t even tell me to my face. Thought, she couldn’t just leave it, because my mother called her and left a message about how disrespectful it was to email me. I wish she’d stay out of my life, but if there’s anything I’ve realized through these relationships, it’s that you can’t change anyone but yourself and that’s pretty difficult also. After the call, I got several more emails and texts saying how I’m not being honest about this and it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. It went from the last year things haven’t been good, to the last two years things haven’t been good, to she will always remember the special times we had the first few months.
She was my best friend and I feel very betrayed. I thought that if anything were to ever happen to our relationship, we would split in as loving way as we came together. I know this is my fantasy, but I truly thought we would be in each other’s lives for years to come. I initiated a one month no contact. This has been the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. I miss her intensely and obsess about the woman she might be with and what I could have done differently. Our paths will surely cross, as we have many common groups of friends, and I dread the day when that happens. At some point I will need to go to her place to get all my stuff she stored for me when I moved back from the Midwest. I will need to borrow a truck and take someone with me, which doesn’t excite me. I cry on a daily basis and haven’t been sleeping. I know that for my health and the health of my son this is the best thing that could happen, but I’m having such a difficult time releasing the dream. And, I have had no closure.
Today is NC for one month...now what?