Understanding Who you are Dealing With

I have spent years trying to understand my husband and the dynamics of our marriage only to always find myself confused and perplexed. Until I met him I did not think I had issues judging people. I usually met someone and felt fairly confident that I could figure out who they were, what they were up to and what our relationship was really about. (I don’t have a history of sticking around for abuse.)

Lately, Husband has been easy to get along with and saying sweet things. However, currently I am not really making any demands on him so it is not very hard for him to be *nice*.

The bad thing is this behavior from him makes me (once again) doubt myself and my judgment of him. I still have moments where I wonder if it was just me that could not trust him. Was it all in my head?  Could I have done something different and things would have been fine? I guess I am still having a hard time letting go of the dream of a real family and loving home for my daughter. I am still crushed that I will never have that.

Then I slap myself and remind myself that I have NEVER had issues with other people and there is no way that after 8 years of being in a relationship with him that it was all a mistake because I did or didn’t do or say something. I am way too quick to blame myself and seem to be stuck in the habit of spackling for him.

NO the real issue is who he is and how he relates to the world.

This morning while reading some blogs I found this information:

"The overriding behavior principle for neurotics (me) is consistency, honesty, responsibility, and integrity (in their words and deeds); whereas the overriding principle for the covert aggressive (Husband) is the very opposite, i.e., inconsistency, dishonesty, irresponsibility, and lying etc. This makes it VERY EASY for a CA person to predict their victim’s thoughts and actions, and hence, to MANIPULATE them. This combination makes it a “piece of cake” for the CA to manipulate the victim and (nearly) impossible for the victim to understand what’s going on . . . for 4 reasons:
1) The victim is unaware of the CA character (because the CA hides it).
2) The victim doesn’t operate like that (and naively assumes others are like him/her).
3) The victim WANTS to believe the CA is operating in “good faith”, and according to society’s standards.
4) Neurotics feel guilty for thinking bad of people – so even when their instincts/gut feeling/intuition starts to warn them, in their head they argue away the realization they so badly need. Because they feel guilty thinking that of the person, especially those closest to them such as family.
People who are in abusive relationships stay there because they blame themselves. We blame ourselves because it is the ONLY point of power that we have – if it’s OUR fault, then we can fix it. Of course it isn’t our fault and we can’t fix it. The only thing you can do is face that and get out. It’s very easy for someone who has come from a childhood of abuse, to blame themselves because they have already had their sense of self destroyed. Very sad. People don’t stay in abusive relationships because they’re stupid."

I have to keep reminding myself that he was playing games with me (and still is) and it was not my fault.  No doubt his current nice is because he is hoping it will make me go easy on him with divorce and he will get more or less what he wants if I am feeling good towards him. 

When I start to feel that he really isn't such a bad guy after all, I MUST REMEMBER that he admitted to me that he didn’t love me!  (That really is an amazingly super shitty thing to do to someone!)

I have to keep in mind that even if I had stayed and we had “worked on” things, the pattern of behavior would not have changed. This is who he is and how he chooses to run his life. He doesn’t want to be honest, transparent or committed to another person. He wants to have autonomy so he can do as he pleases when he pleases and I really don’t think he will ever WANT to change that.

Even though he has chosen to “act” upset and *say* he doesn’t want a divorce, I fully believe he is not really sad about it other than the fact it will cost him money, time (when he has our daughter) and he may even be a bit embarrassed that yet another wife left him.

Lately he seems very happy being single and has a very active social schedule. (No doubt he is out trolling for ego kibbles.)

I must trust that he sucks!