afflicted90

I have been married to my husband for five years now and it has become very challenging, everything seems to be such a struggle and I am coming to the point where all I want is OUT. My husband is a good person but he cannot relate emotionally to me, we do not have a connection. At the beginning of our relationship I was probably impressed with him, the way he treated me, gifts and flowers, and now that I look in retrospective maybe that blurred my judgement a little bit and didn't realize how deeply troubled my husband is. He is a liar, lies all the time about the smallest things and puts himself in a position where he is the hero. He is sneaky, to the point where he even hides food he eats. He is self absorbed and is unable to have a conversation with me, whenever I start by saying something about me or anything else all I get is an AHA, sometimes I've been interrupted and then he changes topics without any respect as to what I was saying, the conversation always has to revolve around HIM (as the hero), his family or his best friend. When I cook, he eats all the food without any regard as to whether if the rest of the people in the house have eaten or not. He is extremely inconsiderate. Before I would put up with it, but lately it is extremely frustrating. He is not affectionate, hasn't kissed me in over a year now and sex is very far and between and not good. I want him to leave, but in the other hand I love him, he is a good father and a good provider. To top it off, we recently have moved because of his job and I have no friends and he is not very social, so no outings of any type, to put an example, if we were recently looking for floor samples for our room and he asked me if I was going on my own car....it hurts me so much, I don't know what to believe, is he cheating on me, or what? Needless to say, the gifts and flowers have stopped, when I ask him something (as simple as probably grocery shopping) he rolls his eyes, and when he gets upset he pouts and makes stupid comments like only a teenager would. Thank you for the advice and sorry for all the words, but I am frustrated and don't know what to do.

anotherguy

hm.

You said a mouthful, and no doubt.

First off - you need to find someone you can talk to that you trust. Mother, father, sister, brother, friend, pastor or something.. anyone you can confide in that knows you and your situation a bit better than some knucklehed like me on a chat board? You are using some very powerful and specific language (self absorbed, liar, sneaky, inconsiderate) ad also his being emotially disconnected and childish.

Who have you talked with? Anyone?

rotor

I don’t know if this is of any help but what you are describing sounds suspiciously like narcissistic personality disorder.

Everyone has a certain level of narcissism in their personality but full blown NPD is a completely different animal which is thought to occur in less than 1 percent of the general population.

Here is a link to a site that gives a very accurate profile of the traits of N's as they known. It’s an ugly page and you have to follow the easily missed links down at the bottom of the page to get to all of the various sections of the site but it is an absolute goldmine of information on the subject.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) : How to Recognize a Narcissist

I’m not saying that this is necessarily what is going on in your case but it is worth checking out.

Regards,

rotor

cyan

My STBXH sounds a lot like yours, although we'd been together over nine years (now separated) and his self-obsession only got worse with time... waaaaay worse. I realized about two years ago my STBXH is narcissistic and the world only revolves around him; he knows nothing else. The gifts and initial "giving," the holiday gifts, birthday, etc. were never to please me, rather, they were only to make himself look good. Those, of course, eventually stopped.

I can completely relate to what you're going through and how your relationship started and is progressing. Mine would also do selfish things like eat all the food, play a movie without asking if that's what the family wanted to see (family night), drive to a restaurant without asking if anyone else wanted to eat there then get angry if somewhere else was suggested (even on Mother's Day), told me to schedule surgery during a two hour-window on a Friday afternoon because that was the only time he could fit it in HIS schedule, etc. His selfishness got so bad I eventually never discussed anything about my life or my world with him because he wouldn't engage or acknowledge my conversation; he didn't care unless it had to do with him. It's very lonely living with a narcissist.