Abuse

» iamback - Recognizing I was in verbally abusive relationship

Hi Lotta,

To be perfectly honest with you, I'm not sure how the "not working" fits into the controlling and verbally abusive behavior. My husband is also very intelligent, he actually read physics books for entertainment!

However, he seemed to have a lot of self-esteem and confidence issues. On the rare ocassions that he did talk to me about his feelings, he expressed concern about getting too old to compete with the younger sector, but within several hours or even minutes he returned to his usual "arrogant" self. Perhaps this was his way of dealing with his feelings of inadequacy -- I don't know, because he never specifically shared this information with me. He often talked about how other people were not up to par.

I will tell you this-- his father is very intelligent as well, but he actually use to compete with his son. As a kid, I'm sure this must have been quite difficult for a kid to endure, especially through the teenage years. My father-in-law, I believe, is narcassitic -- but I'm no psychologist. My husband's paternal father's mom had some type of depression and/or mental illness and his father's brother was eventually diagnosed as bi-polar. My husband only shared this information with me several years ago. So my husband's issues may also include depression and a bit of mental illness as well.

During our marriage we agreed that he might benefit from counseling, but he never went through with securing any services. At one point, I actually dug out my DSM-IV manual and searched for a diagnosis for him -- the nearest one that seemed to fit his behavior was (is) avoidant personality type -- but again, I'm no psychologist.

I do believe that his not working allowed him a lot more time to make sure I wasn't able to do more than we were financially able to afford and this very much helped control how much I was able to achieve -- it allowed him greater control in managing how much "competition" I would become.

Also, he made subtle derogative statments about my "little 4.0 GPA" and the type of classes I took being very "easy" classes, but his classes were a lot more challenging than mine. When I was working on an advanced degree, the computer mysteriously "broke down" or crashed whenever I had a report deadline looming ahead. Eventually, I started staying late and working on my projects after work. The computer didn't crash one time during those 2 1/2 years.

So to answer your question, most of my thoughts are at best supposition. Please let me know if any of my experiences seem similar to your situation.

-- posted by iamback