"I see now that I was trained to come alive at any relatively good behavior or caring on his part and respond to encourage it. But in reality most of the time I was shut down because he was a miserable, manipulative mean drunk."
MamaKit, I started the thread "if you don't have a good marriage, don't expect a good divorce".
This is exactly what I am experiencing. I am finding it confusing, mind boggling, actually. Often I get drawn back in and then suddenly I realize I am back in quicksand, and sinking fast. When that happens, my pattern has been to turn against myself, doubt myself, start to sink into real depression.
There are two books that I have found enlightening. The Wizard of Oz and Other Narcissists describes a personality disorder where the person is grandiose, always in control, blaming, unaccountable for their own behavior, punititive. manipulative, destructive, and fits my AH to a T.
Almost a Psychopath is new, written by a Harvard psychiatrist and a lawyer from research done at Harvard's psychiatric hospital. It describes how behavior in a disturbed person can be almost psychopathic, just of lesser degree. So if they are punitive, blaming, play head games for their own ends, they are using the same behavior a psychopath would, except they aren't at the criminal level My AH fits that to a T. I think a lot of late stage alcoholic behavior fits here.
These books help me right my thinking when it goes upside down and I think I am the whole problem. I keep coming back to this forum, and people keep helping me see what is real and what is not.
We have been brainwashed, and in leaving, our AH's fear losing their stability if they lose their enablers, so they pull out all their tricks, even being nice.
Try googling "gaslighting". It's from an old movie, set around the turn of the century when houses had gas lighting. The husband wants to drive the wife insane, so he rigs the gas lights to flicker, and when she sees that he says there is nothing wrong and she feels crazy.
Feel free to send me a private message - I think we are in this together. Last night my AH sent me an e-mail that if I didn't accept an outrageous asset division or revise it RIGHT NOW he "would not allow me to remove any items at all from our house." Nevermind that I don't have to negotiate with him - the divorce court will do that, or that I own have the stuff in the house and Monday we agree about what I could take from the house.
From what you've said, you are being abused. You are just momentarily in the calm eye of his hurricane, and only because that suits him as a tactic to get you back. From my experience, the winds and fury of the storm will soon be back. We are disrupting a pattern of enabling that is a profound structure in our AH's emotional stability, and they will do whatever they have to to get that support structure back in place.
Soon, I bet I'll be back here, oozing into the quicksand again with AH's next trick. I'm trying to get to where I can assess the situation BEFORE I fall in, but I haven't mastered that yet.
BothSidesNow