Ash...

 Incubation.

We provided him with a compelling and powerful victim narrative. 

The monster grew from that.

It started with supportive texts from her.

From June 2019 until last Sunday I was struggling with confusion, bewilderment and hope. To put it mildly, a period of time lasting for one year during which the prevailing malevolence of his responses to my sadness just plain didn't make sense to me.

I thought I was anxious, and that justified his discomfort...

Of course there is so much wrong with that idea...but what was the alternative view. That he actually hated me? 

I asked that a lot.

He ignored me / snorted in derision / hugged me.

He never looked shocked or reassured me.

At first I tried to restore my equilibrium through searching for responses from him that would prove to me that all the ugly, cold and deceptive moments I thought I was experiencing, were my mistake. 

And all the time he was - malevolent. 

The effect of her intrusion on our lives was his 'personality change' towards 'hyper-masculinity' with its concurrent loathing of empathy (except as a way to exploit others). As if he used her to set a bench mark for how to show up as her man.

As a way to be his dad...as his dad saw himself.

This hyper-masculine configuration justified his aggression and recast his awareness. Humility and kindness were recast as weakness. If he was humane he would care, and to care would mean being able to see the hurt in others. And, to see and care would mean recognizing that he was causing that hurt, and that would bring him to despair. 

And from despair could grow humility and healing.

The only way out of this is through. 

I guess hyper-masculinity was so much more comfortable. 

And no one must see him in any other way.

"This is me now, and I'm not changing"

Hyper-masculinity...

It was ugly.

I was proof that he had a wife who loved him, and that what he was doing to me was unbearable. Twisted logic said that I was the cause of his guilt and shame.

But following his dad's script he knows in his head (probably not in his heart) that he has no responsibility for the pain other people feel following his actions. 

And if I could have just taken to my bed and been ill, or voided myself in some other way. It would all have been fine, he could appear to 'care' for his broken family by not being there except at bedtimes, and I could say "Oh he is a good man" and weep when he was out and say "I wish I was dead". I could have acted like his mom and sister...

But I didn't, so...

1. To reduce his guilt and shame he needed to destroy me as a friend and partner. To do this he set about remembering everything he knows about me that proves to himself that I am, in his eyes worse than nothing. 
2. He refuses to accept any apology I make, or accept that a counsellor could help us be with each other, or separate amicably.
3. To stop finding out the truth he uses deception and perception management, he tells me that there are no lies, there are no secrets, he provides an explanation for his behavior that cannot be checked or tested. 
4. To accomplish both goals he rubbished what I prize most about myself.  
5. And to get me to be emotionally devastated enough to justify his right to persecute others for not being able to shut up he set about exploiting my worst fears, and vulnerabilities. 

I found this last the hardest thing to understand.
It was bullying, pure and simple.

Ultimately though, his dad gave him a malevolent and disruptive set of code lines that allowed reproduction... but not healthy, healing or life supporting relationships. And I think that he wanted me, needed to marry me because I would act as a shield against him seeing who he actually is. I was his proof that he wasn't anything like his dad.

But of course he is like his dad because he hasn't understood that the only way to deal with the monster inside yourself is to recognize it and never side with it. I couldn't undo the cruel behavior his dad had taught him. That had been his task, perhaps the best and only task in life he really needed to accomplish.

Now I am looking at the twitching milk-vomit spaghetti mess of a smashed up synth and sharing what I know. 

People who chose to gaslight -  are not synths - my husband always had choice.

And someone running a gaslighting program exploits your wounds because it works for them. They will blame you when you are upset. They will say that you imagined it all, because you were so upset that you can't remember it properly...

You will be made so upset you may well start to think you are in need of medication.

Find people who can hear you while you describe what has actually happened. In my view, only truth can undo lies and disinformation. I thought I was going mad so I recorded our dialogue. This was so important, I wasn't even aware that I had internalized his rules and was was silencing myself. 

Finally though, the last thing is to see how I bought into the manipulation.  Again information comes from reading books, gaining theories and then listening to the recordings.

But is it over, can I just focus on me?

How many more virtual shot-gun pellets are left to dig out of my flesh?

Not so many now.

And is it over? 

No, this is a liminal, washed out place.

A kind of hospital perhaps...