You know, the thing that gets me ….
It’s when he is nice.
Sometimes he….
…washes the dishes.
…brings in the groceries.
…offers to make dinner or buy dinner.
…takes out the trash.
He always feeds the cats and the chickens. He pays the bills. He gives me cash for groceries.
Every morning, he gives me a hug (not that I really want him to, but I started letting him again) and tells me that he hopes that I have a good day.
Those things are almost harder than when he is mean, if that makes any sense.
When I am lying on the floor crying at 2:00 am because I am so depressed that I want to kill myself, and he says absolutely nothing, somehow, that I can handle better than when he offers to carry in the groceries.
Does that make any sense? Any sense at all?
I guess that him not paying me any attention when I am crying is to be expected. The other “acts of kindness” may or may not happen. And when they do happen, I am tense because I don’t know what is coming next.
I think I’ve told you that he and I belong to two different churches. So this past week end, late at night, after we’ve already gone to bed, he said to me, in a very off-hand way, someone you know gave one of the messages today. (I know some of the people where he attends church.) So I played his guessing game for a couple of minutes and then gave up. It turned out, he was the one who gave one of the messages at church. And they liked it.
I had such an intense reaction this.
I felt stabbed. He hadn’t told me beforehand that he had been called upon to do this. I would guess that in a loving marriage, this would be something a husband would share with his wife. But we obviously don’t have that.
I felt punched. He looks like such a grand, righteous guy at church and I am the scummy wife who doesn’t attend with him. (His church is much, much, much bigger than the one I belong to and he tries to get me to attend with him.)
And I felt wretched. I felt so unrighteous. I am the scummy wife. I blog in the dark about his misdeeds. I want him to go away, just go away and leave me alone. And I wish I was with someone else. I am the scummy wife.
And he is, oh, so good.
Passive Aggressive Abuse 
That makes perfect sense to me. My husband does the same stuff.
If my husband saw me crying, he would leave the room too. Don’t feel bad for going to a different church! When my husband decided to abandon Sunday morning church (and his wife and three kids) to work every Sunday morning, I left that church and found a better one. Sometimes I think I just allow things like that to happen, like me sleeping in a different bedroom, just waiting for him to bring it up so we can have a serious conversation about it. As if that would ever happen. So I just enjoy my freedom, keep my own friends, and if they look down on me for not coming to church with my husband, they can either ask or mind their own business. I know the difference between the people who care about me and the people who are just collecting information about me to pass along. You are NOT the scummy wife, He’s the scummy one for not allowing you to be part of his life and then blaming you for things you don’t know about him. Blogging is as important as air, because we can get the feelings into the open, examine them, and collect input from women who are wearing the same shoes in a different size.
I know the feeling. That voice (you know the one that won’t leave you alone) says “he does good, he’s not all bad, you must have the problem.” And you feel like dirt. Keep your head up, remember he does good to make you feel/look bad. He’s an abuser. Say it with me HE’S AN ABUSER. Abusers manipulate, they use us. They know how to be nice, they choose to use their niceness as a weapon. If this statement is wrong then they would be nice all the time, they wouldn’t have to “choose” to be nice. Please remember, he will not change. They DO NOT care about us except for what we can do for them. He sees that you are getting stronger and maybe, just maybe he thinks you may leave him. Hmm…what can he do to make you stay? Let’s make her feel crazy and be nice to her. Will these actions last? You know the answer, how long has it lasted in the past?
Take a huge leap of faith and leave. I believe you and your daughters will enjoy life away from him. It will be hard, but joyful. Truthfully, how much worse could it be?
Linking your post today. This kind of stuff is the reason I can’t stomach to go to church together with my husband.
Really. He gave a message in church. That made my skin crawl.
To clarify, my husband didn’t give a message. My skin crawled reading about yours doing that, and the oh so innocent and coy way he let you know. ick
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Yes!! I totally understand and agree about the nice stuff!! Completely! It just messes with us even more because then we feel guilty that we feel that way, because by all appearances they are doing nice things, right. Sometimes I just want to say to my guy, “how dare you come in here and act like everything is just all fine and dandy when i spent half the day crying, trying to figure out how to make it through another day”. And they look like the poor nice guy who is just trying to please the ungrateful, emotional wife. I’m not explaining this very well but I totally get what you are saying and agree!
That’s the big problem. You try to explain this stuff to others and they look at you like “what are you complaining about?” This stuff just keeps piling up until you just hide under it and mutter to yourself “I’m not crazy, really I’m not crazy.”
No one, but no one, will ever understand the crazy-making until they experience it first hand. Which I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy….wait a minute….if he finds someone worse than he is and he marries her and she treats him like he treated me….hmmm I may be on to something. :D Okay, that’s a joke, really! LOL
Gaining, exactly! And it’s even crazy trying to explain it to him. Our guys say to us, “I do this, and this and this nice for you. I’m beginning to think that you don’t want things to be good between us, etc.” And then we say, “but you hurt my feelings and I feel like you don’t care about me.” And they say, “Those are just missunderstandings.” Or, “you’re being too sensitive”, etc, etc, etc. aaahhhh! Truely crazy making!! And P.S. I like your joke :) What if he married a passive aggressive woman. Hahaha! That would be fun to watch. :)
Mine did nice things only to turn around when he was bad and justify it with saying but I did this and this and that for you. So… It s not money in the bank is it…. The abuse is much worse now that I m leaving him but you know what the cat is out of the bag now and people know, he can’t hide anymore and it only fuels his true self to behave in the worse way. Does he care, no. He never really did.
Yes newshoes, my H does that…buys me things, then brags about it later…I’ve gotten where I don’t enjoy his “gifts” at all!
So glad you’re getting away! :)
arg… mine was so generous with gifts after he was bad, at the beginning it pacified me I guess in a way and I would think that he would be very remorseful if he was this generous, now I realize that it was just a control and manipulation tactic and I’ve come to hate those gifts. In fact, I hope that if I ever end up with someone else (far far in the future) that he doesn’t do that because I will refuse them and explain why. Gifts are just that, gifts. And they are supposed to come from the goodness and generosity of someone’s heart, no strings should be attached.
I’m cutting the strings, hope you do the same dear, because those “gifts” for me are just reminders of what he’s done.