Sometime toward the end of last winter, my husband’s behavior toward me shifted.
He went on a cruise with our adult daughter, and during the cruise, both younger kids ended up with a stomach bug. When he managed to find a Wi-Fi signal and call, I complained about nausea, cleaning up vomit, and caring for two kids on my own while also feeling under the weather. Anyone who has been through the norovirus knows this is a solid complaint.
My husband’s response at the time was to be upset with me for not just keeping things light and for complaining about my problems. He thought I was mad that he was on the cruise. I was just looking for a little bit of sympathy and maybe someone to send me DoorDash.
We went on a family vacation to Jamaica in April. During the trip, my husband was often in his own world, didn’t spend a ton of time with the kids and me, and when we did sneak out for a date night, he wouldn’t dance with me or sit at any of the events I wanted to see.
In May, when Mother’s Day rolled around and remembering how anxious he gets about gift giving, I let him know what I wanted. I told him I wanted hanging baskets for each of the hooks by the porch, that I wanted to spend the day outside with the kids, and that I wanted a dinner I didn’t have to think about.
He nailed the hanging basket purchase. That’s what I ask for every year for Mother’s Day. He also helped a lot with gardening and chores outside that day.
When dinner rolled around, he made a gluten-filled dinner for himself and the kids, and I ordered myself a bowl because I have celiac disease. When I pointed this out to him, I was called ungrateful. He yelled and said I always tell him he’s not good enough, not doing enough, that I’m never satisfied, that I’m too much, that I ask for too much, that I expect too much.
In June, we went on a cruise with our children. During that cruise, he was often off by himself. One night, he stayed in port until three in the morning, leaving the kids and me alone on the ship in our cabin. When I asked him about it, he became irate and screamed at me.
It was raining on the deck of the cruise ship. He was screaming in my face. I was blocked into a corner, and I was scared of my husband for the first time ever. Later that day, a few staff members on the cruise ship, who I’m sure saw some sort of camera footage, approached me when he wasn’t around to make sure I was okay. The embarrassment of that moment is something I will never forget.
There were smaller things too. Comments about how much I talk about work and the kids. Questions about why I couldn’t just enjoy the fireflies on a nighttime walk. A lot of comments, generally about the fact that I talk too much.
He stopped planning dates. He stopped organizing babysitters. I picked up the slack as best I could, but I also didn’t want to beg to go on dates.
Then in early July, I picked up a phone call. His face was on the screen during my personal training session, and since we share a calendar, I figured if he was calling me, it was important.
When I picked up the phone, I heard him having sex. And I know the sounds my husband makes when he’s having sex after twelve years.
This post is about what I learned once my therapist identified him as a covert narcissist and me as a survivor of fourteen years of covert narcissistic abuse.
Here’s what I now know was happening and why.
Around the time I started writing professionally, I started experiencing a shift in who I was and how much I loved myself. It was a positive shift. During that time, my relationship with my husband started to degrade in various ways.
Mostly, I wasn’t as busy as I had been when I was teaching full time and managing after-school care for the kids, so I started noticing things. When he yelled at or dismissed the kids, I called him out on it. When he said he would do something around the house and put it off for a month, two months, or six months, I reminded him instead of letting it go.
When I was teaching, I was busy, and I also managed most of the household. When I was off for summer break, my husband would say it felt like he was on vacation because all he had to do was go to work, come home, and put his feet up while I handled everything.
It was like that after our daughter was born too, when I stayed home. It never occurred to me to complain about it until I developed a muscular condition and could no longer manage the household.
Since 2019, I’ve been fighting my way back from paralysis. I’ve relearned how to walk three times, and now I’m at a point where I can weight lift, paddleboard, kayak, and ski to my heart’s content.
But while I was recovering physically, I was also becoming emotionally and mentally tougher than I ever had been before. That meant I was standing up for myself more in my marriage. It also meant I wasn’t doing a very good job of feeding his ego anymore.
I started noticing that he hid things and lied a lot. I remember calling my father crying because my husband was lying to me about poker wins and losses, and I assumed he was lying about other things too.
In December 2023, exactly eleven years to the day after he proposed, I found out my husband was in the car on his way to what I thought was a poker night, but was actually a visit with a prostitute. When he came home, he admitted he’d done it five times since September. There are probably many more I don’t know about.
I asked when these instances happened, and he told me during his workday, during nights he was supposedly playing poker, and once while he was on a trip with our daughter. Our daughter is an adult, so it’s not like he left a child alone in a hotel room.
He said he was sorry. He agreed to couples counseling, and I thought we’d be able to navigate through it. But the lying continued. I kept catching him lying about poker or lying about his whereabouts.
Anytime I asked questions, I was told I was anxious. When you hear that often enough, you start to believe it. I was anxious. I was experiencing hypervigilance caused by repeated lying and betrayal that had been happening since the beginning of our marriage, and maybe even while we were dating.
During that time, anytime I had a solo session with our couples therapist, she would ask me what I might do if my husband wasn’t able to empathize with me or interact with me emotionally in the ways I wanted. I didn’t understand what she meant. I knew my husband had ADHD, so I assumed she was leaning into that.
Now that I’ve seen her records, I know that wasn’t the case. Now I know exactly what she knew but couldn’t say.
We eventually stopped working with that therapist because it was clear my husband was never going to listen to her. He said every session felt like he was being attacked by both of us. He blamed the fact that I write and said therapists can do therapy with the best of them.
There are things I did wrong. I tried to teach him how to communicate with me instead of letting a therapist do it. I sent him too many Instagram reels and YouTube videos about what I thought we needed to fix our relationship. I gripped too tightly to the “don’t interact with women without my knowledge” boundary.
But even if I had done all of that perfectly, I still would have ended up getting that phone call with him having sex on the other end.
Here’s why.
I had stopped supplying my husband’s ego adequately. He needed to be adored. He needed to be acknowledged profusely for every contribution he made. He needed me to put him on a pedestal instead of pointing out that he left his muddy boots by the kitchen door.
I wasn’t that woman anymore.
Starting in January 2025, I was slowly and methodically devalued in his life, and his affair partner was quickly brought in to fill the void. He later admitted that he was picking fights with me so he could rationalize the affair by telling himself he had a reason.
There was also twisted behavior that I now know existed purely for his gratification.
He took me to their spot. The place where they met on lunch breaks along the Farmington River. They fed each other fruit, walked across the river when the dam was closed and the water was low, and had sex on an island.
That’s where they were when he pocket dialed me.
When I checked his location, it showed him in the middle of the Farmington River.
He took me there later to rescue a canoe he claimed he’d found lodged in trees along the riverbank. During this same period, I asked him to go on lunch dates with me. I told him I was self-employed and could drive up to his office. I wanted to meet his coworkers.
He never had time. He was always too busy. He didn’t have enough leave. He only had a half-hour lunch break. On and on.
Meanwhile, I now know he was taking extended lunch breaks at least once a week with his affair partner, Carrie. Normally, I change names in stories like this, but I’m leaving that one. It’s only libel or slander if it’s not true.
He would ask me to go on evening walks and repeat phrases they had said to each other on their walks. He used the same words with her during his love bombing phase that he had used with me early in our relationship.
During those months before I learned of their affair, I kept asking for more time, for a bit of attention. He started sleeping separately often (I know now it was for late-night texting sessions).
During that trip in March, the one where the kids got sick, he was recording sweet videos for her, saying he’d never felt that way before, sending emails. But, the moment I needed emotional support as the mother of his children was just too much.
In May, I went on a girls’ night out at a local place. I invited my friend Carrie. Later that night, Hubby showed up (he was invited). They’d been having an affair for months, and she showed up for dinner, drinks, and dancing with me. I have a picture of us all from that night. In it, it’s obvious, but only in hindsight. She positioned herself between him and me and, in one photo, he looks at her adoringly while the rest of us look at the camera. She pretended to be my friend while helping destroy my marriage. Hubby got his rocks off on having his wife and affair partner in the same room at the same time. In June, she showed up for an overnight with me. I still didn’t know.
He kept telling me, after I found out about the affair, that my need for reassurance and my anxiety were too much. I should just relax about it and let him see his affair partner. I shouldn’t need disclosure. After all, he works hard and provides for the family, so isn’t he entitled to some time and space that’s just his to do with what he pleases?
The funny thing about being told that you’re just anxious is that you start to believe it. This happened to me when I was really sick as well, from autoimmune conditions. The doctors told me it was just anxiety until I started to question my own sanity and knowledge of my body. When someone you love and trust tells you that you have an anxiety problem, you start to believe it.
When our anniversary was coming up, I asked if we could do a date as we used to during COVID. I suggested making a bed in the back of our minivan, using LED candles, getting takeout, playing card games, talking, and looking at the stars somewhere pretty.
Three weeks before our anniversary, he told me he wanted a divorce. He said he was done talking about the affair. He was done with my anxiety. He was done talking about the prostitutes. He was done talking about the boots by the door. He was done talking to me.
The day after Christmas, he took her on my anniversary date.
It gets creepier when you realize that she and I, and every woman my husband has seriously dated, look very similar. Dark, wavy, or curly hair. Light eyes.
As I’ve been processing this and detoxing from him, I realized that Carrie reminds me of the version of myself he met fourteen years ago. He devalued me when I no longer fed his ego. When he found someone who reminded him of who I used to be, he swooped in, love-bombed her, and blew up her marriage and ours.
Meanwhile, he worked to convince me I was an anxious, controlling mess who needed to learn to self-soothe. I wasn’t anxious. My body knew something was wrong and tried to tell me seventeen hundred different ways. Eventually, my body started screaming, and I wound up crawling around my house vomiting during a panic attack.
I don’t know exactly where he and I go from here, but I know we’re not going there together. We have work to do to unwind our lives. As he likes to say, we have a lot of joint projects we don’t want to give up, like the house and the kids. But I’m left wondering, how to do that with someone who is hell-bent on psychologically torturing me.
Molly Frances’s writing explores what it means to be human: relationships, families, sexuality, mental health, and growth. When she isn’t writing or working with clients, she’s either on a beach or reading (or both) or dancing with abandon. She lives with her children, a rescue pup, and too many books.
—
This post was previously published on medium.com.
Love relationships? We promise to have a good one with your inbox.
Subcribe to get 3x weekly dating and relationship advice.
Did you know? We have 8 publications on Medium. Join us there!
***
–
Photo credit: luca romano on Unsplash
