u/Loveiskind89389

This is a relapse story too, honestly all the flair made sense.

My husband and I split up three weeks ago. I don’t think he will ever see what gaming did to our lives and I just need to say this somewhere. I do not understand it at all

Husband 37m is a recovered alcoholic. He has eleven years sober.

He bought himself a PS5 as a gift for getting a certification about 2.5 years ago. It was great for a year. He played for a few hours on sundays and whatever it gave me time to do stuff I enjoy.

Then there were layoffs at his work. He found a new job where he set his own hours. Basically we (I mean I) had to get rid of TVs other than the living room one. he’d be gaming for 9, 11, 13 hours a day just on his PS5.

He was also playing games on his phone. Basically it was an argument every day, I was the only income for the last six or eight months. We got into financial problems. He completely quit on our life. He’s living at his parents’ house across the country now. They’re away for a month. We are still talking sort of and I can see his location. He is not even moving from their living room.

If any of you can help me understand the “why” part of all this, it would help me, a stranger, a lot. He still says gaming was his creative outlet and I just didn’t want him to be happy. I think gaming made him really unhappy.

He failed out of the undergrad program that he had three semesters left on. Lost his job. Completely different person. Idk how gaming was worth all that

Edit to add: by “relapse,” I just mean that he said he used to have a gaming problem before we met

Is my (40f) husband (37m) a narcissist? Also, I wrote the really long post this time. Thanks to anyone who reads, I’m in a weird place right now of disbelief and self doubt and I just really appreciate it if you took the time 💙

About 6 months ago he started telling everyone including my family and his own that I had borderline personality disorder. His sister in law is a psychologist but also a drama queen/super nosey. She would call and he would go on a walk and come back with all these new terms and insults to give me later. Eg “SIL said you show all of the classic signs of a cluster b personality disorder due to xyz and that abusers like you only get worse with time.” I went into twice a week deep therapy to sort this out and my psychologist and I walked through the DSM together and she explained each term/diagnosis my husband had been using. It took a months and I paid a lot of money for us to deep dive and do a bunch of extra sessions. I am not diagnosed with a personality disorder, just ptsd, anxiety, depression.

Three weeks ago when he left he made me start AA because he said I was an alcoholic and he would never come back if I didn’t work the 12 steps. I did go to AA for two weeks daily and 100% believed I was an alcoholic. I drank at least a glass of wine most nights and sometimes started around 4pm before the workday technically ended. Of course I believed him, he has eleven years sober so he would know, right? Wrong. I had a sponsor lined up, a group of women I breakfasted with at the crack of dawn, I spoke up in meetings and researched. I haven’t felt like drinking alcohol once since he left though. Now he tells me I need to go to anger management classes and if I don’t he won’t come back.

So, when we got married, I had a home I owned for us to live in, a paid off car, wonderful senior pets, a good career, a graduate degree, worked out a ton, had a lot of love to give. While together, I paid for everything - mortgage, 1 year of IVF (6 cycles), utilities, condo dues, all home maintenance and stocking of everything from hand soap to replacement door mats to furniture and even his clothing. Veterinary needs, oil changes, you name it. He paid for food and utilities (part of the time).

He lied for 6 months about being in school to finish his undergrad. Stopped working about a year ago, so cut his own hours do 1 day/week. He had a video game/phone addiction and was never present. This started about eight months after we got married. He kept me up until 1am most nights trying to convince me to watch one more video (the only time we spent together). He never went to bed at the same time as me. He slept from 3am to 11-12 the next day.

Arguments went like this-

Me saying “hey babe, when you’re at a good stopping point (in your game), could you move the laundry along?” Then 2 hours later, “hey, can you move the laundry along?” Then 3 hours later, “hey I folded the clothes in the dryer to move the laundry along and the load in the wash smelled like mildew so I had to re-run it. Can you remember to move it into the dryer once it’s done?”

And then finally he’d explode and yell “Why can’t you do it?!? I didn’t even start those loads! I’m so sick of doing everything and being treated like your servant.” This is why I always had to keep my mic muted in zoom meetings and check it twice a minute to be sure.

I worked all day. Hard. I have always been the one supporting us. Those types of arguments drained the energy out of me. I was forgetting things at work and developed social anxiety. Every 5 days to a week I would look around and realize my weekend was going to be cleaning again, and he is still sitting in that chair drinking coffee and vaping with his phone a foot from his face playing video games and listening to twitch/youtube videos. I would say “I can’t do this anymore” and start to cry and tell him he needed to do better and thus was no way to live. I frequently got worked up in this state and would tell him that he as lazy and that I really meant that he was lazy this time. The whole thing always feels like a panic attack where I can’t catch my breath and I could hear him screaming in the background saying sincerely awful things. It was a blur.

He left to go live on his parents couch three weeks ago because he couldn’t take “being treated like a servant.” He wants me to show him that I’ve changed before he will come back. He also can’t afford a plane ticket (we never combined finances because I paid everything and he stopped working before we got around to it.

Full disclosure: I slapped him across the face once when my dog was in critical condition at the vet hospital overnight. He had thrown up a stomach of blood and consumed poison/something highly toxic and we were running all tests to try to identify what kind. They wouldn’t let me sleep in the waiting room so I went home and was upset he hadn’t searched the yard for rat poison or answered my texts. He screamed at me, said “stop blaming me you killed your fucking dog.” My dog is my best friend and #1 priority. He apologized profusely after, but then started bringing up in every argument that I hit him and I’m an abuser.

Is he a narcissist? I’m new here and my support group, therapist, family all say that it doesn’t matter anymore, it only matters that it’s over now and I can move on. I can’t stop cycling and don’t know how I’ll ever prevent this again if I don’t know.

My husband (m37) left me (40f) 3 weeks ago to go to his parents’ house across the country. He was tired of being “treated like shit.” He keeps insisting that I need to demonstrate to him that I realized the error of my ways and am working on real change.

Here is the thing though - it’s not okay to not have a job for a year. And it’s not okay to demand that your wife, on the heels of a year of IVF and discovery of chronic disease, suddenly start doing the dishes 50-50. I work all day, pay the mortgage, pay for all pet needs and medical care, bought our car, paid for IVF, just everything except for groceries was my burden.

He was addicted to his phone and video games, talked constant shit about me to his family (eg, “she lost her mind again and took the bedroom TV to I storage because I wouldn’t buy her dinner” when I actually took it to storage bc I didn’t know what else to do. He was playing video games 9-11 hours every day), lied about going to classes and finishing his undergrad degree, gradually stopped working 4/5 days a week, and snapped at me about having to do “all the chores” at home that included cooking and laundry, taking the trash out, cleaning the toilets. So I cleaned the rest of the house excluding toilets, handled all appointments and house maintenance/restocking/bill paying. I did just everything else that he didn’t do.

I don’t even want him to come home anymore. Am I missing something here? How can one person be so self centered that they treat you like shit AND demand that *you* change?

I’m new here, please be kind.

Sorry for the typos my eyes are bleary