Delusional Disorder/Jealousy Type?

I found this site after listening to the latest episode of This American Life called Secret Identity. I recommend anyone dealing with Delusional Disorder to take a listen. It was a watershed moment for me.

For 17 years (married for 9 of those) I never understood what was wrong with my husband. He was always jealous. We meet in high school. I figured (as best as my 15 year old brain could) that he would mature and grow out of it. He NEVER DID. It only got worse and worse. Accusations of affairs with friends, teachers, class mates, colleagues. The List went on and on. And no one was ever forgotten. I remember once while we were in high school we went to a party and some friends of mine thought it would be funny to tell my then boyfriend that I had gone off with a guy named Jeremy. I hadn't. There wasn't even a person named Jeremy at the party. For YEARS, right up until the end, he would say "You never told me the truth about Jeremy."

I thought he was insecure. I thought he would grow. He would see me for the loyal partner I was.

I tried every response I could think of. I was sad, crying, trying to show him how his statements hurt me. I was angry and yelled at him for being wrong. I laughed at him and called him stupid and ridiculous. Then I shut down. I didn't engage. Finally, I would threaten to leave. I was numb. Here we were, two adults in our early 30s successful careers, big house, all the stuff we were supposed to want and I was ready to have a family - and he couldn't stop. He wouldn't go to counseling.

And that's when I made my mistake. I thought to myself, well this is your life, and if you are going to stay and have a family with this man, you might as well try and make yourself happy. I was angry. Crazy really. I thought, he accuses you of it all the time. He goes through your phone, email, facebook, car, etc and says you are doing it anyway. So why don't you? It's your last chance. You will have kids and be tied to your life. So live!

So I cheated. It was liberating. It made life real again.

And then the crash. I exploded my life. And worst of all - he then "knew" he had been right about me all along. 17 years of loyalty down the drain.

He went crazy. Bought a handgun. Threatened to shoot my lover, himself. He would wake me up in the middle of the night screaming.

I left. I had to leave. Now I'm shunned by most of our friends. Judged, but no one really knows what happened.

And I think there is part of him that knows. But its too late for all that. I can't go back. I can't trust him and he certainly can't trust me.

I didn't know what was wrong with him. I thought he was insecure and selfish. Maybe a little OCD, paranoid. But it has a name. DDJ. And I DIDN'T DESERVE IT.

I just found this website today and I am so glad to find there are other people in this world suffering in this type of relationship. My husband has not been diagnosed, in fact does not think anything is wrong. I am the problem. He refuses to work or do anything productive, just sits around all day trying to catch me cheating on him. I am a professional, a lawyer I have not cheated on my husband. He accuses me of cheating on him with half the lawyers in town and even some local celebraties.
For the past 10 months, he has accused me on a daily basis of cheating on him. I do not go anywhere without him or the kids except work, so of course, I do all of my cheating on my lunch hour. Which is pretty much impossible because he calls and texts me all day long, particularly during the lunch hour. He monitors my email texts and phone calls. Just this morning, he checked the verizon account and wanted to know who the 3 "private" calls were from. They were from marriage counselors, I was scheduling an appointment. He has even gone so far as to call the wife of a co-worker he insists I am having an affair with.
He has called me a whore to anyone who will listen trying to get proof of my many infidelities. he calls me a whore in front of the children. The girls are 6 and 8 and they know what he is accusing mommy of. He has called my parents and told them their daughter is a whore and thinks that is an ok think to do. They pretty much deserve it for raising such a troubled person. He calls the cops on me regularly with ridiculous issues, like I threw an envelope or hid his computer.
He has a litany of "coincidences" he considers proof or my cheating and will demand answers to questions I cannot answer. Like why did you say that 7 months ago? In essence, he wants me to prove a negative and you cannot prove a negative. He threatens me daily with divorce. But at the same, time wants me to have sex with him every night. If I do, he sulks afterward and tells me my genital area looks like I already had sex with someone. If I don't, I don't want to because I already had sex with someone that day.
In the last month, I have had shingles, bronchitis, a cold, and, even though it may be age and not stress related, missed a period. For a several months, I drank way too much, but that didn't help either. I am unravelling physically and mentally. I do not want a divorce. I still love Dr. Jeckyll who very seldom comes out to play. The kids love their father and want us to be together. How do I get him to admit he needs help. To admit these accusations are baseless and stop making them. I want my family life back to normal. Please help!

Hello bettydraper322,

My story is above in this same thread, I feel your pain.

You asked for help, so here is my attempt. Try to convince your husband to seek counseling together and make sure the conversations with that counselor included your husbands accusations and total lack of evidence.

Only if you can get a person to see that they have a problem will you have the chance to save your relationship.

If your husband stays in his delusion without a wake up call, or the point of view of a neutral third party he will (in my experience) eventually divorce you.

If you stay in, you will continue to be abused emotionally, verbally, and if things get as bad as it did with my ex-wife physically.

The kids living in the tense environment of a DDJ household, and them witnessing the daily abuse are suffering will be negatively effected.

Perhaps you'll teach them to take any amount of abuse if you love a person ( as I did) but in the end they will still be from a broken home if your husband decides to divorce you.

Like many here I went through an unwanted divorce but have moved on.

I met a wonderful woman about my age, who is not jealous, and who can feel trust and love.

My life before her had turned into a hell of false accusations, stress, and sadness.

Please try to get him to get help. Don't take anymore abuse without help. Get your kids into counseling as well if you have to walk away.

I hope for you the best, and hope at the end of this ordeal you are happy and with your kids.

Thanks,

Sheleftme

bettydraper322 wrote:I just found this website today and I am so glad to find there are other people in this world suffering in this type of relationship. My husband has not been diagnosed, in fact does not think anything is wrong. I am the problem. He refuses to work or do anything productive, just sits around all day trying to catch me cheating on him. I am a professional, a lawyer I have not cheated on my husband. He accuses me of cheating on him with half the lawyers in town and even some local celebraties.
For the past 10 months, he has accused me on a daily basis of cheating on him. I do not go anywhere without him or the kids except work, so of course, I do all of my cheating on my lunch hour. Which is pretty much impossible because he calls and texts me all day long, particularly during the lunch hour. He monitors my email texts and phone calls. Just this morning, he checked the verizon account and wanted to know who the 3 "private" calls were from. They were from marriage counselors, I was scheduling an appointment. He has even gone so far as to call the wife of a co-worker he insists I am having an affair with.
He has called me a whore to anyone who will listen trying to get proof of my many infidelities. he calls me a whore in front of the children. The girls are 6 and 8 and they know what he is accusing mommy of. He has called my parents and told them their daughter is a whore and thinks that is an ok think to do. They pretty much deserve it for raising such a troubled person. He calls the cops on me regularly with ridiculous issues, like I threw an envelope or hid his computer.
He has a litany of "coincidences" he considers proof or my cheating and will demand answers to questions I cannot answer. Like why did you say that 7 months ago? In essence, he wants me to prove a negative and you cannot prove a negative. He threatens me daily with divorce. But at the same, time wants me to have sex with him every night. If I do, he sulks afterward and tells me my genital area looks like I already had sex with someone. If I don't, I don't want to because I already had sex with someone that day.
In the last month, I have had shingles, bronchitis, a cold, and, even though it may be age and not stress related, missed a period. For a several months, I drank way too much, but that didn't help either. I am unravelling physically and mentally. I do not want a divorce. I still love Dr. Jeckyll who very seldom comes out to play. The kids love their father and want us to be together. How do I get him to admit he needs help. To admit these accusations are baseless and stop making them. I want my family life back to normal. Please help!

Hi,
New here. Very glad to have found this forum and read so many stories that ring so true. Being the object of a jealous delusion is so bizarre and disorienting....it's reassuring, though sad, to know that other couples are going through the same thing.

I am wondering how many of your DDJ loved ones have a prior history of disordered thinking or substance abuse. Or how many of your DDJ loved ones have jealous delusions as a symptom of another disorder (such as bipolar). Finally, was your loved one diagnosed with DDJ or did you come to the conclusion by finding out about he disorder yourself?

Short version of my story:

I have never been anything but completely in love with and faithful to my man of 2 years. He's been my everything, and I have always let it show with love, attention and understanding. But a few months ago, he started acting suspicious of me for no good reason. The "episodes" would come and go in a day and not happen again for a few weeks. But they were upsetting and strange enough to me that I took note of when they happened (on a memo on my phone I titled "bad days"). Aside from these episodes (which are only about me and which only I am witness to), he is completely normal, at least on the outside.

In the past two months, the episodes have gotten more intense and bizarre when they have happened. Most recently this past weekend, less than a month into our engagement, I came home from the hair salon to him breaking up with me because my missing his texts for 40 minutes amounted to being "caught in a tryst".

It's so heartbreaking and infuriating and confusing.

Before he broke up with me, I would "forgive and forget" when things got better the next day or so, totally in denial because I love him so much. But this time I feel forced to take the hard line approach. I am holed up in a separate room, being civil, but when he offers to make dinner or watch a movie (he is already in mending mode despite holding on to his delusion) I remind him that he accused me of cheating and he broke up with me, and I just can't do "fiancee" things with him anymore unless he wants to go to counseling with me and work this out. Otherwise I will be moving out.

Today he seemes completely accepting of the couples therapy idea but I upped the ante to the couples therapy preceded by two weeks of sobriety and also individual therapy sessions for each of us. I'm giving him time to come around to it. The sobriety thing is surely what's giving him pause. I'm really trying to frame the therapy as something we are both doing.

He drinks a lot (1-2 bottles of wine per night) and also has past history of daily Xanax use and before that, weekly cocaine use (this is covers a span of 10-12 years). I really don't think wine is the problem (I would love if it was that simple) but I know that any psychiatrist will need him to be sober before they can diagnose him.

He has extreme social anxiety but as he describes it to me, it's the result of an obsessive "thought" that has plagued him for the past 20 years (he won't tell me what the thought is). He apparently went to doctors back then but nothing they did could help him. He mentioned "a little OCD" but didn't go into detail.
Several people I've told about this have said that he sounds bipolar, but he never gets "low" or even especially "high" for that matter. He goes from normal to agitated.

He has a smidge of self awareness, I know he does, about this jealous delusion, yet he refuses to admit it could be an irrational obsession like his social anxiety provoking thought.

It occurred to me that maybe he does know it's irrational and can't let it go, just like his other thought, and breaking up with me would provide him some relief in a way. Or maybe he's hoping I really am cheating, because that would mean he's not "crazy".

No matter what...most awful thing that has ever happened to me. Will give more details and post updates soon.

Hello everyone,

I'm Cristina and have been in the most wonderful relation I can imagine, for the last 13 years. Mutual respect and understanding were key, as well as lots of fun together. I am not a native English speaker, sorry in advance for any mistakes.

For the past two years, I am jealous. I've never admitted it once until today. It's not something that fits me, I am an INTJ and I appreciate rational thought and behavior.
I need help. Which is a sound pattern of thought I can use when mine disappears and a horrible mindset creeps its way in.

I have always been jealous in small amounts, but never indecent about. I have been jealous of all things, truth be told, but with moderate feeling. I was an only child, and even though I was living in communism, poverty and the likes, my mother's long hours of making me think for myself and asking me funny questions have paid off. I had so little friends. It was not me or my mother who wished for that, it was the displacement of the people that communism practiced, it erases all identity & breaks old communities.

I had 4 persons I loved with all my heart. 2 died in less than a year apart, both in pain, paralyzed, delusional, coma, different cancers.
My mother died in 2012 and that's when everything went loose. My partner was with us all the way, more than my father, to be honest.
All this pain, which I never really told anyone about, except the people that knew by sheer observance, has made me less patient and friendly.
I am still super friendly and nice to everyone, with the exception of my partner.
It is so humiliating for me to act this way and he definitely deserves nothing of the sort. I just start shouting, it's not me really - I have this clear physical where my eyesight gets super focused and I stutter. When, not often, I realize in those moments I am out of line and horrible, I try to stop my irrational discourse, then another clear physical sensation appears, where it's like 2 parts of my brain want to go separate directions, my forehead gets very heavy and somewhere in the middle of the head I feel sharp and cold bursts of little pain. Like shocks.
The thing is, I never would believe what I say in those moments. It is not something that I want to do. He believed me for 2 years. He, and he is very much entitled to this, thinks I don't love him anymore as I'd never talk to someone I love like this. It's the first time I admit to myself this is called jealousy, I think it's demeaning of me to do this.
What makes it even sorrier, we are role models for so many people who wish they had the happiness we project around us, the happiness that was a given. We love each other very much, we spend like 90% time together, we work together, and in the most wonderful harmony. I don't want to damage this but I know I did it already.
To be really clear: the things I say in those moments are so horrible and vulgar, nothing like my personality, I am ashamed to hear them after.
I know I can overcome this, I just need a little plan.

Hi nostatic (Cristina),

Thank you so much for posting. It is very rare to hear from the "jealous" partner on this forum. I am glad you mentioned that you love your partner and that you don't mean the things you say when you are having an episode. Most of us who have posted here are the "non-jealous" partners, and very few of us have heard from our partners that they love us and don't mean what they say, because our partners are too far along in their disordered thinking and have no insight about the disorder.

Please, please, please get help. See a psychiatrist or therapist as soon as you can. I am saying this on behalf of everyone on this forum whose hearts have been broken by "jealous" spouses. It is very good and encouraging that you know you have a problem and want to change. Please do what so many of our partners would not do: see a doctor and get help, because you deserve better than this and so does your partner. Untreated, the problem can only get worse.

Keep us posted here. We are cheering for your progress.

nostatic (Cristina),

I just remembered something I saw elsewhere on this forum.
It's on a website called The Work and the exercise is the "Judge Your Neighbor Worksheet".

As a victim of a partner's jealousy, I still urge you to see a doctor-- but in the meantime, perhaps this will help you slow down with the bad thoughts and not act out so quickly.

http://thework.com/downloads/worksheets ... ksheet.pdf

Hope it helps.

Thank you, bad_dream, for reading my post. I really appreciate your advice and I will use the exercise you've recommended.
I think my partner and I have reached the point of no return.
As much as I tried to stop my bad thoughts, and have done so for the last weeks, yesterday I did it again. It only took a moment of him having a puzzled face to something that I wanted him to be happy about. His reaction was in no way out of line as he was trying to understand what I meant, but because what I wanted to tell him was personal and positive for me, I went from super happy to horribly paranoid, thinking (not thinking, actually) that he was not interested/impressed or into what I was saying. That was wrong of me.
I don't know what is happening with me, I can only feel paranoia and alienation.
I don't want to hurt anyone, I'm pretty sure life can be awesome and it was until now.

I have a curiosity for everyone with a little time: did your partners ever experienced a worse-than-imagined turn of events in their life?

Hi nostatic,

I share the opinion with the others who gave you suggestions previously. My mom had suffered DDJ for 14 years before she got diagnosed and treated in US (we are not Americans as you). Three months after the treatment, her symptoms reduced dramatically and 6 months later, I could hardly see she had any symptoms. But one month before she got diagnosed, it was nightmare to my family. I have never seen anybody in my life who was so out of control and wanted to hurt the closest people in her life. I have read many articles and books to find out what kind of disease this was, and it turned out to me that it is nothing different from other physical diseases that we are familiar. Some chemical substance in the brain area was out of balance and it was the imbalance of the substance that make this illness. Please do not wait and try to control your thinking yourself. This is not about the way that you think. This is about the functioning of the whole system in the brain area through the appropriate substance. So please go to seek help from doctors. To my knowledge, the medicine they prescribe is very effective in recovering the balance of the substance in the brain. I was amazed at the effect of the medication my mother received. I was so grateful that she got the proper treatment and recovered so well that I want to come back to this forum occasionally to see if there are other people that need help and that I can help. Good luck!

livewithhope, what medication is your mother taking? Everybody's different, but this is one of the few posts I've seen that attributes a significant improvement in delusional disorder to medication.