Delusional Jealousy?

Helpmyspouse,

Thank You for the reply. I agree he has more of an anger/jealously problem, but the accusations and the way he really belives them are strange, scary and lead me to believe he's delusional. Maybe not? Once he swore I slept with my friend when he came to visit from out of state and we just had lunch. He swears that I broke up with him once because I wanted to sleep around for the month we were apart, when I made it clear to him that its because he crossed boundaries that I have set. I believe he is also a narrcisist. He's always putting me down in everyway I can think is possible. I am very successful in my job and recently got a promotion (this may have been the trigger for his behavior lately). He found a way to turn this into a negative and swears I slept with someone to get the job.

Everybody loves him, he has amazing musical talent and he might be the smartest person I have ever met and he is very handsome. He knows this, however he is modest about it. He enjoys being the center of attention, but not always. He thinks that everything I like music, books, science, people are stupid and main stream. He calls everyone "sheepeople". As if everyone but him in the world act like a heard of sheep doing whatver society tells them. If we watch movies they have to be PG or animated, cannot have any men that are concidered to be good looking. So we dont watch movies or TV together.

I am constantly walking on eggshells. I am going to break up with him if he doesnt seek help, however I am scared of what will happen. I may be able to get him to break up with me, so then it's his idea and then he won't feel like he needs to "win me back" as he says. I figure if it's his idea, and he is alway right then maybe he will leave me alone after the break up. What do you guys think? Good idea?

The more time you invest with him the harder your decision will be. What if you got pregnant? Now the situation has just got more complicated. My spouse didn't show signs until after 20 years. We have two small children that I'm having to protect from him. The torture is unbelievable as I not only face the break up of my family but that the children could also get this illness. I would definitely break up with him. Once you do, you need to stay strong and not go back. He will try to maninuplate you back into his life. For me, if my spouse at least had insight and accepted medical care there is hope to reunite the family. Without this, there is no hope. The pain is great when we hear our loved ones accuse of things that never happened. Break up with him and stay strong.

My wife is suffering from the same illness since the birth of our third child. Although the birth went smoothly, the first month was tough. Our newborn had trouble breathing after a couple of weeks and had to be taken to the ER. She stayed him for a week and barely got any sleep.

Although she has her ups-and-downs, overall, the delusions got worse and worse over the last year and a half. She's suspected four woman, but is stuck on two. One that she thinks I'm committed to and the other is just for fun on the side.

My wife thinks that whenever she's not with me, I've invited one of these women to our home. The one I'm committed to is renting a room from one of our neighbor's homes, according to my wife. And there plenty of evidence of my cheating. The living room and toy room are always cleaned when I invite one of them over. When I take out the trash, she hears me signal to my mistress by closing the lid. Every morning I open up the curtains so my mistress can spy on us. When I'm in our restroom, I'm always shirtless so my mistress to look, even though the angle from our neighbors house to the restroom window is impossible. In the middle of the night, my mistress would climb over the fences and enter our home through the garage with the key I've given her, goes to our rooom, hides under our bed, and talks to me while my wife is asleep. My wife knows because she hears the dogs barking in the middle the night. My mistress controls me with bells. Although my wife couldn't see anyone through the surveillance camera she had recently installed, she could hear the sounds from bells. I've been conditioned to respond to them "like a dog." My mistress drew snot on the princesses in the posters in our daughters room. She even took my wife's lipstick and draw all over the walls. There's a mountain of evidence.

My wife sees evidence like that in everything I do, from my work to the shows I watch, to my phone.

Like others here, my wife looked my phone, my laptop, our credit cards, everything. Because she couldn't find any hard evidence, she thinks I'm communicating with her in ways that can't be tracked. And besides she found plenty of other circumstantial evidence.

She has her phases. One month, she accuses me of stealing her things and giving them to my mistress whenever she can't find something. And when she eventually finds them, she tells me that I planted it there.

Another month, every time we disagree about something, she accuses me of regurgitating ideas and information I got from my mistress. She knows those aren't my ideas.

When we go on trips, my wife would ask me why certain people are starring at me. They must be the neighbors who are sheltering my mistress.

My son wanted me make pancakes for him. My wife blew up on me: "You hate pancakes, so now you're making pancakes for your mistress?! You lying, cheating, asshole!"

The list of circumstantial evidence and accussations is endless.

In addition to this, I have the usual postpartum depression stuff to deal with: I don't love her, and I don't do enough in the house.

She wanted a divorce since the delusions began a year and a half ago. She finally filed several months ago. I got her to drop it months later.

She filed again this week.

I told her she's ill and needs to be treated. She thinks I'm the problem. All I have to do is admit to the cheating and stop lying to her constantly about it. She knows for a fact that I've cheated and continues to cheat on her.

We've done couples therapy, but she quit twice because she felt that they were on my side.

She's seeing a psychiatrist, but I don't know how that's going or if she's taking her meds. Thanks to HIPPA laws, I can't get her doctors to talk to me. I can't be involved in her treatment. I'm completely clueless, thanks to our healthcare laws.

Has anyone had any kind of success with a spouse with this illness? It's very depressing that every couple here ended up divorcing.

I am the OP. Still married to my husband and still suffering with his delusions. I believed that he just had delusional jealousy for a long time, but after making a horrible discovery last year and looking back over our years together, i now firmly believe that he suffers from almost all the forms of delusional disorder. He believes that myself or my "lover(s)" would try to poison him or do something to mess up his cars. He believes that i steal from him and secret the money away somewhere. This delusion was "confirmed" after he found that i had opened my own bank account during one of our brief separations. I put $100 in the account and left it sitting after he left and changed the passwords on our bank account. But now i am forever branded a thief. He believed that a couple of different females wanted to have relationships with him, which they quickly told him they did not. However, one if them he believes received his message while one of my family members was with her because otherwise she would have went with him and would have never notified my family or myself of the message. He believes that sometimes he will sweat out something that smells like ammonia. He believes that might be due to whatever i may be slipping in his foods, drinks, etc... He believes that he is better than me and everyone else, believes that he is some amazing , unsurpassable person and will go on and on about what a badass person he is.
In 2015 he went to his md and requested antidepressants for anxiety issues and was given them. The result was a very overconfident delusional person who no longer cared at all about his family.

exhausted37 wrote:I love him. He doesn't believe me. He completely convinces himself that I cheat on him every chance I get. He sees little nonsensical things as "proof" and says horrible things to me. I adopted the "stare at the ground" defense years ago due to accusations of looking at men, which really does not work well when dealing with the public. And he has turned that around on me by saying that I can't look at him and that I stare at the ground due to my guilt.

I have mastered that same defense. Even that backfires sometimes when I’m “secretly communicating” with said men by looking certain directions or something.
It’s a damned if i do, damned if a I don’t kind of thing. And what adds to the problem is we (us ladies) feel ashamed or overly cautious doing normal innocent things that we inadvertently seem shady or weird thus reinforcing our mens’ delusions of our deceit.

exhausted37 wrote: seemed disappointed that I passed. And quickly found reasons to dismiss the results. He finds "clues" and "evidence" that make no sense to anyone but him. I am constantly walking on eggshells.

I literally feel the same exact way. I bring home receipts and time cards to show I was actually at work and it still doesn’t matter. I understand it’s a sickness and nobody wants to have delusions but I wish my man would bother to look at or consider the tangible proof of my innocence instead of dismissing it without second thought and choosing some decietful conspiracy instead. I don’t understand why he seems to actually WANT me to be cheating? Why wouldn’t someone believe the clear proof that I’m not sleeping around? I accept that I’ll probably never truly know. But it felt relieving to vent a little.

Good luck girlie. Sending positive vibes your way!

oh, this is good stuff!!!

CONTROL. people use accusations and ridicule to control others. they do so because they feel their own lives are out of control. so, they exert the control they feel they lack of their own lives on the lives of others. they hem you in, through guilt and inferiority, so you're not free to do as you would like anymore. it makes them feel good, and they don't care that it makes you feel bad. this isn't a matter of proving your innocence - you'll never do it. they don't want to recognise that as it would diminish their control over you. this is a matter of demonstrating your indifference. only that way can you be free of their degradation of your life, because once their control of you is gone they've nothing to gain by it anymore.

I'm the OP, and I started this post almost 5 years ago. Things got so much worse. So much worse. He thought my family tried to poison him. He thought he had a "connection" to a girl about 20 years younger than him. He messaged her from his secret social media account. She immediately got word back to me. He was in complete denial that she had told on him. He really believed they had something. That's when I found out about all the girls he had been watching on social media and the ones he had contacted. He would often accuse me of having secret social media accounts. I guess he was projecting.

After many fights, and a short separation. He agreed to get help. He saw a therapist a couple of times and then I went with him for the last visit. He had been lying to the therapist. So I told the therapist what was really going on and therapy ended.

Fast forward to January of this year. He walked out on me and our two boys while we were sick in bed with the flu to meet up with a 18 year old girl. He gave her money from our savings. He lied about it but came clean after facing possible repercussions over the missing money. I said that's it. I can't take it anymore. He promised counseling and psychotherapy.

We saw a marriage counselor twice. He likes to accuse me of being the overly jealous one, I guess to take away from his own jealousy. When I told her about the lie detector test she looked shocked. Couldn't believe her ears and started questioning why that took place, that's not normal, there are some more serious issues here than I thought...and he walked out of therapy. We went to see a psychiatrist. I told him I had to come with him because I didn't want him lying like he did with the other one. We met the therapist we had to see before the psychiatrist. She was an attractive young blonde. And instantly he started telling me not to say certain things or he would not let me come back with him. I said them anyway. He was upset. The therapist was clueless.

He saw the psychiatrist over a video conference. Told her that I believed he was delusional, the psychiatrist asked what delusions he was having. He told her that he thought that I cheated on him all the time even with complete strangers. The PSYCHIATRIST said those are real things NOT delusions. She wanted to put him on Wellbutrin. I told him he needed to see someone else. We made an appointment, but he got there on time instead of 30 minutes early and they said they couldn't see him. He gave up on going back.

He walked out a few weeks ago and went to stay with a relative in another state. They have no clue how he really is and have been bad mouthing me because apparently I am the problem. He cut off communication with me for a week. Didn't even call to check on our children. Then when I heard from him he demanded a divorce and wanted me to write up what I wanted in the divorce and send it to him and if he didn't like what I said then he would hire a high powered attorney and fight me for everything. So I did the hardest thing I've ever done. I got a lawyer and I filed for divorce.

He came back to town and stayed at a motel. He alternates between telling me we are done and asking me to come and spend time with him. He came home yesterday, asked me to cancel the divorce, said he didn't want it said we could work on things. Then today he is back to telling me what a despicable cheater I am. He blames me for it all. He wouldn't have left if I wasn't such a cheat. He wouldn't have met up with that girl if I "knew how to keep my legs closed". He calls me horrible names that I could never put on here.

The most recent accusations that he claims caused him to finally move out and be done with me, is he believes that I have been cheating on him with my oldest son's best friend. The kids is 19, again I wonder if projection is involved. I told him I have no interest in children but he doesn't see it that way. The boy has spent so much time in our home since he was a preteen. He needed a place to stay for a month and asked if he could stay with us. I knew that my husband would accuse me. Anyone that walks through the door is screwing me in his mind. I said maybe he shouldn't stay with us. My husband said it would be fine as long as I didn't do anything wrong. And of course I have not done anything wrong. My husband put a camera in the living room pointed at the stairs and started sleeping in there on the couch. He put alarms on doors and windows. When he found no evidence he decided I must have " hacked his camera". He even accused me of sneaking outside and climbing a laddet over a 6 foot fence to meet up with my "Beau".

I have walked on eggshells for almost 20 years now. I am sad and heartbroken that I could not get him to get help. I am sad that the man I love hates and despises me and sees me as a horrible person that is not who I really am. I am sad for my children that will be deprived of a mom and dad together. My daughter who is 20 told me the other day that she has never seen me happy and in love in her whole 20 years of life. That made me sad and guilty. I feel like I have been a terrible role model for my children by allowing him to treat me the way he does. He is mentally ill lbs he also refuses treatment. He said I just want him to take a pill so that I can cheat on him more without him knowing.

Please, if you are with someone with this awful disease, if they will not get help, get out. It is so hard to do. I am still in the process. I still love him even though he has been horribly abusive to me, mentally, verbally, and physically. I am going to see a therapist to try to heal from this. I hope I can find one that is not completely ignorant about delusional disorder. I wish I had gotten out years ago, before he truly hated me so much. It really hurts to be hated by the person you love and that you have stood by for so many years and they just can't see the truth. He told me he hates the person that I am. I am heartbroken. I wish that someone would do more studies into this life shattering disease. Unless you have experienced it, it is really hard to understand.

Dear exhausted,

I am so sorry for your pain. In the years I have been dealing with this I always felt no one could possibly understand what I’m going through. Now I realize I was wrong. I know how hard it is I do not want things to be over with my husband I want him to get help but I realize he can not be helped, at all, unless he sees the problem and wants help. I am so very glad you are getting out of this abusive situation, as hard as it is, and I think your children will be better off with just a mom who is healthy, healed and whole (you’ll get there!), than with this dysfunction going on. One thing I’ve held on to hope for is during the divorce process you can petition for mandatory psychiatric evaluation and that could possibly lead to him getting help. Maybe, maybe not but at least it’s something. For now, heal and stay strong. That’s what I’m trying to do too. My husband abandoned us and our 4 boys and told me 3 weeks ago he’s filing for divorce; the reason behind this is because he thinks I’m trying to have him killed. I’m still hoping to find a way for him to get help and a lot of people are praying but one thing I know for sure is I can’t go back to living the way things were it was absolute hell and not good at all for the kids. I’d love to talk more we are both going through very similar things right now.