Does My Wife Have DDJ

Our marriage has had good years and bad years, but over the last 29 years the good has certainly outweighed the bad. Things were going great, we were eagerly making plans for retirement in the future, until recently when things have rapidly turned dark when the endless accusations began. The first major accusation was that I was having an affair with the girl that cut my hair. Then the laser beam focus shifted to my work. She began to incessantly drill me about who I had lunch with in the cafeteria, etc. Then I was accused of having an afffair with one of my female co-workers, and then another. She then started checking my home email, computer usage, text messages, and cell phone calls... demanding that I identify each number and the conversations that took place from 3 months prior.

The accusations continued to grow. She "knew" I was getting up in the middle of the night and spending hours on the computer. Her health began to fail, she now needed Ambien to sleep and doctors prescribed anxiety and blood pressure medications. Because of her health, she asked if I was trying to poision her. She asked if I was secretly taking pictures of her, and asked if I had video tape equipment hidden in our bedroom.

My beloved wife then began hiding tape recorders in my home office and car in hopes of "catching me in the act".

The clincher came when I received what I thought were a couple of innocuous wrong number texts. One was about the individual going out to eat after church and the other was pertaining to someone's family reunion. I texted back they had the wrong number. My wife didn't think they were so innocent. Unbeknownst to me, she hired a private investigator. Together they tracked down who had the phone number and did research, background checks, etc. Apparently this individual was a known homosexual. So now the accusations came flying that I was having a homosexual relationship. That is when she moved out and filed for divorce. After 29 years I am left devasted, hurt beyond words, and left searching for answers. The woman I knew for all of those years bears no resembalance to the woman who she is now.

Could this be DDJ, or some type of side-affect from the medications? Or could this be a sign of some other underlying mental health issue?

I know exactly what you feel like. I've gone through a similar experience with my beloved ex husband, who started accusing me of having affairs, poisoning him, need I go on? He ended up divorcing me after a 35 year relationship. No matter what I did or said, I couldn't get through to him. When the children tried to rationalize with him, he said they were working in concert with me and that they were taking up for me because I'm their mother. He refused to seek help. The children even offered to go with him since he no longer trusted me, but he wouldn't. Like you said, he's turned into a completely different person. The man I love no longer exists. I think it's genetic. His mom has paranoid schizophrenia, and it manifested itself in her around the same age as him. I wish I could encourage you and tell you that she'll be her old self again. From my experience, as well as others whose stories are posted, all I can suggest is to seek help for yourself. This nearly destroyed me emotionally, I'm still trying to heal. My heart is still broken, but through prayer and my faith in God, He is seeing me through. Holidays are the most difficult. We did everything together. He and our children were my whole life. Seek counseling. It's a bitter pill to swallow. Our home is set to be auctioned off in December, everything we struggled for is gone. He seems to have gone on with his life. I wonder if he's truly as happy as he tells everyone he is. God Bless you.

Thank you for sharing, I'm crying as I read your story. It sounds so identical... may God be with you.

Hi Sandollar. I've been lurking on this board for over a year. But your post is the one that brought me into the light. If it makes you feel a little better, I will tell you that I've experienced almost EXACTLY everything you have experienced. I would regularly read other posts and nothing quite matched my situation. But your situation matched mine almost verbatim.

It started 4 years ago with accusations that my personality had changed. That maybe I was having a mid life crisis. It then changed to me having an affair with someone. Then she figured out who the affair was with so I was then having an affair with a specific person. She made up stories about seeing this woman with us in restaurants when we went out. But never did she see us together. I worked with this woman at a previous job but had very little to do with her.

Then 2 years ago, I think she had nervous breakdown. Her story changed to me surveilling her in our home with recording devices and cameras. This is so I could keep tabs on her thus allowing me to do all sorts of nefarious activities such as operating a porn site, having an affair, maybe even doing drugs. She claims that I took pictures of her and our daughter at night and posted them on the internet. But no pictures have ever been produced (because they don't exist). I was then accused of getting up at night to do all sorts of things. Funny thing is, I sleep very soundly and rarely wake up at all.

I've been accused of giving cues in restaurants to people that are watching us. I've been accused of tricking her sister into taking my side in all this. I've been accused of gaslighting her (trying to make her think she is crazy) so that I can have her locked up and then taking our family assets for myself.

So I've been living with this now for 4 years. I'm about at the end of my rope. I asked her why she still lives with someone that would do all these things to her. She says that she is keeping her commitment to God and our family. Death do us part. Needless to say, we both have a strong faith. I'm willing to work with her and help her but I cannot take the continued scrutiny and accusations that come out of the blue. I've tried to lay down boundaries but they do no good. She's just not dealing with reality. So she uses her "faith" to give her the right to abuse me at every turn by staying in our marriage and keeping her commitment to God.

After reading all the posts on this site, I've pretty much given up hope for her to ever get better. I can't get her into counseling because that's part of my "plan". So I'm just trying to get along as best I can. There's much more to this story but that's enough for now.

Good luck!!

I read your heart-breaking post, along with the equally troubling stories of others submitted as follow-ups. If there is any comfort in this, let me say I have experienced almost everything each of you describe over the past few years. My wife has accused me of almost everything one can be accused of, the most reoccurring accusation centering around her clothes which constantly disappear, thrown her in a panic - followed by a host of strange reasons all centered around my stealing her clothes for various reasons.

I too have been accused of affairs more times than I can recall, for reasons varying from a cord on a light in the wrong position, to a fast-food receipt that had a small change in what i normally order.

This constant barrage has taken a heavy toll on my mental and emotional health, and I rely heavily on a counselor to help me keep myself together for the sake of 2 children, as well as continuing to try and help my wife. She has gone to the lengths of daily checks of my cell phone, mileage, pockets for receipts, and most expensive, a secret video camera system installed on our home she used to monitor my every movement for over 6 months before I discovered it accidentally.

Now, the encouraging news, and hopefully helpful for others. Since she has always insisted I am the reason for all these events due to my many mental problems she constantly diagnoses, I was able to convince her to come to therapy with me in order to help ME. She is willing to do this as she feels sorry for me having so many mental problems.

My therapist has worked with me in this, trying out each new technique on me first, before asking her to try it in order to help me feel more comfortable. I do not know if this will work for others, but at least i have her voluntary going to therapy twice a week in order to help her poor husband.

I wish you all the best of luck and God bless.

It has now been a couple of months since my original post, I wish I could say things have improved but they have degraded to a point that I could never have imagined. My beloved wife of almost 30 years and I had what I considered to be a very loving, satisfying marriage. Now, as we're approaching the holidays, she is accusing me of being a male prostitute. She is saying I have sneaked males into the house at night to have sex while she was in bed sleeping. She is accusing me of meeting men in parking lots, country roads and gas stations in order to be paid to have sex with them. She is worried that I will not account for these finances in the pending divorce. This is an insidious disease, robbing my loved one of rational thoughts and thinking. I keep thinking it can't get any worse, I've now come the the realization that... yes it can.

Sandolllar wrote:It has now been a couple of months since my original post, I wish I could say things have improved but they have degraded to a point that I could never have imagined. My beloved wife of almost 30 years and I had what I considered to be a very loving, satisfying marriage. Now, as we're approaching the holidays, she is accusing me of being a male prostitute. She is saying I have sneaked males into the house at night to have sex while she was in bed sleeping. She is accusing me of meeting men in parking lots, country roads and gas stations in order to be paid to have sex with them. She is worried that I will not account for these finances in the pending divorce. This is an insidious disease, robbing my loved one of rational thoughts and thinking. I keep thinking it can't get any worse, I've now come the the realization that... yes it can.

I'm really sorry to read your story. I think many of us can sympathize with your plight.

My own ex-wife had at times accused me of having affairs (I wasn't). Oddly she did nothing with her accusations during the divorce process. If there was any truth to any of it it would have been easy enough to prove, and she could have used it against me to get a settlement that was more favorable to her. The fact that she didn't even try tells me that on some level she knew it was all BS and it wasn't going to stand up for a minute to any rational scrutiny.

Sandolllar wrote:I keep thinking it can't get any worse, I've now come the the realization that... yes it can.

I thought the same thing, that it couldn't get any worse, when my now ex-husband began with his accusations back in 2000. But as time went on they did, it began with the accusation that I was having one lesbian affair, then spread to my co-workers, friends, and then to almost every female I came in contact with. I kept patiently asking for his reasoning saying, "please help me to understand why you're thinking these things?"... His response was, "I can tell by the way you look at them"... I asked for an example of "the look" and what I got was the most rediculous example, it was a look you'd see an actor having in a movie where they come upon a beautiful oasis after spending a week in the middle of an Arabian dessert. Get the picture? The sad part is that this IS WHAT HE SAW IN HIS MIND. He even accused me of possibly having our new born artifically inseminated by the brother of one of my alleged lesbian mates in order to have a child close to her DNA. Yes, I just had just given birth to our 4th child 3 months before when this was dumped on me.

Over time I became somewhat callous, and perhaps a little cynical, it was my only defense mechanism for the emotional pain I was feeling. I was beyond pissed, I was bitter, just plain bitter. Why did my loving husband become a monster? I didn't know anyone who had this sort of situation to talk to, I only wish I had come upon this site back then. At the time I felt so ALONE.

When I felt an episode coming, and believe me it got to a point when I could clearly see one coming, I would stop him in his tracks and say, "look, at this point, nothing you can say would surprise me, even if you accused me of having an affair with your own mother!" ... and then I would turn around and leave the room or house if necessary. In reality, what hurt the most was that HE BELIEVED ALL HIS ACCUSATIONS BEYOND A SHADOW OF A DOUBT. I remember telling my counselor how I'd like to trade places with him so that he could feel the pain he was causing me... He quickly interrupted my thoughts and said, "don't ever say that again, there is no greater pain than what he's feeling as a prisoner of DDJ."

So unfortunately, if your wife truly does have a delusional disorder, it does get worse... which is why I am now divorced and raising four children practically on my own. I sincerely hope your situation is an exception to the rule. God bless. ~ Beautiful Mind

sorry to read that things have gotten worse. my wife of 16 years has left and tells me she is going to file for divorce.(my post is delusional wife...or am i crazy) my question for you is who is instigating the divorce you or your wife. i am trying to find similarities for my own situation. i thought my story was bizzare, but your last post is almost unfathomable.

Wow, there seems to many of us that have the same situation. I've also cruised the Mid Life crisis boards and the Menopause boards and many stories are similar. Something comes over people and they go off the deep end. They destroy everything they have loved and worked for and blame someone else (or everyone else) for the results. It's very sad. In this thread alone there are 4 men that have almost the exact situations. It must be diagnosable and treatable. You just have to trick the person into getting help. I had one chance with a marriage counselor and he didn't work out. I've read other threads on this board where people successfully get the person to go to a Dr only to have the Dr wimp out which then throws the other person under a bus. You have to play that psychiatrist card carefully. You may only get 1 shot.

As for instigating a divorce, I find that my wife will make many threats and they all come up empty. Those were the mistakes I made at first: I would react to her threats. Now I just brush them off. She never follows through on anything. So if my wife threatened a divorce, I would challenge her to go ahead knowing that she would never pull it off. Nearly all of her threats are idle and are just attempts to hurt me to get some type of reaction I believe. And I do say it works most times. Because once she has broken me down, then she seems to become calm and we have a good spell for a while.

I also read in one of our threads that someone can "see the episode coming". I'm with you there. I can always see them coming which helps me not to react. I just ride them out. But eventually, she has to hurt me to gain some inner peace for herself. Hard to understand.