He finally replied.

More than a week after my original text asking him why he hasn’t been depositing the money that he’d agreed to, he finally replied. Not surprised that it was now a few days before Fathers Day.

Amazing how a simple question turns into a huge back and forth of avoidance and accusations. His first response was “how much is it?” I had just told him in May how much, he knows very well how much and he was avoiding what I had asked. So, I told him how much and said that really wasn’t an answer.

The reason ended up being that he forgot or bought groceries instead. Both reasons are absurd to me. Good thing I don’t ‘forget’ to pay our utility bills or cover the IRS withdrawal every month. Imagine how that would play out. When I am expecting that money to be there and it isn’t, my account could overdraft and/or I might spend money that I wouldn’t have otherwise and the IRS isn’t very forgiving . And to say he bought groceries instead… that has always been something we were both doing. His words were actually “bought pretty much all the groceries” which is not true. I never stopped buying the usual amount of groceries that I have been buying. What he did was bought dog food more often and bought some steak or other expensive meals and other random junk more often. I’d rather we cover the necessities before buying extras.

~~ Yes, I figured out that he likes to put me in this position. It usually happens when I’ve been used to him doing whatever it is and expecting it. Then, out of nowhere he stops. I learn more quickly now and make sure the money is there or expect him not to be somewhere or do something. But, I always ask anyway, giving it a chance that he’ll surprise me. ~~

Without even pausing, as soon as he gave his excuses, he tried to turn it around to put me down and ask 20 questions. Rather than explain each detail or post screen shots, I’m just going to bullet point. Each point could be a whole page of explanation.

• Blames debt on me, then tells me my share would be 1/3, then says we’ll just make everything 50/50 (which is how it was already supposed to be) -each one contradicting the other.
• Says since I’m asking a question, he has some of his own, which he starts asking accusing questions (i.e. Where’s my wedding ring?? -it was on my finger and always has been, Why am I the only one not invited to a girls thing?? –I didn’t even answer that because I haven’t gone to any girls only things and invite him to everything, which he doesn’t go to and will deny my inviting him.) Plus, about 5 more questions including a remark about being room mates and him not needing a roommate.
• Called me plain mean (I don’t know what about, even re-reading the texts)
• Telling me I only care about money – which doesn’t make any sense because if I only cared about getting money from him then I should be happy with our relationship.
• After 20 years of him keeping everything separate, tells me it’s been me wanting it separate and what a pain it is.  – Yet, I practically forced him to open our joint checking account which he barely uses.
• Telling me I haven’t contributed to our relationship financially until recently. Which is a lie or at least a huge exaggeration. ~Out of our 24 year relationship, about 6 of them was I not employed. I was at home with our children.
• Talking in circles! Ugh! This drives me nuts. I tried extra hard to stay on track this time but not sure how much I succeeded.  – This is where he says something, I respond, he denies saying what I’m responding to and says something else, which I respond to, so he says the original thing or says I said what he started with. Obviously nothing productive ever comes from this kind of conversation.
• Telling me I’m wrong and that I’m twisting facts

I finally had to just stop responding because it was midnight, I was tired and we both had work the next day. That totally pissed him off but the conversation was going nowhere and was exploding into something huge when all I had originally wanted to know was why he wasnt depositing the money and if he was going to be from now on. (Which he said yes he would be. But, to give you an idea how that is playing out~ the next day he got a paycheck, today is the 18th, the money gets automatically withdrawn on the 20th.)

It’s extremely hard to grey rock when you have financial obligations that include both people and when you need an answer to something. 😣

Red Flag Warning #2

Anytime there is a holiday or special occasion, the Narc will make sure to cause conflict or commotion to ruin it. 

Father’s Day Gift for the Narcissist

For almost 25 years I’ve put lots of thought, time and effort into getting just the right gift for my Narc. It should come as no surprise that it’s never the right one according to him. 

– Says he can’t use. (But then he does.)

– Says he doesn’t need. (Even though he’s been looking into buying one himself.)

– Says he doesn’t know why I’d get it for him because …

– Purposefully doesn’t touch it or use but uses other items just like it from other people. 

– Etc. etc. etc. 

So, now that I’m at a different place mentally in realizing what motivates him, I’ve come to an idea. This Father’s Day I’m going to do what he does. That is, buy him something that makes me look good being the giver, something that I say is for him but is really for me, something to send an underlying message. 

This is more difficult than I expected!

Have you tried this?

Any ideas would be great!

Avoidance

So, it’s been over a week since I sent the text asking my narc about money not being deposited.  I actually texted him again a couple days later asking if he was ignoring me which of course had no response. I don’t really want to bring it up in conversation. I want the response in writing because I feel like I can foresee words being twisted or some sort of gaslighting coming from it.
I have to say that last weekend I went outside to do some needed yardwork in the backyard. After being out there for about half an hour my narc came outside. Apparently he rented a tractor and was going to do some work with it moving dirt and filling in some holes. 

I’m always up for improving our yard. We are renting and I feel like it gets put off a lot so I was all for working together improving the yard. Separately but at the same time. After being out there for a few hours I ended up helping him with some of the dirt work (literally). That gave way to a small amount of verbal communication but really only anything that had to do with the task at hand.

At that point, I still hadn’t heard anything from him regarding the money being deposited and no sign of the money in the bank account. So, Monday afternoon I sent another text that read, “Still wondering why you haven’t been depositing the money for the IRS and your phone into the account.” It is now Wednesday afternoon and I still have not received a response. 

It’s obvious that he is ignoring the text because prior to my inquiry we would communicate via text probably more often than verbally. But since my inquiry, he has had zero text communication with me. 

Silent treatment

As I said before, once I figured out that I was dealing with a narcissist, I went gray rock. I did this because I felt like I had tried everything else. I tried sympathizing, I tried changing myself, I tried standing up for myself, I tried being more assertive, I tried talking to counselors, I tried self help, I tried everything I could think of. 

I actually kind of went gray rock before figured it out as a way of coping. Our conversations got farther and farther apart. I tried less and less to please him because no matter what I did it wasn’t the right thing according to him. I got tired of conversations turning into blame and verbal or emotional abuse. The only way I could create a peaceful household for myself and my children was to have as little conversation with him that I could. I would only start up a conversation or respond to his conversation if it was absolutely necessary. Topics such as things pertaining to the children or perhaps groceries or the house that we were living in. 

I reacted less and less to him ignoring me and less and less to his subtle jabs at me and I didn’t let his ignoring my questions determine my decisions.  I think maybe he realized I was distancing myself. Recently, I don’t know exactly what triggered him but I could tell there was a shift in how he was treating me. My thoughts are that he was leaving it up to me to repair our relationship and when I was making little to no effort to do so that he decided he was not going to try anymore.

That doesn’t mean he stopped his narcissistic tendencies. For example, the flowers that he sent to my work on our anniversary but yet he didn’t utter one word to me about our anniversary or anything else that day. 

Another example is that we owe some money to the IRS and last year he asked me to set up a payment plan on our joint account. He told me how much to set it up for and told me what date he wanted it taken out on and told me he’d deposit the money for that bill. (Now keep in mind, I have a second payment plan set up for our state taxes that we owe and I pay that.)

He also had promised our children new bedroom sets but when we went to the furniture place they denied giving him a credit line, which I think was partly from not filling out the online form correctly. So he asked me to do it. I was very hesitant and I told him I didn’t have the money to cover it. He assured me that he was going to pay it so I did apply.  I got approved and the payments got set up. These were to be taken out of the same joint checking account as the IRS payments are taken out of.

A couple Christmases ago he bought me a new iPhone and put it on our mobile carrier account that I pay. He put down a large down payment, don’t get me wrong,  and he agreed to put the difference of the bill into that same joint checking account to cover the difference in payment. When my phone was about paid off we decided to allow my son to get his own phone line on our account and he decided he wanted to upgrade his phone to the same version of phone that I had. We went down and purchased his phone; he paid off the rest of my phone and the payments for the remaining balance of his phone were to be added onto our our monthly payment (which again I pay). 

So what he would do would be to deposit the total amount of all three (IRS payment, bedroom furniture payment & phone payment) in the middle of the month before they were all due. Most of the time he deposited the money on the day it was due or after. 

When the same as cash timeline was up for the bedroom furniture, he paid it off.  That was in March, 2 1/2 months ago. The last time he deposited the money for those payments into that checking account was in January. He did not deposit anything in February. In March he paid off the bedroom furniture and told me that he could either buy groceries or deposit the money into the account that week but not both. I told him that was fine and if he could get the groceries because I didn’t have the money to get any that week. That’s exactly what he did it was my bad to think that he would deposit the money the next week I’ll take that as a misunderstanding and disregard him not paying depositing the money in March. 

Because he had paid off the bedroom furniture, the amount of money he needed to deposit into the checking account was about half of what it had been. But he did not deposit any money in April. When it was time to deposit the money in May, I reminded him that because he had paid off the bedroom furniture he only needed to deposit half the amount (I did specify the exact amount). He replied with something like, “Oh yah, OK”, but again he did not deposit any money in May. Here we are a week into June and I feel like I need to know if that money is not going to be deposited so I can make sure to cover it. So I decided to send him a text. Communicate in writing right?

It read, “Why haven’t you been depositing the money for the IRS and phone into the account?” That was at 8 AM two days ago. He has made sure to ignore my existence at home, to leave the room and go out to work on his car in the garage when he sees that I finish making dinner, and of course not answering my question. 

I don’t know if he’s trying to prove a point, if he’s trying to punish me for questioning him, if he’s mad that I expect him to deposit the money for the payment arrangements that he wanted me to make (that he agreed to pay), or if he is mad about me going gray rock. Maybe it’s a combination of all of these… I really don’t know. 

I’d be interested in hearing what anybody reading this thinks about it.