I am not sure if i should trust this situation, my husband called me and said i could move back into the house now because it seems like i am better now plus the house is a mess and the pets are behaving strangely. He still believes that i was the mentally ill one and asked me what happened to me, he sounded very calm and rational. He said that there was more than enough room for the both of us in the house, we each could have our own separate living quarters and that there was no need to pay double expenses. I said i would come down to help with the house chores, taking care of the animals and yard work but still thought i should have a place of my own for a bit. I am hesitant because he is on no meds (says he is doing great, says the meds messed him up) and if he goes through another episode, i don’t know if i could handle it especially since i have already done the work to get an apartment and have everything lined up. My family and i have already spent a lot of money to get me to this point too and if i go back will he lock me up in the room like he said he was going to do before. Please advise, i am still confused and don’t know what to do. He still hasn’t said i love you or given me any acknowledgements as to whether he still wants to be married to me or not
I can understand your concerns and your confusion. Maybe it would be best for you to find someone to talk to, if not a therapist (think of a therapist as a life coach in this sort of situation), perhaps a person or an organization that has experience helping people in domestic abuse households sort through their thoughts.
Schizophrenia is a part of the problem and we can offer lots of advice for trying to help deal with schizophrenia. To sort out what you want out of your life and how to make sure you are taking steps in the direction that gets you there, you will need a mix of loved ones and professionals weighing in to help you.
I see many red flags here. Can you have someone with you when you go there?
I would continue to move forward with your apartment and your plans for now
And follow the advice to take someone with you when you go!
Your mental health and stability is important! it sounds like you have a supportive family
Diagnosed opinion here. There’s a tendency when you have an episode to blame it on the environment, the circumstances, innocent or not so innocent bystanders, relationships, external forces—anyone and anything but yourself or your illness. What you’re hearing is his rationalization of events, not an acceptance of responsibility. And he’s trying to recruit your acceptance of his rationale, and your help in maintaining that fantasy, because he’s encountered undesirable consequences.
I’d take a hard look into: “what’s in this for you?” And as @oldladyblue suggests, counseling or coaching may be a good way to explore this. To my eyes, there’s an inverted power dynamic here: he’s the one asking you to do the changing, and accept your “illness” when it’s the other way around.
I’ve said here I feel that people who develop Schizophrenia are changed as a person and are never quite the same again, and how everyone adapts to that reality impacts recovery. So as a thought experiment, consider if you’d accept his offer to be his roommate if he was a completely different person who you’d just met from the onset of his illness. Thinking of it that way, may clarify your thoughts and feelings on the matter.
You do understand don’t you that he is a changed person, probably for the rest of his life?
I think that YOU need to make up your own mind if you want to stay married or not.
If the apartment is paid for for the next bit of time, take your time to sort out your OWN feelings. A minister, coach or counselor could help you. Don’t rush into a big decision like going back.
When my daughter was acutely psychotic, we built her own studio apartment into our home. It didn’t take much: a short wall in the hallway, a back door and steps, buying a fridge and a microwave for her room. She could NEVER have survived on her own, mostly financially.
When my husband (who is alcoholic) got violent last year, I decided to stay married, mostly for financial reasons. He could NEVER have survived on his own. We separated our sleeping quarters, and they are still separated. But we get along pretty well as roommates, all of us.
You need to sort out what YOU want, and can afford. Not go back because your husband wants a housekeeper, unless you WANT to give up your apartment, or because of other reasons personal to you.
It sounds like you are unsure. Trust yourself in this thinking. Keep yourself SAFE!
I’m glad you have supportive family. You need others around you. Do you have a therapist to work through these difficult issues? Get CLARITY!
What about a mediator for you and your husband? Going into the situation even to help out sounds unsafe and some WRITTEN agreement of what you will do and what he needs to do. It would be good if he’d be willing to work with a therapist or talk with someone like a resource specialist at the NAMI office.
If you have a NAMI office in your area they are great places for resources. Or check out: www.nami.org
Keeping boundaries are for you - what you can do and what you can’t do.
Thank you all for the great advice but i do not live in the US so we do not have NAMI here but i did check out the site for educating myself and i find it, plus this forum to be very helpful and supportive. Currently i am going to stick with having my own apartment until i can be sure that i am not going to be in any danger. I have made emergency contact arrangements with family and friends and am currently seeking a therapist for myself. I have made plans that everytime i will go over to help out that i will let everyone know when i go there and what time to expect a check in.
He is treating me like a roommate or just someone he knows but not like his wife, he doesn’t say i love you, miss you or anything like that, its very cold and detached (is this normal?), he always has to make sure that i will still be sending the usual e-transfers and that i am still going to take care of the utility bills and i say yes everytime and i do it without fail everytime. I refrain from saying i love you or miss you anymore because i don’t want to seem like i am at his mercy but it does not change my feelings for him.
Phetsy,
You are wise and making the right choices. If you felt more comfortable and/or safe maybe you could take someone with you to help at the house? Of course that may trigger him but if you do maybe letting him know might help. Keep your boundaries.
Curious question: how do you pronounce your name?
Phetsy I feel for you and I am in a similar situation in that my husband also believes i am the ill one who needs help and refuses to acknowledge that it is him. He isnt on medication and has now carried his delusions for a year that ive been raped and abused by my ex boss and have since had multiple men, an ongoing affair with the ex boss and I am a bad mother our boys deserve better than me. We are separated 10 mths now and Im trying to get clarity, Im speaking with a Councillor to sort out my thoughts I struggle to process.
Im also not in the US.
Im trying to decide if i should get a finances agreement and take him off tbe mortgage.
We are about to start supervised contact for the boys, Ive just tried to protect us all this time as he can be so unpredictable. Ive lost trust in him.
I feel like Im grieving for what we had, the man I met and love, I dont know this man.
Maggotbrane what you said made sense to me that he may never be quite the same again.
I dont know how to move forward either at the moment. It was a domestic abuse situation last summer and I cant live like that or let the children witness it, its just so sad especially for them.
Any thoughts or advice welcome 
The “h” is silent so it would be like Petsy
Diagnosed opinion here. There’s a tendency when you have an episode to blame it on the environment, the circumstances, innocent or not so innocent bystanders, relationships, external forces—anyone and anything but yourself or your illness. What you’re hearing is his rationalization of events, not an acceptance of responsibility. And he’s trying to recruit your acceptance of his rationale, and your help in maintaining that fantasy, because he’s encountered undesirable consequences.
Thank You so much for explaining it this way ,
This is exactly what my sibling does each time he has an episode.
I am not sure how he would take it. We haven’t spoken about the incident that sent me to the hospital, everytime i try to he abruptly ends our conversation and then doesn’t contact me for days. Currently (i have to admit) i am having a hard time trusting him, i used to trust him with my life up until now. I don’t know what to say anymore because i don’t want to trigger anything. Everytime i ask him how he is feeling he always says he’s fine and feels great (no meds). This whole thing was already going on for over a year and i didn’t realize what was going on until it got to the point of it turning on me. He was always worried about being recorded, says that he didn’t want to talk to me as long as there were devices that could record (cell phones, smart watches, etc.) to the point that i got rid if my smart watch and it still didn’t click in my head that it was the illness speaking. When he spoke about being diagnosed with a form of schizophrenia, i didn’t take it as seriously then, i thought he was just speaking because he only mentioned it that one time and the doctors never spoke to me about it (i never went to appointments with him, only once when he went to see a neurologist for his horrible migraines which turned out to be cluster headaches and nose bleeds). He was also diagnosed with major depressive disorder, we went through a lot of different medications until we thought we found the right combination which seemed to work for a long time (he was taking sertraline for a long time but was still having some side effects). Eventually he stopped taking them but still kept refilling them so it looked like he was still taking them during this whole time he was doing a lot of research on natural remedies such as bee pollen, honey, etc. and even tried cbt oils, smoking marijuana (it helped for a bit but eventually started having delusions from it, so he stopped that). For a long time he was addicted to gravol (i would buy bottles of 100 pills three to four times a month, it was very expensive because over the counter drugs are not covered on my health care plan), this was an on and off thing because he needed it to numb his mind but he didn’t like how it made him feel tired all the time (i always kept a stash with me just in case he really couldn’t handle his anxiety and thoughts). For years after his breakdown at one of his jobs that he had for a long period of time (5-7 yrs), this breakdown led us to the diagnosis of major depressive disorder and PTSD, we tried a lot of different prescriptions. He was also seeing a female psychologist who strongly resembled his mother (he was mentally, verbally and emotionally abused by her and physically, verbally, emotionally and mentally abused by his father plus being bullied at school) so he requested for a different psychologist because she would trigger him too much. He was able to choose a male psychologist this time which he liked and had a lot of respect for but eventually we could not afford the therapy sessions so he slowly quit going. He was suicidal but was aware enough that when he had those thoughts he would call the suicide hot line which helped a lot on many occasions (i’ve had to take him to emergency a few times because of the attempts). He isolated himself from everyone and everything (the curtains were always closed so no natural light came into the house), he ended friendships (he had this thing about calling people narcissists). He spent most of his time reading a lot of non fiction dense material books, articles and research, he was trying to educate himself so he can help himself get better without meds. He loves to write and he is a great writer, so he preoccupied himself for years doing that (he is very artistic, especially with writing all sorts of styles of poetry). He had a few work at home jobs which only lasted for 2 years at most so he was doing ok somewhat until our beloved dog was diagnosed with cancer and he did palliative care for her during the day and i did it when i got home from work this put a lot of strain on us, she passed away 3 months after she was diagnosed. Since she passed away my husband’s symptoms got worse, he was having a difficult time dealing with her death (he had lost his grandmother and step father who he loved and respected greatly a few years before this). He has tried all his life to help people but feels that he gets kicked in the end and he is sick and tired of it, he has helped me with my past issues and trauma and for years now i have been trying to help him with his traumas. So its a very up and down thing, sometimes it seems like his mind can handle it and sometimes it cant but these last 2 years since our dog passed away and he was reading and writing voraciously it got worse. Then everything changed as soon as he started his new job 4 months ago, he was not himself it was as if he were possessed.
This is my most thorough summary
I just spoke to my husband on the phone and he still believes that i tried killing/poisoning him. He says that our marriage is technically annulled because of what i did to him, he also said he had a hunch that the police were listening to our conversation. So now he wants to sign over his part of the house to me and he would go move in with his brother or dad in the city. I don’t know what to do, i still love him. I don’t know if he has convinced his family that this is what i did and he says that i am unstable. Help please, should i just let him go and be support for his family if they need help. If this is still his belief will it ever change if he goes back on medication and gets therapy?
Now i am starting to doubt my reality. He keeps on saying you don’t remember what you did to me and i don’t because i didn’t do anything, so how do you bounce back from this?
Oh @Emerald72 , I’m so sorry, but stay strong. Of course you are grieving. However, the man you used to know became this man that you “don’t know” over 10 months ago. You actually do “know” the current man, the sick man, and you may never see your “old” husband, the one you fell in love with again. Do not put yourself or your children at risk. Domestic violence is unacceptable. Crime is crime, and violence against a wife or children is a crime.
Thank you for your reply Im trying to stsy strong, some days or hours I feel stronger than others. I can’t believe sometimes that 10 months has passed by. Absolutely, I’m doing all i can to protect us from the abuse. Its so confusing, Ive got his 13page witness statement now for the courts, its taken me 3 days to bring myself to read it, its an insight into his mind as he responds to the allegations. It really made me sad. He has skimmed over everything, saying what Ive said happened isnt true, stating he absolutely does not have mental health issues a number of times, that I am having an on-going affair that he discovered, although doesn’t say how he discovered it and saying why did i marry him and go on holiday if I thought he was abusive.
Supervised contact starts in 2 days, I feel anxious yet also pleased the boys will see their Dad again.
Reading his statement you almost believe him, but i know the truth, i just dont understand why or how this happened after 14 years.
I feel for you, I understand, I feel the same in that ive started to doubt my reality too, I know im not and never had an affair. I wonder the same, if he ever does get help and goes on medication or get therapy would it change? Theres no sign hes going too as he keeps saying he does not have mental health problems. I know hes convinced his family its all me and theyve cut us off without even asking me.
I dont know how we bounce back from this either my hope is fading. But know you are not alone with this suffering
I am so sorry you have to go through this especially with children involved. It is extremely heart breaking, i have been reviewing our past texts over the years and everything was good when he took his medication (besides the headaches and other ailments he had) but these last two years have been terrible. I also fear that his family has believed him. So i am at a loss right now
Doubting your own reality is a slippery slope. An associated event that we do to ourselves and sometimes along with others, is “normalizing”. Every time we normalize a behavior we cloud reality for ourselves and become less able to make good decisions.
We have had people come on the forum who felt their loved one was sudden, late onset when actually they had been normalizing schizophrenia type behaviors for years. Finally, a severe psychotic episode usually makes things too different to normalize any longer.
Meds aren’t magic, meds can be a starting point, but it takes a good deal of therapy and effort combined with meds to help our neurodiverse family members function in a way “that is pleasing to others”.
I have a friend whose schizoaffective wife has convinced him to convince his doctor that he needs to take clonazepam to deal with his anxiety. She is the source of his anxiety.