My first marriage broke up after 11 years due to my husband's drug addiction, eventually he died of kidney failure. I met my current husband thru a dating service and when he first called and we first met, I thought, wow, a guy who can really talk! Trouble is, we are going on our 2nd year of marriage, and that's all he allows, is himself to talk. When I get home from work, he doesn't want to hear what my day was like, he tells me everything he did all day, if I try to talk, he ignores me and turns on the tv. After a year of marriage, he still knows nothing of my past because he's not interested. I sure know a heck of alot about his! He treats everyone as less intelligent than himself, constantly trying to teach volumes of knowlege to them (and me), and if I try to contribute something I know about a subject, he gets angry, or he ignores me, then later, if he hears it on tv, he's amazed that I was right, or he tries to tell me about it, and I don't dare say that I knew about it or that I'd previously told him that, or he sulks or gets angry. He has an attitude of "pity" toward everyone here, says they are sad because they are less intelligent, non-educated and don't have the means to better themselves, (even though he was born and raised here, moved away and came back to retire) often he insults people by doing this. When we were first married, he insisted on paying for all the groceries and household bills, and if I tried to pay (or pay him back later), he refused, saying "that's what a spouse is for", he also doted on my two children, paying them for household chores that I would excpect them to do just because it was thier responsibility as household members, and buying them anything they asked for. If I told them to pay him back out of thier allowance, he said, no, he didn't like kids to have to pay back for things. He won't let me go see my folks (25 mi. away) more than 1 per month and then I have to arrange it in advance with him, but he sees his mother every day, (of course she is only 11 mi. away) and she calls 2-3x per day. This January, he started giving me all the utility bills, which I paid, we had never discussed who would pay what and I figured this was my share, however, if I am on the internet and his mom calls, he gets mad because the phone was not open for her call-I got call-wave so I would know if she called, but she refuses to leave a message on it. I figure if I am paying the phone bill and the internet bill, I should be able to use it, but he says the computer is "not a toy" and should be used only for banking or business purposes. He gets mad if the kids use it to look up things for school or e-mail friends (they have friends from the town we lived in before the marriage and they like to keep in touch). He won't let me go see my old friends without him, and then he sits in the car and expects me to say hi and bye and watches the clock. He keeps us on a schedule even though he's retired, if we leave the house at 1:01pm, he keeps checking and announcing the time at 10 min intervals until we arrive where we are going and keeps track of time while we are there. When we get home he re-caps the time used and how efficient we were. Last month, when the water bill came, I laid it on his desk, and he had a fit, saying I was accusing him of not doing his share in paying the bills. He said he paid the house mortgage and the income tax and the groceries and I should be grateful. He also said that when we first were married, my son's room needed carpet and paint and it was the only room that he'd spent the money to fix up and now my son wasn't keeping it cleanly as he wanted, also, he had bought a new mattress for his bed (we had one, but he wanted the boy to have a double size and bought a bed), he said we should treat him better since he had spent so much on the boy's room. He wants us to keep our stuff in our own room (including me, he bought several shelves to put my nic-nacs on so they could be taken out of the frontroom). He keeps the living room set-up like a doctor's office, books and magazines on the coffee table, and the dining room table is covered in paperwork and books. I brought in my dining room table and put it in front of his so we could have a table, but he won't eat at it, insists on having his meals served to him at his chair in front of the tv-I asked why we couldn't have a family dinner and he said he wasn't letting anyone screw up his retirement by forcing him to go back in time 19 years and be the typical "hubby-famly man", he said he came out here to retire and be on his own time. He's been married 4x before and he says every time they broke up because the mothers were too protective of thier kids and didn't allow him to discipline them. I have never said anything to him about what he tells the kids, if it's unreasonable I might tell them privately not to worry about it, but if it's reasonable, I let it go. He constantly quotes Arkansas' laws on marriage and community property laws like some kind of a threat or something-and how this house is only his and his alone. (If it's our home, shouldn't we think of it as ours too?) He has a basement full of tools but I can't use them because they are "his". If we go to a sale, he looks at what he's interested in and we have to leave regardless of if I'm interested, he says "I don't need anything here" and loads us up in the car. He won't let the kids have anyone over because he suspects everyone of casing the place to steal from him. Once we had a slumber party for my 13 year old while he took my son to a boyscout camp. We had two carefully screened girls over, and planned the rest of the pary at the river park so it wouldn't be at the house. He got so nervous about them being here, that he cut the campout short and they came home at 11:30pm. Right after that, some motor oil and a can of gas dissapeared out of his outside cabinet and he said my daughter's friends must have come back later and taken them. He bought my son a bb gun, then said he probably asked for it so he could shoot cats. If mail comes in for me, if it's addressed to "parents of" from the school, he reads it first and monitors what is said about the kids (most of times it's just a reminder of how many absenses they have or how many immunizations they need this year). He tried to teach my daughter to drive, but he threw her into heavy traffic the first day and hollered at her so much, she won't drive with him anymore, and he's mad at me over it. When I first married him, he took me out in his car which was a stick and said he was going to teach me how to drive it, when I told him I'd driven a stick before, he still insisted on "teaching" me the right way to drive it. Anytime a question comes up, he will "teach" the answer over and over for a month or so. When I found two jobs here in town and quit my job in my old town, I asked him his opinion which one he thought was best, he said "well, the one at the photo studio is right out in public, at least if you are working at the school, you won't have to worry about your appearance" (I am heavy-set), I didn't say anything to him, but was depressed for a day or so. Now if I ask even the least little thing about a job or his opinion, he says he won't talk to me about it because he "gets himself in trouble". Now I've gotten to the point where I'm ready to leave, and when the subject of the water bill came up and he started spewing about me taking advantage of him paying for the mortgage and income tax, etc., and he said he was giving me a chance to build up a savings so I could "feel better about myself", I wanted to talk, and he said it wasn't a good time, so I tried the next morning, and he said I was on my way to work (Monday)so it wasn't a good time to talk so we would have to wait until Friday afternoon, so on Fri. I tried and he said it was too late at night, and on the weekend, he had to go take care of his mom, and had to go to the store, and had to do this or that all weekend, so I've given up. I've been keeping a diary of these things, mostly to get it off my chest. I'm starting to think I was some sort of "project" for him, he always tells me he doesn't give to regular charities, but gives to local folks around here to help them out. He's always saying he doesn't know why his neice doesn't marry so she doesn't have to work so hard and raise her kid by herself, although she seems happy the way it is and has just gotten a good job with the post office. He's also always saying that he feels sorry for heavy-set girls (such as his other neice) who probably marry the first guy they see or get themselves pregnant out of wedlock because they have low self-esteem). I had a good job, and was doing ok in my rental home, my kids weren't going without, I just wanted someone to fill the gaps in my love-life, not a financial sugar-daddy, but I think he thought that because I lived in a rental trailer and was a single mom, he had to "rescue" me. That's not what I was looking for! I know he won't go to a councellor, and if I ask him about it, he'll throw a fit.<BR>[This message has been edited by Shaylene (edited July 22, 2001).]<P>
