trauma? from a "shut down"?

I'm gonna describe something that I think got to be a trauma to me although not a big one but still pointing at something very important that was clearly wrong. I have done counseling with my husband and before that was one of the issues I brought to light. Til this day the memory of it still comes back now and then which I guess means I am not fully over it or have complete trust.

When I think back on this memory and/or it shows up on it's own I naturally withdraw from him and my voice when speaking to him is sort of harsh or cold and not personal and on neutral things. I can still feel my anger that came after I felt vulnerable, hurt, and afraid. i was afraid at that moment but did everything not to show it, and still fought this parent - alone, I might add even if I had my own husband in the room with me. He might as well have been in China.

What happened was that we and the younger generation of our family was at his parent's residence. Now to give a bit of background: My husband has grown up in a home where his parents would argue and fight a lot. I believe and I am not alone in that, is that one if his parent is a narcissist.

So this parent is extremely dominant and shifts on the emotion scale and needs attention like no other. Is sort of like a stranger too in the family in that from what I have been told and before seen, is that it goes in and out of the family dynamic and the rest of the family members and those who has married into it are very family-oriented, so I would say it is a strange cut in one and the same family. I have listened to stories of how successful and charming and good looking this parent is "out there". If nobody else says anything this parent will tell you these stories itself, believe me. Not a trait of humbleness in it's body.

Back to the scene that I think I have found traumatic. So this thing came up and the narcissistic parent asked my husband about it and he said go and ask my wife because I know she is against it. This was something he and I had discussed before and made a decision about before, in the privacy of our home, just he and I. Just like other decisions we had made it was not always give and take, a compromise, but sometimes I would let him win and other times he would let me win. This had been one of those times he had let me win. We had not aired this discussion, this topic with anyone else. I would never discuss any of our matters to any family or friends but keep it between us as I would think we were the ones that had to make it work and bringing in others would only make it more confusing. he would also tell me before at one point that he thought we should keep it private between him and I. To my knowledge he would not air anything to his family and friends. He had been the one to first tell me he wanted it this way, to not tell or involve others.

So his narcissist of a parent came to "ask" me this something. Only the narcissist don't ask - it gave orders, was insulted somehow,already and I was completely caught by surprise. I did what I always did before: I tried to remain calm, collected, sure on my voice. Stand my ground. I made apparently the mistake to say what I was used to saying back then when my husband and I had made a decision regarding our family, which was using the term we instead of I and very soon pointed out that it had been me, not us. At the time we were in the same room so I then looked over to my husband who chose to look down on something else as if that deserved his attention more. Zero respect for the situation he had pushed on me. As the situation worsen with his parent I still kept myself calm on the outside or tried to at least and did not cave in. I was trying to truly show that this was not a discussion we were to have, it was if anything something between myself and my husband and something my husband had earlier made me think we had agreed upon.

Afterwards everything caught up with me. My husband would later apologize to me and say he felt ashamed and that he could not explain his behavior more than that he had at first felt irritated that he had not been able to say yes to what this parent asked because he knew I would say no. I told him how I had experienced this so called "discussion" with his parent on enemy's land no less and had felt completely abandon and as if my husband might as well have put a knife in my back.

He was later diagnosed to be on the autism spectrum and there is something called "shut down":s. I have asked him several times to lead me back to how he experienced the situation and he has given me extremely little, says he can't explain it but that it will never happen again but as far as I have understood if you have a shut down you can't help it right?

Our situation is very different these days regarding his parent. Had it not been we would have been divorced I think by now as the mental abuse was too much for me in the end to cope with, too high of a price. What happened to me should not have happened to anyone and I cracked after years of this. I had to get myself up again. Had I never met my husband none of this stuff would have happened to me I think. He let this in, and I did not know how dangerous it all was for my mental state til it was too late. I am not at all just thinking of this incident, but others. I think it has hurt me in this way because it felt as if my husband was in on it. That I was alone even with him in the room. That I will be alone again with him next time I am in danger and need some back up. I know it is a trust issue and it should not be something that comes and goes, it should be solid. I've been told our old marriage is over, and this is our new one, apparently that is a popular phrase often used, to not return to old issues but having learned from them and now moving on.

I get it that his own boundaries were not were they were suppose to be, for his own sake foremost, to have maybe accepted this had this been how he would have been talked" to, but to not react when a supposedly loved one is in trouble was to me a big warning sign.

I have seen him since standing up for me and sounding angry when doing so, going up against this parent of his when it has even if it would so very rarely see me and I would refuse to get in a situation where I was to be alone in a room with this parent (as that is the opportunity it takes to say and do bad things to me without provocation, sick person what can I say?).

I think to me this is an unfinished chapter with my husband's behavior back then, what now happened to him and how he could have when he now claims he loves me, and that he loved me then, have allowed this to take place without a word or gesture of protest?

I know myself that my own boundaries has been screwed up but when it came to other people there was always this shift in me and I would say and do things to protect them. He did nothing to help me. He instead send this lunatic my way, I was completely caught by surprise. I thought this was over a matter and it was then rather long ago that we had talked through, were on the same page, and then that? All of a sudden? He just let me have it? Who does that?

But all the words he says he can tell me is that he can't answer to what happen, why he didn't. It is so odd because we have been out in public when something happened to someone and then he stepped right in and took care of it, just like that. And that was to a stranger. But to me, his own wife? It has hurt and left me in doubt. If he could just explain himself - but he can't. I have not heard of shut downs before hearing of autism. How can it stop someone from showing, doing something? And then still tell me that had the situation worsen he would have done something, when it was already so bad? That was to minimize my experience.

[lostsoul13]

He could of been going through what you were going through after years with narcissistic- he might of just slipped up and eventually will stand up for him self and you…

Thank you LostSoul13. Yes.

At first I thought he rat me out to save himself, and then he could not very much love me, or else the empathy would stop you from doing something like that.

I don't know if I have this defense mechanism in me these days as he has stepped up the way he has and as long as he now has done that, that when I feel my feelings grow for him again, or remind me how they use to be for him once, that I get scared and then I want to make sure that he is not the guy to stab me in the back and hurt me the way he has before, that it is a bit out of my control. Before when I trusted him completely I never had any of this.

I know when me and my first love broke up and years later when I asked him to explain something I remembered vividly he told me he could not remember. He would never back then when it had actually happened explain himself either. It shut down all ways for communication. I felt I could not just skip that chapter and pretend it hadn't happened, the way he wanted me to. It made me feel that so easily something like that could happen again. I did not trust him no more. I know now he was in more trouble with himself than I even thought at the time. That he had his true reasons why he did not remember and said so little of it. If anything, his underlying condition indicated that it was this way, months after the break up when he showed up out of the blue and his eyes were unrecognizable to me, when I could not say if he lived in this reality or another. As if he was both confused and clear. It felt foreign to me. It wasn't him. Usually around this time, I've read about 3 months or so, we move on, we let our exes go. I was doing way better, and to then see him turn up, and like that. But perhaps because he was the way he was then he began this stalking period of his which certainly did not help me to return to him. He needed help, I think. I still felt protective of him and I know we all cared about him, and I just had this trouble reporting him even if I warned him I would if he did not stop. He had this "secret" drinking problem, this why I don't even know if he remembered calling me and back then perhaps my fault I would take the call finally to tell him not to call again or listen shortly to what it was he wanted to say, it was of practical nature or a joke, nothing that took many words, and he wasn't playing me. Anyways it was difficult to get closure when you want answers from someone (he at the time) and he ain't giving it to you. That sort of behavior shields my heart. Later on it wasn't that I needed that type of closure in order to give us another try, but I did feel as if he tried to strip me of my dignity before and then not even explaining his behavoir or apologizing, and when I said it the way it was he would only say "I would never do that to you" when I felt like telling him "Well you did (said is more accurate he did not actually do anything, it was his words)". It would at the time rile me up and I know I had to stop myself from getting upset about it, but i know I felt like asking him "What would I win out of making that up? What would I gain from that?", it had been the last thing I ever wanted to happen, and it did, and then him me giving me zero trust that my version of it was true, even if he too had been there (but did not remember). So it was hopeless.

One time I was under a meeting which lasted about an hour and afterwards before we got the protocol and recording and what not I was asked what was said under the meeting. I was so concentrated that I remembered every single word, did not forget a single one, but other people's memories slipped. I knew I had that type of concentration back then too. Even today I am being told after a fight that I mark words, I remember them. It may be from me being highly sensitive I suppose that it gets increased. To then compare stories to the other person being in the room when this has happened - and he, my husband this time, does not even react...that has been scary to me. That he has chosen to be that disconnected: I was looking to connect, I was looking at him several times while his dad had a go at me for any legitimate reason what so ever.

I want to understand things and have this promise and believe that it won't ever happen again, it should not even happen the first time. I think when we feel safe - we allow ourselves to love and then it feels safe to love. When it doesn't...it doesn't. It won't blossom. It will be held captivated and no love wants to be hold like that, take too much energy.

I think love is different here in a way for us humans to feel, and another way when we are one with ourselves, in free form, in spirit. I have already during meditative state felt a more pure form of it. Perhaps it is our egos, our fears that get to be the buzz that interfer what is always there?

What has bug me about my luvs narcissistic parent is that I believe the other parent is on the autistic spectrum as well as my husband and this could mean they miss out on some social cues while I have to say what ever gets lost there they make up for in other ways, things they do understand that I for instance have only touched the surface off.

From my own experience and from what I have read I don't believe people on the autistic spectrum can be manipulative, and if they would try one would be able to see through that. His other parent is very manipulative. It is not that they would not be able to carry it off, I am sure had their put their minds to it both my husband and his other parent could have, but they don't have the heart to do it, you know? It's not in their nature. One thing I have appreciated about my husband (and also an ex of mine) is that they would just say it: what ever it now was. I never felt I was in some game with them. I liked that kind of honesty. We did not have to agree always, but it was at least this platform to stand on, it felt safe to me, even the same.

My husband has said lately about what he thought went wrong was that his narc-parent used our different opinions that he was foolish enough to admit to but too late discovering his parent would use it as a gun to my head sort of thing, and that he realized too late he had played the narc-parent right into it's hands. But again he would stress that it wasn't me who said, did anything wrong, and that yes he now understod what I meant about the "we"-thing instead of him doing his "I"-thing, and especially him now knowing and believing he comes from a narc-family he knows now that he has to think in "we-terms" more than perhaps others or else the cracks are gonna come and show, so on that he is on the same page. He says he won't repeat this old mistake of his. Either way he thought the one who turned it all into a bad thing was his narc-parent. He has said when I get into that mode that he can't see that I am hurt or sad or afraid (but he did not even look to see that!) and that he thought I had handled it well, it was on him he said and his dumb parent at the time who didn't.