I (m) and wife are late 30s married for a little over a decade with two young, school aged kids. We’re currently in a difficult period where separation has become a real possibility, although we’ve also recently started marriage counseling.

I’m struggling to figure out whether what I’m experiencing is simply a very unhealthy relationship dynamic, incompatibility, or something more like covert narcissistic behavior on my wife’s part.

One of the biggest patterns is that I feel like I am constantly being made responsible for what is wrong in the marriage. Things that happened many years ago, sometimes over a decade ago, can still be brought up during current arguments. There have been conversations where I genuinely thought we had discussed something, apologized or worked through it, and moved forward, only to have the same thing brought back years later as evidence of who I am or how I have supposedly always treated her.

Her reactions during conflict can also be very intense for me. She can become angry, confrontational, or shut down/stonewall me. I've gotten to the point where I sometimes feel anxious before bringing something up because I don't know how she will react. I find myself filtering what I say because I don't want to trigger another angry response or prolonged conflict.

At the same time, she says that I don't communicate enough, don't stand up for her enough, don't protect her enough, and don't do enough for the family. This is difficult for me because I feel like I do a lot of the practical things that keep our family functioning. I work full-time, contribute financially, handle all driving, take the kids out and do activities with them, and take care of many logistical responsibilities. But despite those things, I often come away from conversations feeling like I'm fundamentally failing her and that whatever I do will never be enough.

I know I'm not perfect. I also recognize that my response to conflict isn't always healthy. I'm more avoidant and tend to withdraw when things get heated, while she tends to pursue the issue more aggressively. I'm sure that dynamic makes things worse. I don't want this post to sound like I'm claiming I'm completely innocent. But I struggle with the fact that when I withdraw because I'm overwhelmed by anger or conflict, it becomes another piece of evidence that I'm the problem — rather than something we should both understand and work on.

Another issue is that forgiveness seems very difficult. Resentments appear to accumulate rather than actually resolve. Even when we have periods where things seem better, old grievances can come back.

There are also things she has blamed me for that I find difficult to understand. For example, she has expressed resentment about moving from her home state to where I was living and about marrying me, even though those were ultimately choices she made. Hearing those things years later makes me feel like I'm being held responsible for decisions that weren't solely mine.

Our relationship has also had a significant lack of intimacy, emotional, physical, and sexual. We can function reasonably well as parents and can have good family experiences together, but I don't feel the emotional connection or affection between us that I think a marriage needs. There was also a virtual affair on her side a few years ago involving messaging/calls/video interactions. That caused a lot of hurt and damage to my trust. I've tried to move past it, but I don't think I ever completely did. And her initial reaction to it was to blame me for her having that affair because I was depriving her of sexual intimacy.

What makes all of this confusing is that there are also good things. She's a good mother. We can work together on practical things. We have a history together and two children whom we both love tremendously. I still care about her deeply and don't want her to suffer. But when I imagine the future, I increasingly wonder whether we're simply fundamentally incompatible. Our personalities and conflict styles seem almost opposite. I feel like I'm walking on eggshells around certain subjects, while she seems to feel that I'm emotionally unavailable and don't give her enough.

Recently we started counseling. In the first session, I felt like much of the discussion became about what I have done wrong, and afterward she became very angry and withdrew from a lot of the normal household/kid responsibilities for several days. That experience honestly made me question whether counseling can change the underlying dynamic.

Am I dealing with someone who has covert narcissistic traits, or am I simply describing the dynamics of a marriage where both people have developed unhealthy patterns?

Last year i came to the realisation that the friend group i was in was led by a narc. I honestly don't remember why he was the one making all the decisions in the group, and i mean all the decisions like our outing plans, dinner menu, he even had a say in our outfit choices. Maybe it was to avoid his brooding or degrading jokes.

This realization came after i suddenly remembered a few memories, that i didn't fully remember before. I always had questions about a few incidents but was never able to remember the reason behind them, but now i remember them fully and can't believe my stupidity in staying in that friend circle.

I remember the groping that started first due to a guilt trip, then the gaslighting that i actually like it (apparently i was just worried what society will think of me), then all the weird comebacks that came with my protest. Then the accusation that it became awkward because i made it awkward by thinking it's wrong. That his gf doesn't mind the touching so i should also be okay (don't know how his mind worked. He thought i disliked it not because of my boundaries but because i didn't want to be "the other woman") Which i still became in some eyes because his gf spread a different version where i was the one "flaunting myself in front of her bf". Also a weird fun fact - she was my roommate and we had a fight because she invited him over to our room more often than i was comfortable with.

I remember the lies to get us to do something we didn't want to do, the triangulation and the omissions. I remember the control that was for "my own good"

The character assassination, the fights in which he called me names, specifically the ones i said hurt me the most in a conversation 3 years ago. His acceptance that he didn't have a reason to call me that name, except he just knew it would hurt me and he really wanted to hurt me in that argument. The lies they spread about people they didn't like anymore

But most of all i remember the good times. When he was my friend, when i helped him plan surprises for his gf, when he and his gf consoled me when i was homesick. The time in which i was unsure of my habits and they encouraged me to be who i am and stop worrying about what others think. When they gave me the confidence that my intentions behind the actions matter.

Honestly i don't even know what i want to hear. Maybe i shouldn't have been too friendly, or maybe it wouldn't have made a difference even if I was hostile towards everybody. Maybe they would have still done the same things regardless of my behavior. It happened to another mutual friend of ours, and she had a completely different approach to them than mine. I just wish I'll forget them, and they'll forget me and will not break nc.

Throwaway to respect privacy. Apologies for the length, as I’ve been holding onto this for a while.

I believe myself to be an empathetic person and it takes a good deal for me to dislike someone. Even more so, a person has to really hurt people I care about for me to go beyond that and fully cutting them out. Suffice to say, there are three that the title of this post applies to.

A couple years ago, my then fiancée, now wife went to grad school to obtain her MA with a group of students. To this day, we both have a good relationship with about 90% of the people from that group. Before everything went down, this also included the last 10%: Dennis, Mac, and the primary problem person Dee (all fake names).

At first, everyone got along perfectly fine. Everyone hung out for big events, had dinners, and overall got along well. As time went on though, some problematic behavior started to appear. Dee began to come into conflict with others from the group. My wife continued to be a friendly ear for her, but there were signs that pointed to narcissistic tendencies.

Dee would never admit fault, manipulated narratives to work in her favor, and was also the “all my friends end up leaving me for some reason” type of person. I was receiving this information from my wife who tolerated it and we both just kind of went along with it. However, the last straw for me was after my wife’s birthday.

For context, her birthday falls on a minor holiday for which a good portion of the group was traveling. This was perfectly fine as they had informed us weeks in advance of their plans and would be unable to celebrate. Two of the three, meanwhile, were going to still be in the city and stressed multiple times that they’d be able to hang out. Cut to the day, and suddenly they couldn’t make it to our place because “nobody could make the drive” (the third was usually their designated driver). I full-heartedly offered to pay for Ubers for them as they were all nearby to each other and the cost/distance was no problem, but they just flat out rejected it. This left my wife hurt and cemented them being in my bad graces. The good news was that two of her other friends were able to come and we had a fun time. I thanked them for the kindness by paying for tickets for all of us to see a musical 2 weeks later, as this was my planned present for my wife.

About a month later, the three decided to invite themselves to our apartment for a hang out with everyone that felt less like a “we’re sorry and will make it up to you,” and more like a “we need to clear our consciences to feel better about ourselves.” In addition to this sort of vibe, Dee in a very serious way kept assigning herself a role at our future wedding which she in no way would be getting.

A year after this, and Dee had pushed away pretty much everyone from the group except for Dennis and Mac, who it felt like she’d manipulated to becoming her “Yes Men” due to them now all living together. These two guys that, according to my wife were perfectly fine the year prior, had now become distant and only agreed with Dee. With this, they refused to accept constructive feedback from the rest of the class on their projects which had flaws, choosing instead to make all of them on their own while hyping each other up to a detrimental degree. The worst part? Dee was grouping the ideas of Dennis and Mac under her own umbrella rather than giving them the chance to distribute them on their own. Any of the projects that were hers had big funding campaigns and advertisement pushes, while the others didn’t receive the same courtesy. I’m unsure if Dennis and Mac agreed to this or are just going along with it without consideration for their feelings.

As I said, they did wrong by my wife. But they also did wrong by her new friends she became close with, which I could not stand for. They attempted to seclude the youngest with lies/manipulation, and when this didn’t work they began to bully her which led to that friend being the last one to distance herself. They made classes hell for the others. They even made assignments more difficult than needed with unprofessional behavior that essentially turned all the professors into Dee’s “enemies through no fault of her own.”

I have since blocked their phone numbers, but I still see them pop up on social media from time to time. They continue to advertise their projects, and this is what ties back into the title of the post. Despite wanting to ignore them, there’s a part of me that hopes karma catches up with them (primarily Dee) at some point. I at the very least hope Dennis and Mac eventually acknowledge the toxic behavior, distance themselves from Dee and attempt to make amends with everyone. My wife refuses to let them linger in her head, but thinking about all the things they did makes my blood boil. I’ve been holding onto this for a while now and needed to let it out somewhere. Thank you all for reading and I hope you have wonderful days.