@Christina
If you truly believe that you are not a Christian. God doesn't ever say to give up on someone who needs him. He says to get help and try everything. Just because my husband does things deemed by society to be 'abusive' does not make him an abuser. Just because someone has a mental illness does make them a detriment. Just because one in a marriage struggles does not mean it's okay to just leave and divorce and move on. It is a sin. It is wrong. You are 100% wrong in your advice to anyone to simply get away and give up.
Seriously, you do not understand abuse. An abuser abuses because of power. There are millions of men with PTSD who don’t abuse their wives. And thousands of others who do NOT have PTSD and do abuse. In fact, sometimes they kill their spouses.
I have taken courses in Domestic Violence, as a pastor. One video was a lovely lady who kept making excuses for her husband, and saying it wasn’t that bad. In the end, he just about killed her while she was ironing. What saved her was hitting him with the iron, and running away. For course, it got worse, after she went back as a good Christian wife to a good Christian man. In the end, he was put in prison.
Mental illness, unless someone is actually psychotic, is NOT ever an excuse for abuse. It is not about them lacking control over themselves, but wanting control over you. And your husband is doing that well, keeping you from having money and isolating you. And believe me, this will escalate.
A marriage struggle is not having enough money to make ends meet, and fighting about it. A marriage struggle is disagreeing on how to raise the children, or dealing with in laws. The situation you are in is that you are being constantly assaulted and used. You are like a prisoner of war, who has Stockholm syndrome and thinks it is ok for the abuser to isolate them, keep them from their families and that they need to love the husband, “just the way he is!” NO! You have married a master manipulator, a narcissist who would be like this regardless of his mental illness. I run a support group for the mentally ill, and none of them would do this. Being mentally ill doesn’t mean you don’t know right from wrong.
You are in big trouble, and I fear for your child. The sin is that your narcissistic abuser husband has convinced you that you do not have the right to live in safety, free from verbal, mental, physical and financial abuse.
For the sake of your child, you need to leave this man. A narcissist is someone with no caring or life. In fact, the belief that you have to stay with him no matter what he does is a form of religious domestic violence. Here is something from Wikipedia:
”
Domestic violence (also named domestic abuse or family violence) is a pattern of behavior which involves violence or other abuse by one person against another in a domestic setting, such as in marriage or cohabitation. It may be termed intimate partner violence when committed by a spouse or partner in an intimate relationship against the other spouse or partner, and can take place in heterosexual or same-sex relationships, or between former spouses or partners. Domestic violence can also involve violence against children, parents, or the elderly, and may be done for self-defense. It takes a number of forms, including physical, verbal, emotional, economic, religious, reproductive, and sexual abuse, which can range from subtle, coercive forms to marital rape and to violent physical abuse such as choking, beating, female genital mutilation and acid throwing that results in disfigurement or death. Domestic murders include stoning, bride burning, honor killings, and dowry deaths.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_violence
