March 14, 2026. Full raw inputs, Part 3
They all are fundamentally dependent on me. They can't survive without me. And they tell me that I talk too much and I constantly narrate. The narration is me trying to get them to see that their needs are putting me in a place that I can't survive. They just keep telling me that they don't want to hear about it, so essentially that means it's just so fundamentally entitled.
I put their needs first because that's what I understand love to be, and they put their needs first because it seems that I just don't matter and I'm an expendable resource.
I'm completely stuck and I don't know how to even take a step forward.
I'm troublesomely independent as a result of my own trauma. I can't imagine having to ask people for things, let alone not making it easy to ask for help. But I'm surrounded by people who ask of me or demand or function at a level that demands that I sacrifice my own well-being. And then when I try and have that conversation I'm told I'm narrating and I'm the problem.
In any other context I would be considered a high needs person.
I've always operated on the fact that I've tried to be for my family what the child me needed and never got. And somehow I became that and I was taken advantage of again. It just seems like I was built for sacrifice.
I'm now not breaking the cycle because I did all of the work. And now I'm asking for accommodation and I'm being refused. And my life is messing me up so badly that I can't hold it together and I'm not nice to the people that I love. It's like this loop.
And the loop very much feels like reactive abuse.
I fear that I'm watching the dynamics of narcissism play out in my family. I'm really worried that my children are either going to wind up with complex trauma or narcissism.
It's about modeling shutdown and modeling scapegoating behavior. As well as modeling deeply ungrateful and entitled behavior. How do you get someone to acknowledge that their existence is only functional due to your accommodating them without being accommodated yourself.
It's messing me up as I tried to show the other side. I tried to teach by doing.
It comes down to accountability and personal responsibility and what we're teaching these kids by our behaviors.
My wife and children are developing into the kind of people who will take a shit on you and be mean and awful because you're not doing enough for them at your own expense, and the expense on you is not up for discussion. This seems like it tracks with the emotional immaturity of children, but...
I tried to show the other side. I tried to teach by doing.
It's almost like my wife is a disabled person. She's unable to drive, she's unable to cook, she operates at a very low level. But she also doesn't have the self-awareness or emotional maturity to face that, so we have to play this farce.
My wife doesn't have the emotional maturity to face that she's not an equal contributor and that she has to frame it for herself that she's independent and she's capable and she's good and she's right.
My wife is doing her best, but when it comes down to it, what are people actually producing. Is it wrong of me to take that 1950s perspective? I don't know how else to gauge a baseline and my wife refuses to communicate or is unable.
My wife makes decisions that she thinks are the right parenting decisions. She expects me to be the enforcement mechanism.
I need structured time with equal time actively parenting. If I am to step away for my recovery time during her parenting time, I need to be okay with her being in the garage and the kids being dysregulated and alone in the house, where that's inevitably going to turn into a bad situation.
The defense is usually that she's there and she can hear what's going on, but that's a reactive state, which means the kids need to experience something bad that we have to then fix and have to recover from. And our house has a demonstrated history of an inability to recover.
To me that's neglectful. But obviously I'm looking at that from my own lens. I'm open to understanding, but I feel like asking me to just accept is not okay either, and I think it's just another version of what happens in my marriage.
If my trauma is informing my lens, asking me to remove the lens without scaffolding is abusive to me.
While I'm the one maintaining the operational velocity in the house, earning the income, and doing the majority of logistical housework and errands, my state matters.
My wife's internal justifications for her behavior are so perfectly calibrated. The family or couples therapist is siding with her.
I'm just not sure how I can even broach this topic without it going off like a nuclear weapon in my therapy and marriage.
I feel like I want her to understand that she's participating in a mechanical gaslighting.
Couples therapy is not a vector that has my best interest in mind. It very much seems like the couples therapy is set up to support Randi's perspective.
You can't heal in the environment that hurt you. I think that's a big part of why my affect is what it is in session, because I'm being actively abused and still treated like the problem.
You look out for yourself, so you ask for help. You're told no. I leave and I break up my family. Randi has articulated that she would move back to New York. Even the small amount of help I'm getting now... No matter what move I make, I'm expected to either tolerate what's being put on me now or it's going to get worse. My children lose access to their mother and then that'll be my fault.
I'm in this situation because I cared enough to do it in the first place, with the expectation that at some point I would get the same amount of care and love and accommodation. But it just became the norm, and now I'm threatened with it just being made worse.
We're moving to Costa Rica supposedly in July. That's consuming my wife and her time, and the taxes for her business which essentially doesn't make any money. We told the kids so now we're locked into this course of action.
I have no choice because between what's going on in the country and financial arbitrage. I don't know how I'm going to survive in Costa Rica.
Genuinely all of this, and now that it's kind of hardened, it all just feels like structural gaslighting and narcissistic abuse.
I have been using prescribed cannabis to sleep and to regulate. I am struggling with my use and want to stop. I think I need to replace it pharmaceutically. This needs discussion.