Our stories
Oh my goodness @Faith-and-Hope reading between the lines because you can't say much given its still to go to court......oh dear, your heart must be broken that he willfully and purposefully calculated all of this....it sounds like he has been in over drive in the background for a few years, manipulating lots of strings to come out the other side looking like a great guy...and with all the cash in his hot little hand and another women on his arm. Gobsmacking I am sure it is. It would be close to impossible to ever trust again.
The abuse was deliberate, it definitely was. Your exhusband knew what he was doing, he was not delusional. Realising that abuse is intentional is something that has literally taken me 10 and a half years of non stop constant therapy & 5 hospitalisations to get through. It's really only now, almost 11 years later that I have actually reached rock bottom and I am sitting in the ashes of my life. I have literally lost everything. It's going to be a long and slow road @Faith-and-Hope with so much hurt and frustrations along the way.....you need a boxing bag on the veranda or a cheap set of dinner plates you can smash...
As you say some people thrive on hurting people and embroiling them in their drama and it is absurd how on earth they stay together, but yeah, maybe they find it thrilling. I was only quite young at the time when I met this couple but it was such an eye opener for me, I guess I projected my past and assumed that only men are capable of violence and get-you-back-with-some-of-your-own-medicine like sexual conquests to make their partner jealous to get a reaction......there are cases when it isn't the typical case, I have more life exposure now and I do pause and consider.
Its hard to know how all of this will affect the cubs but you must be so worried. They have resources and are older now which hopefully will help them stay healthy......you can only take one day at a time, and rest regularly when you can because it takes so much stamina to get through a life changing trauma like this humiliation you have suffered.
I have found myself weeping quietly to myself in my apartment. But they have been tears of peace & tears of relief that the worst of it is over. I have my own little sanctuary in my unit where I can close the door and not be scared I will be hurt, with the knowledge that I don't have to have anything to do with my abusers or their complicit helpers and secret keepers. I do get lonely at times of course, but a lot of the loneliness feels historical. It isn't present day loneliness, its the deep well of loneliness and alone-ness that I have carried for 40 years that is coursing through me that I was never allowed to feel because my life was threatened daily. To now sit in my little apartment and listen to the little kids play on the swings across the road and see the puppies in the park and to be mostly free......its hard to describe that relief - but I hope you feel it too some day and can share some tears of peacefulness with your art or the kitten.
Corny 
Just a quick hello @Faith-and-Hope @Former-Member @Emelia8 @Zoe7 passing through.
I hear ya @Faith-and-Hope about the lies and deception. You read about people in the news lying about having cancer, but not only lying even getting money out of innocent people for their treatment. Its just unbelievable how far people will go. I've had to sort through old paperwork and files that I had stored away in boxes but have been forced to sift though it cos I moved last year. My fathers NPD was just off the scale. I'd forgotten about things he'd done, like registering his traumas with cultural institutes, and various other types of organisations, god I just cringe so bad. I find myself oscillating from cringing with utter embarrassment at my fathers lies, to occasionally bursting out laughing at how brazen but stupid they were. Its quite amazing how long he got away with it, but stupid him embroiled the medical system in his lies as well and by the time I was about 16 a few must have figured out it was all BS and refused to treat him. It was mortifying because a good friend at the time who was heaps older than me was a nurse at the local hospital where he would go......I could just tell by his energy he thought my father was an absolute abusive lunatic that was untreatable. He would argue with the doctors and nurses, scream at them and verbally abuse them. Those were the days before there were 100's of thousands of online forums, chat rooms and social media pages where you can just log in make a fake profile, publicise some BS trauma story that never happened to him, have dozens of people validate him and reply, reinforcing his personality disordered delusions of said BS trauma story, and his whole personal biography is up in lights on the internet for the world to see and give him attention for. He would copy trauma stories from literature. Famous literature as if it was his own. He would mimic other people's histories.....I could go on and on, but I won't I'm just rambling ...any hoo I hope that you are as well as can possibly be expected and that you are dry and cosy. I am sure the legal side of things exhausts the hell out of you, you would still have a long road yet. Are you going to Canberra to see Botticelli to Van Gogh? Can't believe that it is almost April.
@Former-Member I hope that your husband is comfortable and not distressed and that you can rest. I feel pretty cynical that there will be answers to MI in my lifetime but maybe Covid will spur some research, lessen stigma, and change a few minds of those that sit in judgment of peeps like myself and your husband. As upsetting as this article was in bringing back horrible memories I would much rather forget, it is good to see articles about the biology of MI. Something so widespread as Covid may get some ignorant people thinking that MI is no different to physical; illness, in fact it is physical it just impairs the head so they call it mental https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/22/health/covid-psychosis.html
@Emelia8 hope that you are warm and toasty with your flat bears Emelia and maybe a poochie woochie or 2 or 3 or 4. My friend texted me tonight and said that her little pupper has grown an entire 600 grams. She was 900 grams, now she is a whopping 1.5 kg
Corny
That would be so wonderful @Faith-and-Hope if there was a sudden resolution. I only wish that on top of the financial settlement you could also receive some compensation, but I know that wont happen. It irritates the hell out of me that he is still able to pull strings in his favour to save face, but really, you don't have any control over what other people think. When we are faced with over bearing people maybe in front of him they feign sympathy for his predicament so he won't lose his temper, but once away from him, they may very well be saying to their partner or family, "poor @Faith-and-Hope , what a horrible man. He's done her a favour" which he has!......sure, if he has heaps of money there may be shallow people and associates around him that are enamoured by that, but not everyone. Some will see straight through him. Your husband must still have some social connections if there's a chance he will cave and theres a financial settlement. What made my father so threatening and agro was that he had 0. He knew no one else would have him and this made his main obsession & addiction to be control over us - he had a particular hatred for me, apparently this is quite common that one child is singled out. He actually didn't want us. He would much rather have been off with other women getting as mcuh attention as possible, but once you're in your 40s/50s/60s too much damage has been done to your social image and people stay away.
In hindsight I can see how perfectly staged it was -
I've read stories in books and magazines of people that have been in a relationship with someone that faked their sexuality for financial gain....I mean it doesn't top faking cancer, that is an absolute whopper, but its up there in the Top 10 most absurd lies.
I guarantee you @Faith-and-Hope your husband knows that he is narcissistic, and he was out to get as much as he could. If he had never been independently wealthy, he would have made a claim over someone else's money that wasn't his. My father stole his father's estate from his own mother and siblings. What on earth he did with that money I will never know. Never think that he has no self awareness. They are traits, not episodic psychosis, he has insight and what is so disturbing is when you realise it was all on purpose, and on rare occassions they even admit it! If he wasn't doing it to you, it would be someone else eventaully.
Keep rested where you can, and I am hopeful 'his greatest deception' that you speak of will come to light soon, and the coward will scamper away. Parts of Europe have gone back into lockdown and is about to be engulfed with a 3rd wave, good luck with that Mr! 
I think the fact that I can burst out laughing is a good sign. I must be moving on.
Corny
Thanks @Faith-and-Hope I swing from laughter to shock & horror. Reading my post back to myself, it dawned on me I don't think I have ever told a friend in real life about my father stealing money from his own mother and siblings via his fathers estate. It must be so low down the list of shocking things he's done in terms of his sense of entitlement that is doesn't even register in my mind during conversations......now that's sayin' something!
Enjoy your art
