Keyword: Reality-Adverse

If you need to characterize your Crazy-Making Husband with just one word, make it 'reality-adverse'.  His reality, your reality, and the reality of your family are, at best, hazy images he immediately parks far off in the outskirts of his mind. For, of all experiences The Crazy-Making Husband encounters, reality is his most despised.

Why is reality so awful for him? Simply because it's dismally different from the foolishness he cradles in his head.  Reality horrifies him. For starters, in stark contrast to his imagined stellar persona, at every turn, reality mirrors back his failures, his lackings, and the fallout of his annoying behavior.  What's more, if he gives it so much as a glance, reality shouts at him. It even makes demands. Which, of course, he projects onto you, his poor crazed wife.

Reality also requires that he fully engage in his life, which of course he cannot and will not agree to do.  Since birth, The Crazy-Making Husband has carried great entitlement. His pride in this entitlement is far-reaching and profound. Like the man in Frank Sinatra's famous song, he takes great satisfaction in proclaiming "I did it MY WAY."

Because he cannot bear to face reality, any reminders of it from his wife meet with ferocious opposition. How dare she attempt to distort his self-image?  How dare she attempt to change him?  What's most important -- and utterly devastating to The Crazy-Making Husband -- how dare she not see in him what he so clearly sees --  perfection?

What is the reality of The Crazy-Making Husband? It is twofold: inner and outer. His inner reality teems with heroism, considerable self-sacrifice, and plight -- as his wife's scapegoat.   His outer reality is downright dangerous, what with the world intensely envious of him, his wife a manipulator and demanding witch, and the dreadful pain of his under-esteemed life.