I made the mistake of trying to make things work with him for the sake of my infant daughter. He was horrible to me for the 4 years leading up to me getting pregnant. I had finally worked up the courage to leave him only to find out I was pregnant a week later. For the next 10 weeks I battled with myself and him over the possibility of an abortion. He wanted one, I didn’t but was trying to convince myself it was the best option so I could be free of him. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Went through my pregnancy severely depressed and fought with him all the time. Once she was born things got even worse between us. He didn’t want her but was hell bent on trying to take her from me just to see me suffer. He was very careful not to say things in text or phone so it wouldn’t be used against him. When I had shown everything to my lawyer they said he would get joint custody and visitation rights. I had no proof of any of the things he had said to me or the verbal and mental abuse from before I got pregnant. It was my word against his. The more I fought with him the more things would go in his favor once we went to court. I eventually came to a realization that he has narcissistic personally disorder. The more I read about it the more things started to make sense. It was as if I was reading about the last few years of my life. I tested it on many occasions to see if he was in fact a narcissist. Everything the textbooks said matched to a T. Everything I read said there’s no way to win a court battle with one, that it’s extremely hard to get them to show their true colors. I couldn’t drag my daughter through courts and custody battles and broken homes and being exposed to the lifestyle he was living. There were only two solutions: for him to be gone completely or to sacrifice myself and try to make things work with him for the betterment of my daughter. And that’s what happened. He changed completely just like a narcissist does. The fighting stopped. We started to work together when it came to anything related to her. Things had become stable. We moved in together and a year later I’m pregnant with our second child. He is still the same man he always was. He criticizes everything I do, the way I act, the things I say, the way I look. I’ve had a difficult pregnancy and stupidly thought he would be a help at home at least when it came to our daughter. Even today at 36 weeks pregnant and after having nausea and contractions on and off all day, when I asked if he could give her a bath after he gave her a bowl of ice cream that went everywhere except her mouth, his answer to me was that if I knew how to make him happy he would but I don’t deserve help bc I’m not a woman and I don’t look like one either, that I just have to suffer through my pain and deal with it bc I’m a horrible mother, wife, and caretaker and if he has to start doing my job then there’s no point in having me around. Crying in front of him was a mistake, thinking I could talk to him about what I was feeling was a bigger mistake. It just gave him more fuel to continue his verbal attacks. I don’t see any way out. He will never let me be at peace. My punishment for not listening to him and having an abortion is suffering him the rest of my life.