Just like basically all forms of right-wing and/or conspiracy nonsense.
This a little r/relationship-advice about a couple divided over the vaccine.
Summary
The pandemic has turned my husband [M33] into a conspiracy theorist and Iām [F31] very worried.
In the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, my husbandās government job mandated vaccination. He chose not to get vaccinated and was later terminated. We were closing on our first home at this time, so we were left scrambling to qualify for a mortgage on my sole income, and finances were tight. This was also a very stressful time since my husband couldnāt enter establishments without a vaccine card so our options for socialization and decompression were limited, and some friends even stopped inviting us to gatherings because of his lack of vaccination. I know for sure he felt sad and isolated due to his stance, and this is when he turned to some online communities to find people who shared his beliefs.
I then started to notice his vernacular change - he would refer to vaccination as āpoisonā, use terms like āplandemicā, and repeat false information such as the vaccine as the cause of death for certain celebrities or athletes. He started to follow many right-winged social media pages (ex: Jordan Peterson, Rebel News etc.), and even joined a large Whatsapp group named āThe Sheeplessā which is a group of people against vaccination that circulate false articles and conspiracy theories in a chat.
Hereās the thing - I work in the medical field. I have 3 science degrees and a graduate level education. I worked throughout the thick of the pandemic and would come home burnt out after having Covid positive patients die on my shift from respiratory arrest after spending hours in PPE and watching their families suffer. However, as my husband got more and more into his newfound community, he started to question what I experienced firsthand in the hospital. He would tell me that he ādid some researchā and the hospitals are actually empty. His research entailed scrolling social media pages. He has yet to read just one scientific article in a peer reviewed journal about respiratory viruses or mRNA vaccines. He also started to challenge my scientific knowledge. Heād say things like the vaccine has āchanged my DNAā and I should check to see if I can still get pregnant since the vaccine causes infertility. When I debunked his theories using actual literature, his response was the articles I read are funded by the government or theyāre āthe white manās scienceā. Yes, weāre both POC.
His beliefs have now expanded into an overarching fear of government control. Weāre Canadian so he believes Trudeau is trying to turn our country communist and implement a social credit system to limit āour rights and freedomsā. Heās become increasingly more radicalized, and has talked about moving to a rural area so we can farm and grow our own foods so when the government shuts down our ability to buy food in grocery stores, weāll be āreadyā. He talks about the World Economic Forumās āmaster planā to annihilate everyoneās finances by purposely causing inflation and all the āhidden filesā about vaccine side effects that are being suppressed.
Weāve essentially had at least one weekly blow-up fight about his conspiracy theories over the last year. My fear is that weāve grown incompatible due to the pandemic. He never once expressed anti-vaccine or even anti-government rhetoric until he was terminated from his job for not adhering to the policies. Now weāre wondering how we could possibly have children when our beliefs have diverged. He says heād still be open for our kids to get the ātried and trueā vaccinations, but he wouldnāt want them to get anything new. He also says he wouldnāt want to raise children in a place like Canada because our leader is tyrannical.
I think he has developed PTSD and maybe some sort of delusional disorder due to the trauma of losing his job. Heās done 2 sessions with a psychiatrist, but his beliefs remain stronger than ever. I donāt want to walk away, especially due to what I perceive to be mental illness, but I just donāt know how much more I can take of him undermining my knowledge.
Iāll take any suggestions at this point. Has anyone else gone through something similar?
Surprises POC and Canadian
Onion?
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That is sad as shit.
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She needs to get out ASAP. He will end up killing her one day if she doesnt
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She could inject him with vaccine first and then claim it was self defense.
Sadly I donāt think it is. My wife is a doctor and she has a former colleague that is also a doctor, and that colleagueās husband went full anti-vaxx to full fascist and no one talks to them anymore. Thereās a non-zero chance that Reddit post is actually from her, which would be an incredible coincidence but it describes her situation exactly.
Totally this.
Gotta end it because he isnāt going to get better anytime soon.
Heās in a cult. The only option other than a clean break (which should be on the table, they have no kids, she can end it and move on) is to seek guidance on how to get a family member out of a cult. A lot of the natural instincts about what to do (argue with them about facts, yell at them because theyāre hurting you) just drive them deeper into the arms of the cult. The only thing that ever works is to point out how the cult memberās life is worse than it was when they werenāt a cult member, and that all the promises the cult is making arenāt coming true. Thatās the central strategy when trying to pull people out of a cult but itās a tough road, itās the only thing that works and it doesnāt work all the time.
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The op of that Reddit thread really feels their spouse has a mental illness and is fighting really hard to help them as opposed to leaving them.
I donāt know if I could do it. I have had a couple friend and family relationships sour over similar antics. One of the recommendations given her was to see if he would do a tech detoxification. So cutting off using screens for a period of time to try and reset. I just feel like the internet is the lifeblood of this thinking, though, and would be extremely hard to get a believer to give up access.
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Yes, sheās a good spouse Iāll give her that!
Being in a cult and having a mental illness arenāt necessarily exclusive, if I was going to approach this with a problem solving approach then I would say that he is in a cult and that is his mental illness. The DSM actually acknowledges that cult members can be in a delusional state that can be treated as a mental illness: āidentity disturbance due to prolonged and intense coercive persuasionā. Thatās a cult, baby.
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I know I have posted about this before but I have a very similar situation with my parents. They refused to get vaxxed. They believe a lot of the dumbass conspiracy stuff surrounding Covid. I have seen them less and less as a result. Last October I decided I needed to go spend some quality time with them since they are getting older and honestly it scares me how much our relationship has dwindled as well as how little time they probably have less for that to change.
Things went ok for the first couple of days but I noticed A LOT of weird magazines/dvds/books from Hillsdale college and the like. I just kept my mouth shut and tried to enjoy the time with them. The next to last night my mom starts bringing up CRT and how the Dems are encouraging kids to be trans and I shut it down pretty fast saying virtually none of her beliefs on that are based in reality and I didnāt care to talk about it. The next night before we were about to leave she confronted me telling me that I was disrespectful to them because I wouldnāt have a civil conversation about their political beliefs. That I was silencing them. That it was their house and it wasnāt fair to limit their speech in their own house.
So I asked if they really wanted to do this. Do they really want my actual opinions. I basically told them they were bigots, listened to a bunch of evil people/propaganda and were complete hypocrites with regard to their faith and then left and havenāt been back since. Didnāt see them over the holidays. My wife now refuses to even speak with them. I donāt really see any coming back from it. I have talked with them over the phone a few times but it is very strained.
I 100% believe they are decent people who were fully propagandized at first by AM radio (Rush/Hannity/etc) then Fox News and now god knows what. Living in Wichita, KS they have plenty of access to other lunatics in their community. They then feed on each other, normalizing the insanity as well as giving them a place to go and then whine and complain about their victimhood from anyone who pushes back against them.
And Iām not the only one. None of my siblings went for Christmas. My sister refuses to talk to them and my brother has about the same level of relationship as I do. Does that wake them up? No. It has just further entrenched them in the delusion they spend their entire life living in.
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Iām really sorry that youāre going through that.
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Brutal stuff that a lot of us are experiencing to various degrees. Just sucks, all there is to it.
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Japan is set to finally go maskless from next month, or at least mask-optional.
If youād like to die of a preventable disease hereās the place for it:
Thing is if you completely cut them off, then they have no choice but to go deeper.
You gotta keep that line of communication open for change and forgiveness to be a possibility.
Eh. As one gets older thereās less and less that would make them reconsider their beliefs, and honestly, āall my kids have gone no contact with meā is probably one of the very few that might be enough of a shock to actually have an effect.
I know that my mother over time has faded from far-right politics quite a bit and that probably wouldnāt have happened if my sisters and I told her to fuck off while Trump was POTUS.
Itās a balancing act though because even being around them is a massive drain on my mental health and wellbeing. That being said I havenāt completely cut them off and still have talked to them occasionally on the phone.
I honestly have no hope they ever come back from the abyss though. So itās just figuring out the best way to handle it until they are dead (or I am).
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