I am almost desperate...

[Atlantico]

I have just registered and loged in to try to have some advice. I have been married to my wife for 4 years (+1 toguether), and I continue having trouble dealing with my wife´s family to the point of having reached the......despair point. We are both in our late 40´s. Form day one, when I met them I felt there was a problem. It is not the case of being not acepted, it is the case of dealing with some very conservative, self conscious people (to the point of nonsense) that always lived in the their short sighted world (small town). Our first stress point was the fact of me being vegetarian, and them not acepting that, with all the inuendos, side jokes etc. They have the most controlling behaviour. Firsltly I decided this issue was a problem my wife was not responsible for, so I did not tell her anything, althogh she witnessed all this stressfull behavior, pretending nothing was happening. This was hurting me a lot, then I thought she should take a position and I became resentfull towards her. My mistake was not having stoped this controling behaviour from day one---BIG MISTAKE. In fact a big part of the problem is really the way my wife perceives it: she is unable to question her family behaviour towards me, in fact she still thinks like a 6 year old -- she thinks they are faultless 100%, community examples. I am left alone in the other side of the barricade. It came down to the point of me being unable to separate separate my wife from all the bitterness I feel towards her family. I see them all as the same "package" and this is putting a heavy load in our marrriage. I know that I should consider my wife and her family, different ittems, but right now I see them all the same way and I am VERY bitter.

My wife thinks I am exagerating, her family is just being harmelees.

I reached the point of not being able to sleep right.

Thank you for reading

[whichwayisup]

Your wife has to understand that YOU are her family now, number one over her parents (to a point, but I think you know what I'm saying) and make you a priority, back you up when you need her to.

 

All you can do is try to not let her folks bug you. Easier said than done, but somehow you need to turn it off and not care what they do, think or say. Who cares if they don't like that you're a vegetarian! That's their problem, right? As long as your wife supports you on that, again, then what THEY think doesn't matter.

 

Your wife isn't quite ready to see her parents in a bad light, so I do hope she wakes up soon.

[TigerCub]

I think you need to just talk to your wife and be honest about how much this bothers you. Tell her that even if you can ignore her family's stupid jabs at you, you still expect her to have your back and support you in front of them because that's what couples in a healthy relationship do - they support each other and they don't allow family members to cause senseless drama.

[waswarmncozy]

Atlantico,

 

I would expect that if I were in your shoes that my husband would talk to his family privately and express that "their jabs" are not appreciated and won't be tolerated! If they cannot treat you with respect than the two of you won't be coming around.

 

If my girls brought a man home that was a vegetarian I would be going out of my way to make things I knew he would be able to enjoy. That's what family does!

 

I hope your wife comes around to seeing your point of view on this! I would imagine it to be extremely uncomfortable for both of you.

[D-Lish]

I sympathize. My ex in-laws were the number one cause of the breakdown of our marriage. My mother-in-law was so intrusive and rude. The family was narrow minded and his mother was pretty hostile with some of the antics she pulled.

 

I remember once she asked us for thanksgiving dinner- and my husband said he couldn't come because we were in a baseball tournament 2 hours away for the weekend. What did she do?? She set a place for him at the table, told the entire family my H was coming, then when he didn't come (as she knew he wasn't)... she flew into a crying fit, ran to her room telling everyone she couldn't believe her son would do this to her- and of course that he wouldn't have done such a thing before meeting me...

 

That was just one of hundreds of antics. her hostility toward me was brutal. My H never stuck up for me (he was afraid)... and that led to me resenting him and losing respect for him.

 

That process started early on and I had always thought it would get better. I don't think things like that do get better... they only get worse. He never wanted to confront the issue- and never changed in the 8 years we were together.

 

I feel for you, I know where you are at. Not that I think your situation is completely hopeful... but a whole lot of work and change has to take place before things could get better.

[Geishawhelk]

It's never the 'big' things immediately, it's the 'little' things that snowball, and finally cause an avalanche.

This has gone on long enough.

 

First of all, yes, you need a good long talk with your wife, and you need her to stand up loyally for you.

If this doesn't work, or even if it does, actually) you could both do with counselling - seriously - because issues like this have an alarming and regular habit of being very destructive.

You need to implement damage limitations now.

 

I agree with you.

You should have spoken up at the very beginning.

But you didn't.

There you go.

We live and learn.

 

So do something now.

[Atlantico]

Thank you so much for your replies!!

 

D-Lish: my mother in law would not go as far as yours, I have to credit her this. That should heve been hell for you

 

It's never the 'big' things immediately, it's the 'little' things that snowball, and finally cause an avalanche.

This has gone on long enough.

quote]

 

This is sooooooo true, it is the snowball efect of all the petty things.

 

i will post more soon, have to go now

[Zolar]

My DH and I had some stress over them again last night. It could be that he still has a six-year old's view of them as perfect, but in my case I think it has to do more with the culture. They are Mexican and I am not. So, I am automatically an outsider and will never be on the inside. He has tried discussing this fact with them, but their response so far has been, "Okay, we understand that we're making a problem, but we'll say we won't and keep doing it, anyway." He has had a few discussions with them that have all ended up pretty much like that. I still feel that I am in a huge struggle with them. They are abusive toward me, but he can't see it. Of course, it never happens when he's around.

 

The only way I can get them to even maybe - maybe- get out of our day-to-day lives is to to take action against them, myself.

 

It has been hard for him to accept that I am his family now. His priorities still seem a little off. But, he does acknowledge that if I am uncomfortable with something that it is not acceptable to him and he'll do something about it.

 

Latest fiasco: They were not supposed to be letting themselves into the house. Apparently, they've been coming here, showering, cooking and breaking the garbage disposal while he was at work. A few days ago, I was very sick and taking a nap. When I woke up, the house looked different and I realized that they had been in here. I lost it. It really freaked me out that they would do that. This time, he took my side.

 

Editing to add this: Currently we are working on moving about 11 hours away from them. I have told him that I don't think our relationship can survive them. Also, reminding him that he is supposed to take up for me seems to help a little bit.

 

As to fighting these people from the beginning - impossible, at least, in my case. First of all, there is something of language barrier, even though I speak their language, I do not speak it well enough to deal with all of this. Plus, there is my desire to actually like them and to embrace whatever differences we have. I only realized to late that doing that would be dangerous for me.

[Atlantico]

well my initial reaction was to miss most of the family gatherings using lame excuses, except the main ones like Easter and Christmas, even in these I would arrive the late the possible. My wife would get a bit unhappy, but would understand my behavior , and I have to credit her that support. I would be ignored, my habits questioned, well the time I spent there was really stressful I would be counting the days to return home. My wife family has really a controlling behavior, and a lot of free time to exercise it. Now, the other problem is that all of the wife family members would display the same upsetting behavior towards me, including the husbands of my wife´s sisters!! They all seem be tuned up. By all means, they dont want me and my wife to separate, or anything like that, they even think I am a good husband, what they seem to do resent is that I have different habits and options on life, all of them socially sound by the way, probabily not so conservative, more open minded.

I would possibly advise Zolar to try to isolate herself from your H family physically and emotionally. Easy to say, dificult to do, I know. These interfering families seem to fail to understand that their behaviour put in risc the wife/husband reltionship to a point of breakdown. Don´t they realize that they are also hurting their own flesh and blood, in this case my wife?

[Zolar]

This is in response to your question, although I'm sure it was rhetorical. I think in our case, they know they are hurting us - they just don't care. They want to do whatever they want to do - never mind what we're going through and right now it's a lot. Lost baby, illness (both of us), litigation at his work, repairing damage to the house after Ike - we're going through all of this and they are the same obstinate, lying, evil people. They really don't care and furthermore, maybe they think we've got too much or got it too good. Also, in my case, I'm not part of their culture... so that's an added bit of dynamic.

 

It's hard to imagine that much hatefulness, but, I'm living it.

 

And, as soon as we can extricate ourselves from our most immediate problems at work and I get my health back, we're leasing out this house and moving to the other house 11 hours away.

[Chinook]

I have a very good friend who says 'we can't choose our family, so if you could choose your family, would these people be even given the time of day..?' This to me brought me to a very focused point with my Mother in particular. I'm going to relate my story in a second which is particularly harrowing... I can hardly think about it myself and it will be the first time I've really talked about it. But I have a point which relates to you people struggling with your families and that's the issue of spousal support. Your spouse may not be strong enough to deal with their family. They may need you to 'enable them' to deal with them. I'm not sure how you do this. For me at the moment, it means staying clear of even getting into a relationship. I don't want to expose anyone else to the nonsense and antics of my own Mother.

 

Let me give you some backfill, I'll try to be brief but unfortunately putting 38 yrs in a nutshell is kinda hard.

 

When I was very tiny, apparently an almighty rift blew up in my family and for years no one knew what it was about. It resulted in my Mother and Father splitting, my Father taking to alcohol (and has never stopped since) and my Mother being admitted to a mental institution because she supposedly had a 'nervous breakdown'. For years my Mother treated me like I didn't exist... she treated me basically like a child slave. I started cooking when I was 5 years old. I started washing and ironing probably around the same age. When my baby brothers were born, I was roped in to help take care of them. When I say 'help' I mean I was doing what my Mother should have been doing. Including getting up during the night to do night feeding and changing. My baby brothers were well cared for... as much as any 10 year old could care for a baby. Through all of this my Mother treated me like I was a hindrance, I was too much trouble, nothing I did was good enough. I spent years and years trying to seek her approval. Hoping something would click with her and make her love me like the others. Even to the point of when I was an adult, and became a lecturer in my chosen profession, that wasn't enough.

 

Last year, I had some serious issues with dealing with depression. My counsellor had diagnosed that partly it was due to unresolved post-traumatic stress after having been diagnosed with a very aggressive cancer a few years earlier. But she had no idea why my depression was cyclical... why it kept coming back. Then in one session, she asked a signpost question about how I felt... and I replied that I felt alone, I'd always felt alone and I'd always coped and dealt with stuff alone because I had to. That's what I'd learned from a very early age. She advised me to speak to my Mother if it was feasible, or some other person who was around at the time when I was tiny... to find out why my Mother was so different towards me. I went to see my Dad's sister, my Aunt. What came from that meeting were a whole load of jigsaw pieces that would fracture and repair my life for me.

 

It turned out that my Mom had spent years and years being abused at the hands of her Father. From this abuse resulted a child. My Grandparents did what people did in those days, they hid their dirty secrets and my Mother was told the child had to be adopted or she would be kicked out on the streets with no support. I don't blame what happened to her and how she dealt with it right then... but how she continued afterwards was indefensible.

 

When I came along, I was the child who could never replace the child she lost. To add to that, she would never leave my Grandad alone... in some warped twisted manner, she was in love with her Father and she adored him... despite knowing what he did was wrong. To add to that, when I came along, she took me to his house too... she left me there with him. My Dad hit the roof about it. My Dad adored me too... obviously in the correct way and he was worried about my safety. Instead of listening to him, my Mother divorced him and denied him access to both me and my sister. In addition to that, when this all blew up... the social worker involved on the case advised my Mother that her best bet was to 'cry stress and be willingly admitted to a mental institution'. My Mother did what she was advised. At 6 weeks old, after the first case of her leaving me with my Grandad, this all blew up... and my Dad threatened to ensure she didnt gain custody of her children if it didn't stop. This went so far that its recorded some place there had to be supervised visits. Instead of dealing with it, and fighting for us... my Mother gave me up at 6 weeks to my Auntie. I stayed with her for 2 years. Developing my attachment bond to an adult I trusted.

 

At 2 years when my Mother decided she would patch things up with my Dad and with my sister on the way she did what he wanted for a while and avoided my Grandad and she decided she wanted her kid back... simply because she didn't want my Dad's sister to continue having me. Following that, my Mother never really could bond with me. Not only was I a kid she couldn't replace... she hadn't bonded with me either. I was the kid no one wanted.

 

I spent years learning how to 'deal with' my Mother. I spent years learning how to 'manage' her to my advantage so that it was never ugly but it was never really warm and emotional either. When I was sick with cancer 6 years ago, my Mother used it in order to garner sympathy from her friends and even had her employer give her 2 months off work. Not once did she hug me, not once did she cry, not once did she ever ask me how I was dealing with it. Not a single time.

 

Around about 6 months ago... that adopted child came looking for her. Suddenly 'J' we'll call her was my Mother's best friend. She was bought gifts for her birthday, she was taken out for dinners and lunches and a whole host of other things. I sound like I'm jealous... I'm not - but these were my Mother's markers of love. She gave them willingly to my older sister, she gave them to my siblings, but she never have them to me. For years, I didn't question it. For years, I enabled her behaviour. For years, I didn't stand up to myself.

 

Not until the day my counsellor told me I would always have problems unless I figured out the root of what was causing them. I worked out that I'm the way I am, alone, don't trust people, push people away, distant... because that's how I learned to survive. That's how I learned best to deal with life, I am what my Mother made me. My Dad didn't get a lookin. He was stopped from visiting any time he made waves at all.

 

So my point is... your respective spouses.. they may be dealing with their families in a way which hurts you and you need to address that, but they're doing what they have always done, what they learned to do. They're managing their families in a way which makes sense to them and doesn't hurt them. I'm not sure you can change that. For me... the way I saw fit to manage my Mother in the future was to simply walk away. She made me who I am. She contributed to how I developed. I was unable to attach to people because that child-toddler-attachment bond was broken so early. I never learned after that how to trust people. Plus my Mother was not the parent she should have been to change it.

 

I'm sorry about the length and this is the first time I've articulated this in full... so I'm not entirely sure it all makes sense. But my point is that you guys need to somehow also learn how to deal with these toxic families. For me I simply had to cut mine out of my life... when I questioned my Mother about my early life and pushed her on her treatment of me, she actually from her own mouth told me that she had never loved me. All the times she beat me with hate in her eyes, made sense to me that day I can tell you. My own Mother.

 

Whats worse is she repainted this whole rift between us in her own indefensible 'story' to perpetuate the lie about the child being my Grandad's - because that can never be allowed to come out no matter what the cost. So she willingly painted me as an attention seeking liar. Her own daughter... when she knew I wasnt lying. When she had openly sat in front of me and told me she felt literally nothing for me. She would rather I be ostracised from my whole family than to allow me any say in anything which might result in her dirty secret being exposed.

 

I have my older sister's email. I could email her and tell her. But to be honest, I don't think it's worth it. Sooner or later, the truth will out without any help from me. I don't need any more grief and I certainly don't need to be accused of stirring as well as being a liar and attention-seeking... so I'm right where I have always been... alone. I can deal with that... at least I know I can depend on me.

[Zolar]

Wow, Chinook, that's quite a story and well-told, too.

 

My father was and is abusive. I cut ties years ago, but it took me years to do it. He is really toxic. Lots of people don't understand how I could hate him like I do - but, I do. It's the only way I can deal with him. It hurts too much even to find a middle ground emotionally. Some people think there's something wrong with me because I feel the way I do, but he did some terrible things to me and I suffer any time I have to be around him even for short periods of time. I have a good relationship with my mother. I have no other family.

 

I recognize that my DH's family are abusive. They did things in their country to him that they would instantly go to prison for if they had done them here. They exhibit a lack of boundaries that shows some evidence for incest, although, I have no real knowledge of that beyond some weird things his mother has said and the behavior of both parents (barging into our bedroom unannounced is just one example). He was abandoned by his father as an infant and sent away by his mother to another country (this one) at age nine. He didn't speak the language and was bounced from one sibling to another, who grudgingly took him in. He was left to fend for himself in one of the largest and most dangerous cities in the U.S. He has never had any sort of advocate and as a result was the victim of violent crimes and was abused by the system here, as well. And where we are currently (Houston) is very hostile to Mexicans. This is another major reason that I want us to leave here A.S.A.P. I want to go home (my home) where Mexicans are just treated like regular people like everybody else.

 

It looks to me as if he tries to buy the love of his parents and sometimes his siblings. They are greedy and only too willing to take his money - it hurts me to watch this go on. He is one of the most successful of his siblings and until I came along, entirely single. I fear the excuse that he "doesn't have a family of his own to feed" is one that they use against us and it all the more hurtful to me since we just lost what would have been our little girl. But, I know that this has been an excuse to parasitically feed off of us in the past.

 

I try to take into consideration that he needs them on some level. I also have tried to make him understand that I am his family first and foremost. That is getting through slowly but surely.

 

The strongest thing I have in my favor is that we are very happy together. We are both sick and miserable if we have to be apart for any length of time. And, I think we love each other very much - one of those rare things, at least, for me it is. He also sees how miserable I am when they are around, although he has not acknowledged their behavior toward me. In his defense, he's probably just so used to being abused by them that he doesn't recognize it at all.

 

But, my point is that I think it is important in a situation like this to acknowledge the relationship that your spouse has with his relatives. So, in the case of the original poster, it might be helpful to make an ongoing analysis of how your wife was treated by these people before you came along.

 

My first impulse when I met his family (he did not want to introduce me, by the way) was that we had to get away from them. But, then I realized that he needs them and that, also, he just wasn't ready to do that. I think eventually, once I have him at my original home (in another more civilized place), he will possibly settle into a healthier relationship with them. To me that means having a respectable distance and seeing them at appropriate times. As opposed to them living with us 1/3 of the year, taking over the house, interfering in our lives and telling us what to do and (me) what to wear and walking in and out of our bedroom while we're having sex.

 

Ultimately, distance is the only answer. I hated having to tell him that... I'd like to say, "I'd do anything for you." Pretty much, I would do anything for him. But, I feel that they are so dangerous to me and to us... For Pete's sake, his mother was "joking" about stealing our baby and taking it to Mexico. That's not a joke to me and it wouldn't be to you, either, if you knew how they are. And, I feel that they are a danger to us a couple - they have caused us so much grief. Between that and some other dangers here in this City (crime and corruption, namely) I have persuaded him to move a day's drive away from here. I know it's the best thing.

[Zolar]

I just remembered this book I read that was really helpful, too, called "Toxic In-Laws" by Susan Forward. One of the really important concepts in it is understanding your spouse's relationship to his or her parents and learning how to make them your ally in the struggle against your common enemy. I think that book might help the original poster. It has been out for a while, so you might find it a library. It is really good.

[Atlantico]

Well Chinnok, you have been through a LOT.

And you survived, that makes you a Winner.

I got emotional when I read your post.

And your point is right: I should put myself in my wife shoes, and yes she has been conditioned also, by the emotional control behavior of her family.

 

Your story rang some bells, in my own personal story, although not as dramatic.

the question is: are you healing well from that horrible ordeal, or do you still feel trapped in your emotions? Has that affected your present relationships?