Caretaker role/Help denial

[IsleOfSong]

Jumping into the fray here, mostly because zad's original post reads as if I wrote it many years back about my own marriage.

I've come a long way, baby — whereas I used to feel the guilt of my wife overextending herself for whatever reasons she's got cooking in her disordered mind, I now feel pretty darn good about not beating myself up for not matching her frenzied levels of activity, volunteering, overly complicated cooking, etc. She periodically wields that in the form of her whiny rallying cry ("We're so different!"), but so be it. I'm glad to be who I am, and not a miserable carbon copy of her doing things I really don't want to do in order to keep the peace, at least until her next meltdown.

So how do you get to where I am? You have to decide that she doesn't get to set your pace. It sounds as though she's already brainwashed you into thinking you're not doing enough — I'm fairly certain that's not the case, from what you've described. You *must* decide that her feelings are her responsibility, and stick to it. Work at holding that position every day. She will whine, make a big deal of all that she's taking on (again, her choice, it seems), but at the end of the day that ain't your problem. Your stance is 100% as valid as hers. And again, her feelings are 100% her responsibility.

I hope my word salad is at least a little bit helpful. Keep posting.

[Call Me Cordelia]

The kids pretty much have no choice but to look to her for love, as young as they are. They are completely dependent here. With your first bio-children already having lost a mother, they are going to want to fill the void and she is the option they have. So it honestly doesn't surprise me that they try, and that they are learning to manage her responses. Check out "parentification" on the website.

Calling a young child a retard is inexcusable. It is abuse. Again, she has all the power in this relationship with her young stepson and he will have to assimilate that name-calling into his psyche in order to get along with her. It's majorly damaging, and it doesn't just "get better."

[zad7242]

I totally agree, Cordelia. My wife would agree with you that it's abuse and she is ashamed by it, but she blames me for "pushing" her to the point where she becomes abusive. In fact, that is a general theme with her: "Other people's bad behavior is because they are bad, my bad behaviors are trauma reactions to abuse." At some point, if this is true, she needs to take whatever steps necessary to remove herself from the "abuse" if she can't find other ways of regulating her behavior.

My step-daughter age 12 has totally taken on the role of parent. She is the oldest and therefore normal for her to take on a caretaker role, but she definitely tries to regulate my wife's feelings.