Medium chill against passive aggressive behavior

[Rose1]

 
And things change over time as well. There's a world of difference withholding grandchildren as part of a temper tantrum and removing children from toxic people. Its so easy to get sucked into the "you misunderstood, they mean well" stuff. I put my foot down with the kids but in hindsight it sgould have been more.

Escaped injury by a whisker. But the continual put downs and pressure wear you down.

[bloomie]

PinkElephant: this one statement stood out to me more than anything else you have shared. 

Dealing with SIL has been an ongoing topic w my shrink for the past 8 years (the entire time I've been with my wife)

When an in law family member's high conflict, bullying, volatile, unpredictable patterns of behavior are creating such an atmosphere of risk and angst that you are spending this much time and effort to manage it, it is most likely harming you and those around you a great deal and that is really important to pay attention to.

You can talk about this to your therapist, your wife, your friends, your in laws, the clerk at the grocery store, anyone who will listen, for another 8 years and my very best guess is the high conflict toxic behaviors will have only amped up because you are now adding a new grandchild into the mix and the balance of the entire family system is going to shift.

Your sil, who is used to being the sun, moon, and stars around which you all circle, is most likely not going to like that. Not one little bit.

I have a uPDsil who is so similar and has done untold damage to my DH's family connections, as I shared with you already in another thread. The most important thing that my DH and I have done to mitigate the damage and intrusions into, not just the times when we are actually with her, but the aftermath and powerlessness that comes from in some ways engaging or enabling such damaging and dark behaviors, is to establish a hedge of protection around our family.

You and your DW and your little one are a complete and separate unit of your own. It is your sacred responsibility to decide together what your core values are, what your boundaries are as both individuals and a family unit. To be very clear and in step with one another around how you deal with anyone who comes into your intimate circles that threatens the bonds of those core relationships - the most precious of people in your world - you, your wife, your child.

Your relationships - the people you surround yourself and your little one with - will shape you and your child's life more than anything else you ever choose. More than a pediatrician - carefully selected, a preschool - diligently researched, you see where I am going with this.

Being proactive in all of the relationships you will allow in close intimate contact with yourself and your dear family is your work in my view. That is the focus, if it has not been to date, that will determine what does and does not work for your family in relationships and close connections where there are multiple exposures a month to someone who is not held consistently responsible for their unacceptable behaviors.

Your in laws may seem like the nicest folks on the block. Pillars of their community, but they have enabled a family system that cooperates with their daughter's outrageous and abusive behaviors.  Your in laws have made choices and are living with them and it sounds pretty miserable. They are 100% responsible for what they allow in close, intimate relationship with their troubled daughter.

They do not own the keys to the gate to the yard that surrounds your home and provides a buffer of protection for your family. You do. In other words, you and your DW decide the limits, parameters, level of contact, strategies, if/how/when you physically, emotionally, spiritually engage with others.

It is possible to be considerate of others and loving and have firm boundaries and healthy circles of intimacy we have developed for ourselves and our family of choice (FOC).

Shifting our energy and what sadly was a powerless preoccupation with the out of control behaviors of others to building and healthy and reasonable limits and protections around ourselves and our children was sentinel work for my DH and myself.

DH's family system required us to "live" in a home without doors, without windows, maintain a yard without gates and fences so that they, and uPDsil, could enter at will. What masquerades as acceptance and approval in that family system, is actually an insistence on compliance with the very unhealthy and damaging status quo of cooperating with disorder and dysfunction.

To hug or not... the expectation that physical contact at the end of a gathering is what "we do" and will close the gap, right the wrongs, reassure an unrepentant, out of control, harmful person and their parents that we will continue to make nice, placate, wipe the board clean, after one in the group (or all in the group) have been subjected to abusive behavior, is a very common behavioral expectation here on the in law boards.  For me, this is further indication of the complete lack of remorse or sensitivity to the hurt and confusion that my uPDsil's behavior has caused.

If you take only one thing away from what has been shared it would be to consider reading together with your wife the book Boundaries in Marriage by Cloud and Townsend.

Another great resource (faith based, but the concept of keeping a loving position as we set boundaries and limits and so helpful) is this youtube vid by Danny Silk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3l3ST7z7ps&t=6s

Keep coming back. Keep doing this good and sacred work to learn and grow and establish a loving and reliable group of people around your family.

[PinkElephant]

Hi Bloomie...

You're right about things ramping up because SILs behavior is already creating friction between me and my wife.

My wife knows how I feel and is sympathetic but still maintains that even though she isn't close to SIL, it's still her sister and she's lived with it for 30 years so she's used to it.

I posted earlier that SIL had come over to our house for a party a few weeks back and was just awful to both of us...

My wife then invited SIL out baby shopping 2 weeks after that, she ruined that trip too (my wife told SIL she plans on breastfeeding, SIL said it hurts and she's going to hate it - my wife said she still wants to and SIL's tantrum began)

I am so frustrated that my wife continues to reward SILs behavior that it's now become an issue between the two of us.

A lot of you have suggested that as long as my wife and I are on the same team that we can give each other strength.

My wife is absolutely committed to making her relationship with SIL work and will not stop trying to "fix" the relationship.

I really feel like I'm in this alone and that my wife is basically just waiting for me to tire myself out and accept that SIL isn't going anywhere and that I need to learn to just ignore the bad behavior.

I can medium chill SIL all day long but watching my wife fall all over herself trying to please SIL is just so frustrating to me and really makes me feel that we aren't on the same team.

[all4peace]

Unfortunately, we can't control others. And often our mates come Out of the FOG at a different rate and method than we do, or not at all.

What you can do is set your own boundaries for your own health, and stick to them. For many of us, when we're no longer willing to go along with the family plan in dealing with the PD person, our mate loses some of our enabling behavior and is forced to start coming Out of the FOG themselves.

I think it's reasonable to tell your wife that even though you love and support her, you are only willing to listen to her talk about SIL's escapades for X min per day since anything beyond that starts disturbing your inner peace.

Or that your home is a sanctuary, and you won't allow XYZ type of behavior in your home, with you, your wife and your future child present.

Sometimes people stay in really troubling relationships because we offer them a relief valve, and when we start choosing health ourselves they can no longer offload quite so much onto us, and perhaps start adjusting their own behavior in response.

Your wife can choose any type of behavior she personally wants with your SIL, and work for a relationship that you wouldn't choose, and that doesn't make you on different teams as that's about her relationship with her sister. Once it's impacting your marriage, your home, your child, then I think it's a different story.

I'm going to offer you an example from my own life to hopefully make this clearer. My DH has a friend who is really problematic in a lot of ways (I may actually start a thread about it). He violates my physical and tech boundaries, makes off-color explicit jokes on a regular basis, calls DH 10-20 times per day, is hurt and offended (manipulative) when DH tries to set boundaries, etc. DH works with him, goes to church with him and grew up with him, so DH feels loyalty to him. I also care about not hurting him, but once his behavior starts impacting our marriage and family life, then I feel like I have every right and obligation to stand up and let DH know what I'm observing.

Now, how DH relates to him as a friend/coworker is up to DH. But how this friend impacts me, our marriage and our family is a whole other story. Does that make sense? I will add, though, that when DH needs to vent a LOT because of this friend and his inability to observe boundaries, then I let DH know that my listening is going to be limited, that if he doesn't want to set boundaries then DH is choosing to continue to deal with this behavior, and that I'm unwilling for DH to offload all his tension and conflict onto me and our marriage in order to not face the tension and conflict in his relationship with his friend. Does that make sense?

I think there's a difference between supporting/listening and enabling an ongoing pattern of dysfunction.