Drawing the line: Advice please!

[Leonor]

Hi everybody,

It's been a while but I am back because I am ready to draw a big line and, frankly, I'm not sure we're going to make it across. This makes me feel extremely anxious, sad and afraid for my future. But I am also at a point where I am de-fogged enough to see that I do not deserve to be abused by my dh and his ils, and I am not going to continue to fail to protect myself in an abusive situation. I didn't cause it, I can't control it (although Lord knows I've tried!) and I can't, sadly, cure it. I can't control my ils, and I can't cure my dh.

Here's a snapshot of the situation: my ils and sil are personality-disordered. Mil is BPD (trending toward waif-hermit) and Fil is covert N, sister is BPD (hermit-witch). They are all hyper-enmeshed with each other, and over the many years we have spent with them, traveling great distances, welcoming them into our home, fostering their relationships with our children ( ), they have managed to manufacture every kind of imaginable chaos. Since they present as needy, helpless, vulnerable and well-intentioned, and dh and I were *both* raised as Golden Children, it was very hard for me to not swoop in and think I could set everything up so they would be stable and my dh wouldn't be so obsessed with taking care of them. They have let their property go to ruin, they have torpedoed their finances, they have faked heart attacks and dementia, they have overdosed on prescription pills ... it goes on and on and on. And when we have called them on it, mil stopped speaking to my children and I for well over a year, while fil dragged dh into a drama of maybe mom has dementia *&@ nonsense! That was my lightbulb moment: this isn't happenstance, or even a dysfunctional way of being in the world: this is an intentional campaign intended to divorce my husband from me (and even our children, if necessary) and bring him back into their sick orbit.

In the past, I have said I don't want to go to visit his family, but I did want to enjoy our time in my h's country with our kids. We even wanted to build a business there and since I love my dh, I love his country and my kids are happier there, I kept compromising on my own wellbeing. When I finally took a stand and said, "I'm not going because our proximity to the ils hurts our relationship and my feelings", dh's response has been that he will travel there alone with our kids and I can stay home. If I go along, then dh visits ils with the kids and I stay in the house. Alone. On Christmas, no less!

There are moments when dh gets it and sits down with me to work out boundaries, but the FOG is strong in this one. He says he cannot stop doing certain things, like controlling their finances by checking their bank statements daily, or spending entire days and nights in the hospital with them when they are ill, or wanting to make sure they are ok. Then this summer when the pandemic hit, he suggested taking a vacation to his country with our oldest son and take him all over to learn about his country, and I thought that was a good idea; I want him to bond with his sons and the younger ones wanted to stay with me. They did awesome stuff together, traveled around, really bonded, and I see they have a much stronger relationship now.

I *also* found out that said visit included in person visits with the ils every other day, and then some evenings too, as well as daily phone calls and drives around town (I had set a boundary of no driving with grandpa because he is 87 and a terrible driver; the last time the children were in the car with him he hit a pedestrian in a crosswalk). By the end of the visit, he had even told his fil that he could leave one of his cars (he hoards old junkers around town) in our garage when I'm not there!  So much for all the boundaries.

Now we've been planning to move overseas for at least a year but this summer has convinced me that it is no longer possible. When I brought up Christmas this year, he said, "Oh we're going to (my country)" and when I said, "I don't want to go there" his answer was, "Okay, you don't have to go! Maybe we'll (meaning he and the boys) go the day after, or even earlier." Like, 

So I found a bunch of couples therapists in the area, older dudes, who speak his language, and I said, "I've been looking into marriage counselors and found these dudes. What do you think?" This is not the first time we've talked about therapists; he at one point even said that he would probably like to talk to his own therapist and even do couples counseling here *and* in his home country because he knows he is enmeshed with his family. But now that I'm calling his bluff, he's getting really defensive with me: that I'm the problem, that I am too sensitive, that he has things he'd finally like to talk about me, that I "went behind his back" to find a therapist, on and on. We're not really speaking right now.

He said he would go in this very passive agressive way ("I don't object to going if you want to go, but I have a problem with the fact that you went behind my back to do this to me"), and so I'm trying to ignore the temper tantrum noise and keep my eyes on the prize, which is saving my marriage by getting his behind into therapy. I'm also trying to stay calm and open, and understand that he knows how high the stakes are, and that he is not being hostile towards me because he thinks that I'm wrong, but because deep down he knows that I am right and he is going to have to look at some very painful things, just like I had to confront my own N/HPD mom and break free of my enmeshment with her. He stuck with me through that when I thought I was going to lose my mind, and took out all kinds of ugliness on him. But I also don't know, honestly, if the abuse and trauma and entrenchment is so strong that he won't do the healing work, continue to abuse me, and then I'll have to leave.

Right now, I'm reaching out to make appointments with therapists and looking into divorce mediation and lawyers in town. I'm giving us until the end of the year to make big progress or make big decisions, because I don't want to stay in a hopeless relationship one day longer, if it is in fact hopeless. There has been hope, there has been love and there has been growth, but now it's on him and I can't control that, either.

Support, hugs, advice, please, welcome!

[notrightinthehead]

sounds like you are on a good path! Sending you lots of strength!

[Leonor]

Thanks, Notright, he said he would go ...

He thinks that b/c we have phds and 20 years together we should be able to talk this out.

But I know that I've talked and yelled and cried and showed him books and videos and it's like he can't process the information. Later he says he doesn't remember it and I think that might be true.

That's how I know that therapy is the only option we have now and I'm insisting on it. It's trauma, he's traumatized, and I can't lead him out or love him enough or make him see.

My only hope is that either he finds some kind of relief in couples therapy with me or that the realization that I am going to separate if things don't change will snap him out of it.

I was on a run today and all of a sudden I had the realization that I deserved more. I deserved 100% of my marriage, not 75%. I deserved to be put first no matter who was making another demand. I've been a good wife. I've been an OUTSTANDING daughter in law. And I've been a good mom, too. I've done my work. I've done my healing, and I'm living in recovery. I don't deserve to be abused, or ignored, or pushed aside from my own spouse and children.

And then I realized something else (I was running a long time). I got it, deep in my bones, maybe for the first time, that nothing is worth abuse. Nothing. No amount of money from my crazy narc mom, no amount of guilt from my depressed dad, no amount of security from my marriage, no amount of holidays with a family, no amount of salary from a job, not even the reassurance that I actually "won" over my abusers 'cause I went on to stay married for many years and have a happy family when they were all sure I was a neurotic who was the one with "the problem" ... none of it. None of it is worth not one more minute of abuse.

It is not worth one more minute of abuse from my mother in law or father in law or sister in law, even if that means giving up my husband. Even if it means ocean waves and hurricanes of guilt for splitting up my family, or co-parenting my children. Whatever it is, whatever the price, whatever the reward, whatever the threat ... the abuse is not worth it.

My hope, my real hope, is that h realizes that the abuse he receives from his family is not worth it, whatever "it"  becamay be for him, whatever string they've got him dancing on, and that he can heal that little boy inside him who thought literally, because he was told this, if you can believe it, that without him being a very good boy his mother would die or his father would die. But even if he doesn't, and knowing that is the fear that is motivating him, still doesn't make one more minute of abuse from any of them tolerable for me.

Luck, please, I need it!

[Call Me Cordelia]

It does sound like you are on a good path! I don't have any advice but I want to cheer you on. You are so right, you do deserve to be free from abuse. It takes a great deal of integrity to accept possibly you'll be divorced because you were honest about the way things are rather than accept the gaslighting and crappy treatment any more.

You should be able to talk things out... except trauma doesn't work that way. It takes deep healing that only he can claim and begin for himself.

[DetachedAndEngaged]

Good for you!

It doesn't sound like the problem is between you and your husband, but between your husband and the world.

Couple's counseling can help clarify that. Glad you are exploring options to get improvement by whatever means are necessary.

[Leonor]

Hi all,

Yes, totally I agree ... And that's what I want: clarity. This is my stuff that is your stuff and ALL THAT OVER THERE is their stuff.

I actually found a guy in our area who is a guy, speaks he's language, is actually from his country, is married to an American *and accepting clients*, so we're going to schedule an intake with him.

Plus dh has settled down a bit and we were able to talk and reconnect and think of this as the two of us working together to be stronger rather than you vs me getting into the ring. We've even been able to say oh we're probably codependent and overextend and don't spend enough time together as a couple blah blah so now we even have a list of Topics for Therapy.

About the ils? Well, he gets it but on an intellectual level. He can talk about how dysfunctional they are and he can acknowledge the impact they have on our relationship and how he is responsible for going boundaries. At one point I was rather proud of me because he was saying that I am the head of my own house and deserve to feel comfortable there and I stopped him and said "I deserve to feel *more" than comfortable, I deserve to feel honored and cherished, even if that makes anyone *else* uncomfortable" and he said, Yeah, you're right!" And I was like damn straight I'm right!

At a deep emotional level, though, I don't feel like he *gets* it; I feel like in his gut he's still way trauma bonded to his parents and that deep emotional healing may be beyond him, or that it will be too scary for him to look at how all of this nonsense has hurt him. How it affects him, how it informs him, how it has influenced him, ok, bit how it hurts him, no. And I'm afraid that unless he accepts and grieves his own hurt, he will have a permanent blind spot for my hurt ... Which sets me up, I'm afraid, for more rounds of abuse.

My bottom line for starters is that me staying home alone is no longer an option on the table; his bottom line is he does not want to go nc with his parents. So we'll go from there I guess.

I suppose that is what the therapy is for, though, to really look at that issue and see how we navigate it and even if he is never able to really access that pain, will we still be able to have the kind of emotional connection that I need to be happy.

Anyone who's been there? Gone to couples t? Ideas? Wisdom?

[Call Me Cordelia]

I deserve to feel honored and cherished in my own home! Yes!!!

Oftentimes in therapy my T would say, "You know very well what you DON'T want but what about what you DO want?" I usually wouldn't have an answer. Thank you for saying that. I wouldn't have come up with it on my own. Very often we just don't know another way of being because we've never seen it!

[Call Me Cordelia]

Hey Leonor, how are you doing?

[Leonor]

Hi Cordelia,

Thank you so much for checking in on me!

We are in a better place right now. We found a couple's therapist but he's booked until late Nov. and hasn't been  particularly responsive I'm thinking about reaching out to someone else now. DH is open to it so that's good.

We have also been trying to spend more time together, even if it's just cuddling on the couch while watching tv. He came with me to go grocery shopping and we made it a date night ... Doesn't sound exciting on the outside but with three rambunctious boys who want to be all in on everything and are in lockdown, it was nice.

I'm trying to posit this to both of us as getting help in batting down the hatches on the boundaries with the ils, to sketch out a plan we agree on for inevitable future events like death or illness, and working on focussing on us as we move into a new phase in our lives.

Another thing that's made me feel reassured is that we're getting better at noticing our rescue-behavior with other people. One of us will say, Wait, are we making decisions that are good for us or are we losing focus here? We're both GCs of dysfunctional families and when one of us points it out to the other in less sensitive situations (like work or friendships) we can hear each other without getting defensive. Actually, h called me on it just a week ago and I was like, yeah, I see how when you're over-giving, I can stay apart, but when you move towards me, I'll lean in to the unhealthy over-giving.

We've also started to see how over-giving is kind of a control. So we're making progress.

Of course it's easier when one of us isn't triggered, it's not about family and we're not irritable with each other. That's why I want to get help ... to find some kind of process or tools to use when we need to have a hard conversation when one or both of us are triggered.

Not there yet, but baby steps!

[Call Me Cordelia]

Thanks for the update. Sounds like you and DH are practicing working as a team on related issues to the Big One. Yay for building those skills up! When you are ready to tackle the in-law issue head on, this will have to help! Yes indeed, baby steps.

[bloomie]

Leonor - I'm late to the thread, but looking at how this is evolving I am so encouraged for you and your H with the ability you are developing to speak into each other's lives and receive input with an open heart. Wow. That has to be tricky at times, but how connection building it must be to be able to recognize common areas of difficulty and build each other up to be stronger and more reasonable with how much you give of yourselves.

I heard someone recently say something that went like this...Prioritzing your relationship and family of choice is the single most important thing you can do to have a successful marriage and family life.

At the end of the day, we apply so many things to our marriages, but this foundational leaving and cleaving world view is essential I have learned and takes some time to fully understand what that practically looks like for some of us.

When we have been groomed from birth to react to the drama bound urgency - often posed as life or death - of our family of origin it takes time to recognize antics and manipulations and then, in unity, respond differently going forward because it truly 'feels' like something terrible is going to happen even when eventually our logic tells us differently. This has been something my H and I continue to work through and caution each other in as well.

I am learning to ask myself this question when faced with yet another manufactured chaotic tempest in a pot of tea...'what is mine to do?' That one small question is really helping me. I hope It helps you as well.

Starboard Song says something so beautiful and I am not going to say it as well, but he says something like... don't let people who are not able to love you come between you. A wise and insightful message.

It seems that you and your DH are starting to turn toward each other and support each other in really important areas.

If you are like we are it will be a sometimes messy and an imperfect trial and error process, but so worth it. Sending you much wisdom and strength as you fight for your marriage and family of choice!

[treesgrowslowly]

Hey Leonor

Good to hear you making progress.

It is a process. Ours is taking years to sort out the emotional piece and the grief. But anything is better than continual dysfunction and contact with narcissists who will never change.

Good luck to you. Truly.

Trees

[Leonor]

Thank you all for your support.

Bloomie, this is exactly what I am dealing with:

"When we have been groomed from birth to react to the drama bound urgency - often posed as life or death - of our family of origin it takes time to recognize antics and manipulations and then, in unity, respond differently going forward because it truly 'feels' like something terrible is going to happen even when eventually our logic tells us differently"

It is almost ALWAYS life or death, too, because fil is dx hypochondriac and mil is histrionic. Mil doesn't need sinus surgery, she has a "tumor near her brain". FIL doesn't have anxiety, he's "having heart palpitations". I actually *know my way around* the city hospital after all these years. 

The last time we got snookered into the drama, *I* was just as into it as dh. Omg, is someone stealing from them? Has their identity been stolen? Is someone using their debit card unauthorized? Let's investigate! No? They're just ona years-long spending spree ever since dh and I agreed we would not talk about money with them anymore? Oh, well then let's host them for dinner and talk this through as a family! 

So we are at our starting point: I do not want to deal with them in any way whatsoever. And I have set some non-negotiables for h, apart from the regular old, "only thirty-minute supervised visits outdoors" stuff. Things like, No spending the night in the hospital. No giving them money. No contact whatsoever bw kids and toxic sil. No living with us ever ever never ever. 

Dh position is that he does not want to go nc with ils. He is onboard with boundaries and negotiations and counseling. He says, when he is not triggered, that he knows his parents are difficult and unwell and that they will not change, that he must do the changing and that when we really stuck to our boundaries in the past that we did much better.

But of course he still is attached to them and does not acknowledge that their toxic behavior is intentional: they want to control him and will stomp all over his wife and kids to get what they want. They are ruthless. Who would pretend to have dementia so that her adult son would feel guilty for being angry with her for not talking to him for a year? Who would invent an appointment with a cardiologist he had just seen a week before so that his adult son would go with him to see how frail he is? Who would text a
ten year old nephew to say that he is loved and she will always be there for him but that she is not speaking to his dad?

My ils that's who !

Dh disagrees, he thinks they are neurotic but not ill-intentioned.

He just called and I told him I was feeling rocky and he said he would make lunch and then we will go on a walk and talk about things. He said he understands more than I think he does and that he is confident and committed to working this out.



Thank you for the support and wishes for luck I am needing it!

[treesgrowslowly]

Hi Leonor

I hear you.

A lot of people have a really hard time seeing their parents objectively.

I think that a lot of people whose parents are narcissistic, they don't think there is any real harm in holding on to their (child-like) insistence that their parents are "not that bad".

They don't see the harm in enabling aging parents... or they don't know what else to do.

That song lyric "you take the good, you take the bad..."comes to mind for me.... A lot of people think well nobody's perfect I gotta take the good and the bad with my parents.

It suggests a lot of guilt might be motivating them. They think about the bad behaviors their parents have, but they feel obligated to put up with it.

And they have probably seen signs that their parents are not pre planning the drama they create.

As the kid of two narcissists I can say that I spent a long time sorting through some of this stuff you describe.

The question around "well how intentional is all their drama and selfishness?" is a question I've pondered about my own parents... who are both deeply narcissistic.

Was all of that behavior intentional? I asked my self this for years.

I came away from that time realizing that a lot of their damaging drama wasn't 'intentional" ...as in "pre planned"...' It was just really self centered.

Like incredibly absent of consideration for others.

So they were selfish.

Were they aware they were selfish?

No. I honestly don't think my narc parents are aware of how selfish they are. That's just my own take on it at this point in my journey. Others here have other experiences with PD behaviours.
When anyone tried to tell my parents they were being selfish we were met with the great wall of denial.

It took a lot of inner work for me to be able to say "no actually my own parents are incredibly selfish people". It's a huge challenge to get to that place emotionally to see our own parents as selfish and it may require counselling support to go on that journey.

I thought I would share this because when I tried to help others and myself get completely Out of the FOG about narcissism I was often met with the argument that you describe...that if they didn't mean to be hurtful then we can forgive them and keep a relationship with them because we feel sympathy for them.

And so if you present this narrative that his parents are like some stealth chess players causing drama in a calculated way. (As I have tried to tell my own FOO members to no success) you may not get very far with that sort of narrative. 

As someone who has thought a lot about this I now believe that my parents are not masterminds who are doing their narcissism on purpose. In their minds they are victims of all sorts of things and their behavior is barely ever their fault. They just want everyone to "be happy" and will deny that the latest drama in the family originated with some thing they did-  minutes... or weeks ago!!

Mine would deny their behaviors all the time. Making discussion about the past (even the last 10 minutes let alone the past as in 10 years ago) absolutely pointless.

I wish I had more advice for you. But this is a process of dealing with PDs in the family.

It's just really hard when people we care about are giving SO much sympathy to the PD parents. I feel for you. This is crummy stuff to deal with.

Trees

[Leonor]

Hi all,

So I've got an update.

Lately h and I ha e been holding meetings once a week just to be able to talk about our plans and wants for the future. Kind of like date night, quarantine style.

So in our last mtg, we talked ils. And dh says I'm doing the work. He says that the ils had been creating all kinds of drama (a mysterious painful rash on mil! A dizzy spell sending fil to hospital!) And h just stayed neutral. He said that before he would have freaked out and tried to get there and make sure everyone was ok, but he didn't. And lo and behold everything is now ok. Nothing really "happened". And he worked hard to make sure neither the kids or I knew about any of it because he wanted to create a boundary between their drama and our emotional health. He says he gets it more and more, and it was easier to stay chill and not get sucked into it all.

Now we're going to draw up a contract of sorts or a to-do list for when the ils act up. We have our regular boundaries that we are both committed to, like I have no contact and kids have vvvvvvvvvllllllc, and he has vvvlllc. We're going to draw up rules around visits and conversation. We are also going to come up.eith some stock responses for when they start to push, like "That sounds like a question for your lawyer/banker/doctor", etc.

We're also going to think up some responses for us to say to each other so that when we feel triggered we don't start arguing with each other, like "Ok, we're upset right now, but we agreed to take 24 hours before making a decision," or "Ok, so we decided that why they do this isn't the issue, but how we want to protect us and the kids".

So, feeling hopeful.

[treesgrowslowly]

That sounds hopeful Leonor!

That idea of reminding each other to wait a day for making decisions is brilliant.

One of the things I did early in my growth work was to start saying I'll get back to you. I got into the habit of putting a day between requests and my decision. Then I got more comfortable taking even more time if I needed it depending what the decision was too.

It is VERY interesting to see how different people react to this. Mature people know that taking a day or 2 to make a decision is a good plan. It shows respect for everyone. Immature folks not so much....

Continued good wishes on this.

Trees

[Hilltop]

Leonor my inlaws are the same.  Constant drama, its just constant and all at their own doing.  DH received panicked phone calls the other day as they were selling their car and had someone coming over to see it and they couldn't find the registration papers.  There were phone calls going backwards and forwards to DH about this drama.  In the end they didn't sell the car and the very next day decided to not sell it.  It didn't occur to them to get the paperwork ready when they put the ad up to sell it and in the end they just changed their mind about selling it in one day.  Ugh.

Then its on to the next drama.  They do things that are obviously hurtful to people and then seem flabbergasted that they are upset.  Cue drama.  With FIL its one medical drama after the next.  He has pain in his knee and he is getting x-rays and all sorts of medical tests.  In a week the pain is gone and all is normal and on to the next medical drama.

I have learned to step back and just stop caring otherwise my adrenals would have given up with all the stress revolving around them.  Its frustrating.  I wouldn't say its done on purpose its just how they are. 

Sounds like you are making progress with DH in how to respond.  Waiting a day to make any sort of decision sounds great. 

[Leonor]

Thank you everyone!

So we now have a game plan and I'm willing to give me and dh a chance to enjoy our time together as a family and set healthy very limited boundaries with the ils this season.

I also am feeling a little more confident because I no longer feel like I'm stuck on the dh-ils roller coaster. Now I know I can actually get off at any time. I'm not trapped, not with ils and not with dh. If this is truly not possible, I will feel sad for our marriage and nervous for my future. But not angry at the ils for being disordered and panicked that h will choose them. Not anymore.

[bloomie]

Leonor it sounds like an empowered place you are settling into. How great!

[Leonor]

Hi all,

Yes, I am feeling actually excited about this year.

That doesn't mean that it's not super hard. Yesterday was an excruciating day. I live with CPTSD and this week always, always hits me hard. I don't even know why, but with my history and after years of therapy and healing I've come to a place where I give myself permission to have a lousy week rather than work through every single dang trauma and memory.

So yesterday it came to my attention that fil would move his car out of our garage by the time we get there. Originally when we were deeply fogged and thinking we'd finally "figured out" away to control their madness, we offered him the space because otherwise he has to drive around for fifty minutes or so looking for street parking (they live in the city). But he's a hoarder, and soon we realized that he was hoarding one car in our garage, had another parked somewhere else and driving another around town!

Btw, he's 86.



So I was like, we offered this space so he could avoid driving around. Then, I was like, we are enabling this hoarding and it should stop. And then I was like I don't want to see that car in my garage. So dh told fil to move his car out of our garage - Yesterday!!! That car has been in my garage now for a year and I was furious. I felt like they were just going along steamrolling my boundaries and dh all foggy was just oh ho hum sure Leo whatever.

Now I'm already in an emotional flashback so I just lost it. I felt everything was just words and patting me on the head and going about doing what has always been done, which is getting all up in each other's nonsense and blowing me off and treating me like always, which is a cross between dishwasher for them and nanny for my own children.

So dh for his part was freaked out at first because he was all, well I really don't care one way or the other which only made me angrier and more vulnerable because that is exactly what his parents count on to run their agenda on us. But in the meantime he had texted fil to get him to move his car out of the garage immediately and if it was there when we arrived we will call a tow truck and his dad can pay for it. He said he really didn't know I felt the way I did but now that he knows, there's no discussion, what I want is what happens.

Eventually my nervous system calmed down and he chilled out and we felt back in a better place. We also looked at the calendar and saw what week it was and gave me a little bit of a break.

I've learned that I need to be super clear in my communication. I've learned that when I am clear, dh is pretty receptive. I wish he would just "get it" but for now I can live with this. We are both aware of the turbulent waters ahead, when a medical mess comes up, bit I'm hopeful that the little lessons we learn along  the way will help us navigate those times too.