IL visits

[WinterStar]

Had a tough couple's therapy session today. The topic was visiting my inlaws. I want us to approach visits as a team and to be assertive in voicing my needs without it causing blow up fights.

Visits with his family are tough. They're long visits with almost no privacy. There's pressure to do things all together as a group (MIL, FIL, BIL, and two SILs with husbands and combined seven kids plus me, DH and our four kids). SIL #1 is abusive both aggressively and more commonly passive aggressively. DH makes many excuses, downplays it and refuses to believe some of the things she does when he isn't around. The family system works hard to appease her, particularly MIL who has a host of issues. I spend the whole visit on edge and exhausted. It activates trauma from my own toxic family.

At therapy, DH painted me as a villain who refuses to do any nonprefered task and manipulates others to get them to do what I want. He has always acted like I'm on one side and his family is a monolith on the other side (which isn't accurate). He makes it seem like I put him in the middle.

He also admitted to mishandling some things. He shouldn't have pressured me to do things I didn't want to and shouldn't have yelled at me. Then, he said he's taken responsibly for his missteps, but I never take any responsibility for my contribution to the problem. I don't even know how to respond. I've wracked my brain for anything I've done wrong. The closest I can come is that in the beginning my expectations were too high, and I tried too hard to please everybody, but I don't think this is what DH is looking for. It seems arrogant to say I don't think I've done anything wrong here, but I don't. And I don't get how all of his outrage is directed at me and not his family who have been abusive to me.

[Hilltop]

I'm so sorry WinterStar.  I feel what you are asking for is normal and natural.  It sounds like the visits are long and as you say have no privacy.  I am not sure if it would be an option to go for a shorter visit and stay in a hotel.  That may give you some space and privacy.

I think the biggest problem is that your DH cannot see the problem and without his support, anything you do or say may not be backed up by him which could lead to further issues.  It's for that reason that I would probably not visit his family at this time until you and your DH have sorted out this marital problem.  He can go visit if he wants but I'm not sure what the visits will bring at this stage if your DH cannot see what the problems are.

Its interesting that your DH cannot outline exactly what it is that he thinks you have done wrong, it is just this general thing of you need to be responsible for your contribution to the problem but he can't articulate what that is.  This sounds like projection and gaslighting.

Have you considered individual therapy?

[Cat of the Canals]

That sounds really hard, Winterstar. And I agree with Hilltop that it sounds suspiciously like projecting that he paints you one way but can't really back it up with examples. Sounds like black and white "always and never" type thinking, and I think we know where he got that from.

And also, unfortunately for your husband, I can't imagine you're going to agree to a visit when he can't even meet you halfway and see things from your POV, even theoretically.

*IF* a visit does happen, even if it's in the distant future, I second the idea of staying in a hotel and have some sort of agreement in place that you are not required to spend every minute with his family. Carve out some alone time for yourself. Or activities for just you and the kids. That's not an unreasonable ask and if anyone treats it as such... RED FLAG.

[WinterStar]

DH's main complaints were:

1. One of the times we went to the beach with his whole family, everybody but me wanted to go to a specific restaurant. It was a restaurant that has a lot of variety, so I should have been happy with that option and gone there. He kept saying it won't try to enjoy things. I don't remember this one, but my guess is that I was exhausted and wasn't up for family dinner on top of the beach trip. DH got very angry at that response.

2. He was also really angry because on one trip we went to the state fair and I wasn't interested in the livestock and tractor exhibits. He said I kept telling him it was boring and stupid. I know I didn't say it was stupid and said so. He admitted I didn't say it was stupid but insisted I kept telling him it was boring. I don't remember complaining about it at all, but I wasn't interested. He seems really upset that I wasn't interested. He has fond memories of the fair from his youth. That's great. I'm not sure why it's so important to him that I be interested.

3. He kept saying I always want accommodations on the visits. I said I'd really just like to be able to opt out of activities that I don't want to do, which historically hasn't been an acceptable option. The only option was to try to justify why I didn't want to do something to then have people try to adjust the plan so that I will agree to it. I felt manipulated,  but he's saying I was being manipulative.

He's told me before that he just wants to go and enjoy laid back visits with his family and that the only reason he can't do that is because of me. He doesn't like that I need some amount of planning to feel comfortable. His attitude is almost like he has to plan things with me all the time normally, and it's a lot more planning than he would like, so it's not fair that he can't just enjoy the visits with his family. In anger he once said he'd just go without me. I was devastated. He was saying he'd have a better time without me, and it just felt like he always takes his family's side in things. In the past, when his family wanted something enough, he would pressure me until I caved.

Anytime I try to address his sister's abusive behavior, he reacts first by telling me I'm wrong and then getting angry with me. The first trip out after our wedding, she gave me the silent treatment. When I told DH, he was so angry with me. He learned the truth later on the visit, but he downplayed it and to this day he thinks I make too big of a deal about it. On another visit, SIL yelled at me at a family wedding. She started out yelling at DH about something he did. I calmly said, "He was trying to help," and she ripped into me. She's thrown a yelling  fit on another occasion too and another not directed at us but extremely unpleasant, and he says I make too much of these isolated incidents. I tried to explain that it only takes a couple of incidents to put me on edge 100% of the time we're around her. He says she's just like that sometimes and it's not directed at me more than anyone else. He doesn't see how she's treated me like I don't belong in the family from the very first visit. He says his sister and I don't get along because we're both particular and just ignores that she's abusive toward me.

He says he has bent over backwards trying to please me on the last two visits, and it still isn't good enough for me. He did make an effort, which I appreciate. It was just done in a way where it felt like he was trying to appease an unreasonable person rather than we worked as a team.

I should mention that I love DH's brother and other sister and enjoy visiting with them. His mom is usually fine when NPD SIL isn't around. Realistically, DH can't make the long trip with all four of our kiddos without me.

[WinterStar]

Hilltop, I agree that this is a marital problem we need to work through. It's the #1 issue for me. DH says he doesn't get why it matters so much when we don't see his family often. I don't know if we'll ever be able to resolve this.

I'm looking for an individual therapist again, so great suggestion.

[WinterStar]

Cat of the Canals, DH doesn't want to stay in a hotel and seems to think I want too many breaks from the big group, like that's the problem to him. And he doesn't see that it's mostly his sister's abusive behavior that causes me to need breaks from the whole group. Given her treatment of me, I'd say it makes a lot of sense. Plus, she triggers my own trauma and anxiety, so it makes double sense that it would be hard for me to be around her. He gets all excited when she is on her "best behavior" for a day. He doesn't get how exhausting it still is and doesn't see the little jabs she makes. I steer as clear of her as I can, which helps but comes with it's own level of effort that's also exhausting.

[Hilltop]

Hey Winterstar, I would think that if you are tired or needing a break I can't understand the logic in demanding you go along.  It's ok to need a rest or time out.  It seems your DH simply can't understand your need for rest or doesn't want to deal with the questions from his family but he appears to be putting their needs and his own needs before your own.  I agree that it's ok to opt out of activities, does he give a reason why you need to be there for all of them, what is he afraid of if you weren't to attend?  Is it that he can't stand up to his family, he can't just tell them no?  I feel like there needs to be more compromise, your DH appears to want it his way and it doesn't seem like he can compromise on that.  It's his belief that he should be there for all activities however I don't understand why this is then forced on you as well.

I am happy to hear you are looking for a therapist.  There doesn't appear to be a lot of support with your DH, he doesn't seem to have empathy with how you are feeling and I am not sure if that is a communication problem or another problem, therapy will no doubt help with giving you more clarity.  I remember early on when I would argue with my husband about my MIL that to be honest a lot of the time it was our communication style which led to the arguments.  We would both get defensive and our language was blaming, it took some time but we learned a better communication style and worked through those issues.  It was hard to talk to DH about his parents because he would get so defensive and I was so hurt however we did improve.  Of course there were other issues such as MIL and her behaviour but our communication didn't help us.

Your SIL sounds awful and I would imagine it is stressful being around her. Your DH has grown up with her and has found a way to deal with her rages, his attitude is she does it to everyone so it's not directed at you, however it doesn't matter who she directs it to, if her rages stress you and cause you anxiety, that's not ok, it's not ok to be yelled at. I feel like part of the problem may be a communication issue when talking about SIL, the other problem is that your DH can't really stand up to his sister and her rages.  I am wondering if you need to stand up for yourself when it comes to SIL.  If she does yell or rage at you, I am thinking it would be normal to stand up for yourself and tell her that you don't want to be yelled at and can she please stop.  I wonder if taking your husband out of the equation may help.

I do also think your husband is feeling a lack of support from the examples you gave.  However I don't understand why he pushes you when you are tired which then leads to other problems.  This is probably something I would look at in your counselling, why does he feel the need for you to be at every activity, what compromises can you reach about that because lets face it, if you had down time then you may feel better during the other activities.  Then of course SIL.  I feel like your DH just wants you to excuse the SIL's rages because it's easier.  No one in that family is telling her enough, so she keeps going.  I feel like if you do stand up for yourself against the SIL rages that your husband should be supporting you on that.

[bloomie]

WinterStar - how courageous for you and your H to be doing this hard work together as you fight for connection and understanding with each other even when it is really hard. From what you write and share it seems like a core issue may be a lack of trust between the two of you? Is that something that might resonate with you?

You mention that unless observed your H didn't believe you when you told him how his sister treated you. It also seems like there are some things your H has been disappointed or hurt in that you didn't realize at the time that he didn't share and that can feel like a kind of blindsiding, which is very painful and may keep you on the defensive and make it hard to hear what your H is trying to say.

When something comes up from the past we had no awareness of that has hurt someone we love it can feel like we are being unfairly characterized, blamed, and overly scrutinized. It is easy to drop into a defensive posture for me in times like that and with us, we both could potentially shut down.

It seems like what you might need is compassion for the anxiety visits with his family brings you. It is perfectly understandable that you would feel vulnerable and unprotected when your H is silent in the face of his sister's verbal abuse and then makes excuses for it.

In my own marriage, sometimes the in law issues were a place where some bigger, foundational problems and cracks in my marriage were revealed.  We needed to figure out how to do things like how to prioritize our family of choice and each other in all areas, how to trust and believe the best of each other when hurt, how to work together and unify over stressful situations, how to speak honestly and respectfully in the moment about disappointments (or closely thereafter as reasonable), how to stop allowing our emotions to be presented as facts, and so many other things.

We needed to address in general, and then in specific, the in law family paradigm which was uncomfortable and didn't work for me - such as excusing ongoing abusive and toxic behaviors by one family member. It is painful to work through when our H's coping strategy is to endure it and stay silent.  As Hilltop very wisely suggests -  the way we were communicating with each other, and the assumptions I was acting on as if facts, were exacerbating the issues and dividing us further. We needed to untangle that knot!

One of our wise hero members all4peace makes a suggestion (and I am paraphrasing here) that in the middle of this kind of confusing swirl, where emotions run hot and high, figuring out what is a 'me' problem and what is a 'we' problem is a good first step.

I hope you can take some time for self care and regaining some balance in the next bit. Keep coming back and sharing. We are here for you!

[WinterStar]

Hilltop, you have given me a lot of good questions for our next session, and I appreciate it. You're right that we have communication challenges. We've been in therapy for two years and have worked out a lot, but this issue is clearly our Everest. My husband gets beyond defensive about his family and never wants to talk about these issues. It's huge that we've gotten to the point that we're addressing it. You're right that he wants me to just absorb SIL's rages and not be upset by them later. I actually have always done the first one because it's how I handled my father's rages, but the emotional fallout is brutal. I want to handle the next one more assertively. I need to. DH doesn't support it and says it would make everything worse.

[WinterStar]

In my own marriage, sometimes the in law issues were a place where some bigger, foundational problems and cracks in my marriage were revealed.  We needed to figure out how to do things like how to prioritize our family of choice and each other in all areas, how to trust and believe the best of each other when hurt, how to work together and unify over stressful situations, how to speak honestly and respectfully in the moment about disappointments (or closely thereafter as reasonable), how to stop allowing our emotions to be presented as facts, and so many other things.

Bloomie, I think my husband just can't face the reality about how dysfunctional his family is. It's easier for him to just get mad at me for noticing it. 

Thank you for bringing up my own defensiveness. Your post has helped me to understand better where I'm getting stuck. My husband expects that I will defer to him the entire time we're visiting his family. Then, when I have a need or want that conflicts, he acts like I'm being difficult. He says the problem is that I'm not trying hard enough, which is what he has told me in other contexts. I get really tripped up by that because when something is important, I always try. I know I fail on the regular, but it isn't due to a lack of effort.

I have a propensity for trying too hard. My FOO programmed that in. I was always in charge of fixing other people's things and working hard to be beyond reproach. I've worked hard to have a healthier approach, but it's a battle each and every time. And my husband tells me I have the opposite problem, which I don't, and I just can't get past that.

[nanotech]

I'm thinking next time maybe don't try at all to even look at tractors and sheep. You were well within your rights not to be interested. I wouldn't be either.
It seems as if you don't get any input on to where you go for these in-law days out. Ugg.
You are being supportive enough by turning up, you don't have to do a song and dance for them about how great the day is.
What I think it is, is that they've all learned to manage SIL's behaviour by minimising and normalising it. And you're NOT  normalising it - you're calling it out-  quite right too. But it may be showing your husband some truths about his FOO. that he'd rather not look at. There's a lot of magical thinking goes on in dysfunctional families, to try to cover the problems they don't  want to admit to or deal with.
For me, it's my own FOO who act like this. In order to normalise the negativity , they gaslight themselves.
I can see you are trying hard, but you won't drink the cool aid and go along with all the denial. Go u! 
The thing is, when you're in the FOG like husband is, it's all very difficult to perceive. They act unconsciously much of the time.

Now I'm Out of the FOG I look back, and I can't believe how much I put up with from my UNPD brother, BPD mum and BPD sister. My UNPD dad I can handle, so I'm still in  very low contact with him. He responded to my boundaries so a relationship is possible , just.
I'm pretty much NC with siblings. Hurrah- it's wonderful.  But I'm in my 60s! It's taken me a long time to realise stuff! At least your husband is beginning to see a few things about his own behaviour and reactions around his FOO - there's hope!
When I was in the FOG my  relationships with FOO would often influence my own behaviour to my husband. It caused some sticky issues in my marriage. They all got on okay with my husband, but would expect a lot from him, while not showing him any respect. They would be critical of him in passive aggressive form. I'm sorry to say that I didn't realise this behaviour was dysfunctional for decades.
That dynamic was resolved when I stood up to them and placed boundaries.

Maybe you could agree on ' short and sweet' attendances at these events, or maybe just don't go.
I don't go anymore. It's wonderful. I don't care what they think of me. I get criticised whether I attend or not.

[Cat of the Canals]

In anger he once said he'd just go without me. I was devastated.

Might it be better if he did go without you? And I genuinely don't mean this to sound flippant. It just doesn't sound like you enjoy these trips very much. And the irony might be that if you weren't there to be the scapegoat, perhaps he'd be forced to wise up to the dysfunction.

But there's a chance I'm projecting here... I'd be overjoyed if my husband let me off the hook for seeing his family.   

[WinterStar]

Thanks nanotech and Cat of the Canals.

I go for a few reasons:
1. I want my husband to go and enjoy visits with his family. I've always encouraged him to make the trip and done most of the planning.
2. My kids love to go, and there are four of them now, so going without me and with all the kids isn't really possible. It's a long trip, and our kids don't travel well.
3. My husband's brother and other sister are good people. I love them and enjoy visits with them.
4. The area they live is near where I grew up. At some point on the trip, we go to my favorite restaurant, the ice cream place I went to when I was a kid, the regional store that has fun quirks, a park that still has some of the same playground equipment, we buy my favorite soda that isn't available where we live. I get to experience some of the stuff I loved when I was a kid, bright spots in my sad childhood.

Being around SIL drains me. And MIL can be passive aggressively manipulative along with a depressed vibe that can get to me. But I do hang around them, and even though they have both treated me poorly, I've never shown them anything but kindness. This is what I don't get. I encourage visits, plan, make the trip possible by sharing in the child management, genuinely want DH to have a good relationship with his family. I do things that aren't my preference while there. I treat everyone with kindness even though SIL and MIL can make that hard to do. And then, my husband tells me I'm not doing enough, not trying hard enough.

MIL used to come visit us for two weeks straight over the summer. I wanted to encourage her and our kids to have fun visits. DH could never get the time off work, he said, so it was all up to me.

Supposedly MIL was there to help, and I could get things done, but she couldn't stop talking to me, no matter how many times I reminded her. She'd complain about her sad life story and never listened to me. She would be watching the kids for me and wander off to hang out in our yard without saying a thing so that I wouldn't even know where she was. She would plan a day activity with no notice when she was supposed to be helping. She would leave sweets out even though I had asked her not to leave them in plain sight. She would say she wanted to help with dishes or something else and then drag her feet in a way that made it clear she didn't really want to help. DH would tell me she did want to help and that she was helping us out and never believed me when I said her visits were draining, the opposite of helpful.

Over and over again I tried to get those visits to work. I thought it was all my fault because I wasn't communicating my needs well. Then, I got better at being clear about my needs and nothing changed. After 10 years of trying, I told DH he has to take off the time if MIL comes. When she wanted to come and he couldn't get the time off, he told me I was forbidding her from visiting. He was furious. She eventually came out when my husband could get the time, and guess what? My husband got really frustrated with his mother. He no longer wants her to come as frequently or for as long. Unfortunately, he's still mad that I have the boundary that he needs to take the time off for her visits. He sees it as my fault she can't come whenever she wants for however long she wants and seems to blame me for the fact that he has to spend so much time with her when she does come. He doesn't want to spend his vacation on it. So it's like he learned but also didn't learn at the same time.

[palmtreeparadise]

I'm so sorry with what you are going through. I too find it very exhausting having to visit the in laws. I always talk about how stressful it is with all the birthdays, the holidays, major life events. Its as if every month is significant and i have to be apart of it one way or another. I do not like holidays anymore, i do not like celebrating things anymore. I just want to be by myself or with DH.

I also would recommend individual therapy. It has helped me SO much. I am able to journal, reflect and talk things through with my therapist without having to worry about hurting DH because its his family dynamic that's causing the stress and anxiety in my life. It is so not easy having to feel pressured to be apart of these events and being made to do things you don't want to do. I hope you are able to do your own things and not have to be at each and every family event.

Had a tough couple's therapy session today. The topic was visiting my inlaws. I want us to approach visits as a team and to be assertive in voicing my needs without it causing blow up fights.

Visits with his family are tough. They're long visits with almost no privacy. There's pressure to do things all together as a group (MIL, FIL, BIL, and two SILs with husbands and combined seven kids plus me, DH and our four kids). SIL #1 is abusive both aggressively and more commonly passive aggressively. DH makes many excuses, downplays it and refuses to believe some of the things she does when he isn't around. The family system works hard to appease her, particularly MIL who has a host of issues. I spend the whole visit on edge and exhausted. It activates trauma from my own toxic family.

At therapy, DH painted me as a villain who refuses to do any nonprefered task and manipulates others to get them to do what I want. He has always acted like I'm on one side and his family is a monolith on the other side (which isn't accurate). He makes it seem like I put him in the middle.

He also admitted to mishandling some things. He shouldn't have pressured me to do things I didn't want to and shouldn't have yelled at me. Then, he said he's taken responsibly for his missteps, but I never take any responsibility for my contribution to the problem. I don't even know how to respond. I've wracked my brain for anything I've done wrong. The closest I can come is that in the beginning my expectations were too high, and I tried too hard to please everybody, but I don't think this is what DH is looking for. It seems arrogant to say I don't think I've done anything wrong here, but I don't. And I don't get how all of his outrage is directed at me and not his family who have been abusive to me.