One step forward...

[mustard_seed]

Hello everyone  I'm "new" here, although I've been reading the forum and other materials for a couple of years now.

A bit of my backstory... I was told many years ago by a therapist that my mother was possibly UPD (narcissism), which took me a long time to grapple with. I'm now VLC with my entire FOO, in which I was the SG (it's obviously a much longer story, but I'll try to keep this short!) Last year I really dealt with a great amount of the grief that I had been avoiding re: FOO and have been finding a lot of peace and healing in my own life.

Despite all the FOO stuff, I'm grateful to have a pretty healthy marriage, which brings me to why I'm finally creating an account. My in-laws have always been an "issue" in our relationship, but since we recently got married, the drama has escalated. The more time has gone by, I've come to believe I have an UPDMil and EnFIL. (Why do I seem to have a way of finding these dysfunctional family patterns...?) (jk, I know it's a thing).

Despite my best medium-chill and grey-rock efforts with in-laws, I recently had a knee-jerk emotional reaction to a new line of covert emotional abuse MIL started right around the time of our wedding. I'm here for validation and support and to avoid talking DH to death about the whole thing. We're navigating it best we can, though we see the situation through different lenses for sure. Thank you for reading; I hope to be able to share more here as time goes on.

[Seven]

Welcome.  Are stories are similar but opposite. I came to the forum because of my inlaws and then came to find out that my mother is uNPD. That all this time I classified my family as normal, but nope...we all fit the assigned roles. GC, SG, lost child, clown, etc. Scary really.

Hope I can help with the IL situation.  The I.l issue came to an end for us when UBPDmil passed away in November.

[GentleSoul]

Welcome, sorry for the situation that brings you here.

I relate.  Am from generations of PDs, alcoholics.  All of the covert flavour!   

[mustard_seed]

Seven, thanks for your reply & welcome. It's nice to feel a bit less alone in all of this. Interesting that your situation is flipped around and you figured out your FOO stuff after the in-law stuff. I hope, at least, that having navigated the situation with your in-laws, you are better equipped in the situation with your FOO.

Maybe I will go back and read some of your previous posts re: in-laws to get some insights. It's nice to meet you and I look forward to hearing more of your story, too.

[mustard_seed]

Hi GentleSoul, thanks for your message. It's both comforting and sad to know that there are so many other people who've lived through something similar.

Alcoholism/substances feature heavily in my story as well. And the covert stuff is so sneaky. I don't know about you, but for me, I can see it so clearly and then all of a sudden it's foggy again and I question whether I'm overreacting about everything.