New Here - Husband having a meltdown over having to see his parents

[mewms]

I hope I'm doing this right. I haven't introduced myself anywhere. I admit coming to an online forum was NOT my first choice, nothing against anyone here. I hope that is understandable. So, here we go...

DH & I have been married over a decade and have two elementary aged kids. It took us a long time to figure out the mess with his family. On the outside, his family looks squeaky clean - at least they did until the adult children started to fall apart at the seams. His mom is very smart and good at hiding the mess. She's also very good at using plausible deniability. Part of her persona seems to be maintaining a "good girl" image. I admit I was the first one to point out something was off. I just didn't have a category for their behavior, and it took me a long time to see. We also married pretty young. At first DH disagreed and was upset with me for saying things weren't right. I told him he was welcome to disagree, but that I wasn't wrong to say what I saw. We are seeing a counselor who, while she can't diagnose people who aren't there, sees the mess. There's just a lot of dishonesty, manipulation, silent treatment, etc. Over the past couple of years some things have happened to make it clearer. After doubting ourselves, we have direct evidence of lying and talking about us behind our backs. We strongly suspect his mother is a covert narcissist, but there are also other family members who have verbally mistreated us.

DH took a brief break. He was super polite about it, imo. I get it, nobody wants to hear from their kid that they need some space to work on some things, but, if you have to say it, I think he was very respectful. He then told them some things that were important to us, which went over like a lead balloon. They have not seen us in several months despite us offering, but they've acted like we've refused to see them.

Now, to get to my question: We are supposed to see them soon, but DH is losing his mess. I guess I just don't get it. My family members are far from the epitomy of functional, but I deal with them. I know it's not the same, but my point is I really have trouble understanding it. I'm very glad we're at least on the same page that the things his mom does are not okay, but he's been very not nice for a couple days and this morning he admitted to legitimately laying in bed when he knew he had an online work meeting. Um... like... we need you to not get fired. When we're not dealing with his parents, he's wonderful! Not perfect, I still have to remind him not to play the martyr sometimes or not to be passive aggressive with me when he's unhappy or to please straight up tell me if I've done something wrong because I know I'm not perfect, but it can be dealt with between the two of us. When we do have to deal with them, he's horrid - says mean things, acts like I'm out to get him and even says as much, doesn't do what he's supposed to, talks about how terrible he is. It's a mess. What do I do? We talked and agreed to try seeing them every few months if they would do so. He set up this date, although we both discussed it. What am I to do? I've suggested he email our counselor. I've said if he genuinely can't handle it he just needs to cancel with them. What am I supposed to be doing here? I have tried to point out to him that I am human too and his behavior is extremely stressful and hard on me. I cancelled some things we were supposed to do together this week because I told him I can't handle him acting like this and exposing the children to it. Suggestions? Commentary?

Also, thank you for reading. I just don't know.

[bloomie]

mewms - Hi and welcome to Out of the FOG! You are not alone in finding yourself engaging on an online support forum something you wouldn't have ever thought you would be doing. I am glad we are here for you when you need us and that you decided to join the conversations here.

Wow! A lot going on within both your family of choice (FOC) and your husband's family of origin (FOO). From what you shared it sure sounds like your H is in a lot of pain and stuck emotionally.  That doesn't mean he has license to behave badly toward you and your kids. That has to be very frustrating and create an unhealthy atmosphere in your home. I am really sorry you are facing this.

The most important thing I have learned in my own journey coming to terms with an in law dynamic that has created a great deal of fall out and pain in my own marriage is there is one thing I can control, change, cure and that is always and only me. And when I do change when/if/how I engage with what sounds like toxic behaviors from your H (my own would also act out toward me and take to his bed when his very limited coping skills failed him) it creates a natural shift of all of the emotional swirl back to my own H and off of me.

I still have to remind him not to play the martyr sometimes or not to be passive aggressive with me when he's unhappy or to please straight up tell me if I've done something wrong because I know I'm not perfect, but it can be dealt with between the two of us. When we do have to deal with them, he's horrid - says mean things, acts like I'm out to get him and even says as much, doesn't do what he's supposed to, talks about how terrible he is. It's a mess. What do I do? We talked and agreed to try seeing them every few months if they would do so. He set up this date, although we both discussed it. What am I to do? I've suggested he email our counselor. I've said if he genuinely can't handle it he just needs to cancel with them. What am I supposed to be doing here? I have tried to point out to him that I am human too and his behavior is extremely stressful and hard on me. I cancelled some things we were supposed to do together this week because I told him I can't handle him acting like this and exposing the children to it.

May I say this as gently as possible... your H is an adult. You are not responsible to remind an adult to behave in respectful ways to you and recognize your need for emotional safety in your relationship. You are not responsible to take on the role of caretaking a grown man and reminding him to behave responsibly and not risk his employment. If he honestly cannot get out of bed... he needs a thorough medical eval. If he cannot speak honorably and respectfully to you and your children that is unacceptable and 100% his responsibility to adjust and mange himself differently.

About his making plans with his family and now he is flopping around all upset.. that is also his responsibility. Period.

As a wife I talked and coddled my own H too much for too long and he got used to it. I was constantly trying to bridge the gap of what I realized (in my own H's case) was a serious lack of coping mechanisms and emotion maturity. It was at my expense and I was done under after a long while of it.

I stopped talking about the same old same old around his family. I just kindly and calmly began to work on my own co dependent tendencies and developing healthy boundaries of my own and living from them. I examined my core values and decided how I would allow myself and my children to be treated. By anyone. I measured my emotional and physical bandwidth and carefully considered what I would and would not engage in.

And every day I still ask myself this question: "What is mine to do?"

It wasn't until I began to live from a solid and healthy sense of my own worth, knowing where I end and another begins, and stepped away from enabling my H to avoid dealing with his own mess by trying to fix it for him and help him, remind him, point out... that my own relationship with my H and my in laws began to shift.

There is such good help in the resources tabs at the top of the page. I suggest jumping in and reading as much as you can as you continue to sort through what to do and how best to go forward. I am really glad you have joined us. There are many spokes to the wheel of us recovering and learning how to step out of the fear, obligation, and guilt and my own time here has been of good help in moving me forward. I hope you find your time here to be of value and empowering.

[AlisonWonder]

Mewms I am sorry you are going through this.  My DH suffers when I hear from, and get ghosted by, my estranged adult children too, and I have to try not to go on about it to him.  Sometimes the person, eg your DH, decides to cut off contact, but there is usually a long period of going back and forth before they commit to it, so you get this awful instability.  I agree with Bloomie that you have to work on what is within your power to change, and that it does make a difference, like a hanging mobile.  Every part you move, changes all the other parts.

[feralcat]

I'd like to reinforce that. I was bought up in dysfunction. And married into similar dynamics. Both times. Because I thought that was the norm.
I allowed my current MIL to talk to me rudely from the off. And that was nearly 22 years ago. I allowed it, because I wanted her to like me, and I was used to being a Nice Girl (doormat) . My DH is the family SG. She talks to him appallingly. And invalidates him constantly.

BUT he also enables her, as did his own late father. To my detriment. Threw me in front of her as his 'meat shield', so the two men could disappear off somewhere. And even before I came Out of the FOG I started to ask him not to. He wouldn't. It benefitted him too much. I warned him, and eventually started ignoring her, and the inevitable minor attempts to play nice. Too late.
He's had to accept that. Feeble attempts to justify her behaviour, and to make me feel sorry for him.

They DO know, really. But the more you try to cushion things for them, the longer it drags on for.
It's not our responsibility to manage their discomfort, but we can gently and consistly move towards living our own best life. Not playing them at their own game, but defining our own.

[treesgrowslowly]

Hello and welcome,

From what you shared, I agree with the posts that have already given some good ideas and insights from Bloomie and others.

To be blunt: He needs to go into therapy to sort out his emotions regarding his parents. These are his parents, and this is his inner work. You can support that work, but you'll never be able to do the work for him.

I have an extremely unhealthy FOO (Family of origin). It is / was / always will be my job to deal with the stress it caused me / causes me to deal with that stuff. Not my partner, not my own children, not my boss or coworkers. Mine.

A lot of people get married, and then they want their partner to help them clean up messes. Sometimes this may be appropriate and sometimes it is not. In this case, this is his work to do.

This isn't a mess that you will be able to clean up for him.

The benefits of going into therapy to explore his stress with his FOO, is that he will have a much better understanding of how he was raised, he will have more insight into how he wants to show up as a father to his own children, and he will understand why he feels anger, resentment, guilt, fear, obligation, and why denial played such a big role in his FOO dynamics. That is what therapy for this sort of thing does. Those are the emotions that adult children of narcissists end up carrying, as a result of the emotional immaturity of their own parents. The book "Adult children of emotionally immature parents" explains this in detail.

If he continues to put this work onto you instead, it is just "kicking the can down the road" as we say here. In the meantime, you will notice the effects of being blamed for the anger and denial that comes from the situation his family is in. You'll be blamed for things that you can't fix, and are not your fault.

Your role here is to support the healthy behaviours in your own family (your own immediate family).

The sad reality is that you and he are trying to raise the next generation, to have very different practices and dynamics and relationships than the ones he grew up with. That is a lot to unpack and most of us really benefit from counselling help to do that important work.

Like you said, in his family you've seen lying and manipulations. That stuff gets 'passed down' from generation to generation in a lot of families, unless people decide to put an end to that but the fact is, it's much more complex than simply saying "oh we won't raise our kids like that" or "oh I won't treat my marriage like that".

There is A LOT that wasn't learned in a family with a covert narc parent. Our parents, on some level, blamed us for their unhappiness (classic narcissist parenting) and then we in turn, blame our partner (and eventually our own children) for our unhappiness.

A lot of adult children of narcissists, we withhold a lot because that is how we survived childhood.

I am being blunt because this is what I have seen a lot of in my own experience.

A lot of people have narc parents, and few of us were ever ever taught what it would actually take to address the things your husband is needing to address.

A few conversations with the narcs in the FOO won't cut it. They won't change. What has to change is our relationship to them, and we also have to learn how their antics have affected us.

You list several things that your DH has been doing, that are all reactions to the intense stress of dealing with PD FOO. Some people stay in that state. They go through life, constantly stressed by their PD FOO. Their children grow up, and they are in a state of misery, because they wish this wasn't happening (denial). It did happen. Sadly.

What is needed is to learn about the PD, accept that the person has these traits, and then redefine our own relationship to them and ourselves, and like I said, most of that is much much easier with therapeutic support from trained counsellors. As a wife you can support his efforts to learn what is going on inside him, but you can't do the work for him, and you can't fix his dysfunctional FOO.

Wishing you the best of luck,

Trees

[NarcKiddo]

I get hideously stressed at the prospect of any interaction with my uNPDmother. Even a phone call, far less a visit.

I'm doing grey rock, which helps, and at this point am not prepared to go NC.

During the early years of our marriage my husband actively tried to "help" me and encourage me to withdraw, stand up to her, whatever. It did not help. This relationship is something I have to deal with by myself, in my own way. The sad reality is that it means he has had to put up with a stressed and ill-tempered wife for a few days before any visit and up to a day afterwards as I decompress, depending on how grim she was or wasn't. His suggestions of how I might deal with her, or what I might say, or could I not just refuse to do xyz added more pressure to an already toxic situation. During those early years I was still very enmeshed and since I have seen her for what she is and started grey rock it has got much easier for him as well as for me.

I am not in any way suggesting you put up with unreasonable behaviour from your husband, but you also can't necessarily expect him to see (right now) that he is being unreasonable. (And what is or is not reasonable does depend to some degree on the circumstances.) Of course you can tell him but in the stress of the moment you will simply be adding pressure that he may be quite unable to deal with. I became very angry with my husband at times, especially when he thought the most helpful thing would be to cancel, when for me that was simply putting off the evil day that I wanted over with, however much I dreaded it. And I couldn't explain it rationally to him partly because I did not understand it myself, and partly because as the child of a narc you just don't open up or explain anything if you can help it, as in your experience it just opens you to more hurt. His method now is to step back as far as possible but make it clear he is there to help if I need anything practical, such as a lift to/from the visit or for him to be part of the visit for any/all of the time. Emotionally there is nothing he can do to help me at the time. All he can do is be there for me and try to help emotionally at a time when I am ready to be helped. You have kids in the mix and clearly their wellbeing has to be paramount. My only suggestion would be to limit their exposure to his stress; essentially you deal with the kids and leave him to sort himself out as much as is realistically possible. Yes it might mean you are doing the lion's share of domestic stuff temporarily but that may be necessary for the family ship to keep afloat.

Best of luck.

[Danie]

Hi MEWMS. Wow! That is me as well. It is good to hear your side of it and I suspect my husband has felt some of those things. I didn't read all of the responses so I may repeat or not be in sync.
The first thing that comes to mind is PTSD. I've been diagnosed with it, due to my family, and when triggered I can feel completely off the rails. All of the things that matter to me just kind of take a back seat while I mentally try to hang-on and process thoughts and feelings. The trauma stuff becomes my reality for a while. I don't think time heals it, time makes it a little less powerful though. I've had enough therapy now to recognize when I'm triggered and what to do. My husband has been patient with me. I know it's been super confusing for him because he can just block things out or dismiss them, while I cannot.

You are asking "what to do?" I would say take care of yourself. I know that's kind of a vague cliche, but you don't have to get sucked in. Go about your day, do some good, fun things, acknowledge his situation and suggest therapy. I think (IMO) he's gonna need some time to untangle this and find his true happy self. I would let him lie in bed, for me that's a way to get centered and rest because I need it.

Again IMO he should stay away from his family until he gets a better handle on it, if ever. His body is telling him something and he needs to listen.

There's something called "flooding". My understanding is that it's overwhelming thoughts and feelings. When I have experienced this I get sort of paralyzed. I've experienced this when family stuff happens. I think it's a little different than PTSD because I don't feel down.

If I acknowledge my PTSD I can sort out what's real and what's not. In other words, when my mother manipulated me into cleaning her floor at her house 2 weeks ago, while I processed that I told myself things like, "I chose it", "I won't be doing it again", "It doesn't mean I'm trapped", "I choose my own happiness".

I don't know if this helps, but I would avoid those triggers and get him some therapy. Also it's so important for you to have your own healthy functional life away from that crap.

[Danie]

I mean it's important for you 2 together to have a good life together where you're healthy and not repeating his past. Put emphasis on your lives together and how good it is!