I want to stick my fingers in my ears

[Pepin]

I've noticed lately that DH is trying in conversations to convince me and others that his parents were good people.  If he can interject a story about them, he will paint them in the best light.  He leaves out certain unfavorable details...and is it right that this bothers me?  It feels like white washing.  Of course since he was the GC, he is going to speak highly of them and paint their flaws into something praiseworthy.  And while I want to say something or contradict him, instead I bite my tongue.  And then I feel defeated because he said what he had to say while not being completely truthful.  If I do happen to ask for clarification (in hopes that he will backtrack and make a correction), he will go around it and cop some excuse like that his parents only did their best and I again feel defeated because perhaps my lingo was off.  He is only considering his GC relationship with them and not anyone else's including mine.  To those that his parents have hurt, DH is unable to see things from their POV.  Therefore, DH believes that they and myself are misguided and wrong...and we deserved what came our way for not complying.  It's exhausting listening to him paint his parents so highly and I wish I could stick my fingers in my ears.

[Andeza]

Can you decide on a boundary Pepin? Every time he starts off on another story, you walk away or something? Sitting there listening to it is only going to continue to leave a bad taste in your mouth and rankle your spirit.

[Pepin]

Can you decide on a boundary Pepin? Every time he starts off on another story, you walk away or something? Sitting there listening to it is only going to continue to leave a bad taste in your mouth and rankle your spirit.

Exactly.  This is where I am stuck.  I really don't know how to set a boundary.  If we are sitting amongst friends and he brings something up, I can't just get up and walk away 3 times?  Or if I am the only one in the room and he brings them up....like he did the other day when we were having a conversation (that I started) about something else - he brought up his parents as an example of being "healthier" than the people we were discussing and I started screaming inside my head.  He cannot see the unhealthy in his parents and that they did some rEaLLy bad stuff to him and his siblings.  Perhaps he does this to avoid accountability for his enabling of them?  Yet on the other side of this, it is clear that he was groomed from birth to be the hero. 

He is far more protective of them now after their death than he was before. 

When we met and dated, he was keeping them at arms length as well and had been for some time.  Interestingly, he only shares stories about his parents before I arrived into the picture and nothing after...

[moglow]

Interestingly, he only shares stories about his parents before I arrived into the picture and nothing after...

I'm guessing this is a conscious choice, where he can share these great memories of them and no one's the wiser. After all, who wants to speak ill of the dead. It may be part of his grieving process but it could be hard on him when those rose glasses come off eventually. Knowing how they treated you, I'd get sick of hearing it. 

Does he talk about any of this with his siblings? We didn't really, good or bad, until the past few years. It's helped me, finally talking it out with mine, knowing it really was what I remembered. None of us are in that particular fog anymore. 

[SonofThunder]

Hi Pepin,

Im sorry your DH's whitewashing bothers you. When my PDw said things to others that were half-truths, i learned to ask myself "does it really matter??"  The answer to myself was mostly "no".  Doing this is a way of me practicing indifference.

Does it really matter what these others think of DH's parents?  Imo the boundary is Pepin's self-controllable indifference and possibly add Andeza's walking away as well if the half-truth storytelling is time consuming. In boundary-setting, you control what enters your ears. If you cannot walk away, put some music or white-noise on headphones to control your own hearing. 

SoT

[Call Me Cordelia]

Is your DH aware of your feelings when he does this? Would it be safe enough to share that you have a very different and pretty uniformly painful experience of his parents, and it dredges a lot of those feelings up for you to hear him talk about them so. (I had a similar conversation not that long ago!)