My parents and my husbands mother (not his lovely father) were absolutely emotionally abusive growing up. I am low contact with my parents and he is low contact with his mother.
Husband went one way of dealing with it by never people pleasing and turned into a bit of a prick because of it and I went the other way by being an absolute people pleaser.
We have three kids altogether (two mine, one his). We have done so much development between ourselves over the years we now have I think the perfect balance of helping people when needed but also fuck around and find out and have worked on our own personalities, he's 70% kinder and empathetic and I have worked out when I am being mugged off and need to stand up for myself.
Anyway, my oldest is getting married. My mother got immediately involved, has for months insulted the venue, insulted soon to be son in law family, insulted my son in law, my daughters dress- as she did with my own wedding- I changed everything due to people pleasing. Other people have been constantly commenting to her as well, trying to add people onto the guest list, caterer charging her over the odds as he's the preferred supplier, people from all sides having tantrums.
Anyway- que last night me bursting into tears (happy tears) as my daughter sat down and told us she wasn't taking it due to us teaching her how to deal with things (me and my husband have worked hard to fix all the kids as they all had personalities based on picking up on ours as single parents).
She has cancelled the whole thing as they won't be spoken to like it by anyone when they are being so accommodating and are going to Vegas with their two best friends and then spending three weeks in America with their mates as a honeymoon/holiday with the rest of the money they had to pay.
I am SO proud of her and us. May sound dramatic but the work we have done and the difficult changes we have made and horrible issues we have worked through to make us balanced people has been intense and mentally draining to say the least.
But we have done it- we have broken the cycle for the children and they are going to be fantastic, mentally healthy adults!
Me, her step dad and son in laws family will all be watching via live stream from our sofas with some champagne!