Husband vs my parents situation

[bountyicecream]

This is something that happened a year ago but we are currently going through marriage counselling and this keeps been brought up. It is clear that the counsellors opinion is with my husband on this and so I'm really questioning whether I'm right at all.

So 18 months ago my husband had a falling out with my parents. 9 months before this situation happened. It was over a trivial thing as these things so often are. Basically my husband felt that I should have supported him when he objected to something ( minor) that my mum was doing with out dd. She was pre- loading the spoons when dd was eating, h felt that dd should be doing it herself ( we were blw). Anyway I didn't think it warranted the rebuke that my h gave to my mum, and so h stormed off as I was 'siding with her'.

During marriage counselling it has become apparent that h feels I have never supported him and have always allowed my parents to influence me. I dispute this as I feel I am v independent. I actually feel I have a much close relationship than many of my friends do with their parents. We only speak every couple of weeks and see each other monthly. I've never been on for discussing personal things with her.

Anyway the big issue came at dd's 2nd birthday party a year ago. I hired a hall and invited 7 other children and their parents plus both sets of grandparents. H's parents didn't come (predictably although I'd have loved them to be there). H refused to come if my parents were there.

My parents agreed to be polite and friendly but not try to discuss any issues or heal the rift in public.

H refused to come unless I uninvited them.

I didn't uninvite my parents. I felt that the party was about dd, not my husband, and that she would love to have her grandparents there.

I counselling h has gone on about how I excluded him from dd's party. I used to reply that he excluded himself as he was always welcome. If my parents had refused to come if h was there then obviously I would have told them not to come. Bt they didn't. They were willing to be friendly for dd's sake.

So this is being trotted out as an example of where I put my secondary family before my primary family. Normally I would say that dads are more important than grandparents and that primary family does come first.

Should I have backed down over this and uninvited my parents. This was the first time I'd ever stood up to my husband. And now he bangs on about it as the thing that has hurt him most ever in his life.

The counsellor just reinforces that primary family is more important than secondary family, which I do agree with, so WIBU here?

Sorry so long

FRIDAY - as its confidential the church can't know what 'counsellor' is doing so they aren't responsible unless OP tells them whats going on.

cjel, you are being too generous.

An organisation which offers counselling is responsible for the actions of its agents. Counselling offered by an NHS trust, or by Relate, is confidential, but malpractice by the counsellor is clearly their employer's problem, and they mitigate that risk by employing qualified, professionally registered counsellors. You could, if you were unprincipled, give your imprimatur to an unqualified random person to act as a counsellor under your roof, but you could not absolve yourself of the responsibility for their actions.

But of course, fringe churches are the legal and ethical wild west, and people appoint themselves counsellors (and ministers, and the rest) without the slightest trace of control or governance. So the headcases who, for example, attempt to "cure" homosexuality (ie, the sort of stuff that would see a real counsellor struck off) also turn their malign incompetence to marriages. The OP is essentially taking a chance on the guy she's seeing being sensible, with no control either from the church or from any professional body.

I didn't mean to offend ppl with autism earlier, I am not implying autistic people are likely to abuse. But in this one case I was sort of hoping that a combination of problems with social situations and bad advise from the counsellor might have led him to think his behaviour was ok, and that he was being honest about wanting to improve the marriage but getting it all wrong but with proper help it might all work out. Sadly this doesn't seem to be the case. But I do hope the OP gets help by herself.

Bounty - as everyone else has said - this is not how a marriage should be. Your parents are probably worried sick but terrified that if they say anything they won't see you at all.

You should be able to see your parents whenever you like. You should be able to tell them anything you want to. They are your parents.

Your DH has some very warped ideas about life and relationships. And he has managed to find a 'counsellor' who backs him up.

I know you said you want to work on the relationship but I don't think you can. He will never be happy with your parents in your life and your DDs life. He sounds possessive and controlling and downright horrible.

This isn't marriage. It's nt what a marriage should be.

Ok everyone. First of all I'd like to say thanks for your help.

This is not a fringe church. It is a very large, well respected church. Not some strange cult like thing. It is as normal as normal can get. I take your point thT the counsellor is not being helpful in our situation. I think perhaps he is a little out of his depth. But I do not think he is a bad man.

The original point of this thread was to help me clear my head as to whether my actions about the party were so very clearly wrong. And I've taken on board that no my instincts were probably correct.

At the moment having read all your replies I would very much like to LTB tomorrow as some of you urging. However I cannot do that. As you know, at the moment h is officially the sahp and so I feel that there is a real risk that I could end up not being the primary carer if I just walk out. And so in the long run that would make things worse.

I will get advice, some individual counselling and make a plan.

Thanks for your time and input. I hope you can appreciate that whilst its clear cut for you, for me living here it is not. There is a lot of unknown and risk. And I know that neither dd nor I are in physical danger so we do have the luxury of time to plan.

bounty I think your last post sounds reasoned. Please act and maintain a careful considered momentum to getting to a happier place what ever that maybe.

I think you have been very brave and have took a lot on board - well you seem to have. Good luck OP. Keep posting please get some RL objective advice.

I dare say if you told your parents they would be relieved that you can see all this and that they'd want you back. This is about the res tof your life and DD's.

All my best x

Talk to your parents more, confide in them. You can call them from work surely? Or buy a cheap PAYG phone and keep it at work.

You're right, most Baptists would be offended at being seen as a fringe church. They are very mainstream.

However as you have realised they are prone to being out of their depth by wading into a situation wishing to help but only powered by 'being a nice person' not any actual skill. I've seen this over and over again at my mum's church. They sometimes do amazing work and sometimes make things a whole lot worse. I can absolutely see the minister of my mum's church recommending a nice chap in the pastoral care team for counselling rather than Relate. It's innocence and well meaning that is their problem.

Looking back on the advice he's been giving you 'it's you and him against the world', it's not dissimilar to the advice given on a lot of MN threads where the DH is siding with the MIL and needs to learn his relationships have changed now he's married. If you have an EA spouse who can trick a well meaning, untrained chap, he will give advice that ends up encouraging the EA spouse in their abuse. Which is why people don't get counselling from their mates.

I think your plan is v wise and wish you well.

Its not about people being nice or not! I am sure Hitlers friends thought he was nice, that's by the by. Someone who is untrained is delving into your marriage and counselling you. Powerful stuff in ....whose hands exactly?

You sure your husband and the pastor dont share these views:
www.raisinggodlychildren.org/2013/02/5-ways-wives-unwittingly-disrespect.html

Copy and paste that into your browser, please dont make that clickable so that the blog owner will find this thread in his blog stats as an origin for views

Advice, individual counselling and a plan is exactly what you need.

Good luck with it all.

Bleugh... I have looked at your link Quint - and another that was a link on it... That does not fit within my idea of Christianity....

Good luck. Your decision is good. Hope you had a good chat with your mum this evening.

OP, that all sounds really awful. I grew up in a fundamental, very evangelical church. I knew a lot of people who received church counselling, in that church and in other evangelical and fundamental churches (large, well respected etc) - almost all of it was flawed, because they were coming at it from the premise of the ideal outcome was the marriage being saved, the family unit staying together, and the family continuing to worship in that church as the ideal, and only rarely that what was best wasn't compatible with the family unit staying whole.

Please, please get yourself some individual counselling.

Your H (I refuse to say D!) is playing an incredibly clever game, and I hate to say it but you will need to as well.

Start your counselling, and then start pretending to go along with everything, as though the counselling is working the way your H wants it to. Warn your parents you are really reducing contact, but that you will probably need their help at some point in the future when your position is clearer.

Do everything in your power to reduce your hours so that YOU do the pick ups. If it hurts you financially, then so be it. It might make your H take on more contracts as they come in.

Don't, however, give up your job, you will need it.

Position yourself back as the primary carer, make up some rubbish about how hard it is to view him with the respect that you want to when he is not the breadwinner, and that you really believe his self esteem is also suffering because of it and you just can't bare how it has affected him. How perhaps if he found a job the whole family could move to near the where his job is (once he's over the probably period, of course) so that you can all stay together. You NEED him to be out of the house and as he's so antisocial it will need to be work oriented.

Good luck, op.

I'm sorry to read about your hideous situation. I can't offer much advice but this site might help. I'm on my phone so I hope this works

m.wikihow.com/Recognize-a-Controlling-Person

Glad to hear that you are making plans OP. DIYs suggestions sound plausible for your situation and for H to believe that you are letting him have control. But please tell your parents what you are doing so you havethat ssupport in place ready for when things kick off.

I also think that your plan sounds sensible. When you put that 'this was the first time I've stood up to H' in your OP it was a massive red flag for me. Lots of luck.

Your husband shouldn't be trying to control how much you speak to any member of your family. As others have said, the person you spoke to at the church was not a counsellor, and his advice was awful.

I think you have to face up to the fact that sometimes marriages don't work out. This is not the end of the world. It sounds as though you have supportive parents. You are allowed to open up to them. Admitting to them what has happened may seem like the point of no return, and the end of your marriage. However, for whatever reason he is being abusive. You and your dd can't go on like this forever and you need help.

I've been following the thread.

In case this is relevant to the OP, I'll say a bit about my parents and my own upbringing.

My father was brought up in a Baptist Church. We are talking about the 1930s in a relatively remote part of the UK so not a 'modern' church. However I think even today Baptists are Fundamentalist and Bible-based, which can encourage a rigidity and traditionalism of thinking. My father had had -in other ways - an unusual upbringing, and carried a lot of old unhappiness round. He had very very fixed ideas, and found it extremely hard to cope with the sort of minor differences of opinion that are part and parcel of everyday working domestic life. When anybody disagreed with him - politlly, on some trivial manner - he would become massively upset, angry and withdrawn. His not speaking for days was commonplace

I think my mother intiially believed that by understanding him and loving him, she would be able to undo the past. He'd cease to over-react, become more secure and trusting, more able to show affection. Sadly this wasn't the case. (I can only think of about two occasions when I saw him touch my mother, and I can never remember him expressing verbal appreciation or any kind of endearment.)

My father was able to be more affectionate with very small children - with girls in particular - because he didn't feel threatened by them. However this affection would manifest in inappropriate ways. Once his children grew up and became more talkative and argumentative he could not accept this as normal healthy behaviour, which could even be welcomed. This was particularly difficult for me as a daughter because of his ideas that girls should be docile, and that it was natural for them to both respect and adore their fathers. He became angry and punitive - I got regularly hit around my head throughout my childhood and adolescence - as well as cold and remote.

I think what I am saying is that it's possible to opt to stay in a relationship of this kind. This is what my mother did, in an earlier era. But the costs of doing so can be huge - both to the woman who feels it was right to be loyal and keep trying, and to any children of the marriage.

OP, if you are worried about not being deemed the primary carer, I would suggest the following:

1. Make detailed notes of what you can recall from your counselling sessions, particularly what was made part of a specific agreement.

2. Talk to WA about the best way forward.

I can't imagine that the contents of your counselling sessions would be something that a court would be particularly delighted with, as they seem to be designed to aid and abet an abusive man in further abusing and isolating his wife and child.

Please do talk to Women's Aid. They can advise you and support you. They will help you make good plans, and can point you in the direction of good family lawyers.

Position yourself back as the primary carer, make up some rubbish about how hard it is to view him with the respect that you want to when he is not the breadwinner, and that you really believe his self esteem is also suffering because of it and you just can't bare how it has affected him

This!

I cut & pasted the link that Quint gave above. Not my notion of Christianity, but then I grew up with a CofE vicar uncle not this fundamentalist surrendered wife rubbish.

I know that the Baptist church is big and "respectable" but the stuff about marriage and protecting the relationship and primary family is surrendered wife rubbish.

However -

If you play along with all that crap about the husband as head of the household and requiring respect ( that story in the blog about the wife not following him and so disrespecting him made my skin crawl) then yes, yes, yes him not working, and not providing, and you being worried about that because he's losing respect or some such utter rubbish, might get him off his arse and actually contribute to the family. You're working & doing the bulk of domestic work. What's he doing?

So you could use the sexist rubbish that you've been subjected to to your own advantage, and play the Kinder, Kuche kirche line.

Aside from church issues, I just think some people are massively jealous and can't tolerate their partner having any other relationships.

Mil banned fil from seeing his mother. No real issues, she just resented any time he spent with her. She apparently kicked up such a fuss if he ever visited that fil couldn't face the rows and upset and so withdrew from his family. Mil achieved aim.

Dsis likewise made it incredibly difficult for bil to see his parents or siblings. It was never convenient, they couldn't visit, etc etc. Bil left in the end for numerous reasons but this was one of them.

Let's face it, many, many of us don't much care for the in-laws but a normal, rational person has to grit their teeth and suffer a bit of interaction. The OP's dh is clearly very odd indeed.

Also, meant to say, I think you are amazing, OP. It must be very very difficult to read this thread. It's easy to give advice to someone to get out of an unhealthy situation. Far harder, far far harder actually to do it.

Your posts come across as so calm and rational. I hope you are able to be kind to yourself.

Good luck!