DH should have told me how dysfunctional his family is

[daytimemom]

Come from a very dysfunctional family myself. As a result always longed for a “normal” family. One of the things which attracted me to DH was that he and his family seemed pretty “normal” ie mum, dad, brother, parents had “good” jobs, own home, no addictions. In fact the opposite to my background. Told DH about my own family, the impact it’s had on my life, how if I had children I wanted them to have a “normal” childhood and family.

When DH & I started going out I met his family lots of times & everything seemed fine. DH never once mentioned what I now know; his parents don’t care about him, they are tight with money & let their son pawn all his possessions when he was at uni as he was so broke. They have no interest in their son and zero interest in their grandchildren. When we visited them this summer there was no food in the house for us to eat.

I asked DH if he had ever had any sort of relationship with his parents. He said no. They took no interest in him as a child, they didn’t do anything together, no days out, no holidays, no conversations about what he should do with his life, nothing.

DH has admitted he only felt able to visit his parents when I was with him as it offered him some sort of “protection” against them ie with me there they were less likely to shout or have a go at him.

My counsellor said I am so angry because with DH I thought I was getting the family I craved.

I am just so angry with DH. How dare he not tell me about how awful his parents are until we are married and have children. I feel so guilty that I have had children with a man whose parents have zero interest in their grandchildren. At the back of my mind I think if I had married someone else I would have given my children grandparents who would have loved them. I know there is no guarantee but they couldn’t have any worse grandparents.

I was honest with DH about my family so he should have been honest with me. It’s only now, when it’s too late that he shares all the horrible tales from his childhood!

I think you're misplacing your anger at your own childhood onto DH for not 'giving' you the family you wanted - which is wrong. And you're being exceptionally selfish - did you marry him just because you thought you'd get a nice family out of it? Or did you marry him for who he is? If it's the latter, then this is a shame for him, but otherwise irrelevant. Lots of people have dysfunctional families and manage to create happy, warm lives of their own. Don't give your husband the impression he is broken or lesser because of his upbringing - you'll just be contributing to the damage they did.

Turn this round for a minute, and ask yourself how you would feel if your husband had refused to marry you based on your awful parents?

It’s not on really, is it? In fact it’s very hurtful.

Instead of mourning the family you would have liked to be a part of, celebrate the fact that you have both emerged from difficult backgrounds and resolve together to build the strongest, happiest of families for your children and your grandchildren. Look forward, to back.

You can spend all your energy rereading the novel of your life to date, or you can use it to write the next exciting chapters.

• not back

In the early days of our relationship I would say stuff like “ how lovely you had parents who loved you” (when telling him about something awful that happened in my childhood) he would agree. He should have said well actually....

if he'd figured out/accepted/been able to articulate that his own parents were quite shit - and he really might not have managed at least one stage of this, as other posters have pointed out - he might not have wanted to tread on your toes. When someone is willing to share their horrible experiences, it's not always good form to jump in with the me-toos. Sometimes you need to give people space to express their experience, without making it about yourself. He might have really been trying to do the right thing.

Is it possible that you and he have succeeded in creating a different, more positive environment for your own children? Could it be that he now feels safe to accept and articulate his unhappiness with his own parents? My parents were good, on the whole, but they had a few major fuck-ups that I still don't talk to anybody about, as there is a part of my mind that needs them to be ideal - that assumes that my loved ones will think less of me and my family if they knew. I'm sure you understand that it's really vulnerable feeling that the building blocks that made you are incredibly flawed. If your husband is confident enough to accept that his folks weren't ideal, it might be because the family you and he have is far more stable, and he no longer has to define himself by that old family unit.

I understand that you are upset, but I echo PPs that you can use this as a positive thing. You and he have the opportunity to do better than your respective parents did. So stick with one another, and go for it.

YABVU. Use both of your dysfunctional childhoods to make your own DCs childhood better.

I get that you're disappointed, but in the wrong person and for the wrong reasons.

Be the amazing GPs in the future that you wanted for your own.

Why do you get the monopoly on having a terrible past? Surely this should bring you together?

If you keep going like you are your kids will end up coming from a broken marriage too. Your DH deserves better. If you love someone, marry and have children this should not be conditional on the functionality of their family

Posters have said grandparents aren’t important but try telling that to my son who hears about his friends grandads taking them to the park, or playing footie with them.

They’re a nice bonus but that’s it. Millions of kids don’t have grandparents because they died, or live very far away, or are ill, or are just plain bastards. That’s the nature of life. People just get on with it.

I agree with all the above.

Perhaps you could find some "substitute" grandparents / aunties & uncles ... someone from your neighbourhood who is lonely and who would like to take an interest in your children and your family life. Some places have schemes which match up older people and families with young children...
although I did have a set of grandparents they lived a long way away and we were very close to our childless widowed next door neighbour and his second wife.... so much so that when they moved away to retire by the seaside when I was about 8 my parents used to take us to stay with them for a week in the summer.... just me and my siblings - Mum and Dad took us and then came home - it was a marvellous experience but they weren't blood relatives.

Wow you could be me op. Offered up my existing dc to his dm +df who were keen as mustard for a short while.
We had ds and they snubbed us all!!
Dh had buried how bad his dps were, hoping a dgc would transform them.

It didn't unfortunately.
We have been nc for nearly 4 years.
I sympathise greatly op.

I don't think it's a case of YABU or YANBU.

Usually we don't realise how dysfunctional our parents are until we are adults and usually when we have children (that moment when you think "how could they talk to me like that/smack me?" etc). Your DH's childhood would have been normal to him.

Your allowed to feel upset at something you wished for, your allowed the grieve for the future you saw for yourself (I'm guessing a close knit family). But I would work through these issues with your counsellor, as it may make you see we all think our future will look different to how to it ends up and that isn't always a bad thing.

It is unfair to put this on your dh. Would you have felt differently if you knew that his family were like this? Maybe he was afraid it will put you off, his family are not his fault. You are in love with him, not his family. If his family are that bad, he can go nc with them, and have no contact.

I really don’t think you can be angry at your DH!

It’s not normal or natural to spill out that their parents don’t care etc and really you would have known that there was not this mythical fabulous family before you married him - as I presume you would have met them a few times?!

Some people cope by not examining the past/allowing themselves to think about it.
This. "Getting everything out in the open" might be the "healthier" way, but it is very difficult and painful for many people.

Things are not always as they seem in a "loving" family. Not the same situation as yours, but I saw all my grandparents as very nice and loving people, often there during my upbringing. But much later, long after their deaths, I learned things about them from my parents that made me gasp, of which my parents had spared me the knowledge. Should I begrudge my parents this?

I know a young couple who have been happily married for a number of years now; she has loads of issues with her own family, to the extent that she is non-contact with most of them. When they married, her side of the church was far emptier. Her DH hasn't even met most of her family, and perhaps never will. (Contingency plans were made for the wedding, in case they turned up unexpectedly!) Although he knows the basic stories, there is probably more that he hasn't heard, simply because it's too painful for her to tell. She never got anywhere with a counsellor, because she found it too difficult to talk.

When they first got together, her self-esteem was very low indeed, to the extent that she herself tried to talk her DH out of a relationship with her; in a way, I suppose she was laying her cards on the table. She was also terrified of meeting any of her DH's family, in case she "wasn't good enough for them". Even now, she has difficulty with new members of DH's family coming along, such as nephews and nieces, in case they reject her.

They are apparently (to everyone else) very happy as a couple, in spite of this. Should they not have got together?

The people totally battering the OP have no understanding what it is like to come from a totally dysfunctional background. No idea what it is like to feel so broken, incomplete and inadequate. I only realised how much was wrong with mine when I got to university and saw what normal looked like - not perfect, just normal. Parents who knew how to care about their children. Parental relationships built on actually liking each other. The total lack of question where everyone would be at Christmas, the total lack of question that OF COURSE they would go home for the summer break. It can break you to see what normal is, and know you never had it or anything like it.

My first boyfriend at uni's family were almost cartoonishly perfect. I was drawn to him on his own account, obviously, but when I met them his family explained completely who he was: happy, cheerful, straightforward, confident, well-balanced, kind, full of interest in everything. That was how he was raised. He had grown up surrounded by love - for him, for his siblings, from his siblings, between his parents.

You cannot even imagine how intense the desire of a broken person is to take refuge in something whole and functional, even if it is borrowed. I totally blew it with that boyfriend because of that intensity - I wanted so badly to be part of his lovely life, I scared him off.

So OP, I get you. You thought you came home. And YES - you were picking the grandparents you wanted for your children just as you pick the father you want for them. I can totally understand the feeling of betrayal because once again the world has disappointed you, the truth falling so far short of the ideal. I understand.

But it isn't his fault. In your heart you know that. Not everyone who is broken has the courage to be out there with that, for some people the need to start their own family, to form their own normal, is so great they don't have the courage to run the risk of rejection. We all have our own ways of managing to live with what we didn't have.

Keep doing the counselling; keep loving your children; try to forgive your husband. Focus on what you and your children do have and could have; but I know only too well how hard and heartwrenching it is to accept what we and they can never have. to you.

My imaginarycathasfleas

What exactly are you bringing to the party, family-wise, that might be of interest to a man from the background you crave?

Fucking savage thing to say to someone who is only too well aware of what they haven't had.

The people totally battering the OP have no understanding what it is like to come from a totally dysfunctional background.

Bet you a dollar.

There’s a lot of anger here!

It’s totally totally fine for the OP to feel disappointed and crap and talk to her counselor. My DHs family are horrible to me, I get it. I actually hate them.

But don’t blame your DH! He needs a bit of support he’s had to put up with them.

You now have your own kids OP and can form a healthy family. Free from horrible pasts for both of you.

The DH has lied by omission to OP, even going so far as to agree with her when she told him he was lucky to have parents who love him.

OP craves being part of a functional family and laid her heart open to DH. This must feel like a slap in the face.

Whilst I think Op and her dh CAN come through this, her feelings of anger and betrayal are very valid and I'm glad she has a counsellor to work through them.

BitterLemonTart

^YABVU. Use both of your dysfunctional childhoods to make your own DCs childhood better.

I get that you're disappointed, but in the wrong person and for the wrong reasons.

Be the amazing GPs in the future that you wanted for your own.^

What you don't understand is what a fucking HUGE ask that is. To fill your children's cups with something clean and pure when your own is warped and empty/dirty. It is scary knowing that is your job but not having the tools to make that happen, knowing your instincts are wrong, everything about how you were built emotionally is wrong for the job.

Working against everything you have learned constantly. To feel like half the time you are faking it, stiltedly parenting by numbers because you know if you just act as 'feels right', what is 'intuitive' for you, you'll end up doing them the same harm as was done to you. To know that, somewhere deep inside, you had kids because you so desperately wanted to love and be loved as you never have or were, and what an unfair burden that is on them before you even start.

It's not like you just flick a switch and be a good parent. So much of how we relate to others is set in our formative years. It can be overcome, but it is hard and it is work.

Your issues are not your husbands issues or your kids issues. YABU.

What exactly are you bringing to the party, family-wise, that might be of interest to a man from the background you crave?

Utterly vile and irrelevant given OP was totally honest about what she was bringing to the mix before marriage.

Unfortunately children will always see things they don’t have and crave them. My DD has seen all her friends get lovely baby brothers and sisters and wants one. She has two sets of GPs. My DP who are brilliant and maybe PIL who are quite frankly, not. They haven’t seen her for almost a year but talk all the time about how important she is to them. You cannot control the things children see and think they are missing out on, you can just ensure that they have a warm and happy home life

Surely you didn't marry your DH because of his parents?

It's more important that your children had parents that love and care for them than grandparents. It's disappointing for the children but I fail to see why you are so angry at your husband, he's had to put up with his awful parents all his life and now he has to put up with his wife's anger that she married into a dysfunctional family???

@Whiskey2014

Your issues are not your husbands issues or your kids issues. YABU.

Yes because we're all totally discrete entities within families and have no effect on each other whatsoever. Oversimplistic rubbish.

@Namestheyareachangin Actually I come from an exceptionally dysfunctional background, and am NC with my parents. My background and how I feel about who I am in relation to my background is part of why I find this thread upsetting. The older my DC gets, the more I realise how shit my childhood was. I already knew, but each new lovely experience with and aspect of raising my DC just hammers it home. For example, I had to ask DH if I was going overboard with toys for DC because I never had more than 1 or 2 toys at any time; I just had packaging (toilet rolls, etc.) to 'make my own toys'. I hadn't realised how absurd this was till I looked at what to buy for DC.

Careful what you wish for. Read some mil threads