I have caused so much pain to so many people and it’s too late to fix it.

[wrongstation]

I was very insecure when I was younger and overheard my husband’s parents and siblings telling him they didn’t like me and to end our relationship.
He knew I was uncomfortable with him listening to people that were trying to persuade him to leave me all the time so he stopped contact with his family.

His friends were concerned that he didn’t speak to his family anymore and kept trying to get him to talk to them, he changed his number but his friends gave his new number to his mum even though he said not to, so he stopped seeing those friends too.
They didn’t give up and were constantly calling and texting and by this time I was pregnant and still worried that he’d listen to them and just wanted us to be left alone to be happy.
Eventually we moved away and got married so we could be together without judgment but I am a lot older now as this was 17 years ago and the reality is I isolated my husband from his family and friends because they didn’t like me and I felt threatened by them talking him out of being with me.
I literally just removed them like they were obstacles in the way of my happiness.
I hate that I did this to my lovely husband and I’ve apologised but he just thanks me for getting him away from there and says how happy he is and yes we are happy now but I can’t live with myself for all the heartbreak I’ve caused his family who don’t even know our teenage kids.
I am not insecure now I’m older and a lot more confident than I was but I know there’s no going back because his family didn’t like me to begin with and especially don’t now they think I am controlling and have isolated him from his family and friends which is 100% what I did and I am even more sorry that I did that to him and he doesn’t blame me and says he did it so we could be happy, which we are.
I know there’s no going back now, and what’s done is done but I wish I could have been stronger and it could’ve been different.
He just says leave it, we’re happy and that’s all that matters but it’s eating me up.

I’m not seeing OP being controlling here, unless she’s left something out.

Controlling would be forcing her DH to choose between her and his family, putting restrictions on the contact he can have or emotionally manipulating him when he spoke to them.

Expressing she is uncomfortable with hearing the message “you should leave her” (and who wouldn’t be uncomfortable with that?) isn’t controlling, and that’s the only thing she said she did - everything else is DH.

I agree with the idea of counselling, if only to help OP move past the guilt she feels.

If every single family member was telling a female relative to leave her partner would you say the family were toxic or would you be saying they could see something she couldn't?

And again, if the OP was a man would you be saying that his wife made her own decision to cut off her family or would you question the situation more and ask if he had unfairly emotionally blackmailed her making her feel like she had to make certain decisions.

If all of a woman’s family and friends were warning her off of a man would you say they were all crazy and the man was innocent or would you think maybe they can’t all be wrong.

Take away the genders from this situation and you’d have a whole lot more to say.

You presumably haven’t spent 17 years thinking about this so why are you focussing on it now? Have your kids asked about it or something similar?

sounds like a two way street to me too - expressing an opinion over a partner is fine, even making it clear you don’t think they’re right for your child but ultimately you have to back off for the sake of family relations.

you both need therapy - as much as anything, you may have too high expectations if you think this is fixable at this point so you need limited aims and small steps for dh if he can be persuaded to try and re engage.

both dh and his family and friends all participated in the estrangement. If dh really doesn’t want to try it’s ultimately up to him.

My lovely ex told me certain friends and family were no good and encouraged me to drop them. He was right, he loved me, they were pricks.

Isolating someone is so much more than being critical of friends and family who are behaving in a way which does not respect boundaries and even encouraging contact to end.

There's nothing stopping your husband getting in touch with his family now if he to. Its his decision

I think it’s perfectly possible that parents and siblings could all be toxic, yes.

It sounds like DH's family were quite controlling. Imagine trying to break up your son's relationship with a girl simply because you didn't like her?
OP - if you're regretting how things worked out, maybe that's a sign to start considering some kind of re-contact?

I would guess that it's very few people who wouldn't change anything they've done or said over the course of their lives. I definitely have certain deep regrets. I hurt someone I loved very much through a thoughtless action that was somehow never fully repaired even though we both still continued to care for each other very much.sinly my fault. I never got the right words said that would have repaired things. St another time different family members caused me deep hurt and almost destroyed my relationship with the man I've been married to many years. I know they regret their actions as well. The only thing we can do is learn from our mistakes, repair what we can and forgive ourselves and others for what can't be repaired. 💐

I think there is a big piece missing here.
Alot more.
The title dont match the story.
As someone posted above if the whole family was saing it they saw something his eyes didn't see.
Are you in his head so much that mind games he didn't see being manipulated that he never saw and still dont see it.
To have this much guilt op there is more to the story.

You didn't isolate him. His parents spoke badly about his life partner and you, as a couple, did not feel comfortable having people in your lives who treated you that way.

His friends refused to respect his decision to cut off contact with his family and he drew a boundary.

My husband cut contact with his parents before he met me due to their attitude to his ex-wife. I mistakenly thought that maybe she'd caused the issue and encouraged him to get back in touch and they quickly reverted to type, behaved abusively towards him and left him hurt.

His sister has been consistently hateful towards me, he wanted to cut contact but I maintained contact for years, allowing all that drama into our lives and causing us both stress. I was worried about being responsible for him losing his family. We have now had to break contact because her behaviour has become unmanageable.

I would have done him a favour by backing up his choices not to be in touch with those people.

OP is being searingly self-critical in her posts yet at no point has she said she forced her DH to go NC. In fact quite the opposite.

If the OP were male, and had written the exact same posts, my response would have been the same.

I also wonder if some people with dysfunctional families choose partners that they hope will give them an excuse to reduce contact with their family.

Exactly this.

My DH's wider family were initially quite welcoming to me. When it became clear we were getting serious his mother told them all sorts of bollocks about me, total made up stuff, which resulted in all of them telling DH to leave me.

Families can be horrifically toxic.

I think there's a lot of truth in this.

What you did was wrong. Maybe karma will turn around to bite you and when your kids are adults they will meet partners you don’t like and end up completely non-contact with you and you will know how it feels from the other side.

Why take sole responsibility? He could have continued to stay in touch with them, or seen them without you there. He could have stood up for you and encouraged them to get to know you. He could have explained to you what they found so off-putting, so you could consider changing.

He says he is happy, so perhaps he chose to use this situation to engineer a split from a family he found quite toxic.

They could have decided to be kind and welcome you into the family, whatever their reservations. They could have asked to meet with you to clear the air. Etc Etc. Everyone plays a part.

But you feel bad. Are you suggesting you'd like to try and establish a connection with them now? You could try if you like.

The decision is your partners to make. Time has passed, and he has the right to make contact if he so chooses. Or he may feel that his life is better without them.
I think the fact that 17 happy years have passed tells you that life is better.
Either way, he was part of the decision and you mustn’t carry this burden on your shoulders, let it go.

Yep this. It is entirely dependent on the family dynamics, why they didn’t like you. I don’t agree with posters who have limited experience of these issues telling you that you are definitely at fault. They cannot possibly know that.

DHs father was violent and abusive and his siblings and mothers are deeply codependent and enmeshed.

There was decades of SA and incest in my family.

We don’t have much to do with either family and for sure with them our spouses are the problem. That is just simply not true.

We want a quiet life and to protect our children, we cannot undo the deep dysfunction in our families and so we leave them to it and these situations like the OP are deeply complex.

How does husband view his family?

Does he think they were toxic?

Did they go on and on about you or just voiced an opinion?

There's differences between putting boundries in place and isolating someone.

Your dh’s family sounds really dysfunctional. No adult cuts off a a family they love that they have a healthy functional relationship with. This has nothing to do with you.

I have cut my whole family out of my life. I had lifelong friends who tracked down my children, sent photos of them to my family. I cut off those friends. Same friends years later stalked me and got my new address (we moved far away and family have no idea where we are) and gave that address to my family to begin harassing me again. This has nothing to do with Dh. It has been my decision to cut my family and some friends out of my life.

Your Dh is an adult. He can make his own decisions. You should be supporting him in that. I hope no one feels sorry for me because I’m a million times happier without my family and most importantly, my children have been kept safe from their abuse.

Please do not try to make contact with them now (THAT would be controlling). Your Dh is allowed to have control over his own family relationships and can create the relationships he chooses if he wants to.

I know it happens but this is one of the worst examples I've seen on this forum. The OP actually admits she followed the abusive pattern of deliberately isolating him from family and friends and the responses are that he had the choices and it was his decision etc.

I am interested in this comment from him: "but he just thanks me for getting him away from there and says how happy he is".

As a rule, I don't think that if someone goes NC with their family for just one reason - their partner and family don't like each other - that this is something they'd say. So have to question whether or not there were other factors at play, and you coming along gave him the strength to cut them out.

eg exBIL's sister has recently cut him out of her life completely. He is, without a doubt, a truly awful person but, I imagine/assume that like many family members, it's hard to make that final step which is why she didn't do it before. There's guilt and fear and responsibility etc. But the final step for her was when he became an obvious danger/problem for HER DC while he was staying in their home. That was it. She cut him loose at that point and has refused to see or speak to him since. On the surface, this is what it sounds like happened with your DH.

What stories does he tell about his life growing up/before you? What other challenges did his family present?

More importantly, does he regret it or want to go back? Even after all these years, of course some relationship COULD be possible, maybe. But if he's not interested, what's the point.

Where does she admit to this?