PIL taking priority

[dontwanttopanic]

Hello everyone,

I've posted on related issues before but after many, many arguments about this, DH and I have come to a bit of a standstill. Fundamentally, DH's (very large) family are pretty demanding in terms of time and privacy. They aren't evil or nasty but they very much want things done their own way, even if that way appears extremely unusual or intrusive to the outside world. They very much consider our house to be their house and this has caused a number of difficulties between DH and I over the past few years.

DH has for most of our marriage been very reluctant to challenge them - he thinks their behaviour is perfectly normal, having grown up with it, and hasn't understood why I am upset or frustrated. However, the last few weeks have been extremely difficult ones in our marriage and he has now agreed in principle that our family (that is, he and DD and I) should be our priority and that he can see that his parents' behaviour towards us/me hasn't always been nice. That said, he considers that they can't be held responsible for this as "it's the way they've always behaved and nobody has ever told them that it's a problem". We have both read that book that it frequently recommended on here, "Toxic In-laws", and it even has a whole section which describes PIL's behaviour in uncanny detail, but DH refuses to acknowledge this. It feels a little as though he is insisting that black is white and I don't really think there's anything I can do to persuade him otherwise under these circumstances. I am trying now to focus on how we move forward and agreeing strategies to side-step issues with his family before they arise, to prevent things (hopefully) getting so bad again in the future. I am however a bit nervous about how realistic it will be to implement these strategies if DH just doesn't see that there's a problem.

I am feeling really sad and bewildered about DH's views on this, but they are what they are. Compared to some of the things I read on here, this is not something worth breaking up over; I love DH very much and will do anything to avoid us splitting up so I need to make peace with this situation and would value the collective experience of Mumsnet. Please could you tell me about similar long-term situations you've had and how you moved on past/through them?

Thank you very much in advance.

It's hard without knowing the backstory.

I just let DP get on with seeing his family and only get involved when I have to. They have quite a dysfunctional relationship but don't see it that way!!

What issues are you referring to?

This must be really hard. Some of us with toxic parents see them for what they are and some are blind and make excuses for them. I used to do the latter, for a long time. It's a kind of defence mechanism, because it protects you from seeing what they're really like.

Your DH has evidently never had anyone model healthy boundaries and he doesn't know how to change the way he behaves in a family system that has never changed. Someone needs to behave differently and that is going to have to be you. I can't say how your DH will react, but you need to start setting boundaries for yourself that you are able to enforce somehow. Hard to say what they should be without knowing more details.

I can't help wondering if you are my SIL as my brother is in this kind of denial about our utterly toxic parents.

I put my foot town with BIL and basically stopped all integration with him but dp was totally on board with it. This is however after three years of abuse by message and pretty outrageous behaviour. It had to get a lot worse before dp actually listened to me.

If I were you I would withdraw from any interaction from them that way at least you don't have to deal with them.

I would also tell DH you need to stop tolerating their behaviour in front of your DD as she needs to know it's not okay. The problem with toxic families is that there is an expectation that toxic behaviour will be tolerated. So the next generation learns to do that too.

Setting the right example for your DD is more important than keeping the peace with your in-laws, which may have been taking greater priority than it should. They are adults and should not be placated at all costs. It is worth reminding your DH that you and he are your DD's templates for what it is to be a man and a woman and to live in the world and if he tolerates toxic stuff in front of her what is he teaching her?

An example you might set of a boundary (without knowing your back story I'm just making up something hypothetical):

If they insist on doing something in your house in a way that makes you uncomfortable, tell DH: "I feel uncomfortable and I'm not willing to be uncomfortable in my own home," and go out, with DD.

Is there any way you could say to the in-laws: "I feel uncomfortable /unhappy when you do that, please stop"?

If your DH insists you can't say that to grown adults, well, ask him why he thinks that. And try to encourage him to go to therapy. It might help if you go together to a family therapist to discuss the issues (ie someone who is an expert on family systems).

It does depend on what they do really. Because it can range from the faintly irritating but best ignored (harmless comments on occasional visits) to the really intrusive (dropping round for frequent visits uninvited).

What are the parents doing

If they're uncannily well described in a book about toxic people then it will be pretty bad.

The thing is dropping round for unexpected visits isn't the crime of the century, lots of people would be happy for that to happen! It's all relative.

I don't think it's just that WipsGlitter.

There are lots of smaller things which over a period of years have ground me down a bit - I just feel that we have no rights over our own home or family or privacy and it's something I'm really struggling with. I don't know whether this means I'm someone who needs an unreasonable amount of privacy - I'm just not sure? Sorry - as I say, I have posted about some of these issues before so this may get a bit boring for some people.

They do indeed turn up unannounced and let themselves in to our house and wander around (although this has now stopped, thank God, since I had a bit of a meltdown about it - I was on my own in the house on maternity leave with DD and wasn't sure whether or not it was burglars). It took many days of negotiating with DH exactly what we were and weren't allowed to say to them to get this to stop. (I was in favour of saying "please stop letting yourselves into our house".)

They invite large numbers of extended family to come for dinner at our house without asking us whether that's ok, and they (reasonably frequently - 3 times in the last 12 months, for example) announce that they are going to have huge parties at our house over a period of several days without asking us first.

When DD was a newborn, they moved in with us for a couple of months for various reasons (despite my not being happy with this arrangement. I told DH that I couldn't cope with it, especially as he had injured himself and couldn't do any housework or babycare for quite a long time. He said that he knew I was at breaking point, but he wasn't willing to ask them to move out.). FIL quite openly dislikes babies and disapproves of breastfeeding and made his views very clear indeed, such that I spent most evenings upstairs in our bedroom on our own, feeding DD, or wondering around the countryside so as to avoid going home.

They have expressed some pretty shocking racist views in front of DD and when I said to DH that that wasn't ok and they couldn't do that again in front of DD, FIL said that we were being too touchy and, essentially, that he would say what he wanted in our house

I know and I've looked at the OP's other threads but it's hard to advise without knowing what the problems are! Other people's family dynamics can be hard to understand so while the op may struggle with something her DPs family would just see it as normal.

I should however note that DH has apologised over the last few weeks for what happened when his parents moved in and agrees that that can't happen again and wasn't fair.

Oh, I remember your thread about your FIL banishing you to the bedroom in your own home because of his feelings about breastfeeding.

You find hope in the fact that your DH has now apologised and recognised that this wasn't ok and can't happen again? That hope is sadly misplaced, until he is able to recognise his parents' behaviour for what it is, as it happens. The fact that he still can't see it when it's waved right in front of his face in the "Toxic In-Laws" book, means that all you're going to get are more such incidents, where your DH may or may not apologise months or years later, after the fact.

For anything to change for the better, he needs to recognise what is going on in the moment. And he's clearly not there yet.

I'm really sorry for you, as it's exhausting to feel let down like this by the person who you love and who loves you. Like you're jumping up and down pointing at something obvious, that they just refuse to see.

The marriages I know of that contain a cowed, enabling child of controlling parents are rarely successful; the one or two successful ones I know of only work when 2 things are present:

1. Extreme physical distance from the controlling family
2. A partner who is aware that their controlling ways aren't ok, and that when their spouse balks at it, it's not the spouse who is the problem, but their parents.

I told my DH that I loved him very much but that our situation had become so impossible for me that I was seriously considering leaving him and moving back to my home country with the children. I told him that I didn't want to split our family up but I could no longer live with him being so low down on his priority scale.

That made him sit up and take notice. In the end we moved together and I very rarely have anything to do with my in laws. Bah and the kids speak to them regularly on Skype which is fine with me. Things are much better with us now, although MIL is planning to visit us this summer which could be interesting

Thanks, Hypodeemic. And what did your DH say? Had he always said that of course you were at the top of the priority list (but not implemented the statement), or was this a statement that he only agreed to make at all when you considered moving away?

He was all talk for a long time, yes of course we were his priority, right up until one of his family said something and then he went along with whatever they wanted for a quiet life.

I put up with it for far longer than I should have, there were a lot of very minor niggly things that made me look very petty to keep bringing them up but they ground me down. I was young and naive and didn't know how to handle things, I'm more stubborn now!

Ultimately he was the one who suggested we move, although his family will never believe that. His mum even complied an A4 list of questions for us to make sure we'd thought through our decision properly, she didn't make it to the end of the list

Wow. Perhaps I don't have it that badly after all :)