Still angry about this letter almost three years later

[Toska]

DH's dad sent this letter in his birthday card five months before our wedding. He had called them three months before to ask if they were coming to the wedding as I was paying the final balance and everything was non-refundable. They said yes.

For background DH's mum doesn't like me and spent the first two years of our relationship talking me down (we met through unconventional means, I'm a different race, I'm quiet, I'm significantly younger etc.). DH (then DP) did not stand up for me, he says he never noticed. It all came to a head in 2013 when I was getting ready to go with them to an event and she asked me where I was going when I responded with them she said that it was a family thing and I couldn't come. DH spoke to her about this, of course she pretended that she didn't mean to upset me.

She then called a few months later and I told DP not to speak about all the past incidents as she would find a way to turn them around. He didn't listen to me and did it anyway. I overheard this conversation and he was saying things like 'Toska thinks you've been really unkind etc', rather than 'I've noticed this. . ' He's really bad at standing up to his parents as they supported him until he was in his early 30s. I'm over 10 years younger and poor I think his parents knew that I would be too eager to make a good impression.

His mother then proceeded to talk about me to his other family members (they told me, one said that she told them I didn't like the way they looked at me!) and send nasty emails and make weekly phone calls to DP/DH about me. The letter I've attached arrive in 2014 a full year after the initial blow up. I've never spoken to them about their emails and letters and they've never apologised to me. DH maintains that after the letter from his dad he spoke to them about three months later and read them the riot act and they were sorry. If I ask when or what was said he says he can't remember (he is dyslexic). We've been arguing about his parents since 2013.

I had a miscarriage in January and I'm tired. I can't do this anymore. I'm tired of worrying about what rumours his parents are spreading about me, I'm tired of saying their names more than I say my own and I'm tired of being excluded. I'm undergoing assessment for Borderline Personality Disorder and have taken antidepressants for the last six years, worrying about all this crap is making me angrier, more destructive and paranoid. I have no rest, I've thought about this letter everyday since it arrived. My parents were abusive and we had social services involvement. I have my own crazy parents to deal with. All DH says is that we have to find a way through this but he doesn't know how.

What would you do?

It doesn't look like you will ever be able to make up with them. But I feel this is just a red herring TBH.

the fact that you haven't felt happy at all in the last 10 years says much more.
If you haven't seen then since the wedding and have no relationship with them, they wouldn't have been able to make your life hell iyswim? So what is gong in that making you unhappy or is stopping you from being happy?
How is the relationship with your DH?
What about the stress due to the infertility?

I don't see how her mh has anything to do with it her mil is a spiteful witch who spreads nasty lies about her. On top of that she's with a husband who don't give a damn about her feelings and all this could be racially motivated. Seeing as she doesn't treat her other dil that nice. If your spineless husband can't sort himself out then you should run a mile. Its amazing what emotional abuse and bullying can do to the mind. Give her back her son if he's that special.

You seem to be angry with everyone- your DH, his parents and yours.
Why is this?

I don't think anyone here can really understand the letter. (It's also not very clever to post a letter, that was supposed to be private, on a public forum, even with the names crossed out.)
We don't have any context for the letter, only your side to it all.
Even posters here are reading different things into it - people are seeing different sides to it.

If you haven't already, have you had counselling? It sounds as if you have a lot of baggage going back to your own childhood. This all needs sorting because it's possible you are paranoid and seeing things not as they are.

I think you ought to seek out a counsellor and talk this all through, maybe with your DH as well as a couple but also for yourself.

London- there is no proof the MIL spread lies- this is the OP's take on it.

Sorry, I don't see anything particularly nasty about this letter. To be angry about it several years later is really worrying.

Agreed with other posters, is it possible your MH may be clouding your judgment here? I also think that your dh is more of an issue than the ILs.

I would let it go and try to reconcile

Toska How do you know the MIL sent nasty emails? Did your DP/ DH show you them? Did he talk about them? Did his family show you evidence?

I really don't understand how you discovered any of this.

Polly why would family members confront her for and make amends on her wedding day about things she has apparently said behind her back.

*There back

You seem to be angry with everyone- your DH, his parents and yours.
Why is this?

Have you not read the Op's posts correctly?

I haven't read all of the responses, just the first few. But unlike those PP, I don't think that letter is conciliatory at all. He refused to attend his son's wedding!
They certainly sound racist and it sounds like an emotional game to try and guilt your husband into leaving you....

You do need to sit down with your DH and talk about this though and come to some kind of plan of attack as to how you're all going to sort things out??

toska I felt sad reading your op as I can relate to a lot of your post re MIL.
My situation is very different, we have been NC for 3 years at DHs choice, and she is constantly trying to claw back in and make trouble.
I've got no real advice for you I'm afraid, excerpt to say that 1 thought that helped me was that I've realised it's never really been about me. MIL was always going to go out of her way to be nasty to whoever DH married like your DH he lived at home before he met me and our relationship naturally changed the dynamics between them as he grew up and gained some independence
I would second the pp who advised to press on with your mental health assessment.

London I don't understand what you mean. They didn't speak to her at the wedding.
What are you reading to find this info?

They came to the wedding and didn't speak to me all day. I haven't seen them since the wedding two years ago.

There was no confrontation at the wedding. The letter was sent before the wedding and aims at reconciling them all.

That's the part I find so difficult. It still feels like all this shit happened yesterday. I am as angry now as I was then. I think the promise to not bring them up is a good idea. My self control is non-existent though. I've tried wearing an elastic band and giving myself a flick when I bring them up but still no improvement.

Yes, the £250 a head is for the wedding. Surely 'behaving like an adult' would mean that you wouldn't let your child fork out £500 for your meal at their wedding if you knew you weren't coming. Particularly after making abusive phone calls about their wife to be.

The tone is so strange, especially the line about the letter just being from him. DH is just not built to defend anyone. He keeps saying that he'll stand up for me from now on but I think too much has happened. There are members of his family who were so kind and welcoming to me and feel too nervous to see them anymore. He's very polite and his parents funded him until he met me so he feels like he owes them.

I completely agree, I haven't spoken to them in two years and yet we speak about them everyday. My family isn't a family, I married DH to have a family and he let his relatives bully and attack me, it was like he was telling me that I would never be family to him.

I really believe the infertility will be the end of me. It took months to convince DH to go and have a sperm analysis. I just had a feeling that there was something wrong. He kept putting it off and ignoring me. He was so sheepish when he called to say that his analysis was absolutely dire. We first asked for the NHS referral in April 2016. The forms arrived the weekend I lost my baby in January. I just feel like I have had to put up with a lot of his crap for very little in return.

Polly its in her second post.

At the wedding a member of their family who I barely speak to told me that they heard I had said unkind things about them to DH's parents but they wanted to make up. I hadn't said a word about them and it just made me feel very paranoid.

Polly

I know that his mother sent nasty emails as we have access to his each other's emails. Would you like me to post them too?

This is a horrible nasty letter.

On the face of it, it seems fine. But I have read tonnes like this.

A genuine letter does not sound like this. This has manipulation and narcissism all over it.

Toska I don't think you should post letters or emails that were not sent to you. Even if they were, it's not a good thing to do, to put someone's private mail on a public forum no matter how angry you are.

Unless I'm being very thick, the letter doesn't say they are not coming to the wedding. They did come.

I can't make head nor tail of how many people are in his family and who has supposedly said what to whom.

You have to decide how to get rid of your anger. Counselling will help based on what you have said about your own childhood. Maybe you are bringing a lot of unresolved emotional issues to the marriage?

If you think your DH is not supportive then end your marriage. You don't seem happy in it.

TBH I think your dh has handled this appallingly. He told them what you'd said to him about them so it's very hard for them to take that any other way than as dil insulting them and that's hard to make up from. The letter seems like it was intended to open lines of communication but your dh ignored the potential to clear the air or lay down firm boundaries.
My pil are regularly bonkers but I cope as dh sees it and handles them. I know he's always on my side and he makes sure I know that but I also accept that unlike friendships that you would drop if you were treated like that, parents bond is so much stronger that adult dc take a lot of crap. I support dh in maintaining a relationship with his parents because, no matter what, he loves them and feels responsible to a degree to be a "good" son. I think you need to accept your dh isn't going to cut out his parents but speak to him about issues as they arise and get him to give some balance.
I also think it's very normal for a mil to speak to other family members about dil.

Finally , the letter says they want to do everything they can to be reconciled and put whatever went on behind them. Clearly some of this did happen as they came to your wedding.

If you didn't have a child with DH do you think you'd consider divorcing him? Only reason I say this is because you say too much has happened since he's said he'll stand up for you from now on.

Though like others have said though his parents behaviour is appalling it seems they're trying to make amends now, so is DH and you yourself admitted you've got problems going back to your childhood with social services involved etc.

That letter looks like it is an olive branch tbh.

Yes, the £250 a head is for the wedding. Surely 'behaving like an adult' would mean that you wouldn't let your child fork out £500 for your meal at their wedding

£250 per head

Polly

You are certainly entitled to your opinion and I think you can report things that shouldn't be on MN. I've saved all the comments on the thread so I can refer back to them so do feel free.

The letter says '. . . the current position is that I will not be attending'.

If you can't follow the thread then please do ask for clarification or feel free to ignore it. I pay for DBT privately, it's been a year and it's not working and as it's supposed to work well with Borderline Personality Disorder my GP is stumped.

Thank you for all the helpful responses. I am posting here as like I said I know I can read into things.

DH has come along to doctor's appointments as he is convinced there is something wrong but I do wonder if he's just trying to cover his back as a lot of it stems from him being too scared to lay down boundaries. He knows that when his mother first started emailing about me he should have shut it down. It's particularly difficult as she talked about some of my 'quirkier' (introversion, long sleeves all year round irrespective of occasion etc.) traits and as she's a nurse she would have know what they meant. The calls were also particularly nasty, the venom in her voice was palpable, she was screaming down the phone.

I've felt like this for so long that it's my normal, and there are lots of things here I hadn't thought about so it's been really helpful. I'm not sure I agree that the letter is conciliatory but it is useful to hear. I want to believe that this is a dad's awful attempt at bringing back his family together but I can't.

I appreciate the letter said he would not be attending. But in your further posts you said 'his parents didn't speak to me at the wedding'. That implied his mum and dad came.
You also said in that post that they came once they knew that the £500 for them was not refundable.

So they came.

And the letter said that they wanted to put everything behind them and be reconciled.

I'm sorry you think I am not reading but I think you are being selective over what you focus on . The letter has reservations in it about the relationship between you but it ends on a conciliatory note. Many other posters have said this too, not just me.

Toska, I really don't think it's an olive branch in any way. It is a typical narcissistic letter, not a conciliatory one.

I only say this as have lots of experience of 'nice' olive branch letters, that really aren't. They always seem to be in birthday cards too.

I know £250 per heard is ridiculous! My 'D'M cancelled my original booking. But that's another thread. . .

I really, really, liked FIL. We sat and had dinner together alone once and we spent the whole evening laughing. I was so shocked when he sent that letter. I helped set up his retirement party, I was the only one to get him a gift. I felt like I really tried.

I am aware that this doesn't sound very nice but I'm being honest. I want to stay with DH, I don't want anyone else, I don't want us to split up but I want him to feel how I felt, I want him to understand what it feels like to have someone piss all over your dreams and expect you to behave like nothing has happened. I have no-one in this world, no family, friends or people who care about me. He was supposed to care about me. Before we knew we couldn't have babies he would say that he wouldn't feel comfortable leaving our children with my mother. He knows I suffered having her as a mother. He knows that I am still suffering, she should never have had children.

Rationally I know that I am putting the stuff with my mother on him but he let me down and I can't move on.