On whether to disown your mother or not

[Blueeyescry]

My husbands mother has spent his whole life being barely involved in his life. When he was a baby with a fever and crying she shook him, even though her job was bringing children into the world. And never took him to the hospital to prevent the damage from worsening. He has said to me that he was shocked a little at our first Christmas with my family, being that they were so warm and could make inappropriate jokes, work together in the kitchen, and to not have someone be in a bad mood.
He has to ask her for hugs, and she will not return a simple "I love you". When confronted she is unwilling to change.
We have only been married for less than a year, we started dating almost 3 years ago, but each time I'm around his parents I feel so uncomfortable that I have trouble even making eye contact, much less know what to say or carry on a conversation.

I just want some opinions on what we should do, this is causing him immense stress and I don't know, and don't want to find out, he long he can survive the fact he was denied a healthy childhood and thus a healthy adult life.

Somebody please help us with this decision...

At this moment he wants to not talk to her ever again. Counselling has been proposed between them but never acted on. He has gone through solo therapy, but I don't think he brought up the issues with his family.

I grew up in the same environment, never was shown any emotion, never got ' love you' only when they were pissed. Horrible parent. Once I reached a certain age and got myself married and children, it got easier to say ' fuck off' which I did 6 years ago and I've never felt more free and safe in my whole life........oh and Im male.

Good luck!

My mother has also be immensly helpful for him, just talking to him and putting forth her own stories and knowledge of situations like these but we are still at a maybe, I mean it is his mom, I get being reluctant to say goodbye to that.

His sister has also disowned her. He is the youngest of 4 kids.

Not surprised to see that his sister has disowned her mother as well. Think your H ultimately will need to do the same.

Its not his fault his mother is like this, he did not make her that way and nor did any of her other three children. What if anything do you know about her own familial background, that often gives clues.

No to counselling between he and his mother either; there is absolutely no point in doing that. Your H needs to see a therapist and ideally someone at that who has no familial bias about keeping families together despite the presence of mistreatment.

I know that her own family life wasn't good either. That is causing me to have trouble with it because I can sympathize with her, but yet my own mom went through worse and was able to raise me despite not being as financially secure as his parent were, which I know has nothing to do with the problem. The reason I bring up money is his dad asked me if i would have rather grown up in their house (nice) and my house... poor, needless to say i was taken aback by that question but said no, this was two days ago during the recent panic attack where he was confronting his mom.

There is a book called the emotionally absent mother. It’s focused a lot on women, but it still might be good for him to read.
Lots of mothers have trouble being mothers if they come from a shitty childhood themselves. But it’s no excuse for emotional neglect.

Maybe if he reads something like that he can process some of what’s happened.
Some people can go NC and some people just can’t. So it might be good to start to process what has happened to him.
And I’m glad he’s got someone so lovely as you for him. He’s very lucky

When he was a baby with a fever and crying she shook him, even though her job was bringing children into the world. And never took him to the hospital to prevent the damage from worsening

Whoever is passing on this story is at least equally responsible, btw.