Thanks to MUMSNETs recent (mil inviting herself on holiday) and an absolutely AMAZING link someone post (community.babycenter.com/post/a62791180/mil-ruining-vacay-541?cpg=1) After nearly 30 years, I have just had the most incredible, enabling and "curing" experience. I can't thank PEENA enough, for her post, as she has helped me more than she will ever know. I lived through a very similar situation, with my ex husband. He was verging on "incestuous" in some ways, with his younger sister. Their mother died in a car accident when they were only 14 and 12 - so of course there were very close and protective relationships going on, which I understood. However, it was extremely exclusive. I was always made second best to little sister, (my own age) and made to feel like I was a monster from hell, if I ever wanted my fiance (soon to be husband) to myself. We could do NOTHING, and go NOWHERE without her tagging along with any one of her many boyfriends. The strange thing is, that if we were at an occasion where dancing was involved, he ALWAYS danced with her first, and "mostly" - the dances with me were "second choice" and sporadic. I tried, tried and tried to understand it all, and put up with it, because I did love him dearly, but little by little, our life together became about HIM AND HIS SISTER, not me and him. Everything had to revolve around her, her dire finances, (no job, preferred to sit at home and rely on either my partner, or one in a string of her
boyfriends) and her needs and desires. I had a horse, (well I worked very long hard hours, and paid my own way entirely,) - so of course she had to have one. So guess what? Unemployed, and at the time scrounging from yet another boyfriend, she got a horse. Had never ridden, knew nothing about it, - so who ended up looking after it? Of course, me. I could write four hundred pages here, about her jealous and spiteful personal put downs of me, my family, and my friends, and her tantrums and plans to separate me from my partner and he always supported her and simply was unable to see how unfair and unacceptable it all was.... (she succeeded in the end) - but I don't want to bore you. On of the final crunches came, when I came home from work one day (she was almost always in our house anyway) and I saw her car in the drive, - my heart sank as I knew the whole evening would now be me preparing dinner for us three, and her sitting drinking our wine, and dominating the entire evening, as always. But when I got into the house, they were not, as usual, sitting drinking at the dining room table, but mutterings were coming from the bathroom. (By this time we were married). I opened the bathroom door, and my husband was languishing in the bath, with a glass of wine, and SHE was sat on the toilet, nattering away to him, also with a glass of wine. The machinations that woman went through to make me leave are incredible, even "betting" with one of her friends that she could get my husband into bed with him.. and of course it ended. For so very many years, I have struggled with the thought... "was I over sensitive?" "Was I unreasonable?" and I honestly really never got over it. It genuinely had a permanent affect on me, and my confidence and my future. Reading WONDERFUL Peenas story has genuinely helped to cure me a bit! NO I wasn't unkind, or unreasonable... it is not "natural" and it is not "normal" to put your wife/partner/fiancee way down the list of priorities! Thank you Peena... but would also like to hear if any of you lovely mumsnetters have any take on this? To finish this off, I have to tell you, that after we had split up, we arranged a get together to talk things through ... at a very quiet, fairly obscure restaurant. Ten minutes after we got there SHE turned up, with the |"friend" she had betted could bed my husband. I looked at him in utter disbelief and astonishment, and he just shrugged his shoulders!