I regret therapy

[Fuckedoffat48b]

I am 17 weeks pregnant with mine and my partner's first baby and got back from a visit to PILs on Sunday evening. They were awful.

They have always been awful. It is the gigantic thorn in the side of an otherwise happy, loving relationship and has significantly affected my mental health, along with a poor relationship with my own parents.

I have done both couples therapy with DH and then quite intensive psychoanalytic therapy just for me over two years (ended just over a year ago) and I feel that it has served only to make me the focus of the blame for the poor relationship with them and give me unrealistic expectations of what is achievable. Which I am then blamed for when these expectations are not achieved.

I feel therapy is to blame for some of this outcome and I am not entirely sure where to go from here?

Thanks for all of your advice. Just to clarify, my therapist (and the couples therapist before him) was adament that I had to find a way to be able to have a relationship with these people.

I am fairly low contact with my ILs, which my DH constantly, constantly goes on about but seeing them, no matter how infrequently is still horrific.

I have encoraged him to see them alone, which he sometimes does, but he feels they are offended by me not turning up. There are weird rules as to when and how I turn up that I don't really understand/have actually managed to largely ignore.

How strange. I never had any sort of relationship with my MIL. I was distant and civil for very short periods of time. More than two hours in her company was impossibly draining.

The “weird rules” about when/where you see your ILs is also something I can relate to. MIL would issue summonses to family events with no consideration for anyone else’s agenda. Once I had worked out that she believed, very deeply, that it was her prerogative to order her family around, I no longer wondered whether I was offending anyone by not responding to summonses.

Are your DH and ILs from the same culture as your parents?

Op i swear we have the same inlaws. Except its my husband thats going through psychodynamic therapy for near 3 yrs now. The reverberations when we have any contact with his family still remain

Well then change your therapist - it's another instance in your life of not taking charge and living by someone else's rules.

Why would you pay someone to tell you to do something you don't want to?

You need to get both DH and ILs under control. Totally cut contact with the latter, and force DH to confront the fact that whatever he chooses to do, this dysfunction has gone on far too long for you, and enough is enough. If he chooses to stay in contact with his parents that's up to him but he has to respect your decision.

And part of that is that he needs to stop going on about them to you and trying to manipulate you into seeing them.

"Just to clarify, my therapist (and the couples therapist before him) was adament that I had to find a way to be able to have a relationship with these people".

Did you challenge such assertions at the time, what did you think?. You saw people who counselled you very poorly. They never really understood the whole power and control dynamics behind dysfunctional families either. On a much wider level they should be reported to their governing body if they are registered.

If your H feels offended by you not turning up to see his parents, that is his problem and not yours. It is one stemming from his perception of his parents and how he wishes to be seen by them. He is that terrified of them that he would rather throw you under the bus to save his own skin and get their approval. After all, he grew up with them and regards what they do as normal, that is his normal. Am not all that surprised to read that he won't entertain therapy himself nor read books about toxic families, his FOG is very deeply entrenched within him.

I have a massive problem with my in laws. My DH is supportive and we are a team.

I am fine.

You have a problem with your in laws but your DH is hopeless and enabling their appalling behaviour.

You are not fine.

You have a DH problem as well as an in law problem.

I'm sorry to say it will only get 100 times worse when your baby is born. You will spend his/her childhood protecting him/her. Your in laws will spend the rest of their lives trying to turn your child against you.

Your DH is making this so much worse.

Your husband is the problem. He takes their side. He doesn’t even try to respect your point of view, let alone understand it. He refuses to get therapy (and he’s the one who needs it!) He refuses to even read the books.

Honestly? I would have LTB a long time ago. Maybe if you’d walked away it would have been the wake up call he needed. But maybe not. And you have to he willing to actually walk away for him to take it seriously.

You don’t just need boundaries with your in-laws, you need boundaries with your husband and what you are willing to put up with from him.

Personally I would be insisting he gets therapy or at least reads the Toxic Parents book. But as an absolute minimum he needs to put up and shut up about you not seeing his parents, whether he likes it or not. If he won’t protect or defend you at all (which he clearly won’t) then he can damn well see them by himself.

Things are only going to get worse when you have the baby, you are going to be at your most vulnerable when giving birth and recovering afterwards. I expect he is going to put a lot of pressure on you to see his parents and put up with their bullshit and nastiness, for the sake of the baby. It’s the kind of thing that you are likely to resent him for for the rest of your relationship.

You have been warned.

I also agree that this whole situation re his parents is going to further worsen when your child is born because he will put further pressure on you to let him take the baby to see his parents. It will be done as well to further undermine you as this child's mother.

Children need emotionally healthy role models and neither they or your parents fit the bill. Your child really should not have any sort of relationship with them and neither should you. Would you have tolerated any of this from a friend, no you wouldn't have done. Dysfunctional family relations are no different.

But I still am very, very upset. And I think it is partly to do with what I now feel to be some victim blaming in therapy. I am blaming myself for 'letting' this happen to me iyswim.

I think that you are actually in quite an advanced stage of therapy / control of this situation. You are crystal clear that they are well out of order, you are crystal clear that your DH does not see it as you do and you are not his priority - his own discomfort is. You have tried very hard to call them on their behaviour, put in boundaries but it just escalates.

I think "blaming yourself for letting this happen" - is just an important part of the unravelling. You cant blame yourself for not seeing the toxicity - you have - so well done, you haven't tolerated their demands and bad behaviour - you have called them on it - put in boundaries - so well done.

You are just at the cross roads now of seeing that for these people those tactics wont work - that is not your fault - there needs to be a new approach - and that is simply NC as the situation is intolerable.

NC is really easy when you get started and make the decision - no grand announcements needed. But expect them to up their game - there is a script - they will send you things, they will use flying monkeys (likely DH), they may try to door step you, make contact via all sorts of communication channels, they will have a crisis, faked or exaggerated illness. Just be ready for each of these and bounce them back.

Pat yourself on the back for getting through each day with NC. Dont waste your breathe and finite emotional energy talking to the brick wall that is your DH - preserve it for your baby. He has switched off to you -- he doesn't hear you, you are not his priority. He might sit up and notice your actions though. Tell him you want to hear nothing about his DPs and you dont want him to give them any information about you.

Are there other siblings, does this couple have friends and family - what are there relationships like with them -- if you look and listen closely that tells you what you already know - don't take it personally.

Really just see that every time you are in contact or think about them their toxicity triggers cortisol stress hormones poisons that will pollute your unborn child and your relationship with your DH and child going forward.

So swerve them and protect yourself.

LC wont work here with these people.

Op could your husband see his parents without you? If they are consistently treating you badly and it is affecting your well-being then I think it would be helpful and reasonable to go nc with them. You mentioned that your husband said he was afraid of losing you or his parents. This could be the compromise that makes both of you happy. With therapists some are better than others sometimes it pays to shop around. Also, sometimes it is about finding a therapist that is compatible with you, someone you click with and understands you.