tl;dr; Last Sunday, my husband and I went to his brother’s for a family dinner after not seeing most of them for 15 years; husband was being laughed at and humiliated, and almost physically taken advantage of, and I came to his defense. He is upset with me now and I don’t think I’m in the wrong, but still want to do my part to resolve the situation.
I’ve been in a relationship with my husband for 10 years, and we’ve been married for almost four. He has a very complicated and unhealthy relationship with his family. He is the black sheep and it was always obvious that his older brother was the favorite. He was abused by a cousin who was close to his immediate family for years before finally telling his parents, who didn’t believe him. This cousin outed him, and his parents kicked him out and didn’t speak to him for years. They didn’t come to our wedding and only began speaking to him like two and a half years ago. His relationship with his brother is strained.
My BIL invited us to his birthday dinner, saying the whole family hadn’t been together in a long time and he wanted to fix that. My husband had a massive amount of anxiety, as this would be the first time in almost 15 years where he’ll be with every single person who was out of his life again. We’ve had countless conversations about his family, as he feels like he’s to blame for a lot of what happened and for losing contact with many of them. While my situation is nowhere as bad as his, I’ve had my experiences with toxic family members and abuse, as well as working professionally with social workers for a long time. I’ve always been very vocal when it comes to my disgust with them, and tried to convince him not to go to his brother’s dinner. He decided to, in an attempt to bury the hatchet, and asked me to please come. The night before, he kept having panic attacks and throwing up to the point where I thought we wouldn’t go and was begging him not to do this to himself. We went anyway.
The dinner was last Sunday. Everyone there seemed surprised, not necessarily in a good way but also not a bad one, to see him and to see that he brought me along. This was my first time meeting everyone in person. To make a long story short, things started off okay but then my BIL and FIL very quickly began to make jokes and tell degrading stories at my husband’s expense, ranging from his mental health to his sexuality to him “lying” about some of the abuse he suffered. He was clearly uncomfortable with them, and everyone else was laughing like this was some normal thing. I asked what the hell was wrong with everyone. My husband said it’s okay and not to make a big deal about it, but I continued saying I can see why we had stayed out of touch for so long. Things got silent before his brother asked me who I thought I was coming in there and speaking to them like that. We started to go back and forth, when the cousin walked in and apologized for being late.
My husband already had this uneasy, sad look on his face, but when the cousin walked in, his face just fell and turned pale. I asked him if he was okay and he didn’t answer. Everyone started talking and laughing again, and my husband excused himself to go to kitchen. When he left, the cousin was like “what’s up with him” and started cracking jokes, making everyone laugh. I glared at him and he tried to make small talk with me. At that point, most people had started eating and the cousin said he was going to grab something from the fridge. I didn’t get up immediately, but after a few minutes, I decided to go in there too and make sure everything was okay.
In the kitchen, he was talking to my husband who was trying to ignore him. He said something like “Why are you being so weird, I haven’t seen you in forever, just give me a hug”, and he grabbed my husband’s waist, running his hands down his thighs. My husband tried to push him off and asked him to get away from him. The cousin said not until he gave him a hug and I walked in then, saying “he said to get away from him”. The cousin looked surprised to see me and said that’s it’s no big deal, just go sit down. I raised my voice and said get away from him, and he asked what I was going to do. Without thinking, I punched him in the jaw.
He let go of my husband and fell to the floor. My MIL came in and started screaming, which caused more people to come in and see what was happening. The cousin got up and had blood in his mouth and started laughing nervously, saying he was okay, everything’s cool. MIL asked what I did, and I said “what you should’ve done years ago”. The BIL told me to get out and that it was a mistake inviting us. I told him it was a mistake to think that they would’ve ever changed or were actually decent people, they were all abusive and narcissistic pieces of shit. I told them I would get lawyers involved if they ever reached out to my husband or me again. Within the next minute, we were out of that house.
When we got home, my husband immediately went to the bathroom, started crying, and threw up. I asked him to let me in, and he said to leave him alone. He stayed in there for a long time, then went to bed. This whole week, he has been very distant, and hasn’t been eating a lot or sleeping well. I tried to confront him about it on Wednesday, and it led to him getting emotional and shouting (which is very unlike him unless he’s very stressed out or overwhelmed) that he didn’t want to talk about it, I ruined any chance he had at rekindling any relationships, and he wished we just didn’t go. I was shocked and said I defended him while he just sat there and let everyone walk all over him, he didn't even want to be there, and he started crying and saying I didn’t get it, please just stop talking about it. So I left him alone and we haven’t talked about it since.
It’s been almost a week. Things have been tense between us. It’s not bad per say, but there’s definitely an elephant in the room. I’m admittedly shocked and angry that he thinks I ruined things for him. Everyone there was either berating him and laughing about it, or being complicit. His cousin was trying to take physical advantage over him again. I see where I overreacted, especially through the violence. But did he expect me to just watch and play along? It was absolutely disgusting and horrifying to witness firsthand. Worse than how he described it before. What was there to rekindle? His face last Sunday during the whole thing said everything, everyone in his family said what they needed to say. I won’t act like I was some perfect knight in shining armor, but I feel like I’m more in the right for defending him. I don’t know why he’s upset with me. I’m unhappy with the way this whole thing played out and just want insight on how to fix things (with my husband, I couldn’t care less about his family).
Submitted June 01, 2019 at 07:14PM by soiguessimessedup http://bit.ly/2KmT5Q7
No comments:
Post a Comment