I'll try and keep this as short as I can. My husband's parents display narcissistic behavior and were abusive to him growing up, both physically and emotionally (MIL was also physically abusive in his adulthood..I'll just say a beating was involved). At 18, he moved out and interacted with them only minimally after that, mostly just on the holidays. My husband and I met in college and when I did see his parents, they seemed nice for the most part, but he didn't talk much about them or his childhood (until just recently). We got married 6 years ago and had a child 5 years ago and within a wink of an eye, we found them completely enmeshed in our lives.
MIL became weirdly competitive, seeing our son as hers and she walked all over us. When we started setting some boundaries, she pushed back HARD and engaged in passive aggressive bullying so we eventually distanced ourselves. At that point, the smear campaigns ensued. She tried isolating us from the family, she tried putting a wedge in our marriage, she trash talked my husband to his brother and sister, all while victimizing herself against us. She rallied all the women in her family who, in turn, attempted to involve themselves and pressure us.
We prematurely offered to take them to family counseling to which they reluctantly agreed (smirking and snickering and sarcastically saying "well we can TRY"). Over time, it was clear to us that it would just be a game to her, though a part of us still hoped that maybe counseling would work. Before considering it again, we wrote out a long letter, documenting everything that had happened from the start of all this (we had been saving everything, text messages, conversations, 3rd party accounts) and confronted her and FIL. She responded with intense gaslighting, even going so far as to fabricate entire stories right to our faces. It was surreal. At that point, we just said screw it to our offer of counseling.
We continued to set up 4 hour video chats between them and our son every 3 months but that was about it. MIL continued to send husband texts smearing me. About 9 months ago, out of fear that they would sue for grandparents visitation rights and also out of fear that maybe someday our son would resent us for not knowing his grandparents more (I also personally feared that when our son turned 18, they would try and manipulate him and smear us), we offered them visits with our son with a counselor present, telling them these were baby steps. They went back and forth on it and then tried it once. They were required to sit with the counselor for a 20 minute session beforehand. After the visit was over, my husband asked FIL when they wanted to do it again. FIL said they didn't want to and they didn't want to fork over money (we offered to pay half - 60$, also they are rich). He also said the counselor told them they didn't need to be supervised (when we asked the counselor if his comment was true, he told us no, he never said that and stated he would never make that kind of assumption after talking with someone for only 20 minutes-so basically FIL outright lied). FIL then made a veiled threat about putting a wedge in our relationship with our son when he turned 18.
Since then we have done a few video chats. During those video chats, they did the following: attempted to glean information from our son about how often he visits other relatives, stated over and over how they are his GRANDPARENTS, made weird comments such as "Look at your grandma, isn't she magical", complained to the screen how our son didn't know them, and attempted to schedule future video chat visits through our son. We also caught them video chatting our son without us present at like 6 in the morning (I guess our son must have woken up before us and gone into the living room and called them on his own via Alexa).
At this point, I just want to be done. My husband just wants to do brief quick video chats with them on Christmas and cut them out outside of that but still leaving open the offer of them visiting with a counselor present. We have spent thousands of dollars in counseling, trying to work on managing their behavior while still allowing them in our lives. I am still ridden with self doubt over whether we should continue setting up video chat visits or not and husband and I are exhausted beyond belief. The one thing our counselor does not want to give advice on is how often we should video chat them. We are also considering having another child in the next four years but the thought of having to deal with them for an extra 9 years terrifies me. So basically, advice please on whether or how often we should continue video chats.
TLDR; MIL has narcissistic tendencies. FIL is an enabler. We have offered supervised visitation, they rejected it and made threats about putting a wedge in our relationship with our son when he turns 18. Advice please, on whether/how often we should continue setting up video chat visits with our son.
Submitted April 24, 2021 at 02:21PM by Educational_Hand9604 https://ift.tt/32Lrbpi
No comments:
Post a Comment