Yes, MIL is selfish, but girls are so used to it, they always say, "I don't care, it's no big deal". I couldn't count how many times I have heard them say that through the years. Sad,huh?
My mother married my step-father when I was 9 and he adopted me. My real dad died when I was a baby and I never knew him. My mother died 13 years ago. My adopted dad is remarried. They live about 5 hours away from us. These are the wonderful people my kids consider their grandparents. They see them more than the grandparents that live five minutes away from us! As a matter of fact DD has also asked my dad to be her escort for the ceremony along with her dad.
I'm grateful that my DDs have such a strong male figure in their lives. He has shown them more love and kindness than they have ever gotten from the "blood" grandparents.
Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are. -- Bernice Johnson Reagon
I realize that is his mother and he loves her, but why does he always see his DDs "faults" and not his mother's!
Why do you keep asking 'Why?".
It's because he's a pampered, self-indulgent mama's boy who has crappy relationships with his kids. If your SIL (2 divorces) is any indication of how your MIL "raised them kids right", it's no wonder your H is failing you and your daughters: the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. You MIL pays more attention to your husband's mistress than to her own grand-daughters. This is beyond Jerry Springer, Yoyo. You married into quite a family.
I also think you avoided my other question about changing the game with your husband. Let me briefly revisit it again.
Your making yourself available to him again. He feels perfectly comfortable sitting with you at game and complaining about your daughter's behavior. (which is implying you aren't raising them right to respect his "sainted" mother.) You agree with him, and say, "Yes Dear." and demurely change the subject.
All the while his mother, their grand mother, has PUBLICLY cozied up their father's mistress. And this is supposed to be OK? It's freaking insane. They should replace the Sopranos with something based on your husband's family: The Real McCoy's or maybe, Bubba Knows Best or Bubba thinks below the belt.
Why didn't you bring up his mother's behavior? "You know X, I think your mother has some nerve inviting your mistress to go shopping, yet ingnoring her own grand-daughters?" Or how about this, "Well, X, the reason why our daughter isn't too keen on calling her grandmother is that she's become friends with your mistress, who is breaking up our marriage."
OK, you get my point.
You are asking "Why self-centered, immoral man, who is cheating on you, raised by a woman with no moral compass, who openly embraces his mistress, will take his mother's side in a family squabble?"
Exactly what are you expecting from him or your MIL? Accept that they are not bound by rules of decent, ethical behavior. Your MIL would have made a great mother of a mob-boss. I see her kissing Al Capone on the forhead saying, "what a good boy" while knows he has a mistress, extorts money, steals and kills people for living.
My prognosis: this way beyond a MLC. This is a deep character issue. He's acting in accordance to the way he was raised. Bad root, bad fruit. His world view tells him he's acting normally. This isn't a fog. THIS IS WHO IS REALLY IS. I don't think he was ever an involved, loving father, or for that matter an intentionally faithful husband. I think, if he remained faithful up till now it's because he hasn't had the energy or opportunity to stray. Personally, I think, and your proabably suspect, he's probably cheated on you at least once before.
You are waiting for him to get out of his fog?. I don't think he's in one. I think he's being 100% of who he really is.
Maybe you are hoping he will learn that straying doesn't pay, or that it's not all it's cracked up to be. Maybe you waiting for him to show up at your church, answer an altar call and weepingly repent while the pianist plays, "Just as I am".
What are you waiting for? Your real husband to come back? You've got the real one. I think the description of the man who cheated on you is consistent with the man you have married to all these years. This isn't temporary insanity, this is who is he and where he has come from. He's not in a MLC.
He needs to radcially change into someone he's never been before.
Sorry, Yoyo. That's what this Yankee sees.
I love and respect you. Hope this didn't come off too harsh.
You are absolutely right about everything Theo. Friday night at the ballgame I sat with friends. I had one on each side of me when he got there so he sat behind me. I pretty much ignored him the whole game.
You are right that he comes from a family that appears to have no or little values. I guess you are asking yourself why I married him. He was so good to me when we were dating. He pursued me. He took me nice places, bought me nice things, and was very nice to me and my family. I can remember at times thinking that he loved me more than I loved him. Sad that he either changed later or his true colors came out.
In a true sense he had not been a "dad" to our girls in the past few years. I guess it's hard for me to watch him criticize his daughters for everything and not realize his mother's faults.
His mother is the type who is always mad at someone. She has a love-hate relationship with one of her sisters. For a couple of years, all she did was talk badly about her, now they are thick as thieves.
H keeps bringing up the fact that DD17 called my dad and stepmother to tell them the news of homecoming without calling his mother. They are the ones who stay involved in her life even though they are 5 hours away. I thought at first he was just uncomfortable having to face my dad on homecoming night, but now I realize it's not only that, but that he is jealous and mad that she called them and not his parents.
So Theo, what do you suggest I do? I do not pursue him. Are you suggesting it's time to cut my losses and divorce him? I keep getting closer to that decision everyday. By the way your reply is not too harsh, it's just the truth.
Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are. -- Bernice Johnson Reagon
Yikes, that is a bit harsh for my southern sensibilities. I take a differing perspective. H and MIL are the golden people who do what they want, and they can do no wrong. Therefore everyone around them wrongs them, not the other way around. I know from late-night conversations that Yoyo has, in her sweet southern way, pointed out all of those little inconsistencies to H before. And sitting on the bleachers with friends what not the place to repeat it.
Theo, always keep in mind this man is a hunter and owns guns. It does no good to keep antagonizing him.
Sara is right that I have addressed the relationship between DDs, MIL, and OW before. It just goes in one ear and out the other. I have told him before I will accept 1/3 or the responsibility of the lack of relationship between MIL and DDs. I told him he that he is responsible for 1/3 and MIL is responsible for 1/3, but I would not accept full responsibility. Of course he agrees at the time and then it seems to be forgotten or dismissed. So I have given up trying to get him to listen to me when it comes to his mother. Why beat my head up against the wall?
Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are. -- Bernice Johnson Reagon
Perhaps I was harsh. You say they are Golden people who do what they want and can do no wrong is, perhaps, a nice way of saying, "Self-centered, reckless, unaccountable, with no moral compass."
It's not that I was expecting Yoyo to bring these points up at the bleachers, it's just that I was trying to highlight the insanity/imbalance of the situation. He points out his daughter's failings vis a vis his mother, yet ingnores that she's best friends with his mistress. Will that not wound a young teenager's soul to think her grandmother publicly embraces a home-wrecker, adulterer and a rival to her mother? It's like trying to maintain normalcy while living in a family of mafia-bosses.
No..it's more like a Greek Tragedy.
Yoyo,
I'm not qualified to offer advice. I'm not successful at doing this. Sara made it though, I haven't.
I just want, perhaps, you not to hide behind the convenient category of "mid-life crisis" or "fog". I don't think he's going to snap out of anything, because he's acting according to character -- he never stoppped being who he is. The sooner that's clearer, the more effective your DB efforts will be.
All men will be kind and sweet in courtship. Three hard questions to ask, like the old folks used to say, "What about his family, his character, and his faith?" What does he believe about right and wrong? Why does he think he's a "golden" person, completely unaccountable and reckless?
I think it's more fruitful to say, "I want him to change and become an intentional husband and father, a more attentive, accountable person, who can admit his own faults, correct them, and who can see that adultery is dead wrong and can commit to fidelity in a marriage with me".
Because you see, that description is not who he is now, or, perhaps, ever was. But...people can change. Miracles happen.
But you are looking for change, not a return of his old self.
Does that make sense?
In my situation, my wife's complaints about me are legitmate, for the most part. What she's turned off by are character flaws, weaknesses, an inattention to my appearance and weight, and selfish personality traits. I'm not in a Mid life crisis. There's no old Theoden that needs to re-emerge. The old Theoden, which the only one there is, needs to change.
He has no problem giving you lists of demands for your change: cook more, clean more, give him more sex, treat him like a king, be nice to his mother, don't nag at him, be a Suzy home-maker.
What if you handed him a list of the changes you need for him to make this marriage work? What would he say?
Why do YOU need to be the one to make the all changes? It's seems imbalanced.
Sara, isn't Retrouvaille, at least, all about mutual communication and change?
H was never extremely close with his family until he decided he was so unhappy with his marriage. I was the one that always took care of the gift giving, etc. Now it seems it's like we have an extra person in our marriage, MIL, she does no wrong and is up on a pedesstal. My DDs and I on the other hand seem to do no right. I just don't understand why he finds such fault with them. I of course can understand him finding fault with me because he is anxious to discard our marriage, but discard his children also?
Funny thing I never tell him "well, Dad said this and that". Believe me,my dad finds plenty of fault with him right now, but not once have I repeated it to him. My dad tried for the longest to leave it up to me, but has recently had a hard time not voicing his opinions to me, but not everyone else! H has even asked at times what my dad says. I just reply he just stays out of it and supports me. For the longest time that was the truth.
It appears that H is hiding behing MIL's apron. He needs her to confirm that DDs and I are wrong. Sad, but true. I can understand the confrontation with me, but my DDs, that's crazy.
Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are. -- Bernice Johnson Reagon
