What's the upside? Your image???? Yet the downside is HUGE.
If anything has been made abundantly clear - image is all my in-laws have. They have spent years building an image that was primarily upheld by ruinous debt and other issues I didn't find out about until after FIL passed.
Apparently MIL didn't move out of her own mother's house until she was in her mid-30's. When FIL passed away - virtually nobody outside of me, my mother, my step-dad, and FIL's brother/mother came to visit after the funeral. In fact... during most of my relationship (nearly 5 years) almost none of their relatives really visited them... they always had to go visit their relatives.
They are overprotective of their secrets, and I think some of the skeletons in the closet are starting to unravel. Unfortunately for them I'm like a bloodhound when it comes to legal things and finding cracks/weaknesses. Appearances can be deceiving, and I've apparently hit the tip of the iceberg on a very dysfunctional family.
Red flags, such as when I gave, gave, gave without expecting anything in return - they acted like that was a concept foreign to them. They were mistrusting and questioned my intentions when I asked for help in reconciling the M. Then they attack me viciously in the D in a mode of blame assignment - because it had to be all MY fault.
Of course I had enough of a presence of mind to go from nothing to holding all the cards before the first hearing. Then they shifted to nice mode, and all of a sudden began normalizing W's A. Her mother vehemently pushed the "They are just friends!" any time I implored her to ask W not to go there. Regardless of what they are... there is no excuse in having her spend every bit of free time while I have the baby there considering how it makes me feel.
But what I feel doesn't matter. W is allowed to do whatever she wants and I'm suppose to support it, because if I criticize it they heap blame on me and then vehemently attack me for "attacking" W.
I really don't mind burning these bridges... and I really don't see anything coming in the future in terms of W and I absent some sort of miracle. Giving myself until June 1. If I don't see any positive traction in the relationship by then, I think I'm going to recommit to the D.
"You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into."
