How to tell if there is an A

[justpeachy]

i look at all the other guys around me and then i look at him. and if he had just grown up, and became a real man .. he would be perfect.

Just stumbled on this thread and saw it was linked back to my thread.

This statement... exactly how I feel. H is a very good man in many ways. There are a lot of things about him that I'd be hard pressed to find in another man. But, the fact that he's a man-child and not treating our marriage like a marriage is way too big and too hurtful to overlook. I keep trying -- I'm realizing now I've been trying to overlook his lack of emotional development for many, many years. And now it's coming back to bite me. I want to believe he can and will "grow up". He keeps saying he wants to. But I don't know what I can believe anymore, or even if I should. Or even if he can.

I read this whole thread and also wanted to throw out there that my IL sitch sounds eerily similar. H and his older brother were overly coddled as children, and their parents used their sons to prop up their broken marriage (and still do). When their sons became adults, the IL's couldn't let go (and still wont to this day), but they trained their boys well to also not let go. BIL (who is 5 years older) has finally started figuring it out over the last few years and trying to cut the apron strings (which hasn't been pretty). My H is still a long way off (although he recently had a talk with his brother which turned on some lightbulbs for him).

I could seriously go on for days about the IL's. The guilt trips. The anxiety disorders. The co-dependency. The "us vs. them" mentality (meaning, in the IL's minds: IL's and sons VS everyone else). The emotionally weak/whiny/fragile mother and the domineering/stubborn/overly-paternal father. The IL's very strange/deficient social skills (and the fact they have almost no friends and attempt to revolve their "social" life around their sons). Their habit of dealing with problems through avoidance and/or passive-aggressive talking behind people's back. Their "need" to meddle or give input in every major decision in their son's lives. Their poorly veiled hostility towards every woman their sons date/marry. Even so far as telling H that his affair wasn't so bad (because it was "only" an EA) and that "all he did" was lie to me, and that they thought it was wrong that I said he couldn't still be friends with OW.... These people are effed up big time, and they've effed up their sons along the way. It's a shame, because if it wasn't for all the psychological issues and screwed up boundaries and all of that, they'd both be really great people who had raised two really great boys! But instead they've have psychologically battered their sons into remaining little boys so that THEY can feel like they still have their protective little family unit that props up them and their sham of a marriage.

So I feel you, and am so sorry we're not alone in this.