Hi pbetra, With my W's family, there are 2 sides. Her father left her, her brother and mother when she was 10 years old and it was an awful D. He abandoned his kids totally and never paid a penny in CS (was wanted for a time in the state where his kids lived), he left and put all assets in OW's name, made sure the D took long enough that the kids were over 18 when it ended (11 years!!) and her mom got only the family home, nothing more. Her mothers side of the family are really good people. They don't care how much money a person has, just what kind of person you are. Her fathers side...all about net worth! This wasn't a problem until W's father, after the death of his father, suddenly wanted to "make up" for all the bad things he had done to my W all her life. The thing is, for him to accept HER, she had to leave me as he said she was "wasting" her life as a mother and wife!
This drove my W into a deep depression as she has always wanted her fathers love and acceptance. That was 8 years ago and now that she has done what HE wanted her to do, he is totally running her life. Since about 3 months before she left he went from contacting her maybe once every 3 months to calling her 3-4 times a day and texting all the time. He talked her into changing her mind about filing for D, leaving the home, going to MC and she listens. It goes the same every time. She tells him no, I don't want to do X, he tells her over and over that she should do X and manipulates her into changing her mind. Even my D's say how "different (bad)" she is when she is around her father. He is the only person that has backed what she is doing. But she so badly wants his love and acceptance she only listens to him. It also doesn't help that he has cancer (very bad) and she feels it's now or never for her to get him accept her.
She says she wants to live her life on her own terms (why she had to leave) but allows her father to make every decision, down to where she puts her bed in HER room in her new house! Until she stops allowing him to run her life she will never get through her MLC as she will never experience what life on her own terms is like.
My W has become just like her father when it comes to money. She makes very good money in her job. She has now taken on a 2nd job as well! It's also not a coincidence that B-day came 3 months after the company I had worked for for 11 years closed (I was making more than her up to that point) and I started working for a startup where I wasn't making much at all. She said she would back me knowing it would take a long time to start making the same money as before but when it came down to it, she couldn't stand that I was making less than her. Her fathers side of the family influence.
To her mothers side of the family, she was successful. She has raised 2 kids (one 19, other 14), she was a good mother, married a good man who loved her, sacrificed "things" for giving her kids the best head start in life (private school, etc.), now has a good career helping others. To her fathers side she was a failure. She lives in a small older home, doesn't have a high "net worth", doesn't vacation every years in exotic places. To gain the acceptance from her dad she had to dump her old life completely. Add in MLC and thinking she needs to be "happy" and she's not, this is what she is doing.
We think that our s's have overcome their family backgrounds after 20 years or more together. The thing is they never really did. Of course like any M we had our problems (like you and H did). But they weren't so bad as to warrant dumping so many years together. What happened to our M's wasn't about what we did or didn't do, whether the M was bad or good. It's about the influences our S's families have had and are still having on their psyches. The push and pull of wanting their parents love and acceptance vs. living their own lives. I really believe MLC starts many years before we ever knew our S's. They are never really over issues from their past and once they reach middle age they start to panic thinking time is running out to resolve those issues.
