I've got to write down my thoughts about my wife's family. Mostly their father but all of them. Their father is a sensitive subject. They grew up with all of these rules of when he allowed himself to be available to them. For example, it was considered a sin to talk to him while he was watching or reading the news. It also was unforgivable for him to be interrupted during a sporting event on television. From the talks I've heard with my wife's sisters he was especially dismissive of their needs and concerns. Yet despite his disconnect with his children he was still so controlling that he could often be cruel in the way he laid down the law and criticized his children for their flaws. He's judgmental but since he knew little of what their actual situations were, he was simply jumping to conclusions and putting people down. He does this with almost everyone that I've seen since I married into this family. His children often apologize to each other, their spouses, and their children for his behavior.
It usually goes like this...
"How could your father say something like that
to me or to someone else?"
"Dad, was being a jerk." (I've heard them
use the term 'Ass' on occasion).
"But
that's just dad and he'll never change."
It's almost a mantra. This repeated meditation that they do to keep
sane. I don't know which is worse. That they feel their father is a jerk, or
that he's incapable of change. It breaks
my heart.
As for me. I
suffer from Major Depressive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and Social
Anxiety. Being around my father in-law
is much like jumping into a hornet’s nest while doused in gasoline and letting
him light the kerosene on fire. It
wounds me everything. He talks down to
me. He asks me what I'm up to but
proceeds to not listen as he is simply waiting for an opening to let loose his
next criticism of me and my life. He
does many of these things at vulnerable times as ways to say I told you so.
One example:
In 2003 my wife became pregnant. It was planned, in fact we spent many hours
fasting and praying that this was the right choice. We felt very strongly that this was what God
wanted for us. Things started to go
wrong though. My wife experienced
bleeding that was excessive and upon receiving an ultrasound it appeared to
come from a dying portion of the placenta.
We were at a different OB/Gyn than usual because we were told our
preferred provider didn't deliver babies at the hospital that our new insurance
covered. After hearing the new doctor's recommendations,
we talked about our options but also decided to get a second opinion as to the
best treatment plan. When we went to my
wife's old doctor with all the records from the newer provider, he felt the
diagnosis and treatment plan should be something different. He also knew that after my first child was
born the next 2 babies' placentas looked NOT great each one a bit smaller and
starting to die around the edges almost as if the stretching of the poly
hydramnios from our first child had damaged the uterus and it had trouble
sustaining a full-sized placenta. We
also learned that he could deliver at our hospital but since it was far away
from his practice, he only did it for established patients who were in our situation,
so we switched back to him partly because he was well known for handling high
risk pregnancies.
Still our baby decided to have complications at
about 24 weeks despite the progress that his treatment plan gave us until
then. They did some injections; we began
to go in for daily exams and non-stress tests.
Then at about 24 1/2 weeks gestation we were sent to the hospital for a
stress test that included Pitocin. At
first things seemed fine but the nurse saw things on the monitors that made her
excuse herself to call the doctor for a possible early delivery. While that happened, my wife felt something
wrong and then the blood started coming.
It wasn't long before she was in the operating room having an emergency C
section.
No one predicted these events. They couldn’t, they were a convoluted and
intricate set of coincidences that brought this to this point.
Our son lived most of his 6 month life from mid-January
2004 to July 31st 2004 in a hospital.
At the end when my wife and I knew he was only taking more and more
steps backward and almost none forward my brilliant wife asked to bring him
home on Hospice care for whatever time he had left. We were broken. My father in-law came with his wife to the
hospital while we were making the arrangements to bring him home and we were
put in a special room with our son that was designed for families in our
situation. We'd explained the facts to
them multiple times before, we talked about it again in light of our decision
to bring him home on hospice care. It
was like he didn't hear our words or care about our feelings. He stopped mid conversation. Looked away from my wife and glared down at
me. His eyes accusing me as he said,
"You shouldn't have gotten her pregnant so soon after the son
before." He wanted me to know that
my son's dying was purely my fault. And
he chose that moment, when I was at my lowest, to tell me. You could tell that he'd been waiting for his
chance to say it.
It was vile and cruel. Did not help and since he had no medical
training or real knowledge of what happened to my wife, any of it, this came
from a place of hatred for me. He hated
that I was the stay-at-home parent and my wife worked. He didn't care that I was the one living my
life in between the NICU and home.
Trying to maintain the home and take care of my other children and not
neglect them while simultaneously trying to make sure my wife had what she
needed to continue to work, or that I somehow did this and got my back yard
tilled and level and planted grass while doing everything else.
I was at fault for everything. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised,
he'd never had a kind word for me since my wife and I announced our
engagement. To him we were being rude to
allow it to happen so soon after her brother and sister got married. And for years after he was cruel. He didn't approve of how I put in my front
lawn and stood there making jokes about it and laughing about it with his wife
(she didn't really laugh back but just stayed silent). Many instances had occurred like this through
the years but that day in the hospital, I decided that he no longer would have
my respect. I had tried to gain his but
realized this was impossible. I began to
keep my distance. Being near him fueled
my mental illnesses in ways that no other being on earth could. My wife realized the trauma and even though I
wanted her to go to her family events, she stopped making me attend unless I
felt strong enough to do so.
One year, it fell on my wife (and I) to plan the weeklong
family reunion in July. Everyone was
expected to be in attendance for the week or there would be guilt. This disregards the obligations to spouses’
families or any vacations that each child might want to take with their own
small families to create their own traditions.
Many people only had 2 weeks vacation coming to them each year and that
meant the Bailey family felt entitled to exactly half of that.
I helped my wife brainstorm of where to hold
it. What she wanted to do. Activities she wanted to do with her family
for a long time were brought up. Playing
a family softball game was on top of her list for years, so was visiting the
local airplane museum (something desperately wanted to do with her father) but since she's a busy nurse and had such
limited time to plan and carry out these things without taking even more
vacation time to prepare, she needed to be close. Close for set up and prep and close to each
activity she had planned. She made a
decision and asked her parents to put up the money for the reservations of the
local camping area that had a group site large enough.
Her father was livid. He hated that it wasn't to be journey far
away like other years. He decided to
look up the reviews of the area to try to find fault and like any place he
could find them, there were always bad reviews on the internet, he found bad reviews despite the good reviews also on the sites. I had given my wife my opinions because our
ward had camped there with no problems on many occasions, I'd attended
overnight trainings there as a Scout leader, and one side of my family used the
spot every year for their modest family reunion. Tina tried to explain this to her father, but
he wouldn't listen. He berated her and
belittled her and made it clear that this choice wasn't good enough for HIS
family. That call ended with my wife
broken and in tears. This wasn't the
first time I'd seen her father do this to her.
The week before our wedding I was taking her home to
spend the week preparing for the event.
While driving I suggested that she ask her father to lay his hands on
her and give her a father's blessing using his authority in the Melchizedek
priesthood that many men of our faith hold including myself. She burst into tears. She began to recount how her father always
criticized her so much. It felt like she
was saying that he'd treated her like his love and approval was conditional on
how well she lived up to everything he expected from her. This was one of the biggest reasons she chose
to go to a school that forced her to live away from home. She needed to be away from her father's
toxicity. But the worst happened several
months before we met. She'd had a
frightening experience at her apartment.
And she was worried that she might not even be able to have the strength
to be there any longer. She decided to
go home that weekend and ask her father for a blessing to help her. But true to fashion, her father never gave
her a chance. He spent most of the time
complaining about her choices, especially about her boyfriend (not me yet) that
she'd had through high school. He was a
year younger and still in High School but mostly,
He just didn't like him or the idea of his daughter
dating anyone. My wife never asked for
the blessing she needed. The fear she
had about her apartment was nothing compared to the way her father treated her.
Back to the reunion planning. After he broke her again that night, I could
no longer take it. I couldn't
sleep. Instead, I went to my computer
and wrote an email. I discussed how
terribly he'd treated his daughter on so many occasions, I mentioned his
constant criticism of me. And really let him have it.
A few days later he responded.
He acted shocked that I would dare talk to him this
way. He threw in a few attempts to
gaslight my issues with him that I was somehow in the wrong. He said "no offense" to my family
or the time we had spent camping there but this place just wasn't good enough
for his family. (By the way if you have
to say "no offense" it's already too late and only makes things
worse.) He finished with what he must
have thought was an apology, but it merely said that he was sorry that I
felt this way but then listed many reasons why he did nothing wrong and was
perfectly justified in his behavior. So,
no real apology, just more gaslighting.
A few days later I decided that I'd overstepped by
saying things that rightly should have come from my wife. So, I replied saying simply that I was sorry
because I shouldn't have said what I had. Which was a half-truth. The things needed saying but they really need
to come from his children. Firstly, to
him I'm the lowest of the low in the family.
Not good enough. But his children
are the ones constantly having to apologize for his behavior.
I have since that day gone as close to no contact as
I can. I have panic attacks that are
severe if I know that I will be forced to spend time with him. Some have landed me in the Emergency Room
because even my RN wife couldn't be sure that I wasn't having a heart
attack.
He also loves one child far beyond his others. I have watched him spend days of these family
reunions talking only about that one's accomplishment and never have heard him
say a thing about each of his amazing other children. If we go somewhere and he meets strangers, he
will count down all his children and grandchildren and
great-grandchildren. But he does so like
they are trophies. It's a bit sick
because it feels more like he's saying that he impregnated his wife so many
times and look what happened. They're
like trophies of his manhood. I've
almost never heard him say anything about the work his wife did to raise
them. His emphasis is on his
contribution.
Sadly, I'm not the only one with these issues. My wife's closest sister's husband has had to
have words with him and one time according to eye-witness reports my wife's
father stepped up to this brother in law as if he intended to strike him.
Tina's oldest brother has a wife that constantly
complains behind her father in-law's back about his favorite child. She nicknamed him "The Golden
Child" and says he's the one who can do no wrong. Sadly, her husband (the oldest) isn't that child,
and she seems to really want him to be.
Also, she is just as toxic as the father in-law she complains
about. Overly critical, judgmental,
talks behind people's backs and she also becomes very passive-aggressive. It's almost like the oldest son couldn't get
the approval he needed from his father and
married a copy of his father for validation.
One of Tina's younger brothers has a wife that has
had many of the same problems with this family that I've had. Those are her stories so I won't go into them,
but she also has anxiety issues which have forced her to go no contact with
this family as much as she can.
I do everything I can not to put my wife in the
middle of this. I try to encourage her
to spend time with them and still have some sort of relationship with
them. Most times she comes home upset
about the way her father talked to her or to our children or
grandchildren. I deeply feel that he
lacks empathy for others and seems to have an over inflated sense of self-righteousness.
Ultimately, I don't think we will choose to change
unless his children finally, calmly, tell him about all these problems. His daughters need to explain how he mostly
ignored them unless they did something wrong because women seem to be 2nd class
citizens in his family. They
need to tell him that not only is his "advice" (criticism), not been
asked for but comes from a place where he hasn't even listened to the problems
in the first place and often isn't qualified to give said advice.
They need him to show love with no conditions. They need a father. They need true apologies. Not excuses for his behavior. There's not much
time left. He's getting older. Worse, he'll likely be preceded in death by
his oldest daughter who is fighting stage 4 cancer that will eventually be
terminal. Unless he has some major
health emergency beforehand. Either way
there's not a lot of time for him to fix things and he is the common
denominator in these problems.
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