*hugs* to you Petra!! This is a terrible situation to be in and must be incredibly painful for you – *massive hugs*. It is heart-wrenching to deal with this level of rejection and pain; seemingly for no reason. You do not deserve this treatment; and it’s really heartbreaking when your husband is not on your side!! He is probably struggling with his own shame and a need to be accepted and loved by his family; this can be incredibly hard, and often we are rendered little kids in front of our families, so desperate for their love and approval that we find it hard to act with adult assertion.

You cannot stop these people from hurting you – it is painful and it is a sad reality. But you can be happy and be free from most of your suffering about the situation, if you are willing to do some simple exercises :).

I really agree with the wise responses from Simon and Jade here :). People are incredibly self-involved unfortunately, which makes them often too blind to consider someone with out all of their projections. While it is painful, I do agree that you ‘hustling’ for your worth from them, and love and acceptance. From people that just seem ‘bad’ who have hurt you, rejected you and treated you unfairly – rationally even if they did offer friendship – would you WANT them as friends, aside to ease the suffering you feel? Do they deserve your friendship? The fact that they are taking out whatever their ‘issues’ are which do not make an ounce of sense, on your CHILDREN? Do your children deserve their treatment? And that they cut you out for asserting yourself against that crazy, horrible comment the brother made – that is abusive behavior.

I think, as hard as it is, try not to get angry because you are dealing with abusive people – which means that their actions have no reflection on you. They use their abuse tactics to try and control and make people fall in line – your husband and you but they surely do that with all people, because it is their way of relating and feeling in control. You don’t deserve that crap in your life and I think it’s a blessing that these people have cut you out. It means you can focus your energy on people that do deserve to be there and who deserve to be in your children’s lives.

But rather than walking around with all your pain, and suffering from anger, and hate – while understandable – it is just unnecessary suffering. I really advise you to practice loving kindness meditation 🙂 – it will really, really ease all the pain you are feeling and help you love yourself and feel more peaceful and at ease; then these people’s actions won’t matter so much ^_^. As has been mentioned about auditioning for people’s approval who don’t like you by Jade, sadly you do this because you find it hard to approve of yourself! If you did find it easy, then you would not be driven to gain approval from these people and feel bad about yourself because you couldn’t. Loving kindness meditation has really, really helped me to love and accept myself; when we have own our source of love which we gain from meditation; it’s *amazing* – you feel so much love for yourself – it really is a beautiful feeling :). Love is not control and it is not abuse. Which is what these people are intricately connected with. So as a I say, you cannot change how they feel; but you can change the effect it has on you <3. I really hope that you try the meditation out ^-^! Even just everyday for a week. I also suggest, but I know this will be very painful to maybe consider, that you maybe send some loving kindness their way; because if you suffer from (though righteous) painful anger, resentment or criticalness, it will only deeply add to your suffering – and I do not want that for you.

If you are happy, do you desire to hurt others? No. These people must be deeply miserable that they feel compelled to make you and many others (I am certain) suffer because of their pain. It makes me feel there is a very painful legacy within that family; which also makes me feel some compassion for your husband; clearly he is not like them, but suffers greatly from their treatment. Havig issues with my own in-laws (well kind of, we aren’t married yet!) my longterm boyfriend, I know deeply struggles with desiring their love and acceptance, and finds it very, very hard that their is a rift between my self and his mum. I’m not saying that doesn’t mean that he should not be there for you and stand up for you (though it may seem very fruitless) but I know my boyfriend, personally, finds this a very very hard and painful situation. I find with us, at least, that open, non-angry, deep conversation on how we both really feel really helps us with love and understanding.

Please let me know how it goes :).

• This reply was modified 10 years, 2 months ago by Kirsten.