Dear Lily Margarette:

Taking a break to consider practicality:

“I have two older brothers who I’m still close to and both my parents have been a massive support during this time of my life… I can honestly say hand on heart that I always felt safe and fully loved and supported. I’m not making that up” –

–  Is there any way that your parents or your older brothers can help you by having you and your kids move in with them while you legally separate from your husband (and his family!) and not have to deal with them beyond what will be decreed in a future legal separation/ divorce contract?

I am thinking that feeling “safe and fully loved and supported” again, with your family, you can have the mental space to rebuild your life, best you can and find yourself, so that you no longer feel stuck in a rut and lost.

anita

Dear Lily Margrette:

I am sorry that your mother had a stroke and has a poor eyesight as a result, and that your father has a lung condition. I wish the two of them the best health that is possible for them. I am also sorry that you don’t have a safe place to go to, away from your husband and his family- not with your parents who are in ill health, living in a small house with your middle aged brother, and not with your other older brother, who is living with in a one bedroom flat with his wife, having no accommodations for you and your three kids.

Does it make you envious of your husband’s parents and sisters, for having better health and much more wealth,  bigger homes, better luck, perhaps, compared to your family?

anita

Dear Lily Margarette,

good to hear from you again! First off, to answer your original question: Is this rude?, I do believe it is rude, specially since you and your husband’s friend have met before: he came to our wedding and we all used to go for weekends away together before we were married.

He is now addressing only your husband, excluding you, but then suggesting that he and his girlfriend should meet with your children (he and his girlfriend would like to see my husband and get our kids together!) He also mentions his girlfriend’s name (The fact that he included his partners name), but makes no mention of you. I think that’s definitely rude.

What is more worrying though is that your husband doesn’t see any problem with it:

My husband thinks there’s nothing wrong with it and asked ME to send him a card back…I refused and told him to do it if it’s so important.

Not only that, but your husband asks YOU to send a card back – even though his friend completely ignored your existence! I find that really disrespectful and insensitive to you. You reacted well – you told him you won’t do it and that he should do it himself if he wants to.

Unfortunately, your husband just continues his behavior of ignoring your feelings and telling you that you are too sensitive, even if his family treats you badly:

Also if I ever spoke to my future husband about my father-in-law’s comments I was always told he was just joking and that I’m being over sensitive, he was like it with everyone. So for a long time I doubted the worries I had as me being paranoid or over sensitive so I never mentioned it to my family.

He doesn’t respect you, similarly like his family doesn’t. Unless he changes, I think the best solution in the long-run would be to separate from him.

But I know it’s not easy for you, we’ve spoken about it before. One of the big issues is that you feel lack of self-confidence in your ability to have a successful career:

My self-esteem in others parts of life isn’t great tbh. I’m a full-time housewife and don’t feel as if I could cope financially if I were to split up from my husband. I used to work before I had kids but that was 10 years ago and feel completely terrified of ‘going out to work’ again. I’ve tried various things to help me, taking online courses, even starting freelance work for a little bit but I felt out of my depth and scared of failing.

I do feel so incredibly regretful that I never had a proper career set up for myself. I’m educated and always worked (but nothing leading to a specific career) but when I had kids I gave all that up. I’m completely stuck in a rut because I can’t see me ever being able to be independent and having a job anymore. I’m so envious of working mothers because they have the confidence to work. I don’t even know what work I would do as I’m 44 now. I don’t feel I have any skills to give. I feel lost.

It seems you do have self-confidence to stand up to your husband and his family and demand respect from them, however you don’t have it when it comes to work and career. You don’t feel capable enough in that area of life.

Would you like to explore that more? Because that’s important if you want to move forward in your life.

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

Dear Lily Margarette,

I would like help in being able to build my self-esteem in order to sort myself put with earning money. … The problem is I have no idea how to do this.

If you feel incapable of earning money, including scared of failing if you even try something, there must be a story that you are telling yourself, e.g. “I am not good enough”, or “I am too old”, or “I don’t have proper skills”, which keeps playing in your mind. What is the story, i.e. the negative self-talk that you have been telling yourself?

On your previous thread, you spoke about the reasons why you married your husband:

I married him because i loved him, and thought he’d protect me and the family we have and make me feel safe.

In what ways you didn’t feel safe enough and unable to protect yourself? Inspired by anita’s last question, is it perhaps his ability to provide for you and the family what attracted you (among other things), because you felt unprotected financially while growing up?

Wow, going from a question of “Is this rude?” to looking at options of legal separation?? Thoughts about how this marriage is not how it was meant to be. Then, more about not being able to work or to go out to find a job? Self-esteem? As an outsider, not knowing the details, it seems to me that this person needs to see themselves thru the eyes of others to determine their worth to themselves. So, not being mentioned in a postcard becomes a traumatic turning point in one’s life?? It is always the last straw that breaks the camel’s back.

I wish you happiness. Good luck.

Dear Lily Margarette:

I spent a few hours re-reading all your posts in your two threads very attentively and forming this post. I believe that as a result, I have a better understanding of you and your situation. Before I proceed, a comment: I have no reason to believe that you lied about anything at all. I think that you’ve been telling the truth as you know it, and I have no doubt that you are suffering and have been suffering for many years. The purpose of my post is to hopefully help you to suffer less, and less.

“Am I being oversensitive or is this rude?“, “I was always told…  that I’m being oversensitive… So, for a long time, I doubted the worries I had as me being paranoid or over sensitive” – I think that you are indeed oversensitive, and that you tend to think the worst of people’s intentions. It doesn’t mean that people are not rude to you and never have been. For example, when you were bullied in school, the bullies were indeed rude to you.

The people you claim to be rude to you may be rude sometimes, but generally, they are either not at all rude, or not as rude as you imagine them to be. Your pattern of behavior, as I see it now, is this: (1) You either perceive insults where there are none, or you magnify incidents of normal human carelessness and perceive those to be insult and rude behaviors, (2) You then fume over perceived insults and rude behaviors for weeks and months, and (3) You overreact, expressing great outrage over perceived insults, arguing, creating and promoting strife.

We are all guilty of normal human carelessness, particularly when tired or under elevated stress or… when not paying close attention for any reason. We need to be more and more attentive, but there is no escaping being inattentive and therefore careless at times. Here is an example of normal human carelessness on your part: I addressed a post to you yesterday, you then replied to another member but ignored my post. I assume that you didn’t ignore me on purpose, with the intent of hurting my feelings. I assume that your attention was with the other member’s post, and not with mine.

“He said his sisters don’t like me because I speak out to their father. His words were ‘how would you like an outsider coming along and having a go at your mum’ ….an outsider…that’s how they see me. After 12 years of marriage and 18 years being together” – your husband, who lives with you, did not say that you were an outsider in his life. He said that you were an outsider in this sisters’ lives, but you reacted as if he insulted you, saying that you were an outsider in his life.

His claim that you were an outsider in his sisters’ lives was valid: his sisters have known their parents all their lives. You showed up into their lives as their brother’s wife decades later, when you were in your early 30s, an outsider in their lives.

“His mum said that…  there’s hurt on both sides, they’ve nearly finished my marriage with their actions, and there’s hurt on BOTH sides!” – your husband’s mother was reasonable and generous, having expressed a willingness to take some responsibility for your hurt. But you did not reciprocate her generosity: you were not willing to take any responsibility for her hurt.

In regard to your husband’s family’s request that you take responsibility for the hurt on their side, you wrote: “I’m never ever going to give in to his or their requests …ever!”

Regarding a conversation you had with your husband last September, you wrote: “he told me the family treats me the way they do because I won’t forgive them for the stuff they’ve done… They also said they’re hurt because I won’t ‘forgive’ them” –

“I won’t forgive them” means that they apologized for “stuff they’ve done”, but you did not accept their apologies. You kept your anger (“I’m never ever going to give in to his or their requests… ever!”).

You wrote (by “him” you are referring to your husband’s father): “I’ve always been able to speak up for myself and I’m the kind of person to be extremely honest if someone has upset me… no one ever stands up to him, apart from me… I dare to speak up” – it’s excellent, to be assertive and to speak up, except when you react to insults that did not take place, or when you overreact to normal human carelessness.

“I’m so sick of the same argument go round and round” – who is initiating the arguments, who is stirring them? “His mum said that I’ve fractured the family” – maybe you did, and maybe that’s the reason that they didn’t acknowledge your wedding anniversary and why they avoided visiting your home, etc.

You said that on your wedding day, your husband’s father told you that you are ugly. That would have been terribly rude, but did he use the word ugly, or did he say something that you misinterpreted to mean ugly.

“it’s very hard living an everyday life with someone knowing how they really feel about you, that you’re 2nd best or even further down on the pecking order… I really feel I’ve drawn the short straw… I can honestly say hand on heart that I always felt safe and fully loved and supported. I’m not making that up” –

– it reads like a core belief from childhood, that you’ve been carrying with you into your current 45th year of life, and that is, that you are 2nd, or 3rd best, down the pecking order. If you, at times, felt safe and fully loved and supported as a child, then it may be that the trade-in to that feeling was to accept being down the pecking order within your family of origin.

“I just find it hard pretending to be all fine and normal when actually I do feel disrespected and made to feel that I’m not justified thinking this way by my husband, he’s very quick to brush any feelings I have for anything aside“- not all our feelings are about what is true in the present time. Our feelings are often about what we experienced in childhood projected incorrectly into the present time. Someone in your childhood terribly disrespected you, brushing your feelings aside. Fast forward, you imagine that your husband and his family is terribly disrespecting you and brushing your feelings aside.

And then, a complication is added: because of you creating strife between yourself and your husband and between him and his family, they get angry at you and act rudely to you, which you figure is proof that they were rude all along.

“Am I being oversensitive”, “I was always told…  that I’m being oversensitive… me being paranoid or over sensitive“- sometimes it is true that we are oversensitive, and that we are assuming the worst intentions on the part of others. You suspected it to be true on your part, and that’s why you asked the readers of this thread for unbiased opinions (“Which is why I’ve asked for non-biased options (opinions)“. This post is my best non-biased option, for you to consider. Or not.

anita