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I am curious

SoDisappointed's picture

This may sound like a strange question, but I would like to know your position on this...

For those of you that have disengaged from your skids, do you have pictures of them around your house? My guess is those that have successfully disengaged the answer is yes and it doesn’t bother you in the least. 

But those that are recently started and still harbor that anger and resentment, do these pictures trigger you in some way? Do you limit where they can be displayed?Or do you even have them displayed?

JanRebecca's picture

We don't have many pictures around the house period because we have an extremely small apartment but there is one photo on the well with DH, SS and BS. Yes it triggers many feelings but what can I do? 

pinkb's picture

... right after we got married I collected a number of photos from various sources (cameras, FB, my phone, friends, etc) and had them framed and dispersed them throughout the house.

Shortly thereafter on our anniversary, my husband had several of our wedding photos framed and those went up as well. I casually mentioned... blah blah blah... if there's anything you want to be framed, I'm going to take some other photos to get framed... Of course, he didn't hear me. While unpacking I found one lone picture of his son in elementary school that was already framed.

I can say that every picture my husband presented to be shown are visible inside our home. It is proudly displayed in the guest room, on the bottom shelf, lovingly positioned behind an oversized photo of our cat.

Kisses, you little Jacka$$.

CANYOUHELP's picture

I have just as many pictures up in my house as they do of me....zero....

Well, that's not true, I have one in a cabinet blocked by a whole bunch of stuff so I do not have to look at it...so I have one more up than they do...lol. 

Prior to their intentional nastiness, I put many pics up, as that was the only present I ever received, even then....I owe them what they give me, nothing.

 

 

SoDisappointed's picture

I will admit that when all of this first happened and her NPD son went off on me, cussing me out for 20 minuets (I walked away in the first 30 seconds) I was having a lot of PTSD. I asked her to please take down pictures that had him included because it was a trigger. But now I am getting from 24SD, through my DW since 24SD no longer “feels comfortable” in our home, that I am controlling and how much could it be “our home” if she can’t have pictures of her family. 

I know it’s a minor point, but I only asked to remove the ones with NPD 30SS. It’s not my problem that lots of the pictures she wants have all 3 skids. And to be fair, there are pictures of my DW’s mom and dad, as well as 24SD. There are also pictures of the 3 skids in the guest room where 24SD stayed when she use to come and stay with us. But they are going to find one thing and make it into some huge character flaw about me and why they dislike me. I really don’t care. It’s not their home and their opinion of anything doesn’t affect me.

But I do t want DW to feel I am being unreasonable, so I told DW to put the pictures up and I will just have to see if the disengagement is working. 

notsobad's picture

Tell your wife that it’s more important that You feel comfortable in your home than SD or any of the skids.

When her kids have their own home, that they pay for, then their comfort will come first.

Kes's picture

The pictures of my SDs in the house, used to really bother me, but they don't any longer.  For me, things got a lot better when they stopped coming EOW, about 4 yrs ago,  and the photos don't get to me like they used to. 

momjeans's picture

In general, I don’t have a lot of photos displayed in my house, or at least in the common areas. 

DH has some outdated photos of skid in his office at home, and that’s it. 

To be honest, I don’t want to look at skid’s face on the daily. I just don’t. She’s a reminder of all the hell BM has, and continues to, put us through. 

Same goes for pictures of my in-laws. I don’t want to look at their faces any more than I have to. They have been a real problem in my marriage and I absolutely refuse to acknowledge (or celebrate) people who want to continually try to bring me down. 

pixielady's picture

This was a point of contention the last (probably forever last) time my in laws came to visit. SIL had the gall to count the number of pics of DS (DHs and my toddler) with the number of pics of SS9. There are more of DS. He is both of ours. He lives here. She implied that poor SS was being marginalized by not having more pics in our house. Get off it, lady! I told her I could wallpaper my house with DS if I wanted to. I don’t want to see pics of SS at every turn in my house. DH has pics of him in his office that he can look at. 

hereiam's picture

Pictures of step kids in displayed in my home? That is what the pegboard in the garage is for. Diablo

Seriously, I don't decorate with family photos, so not really an issue. There really is a picture of SD on the pegboard, though.

 

SacrificialLamb's picture

We have more pictures of our pets than our children, who are all adults. I have a spot that is personal to me where I have two small pictures of my children. DH said he was going to put pics in his office, but he never has. 

In our previous house, it was only fitting that I saw OSD's face hanging on the wall of the hallway while using the half bathroom....(I only kept the door open when no one was home).  I didn't realize how perfectly I had staged where that picture was hung at the time.....  *ROFL*  I did not want to see that stuck up face in our new home. 

Myss.Tique D'Off's picture

The s/kids can have photos of who they like in their own room. I dont consider it "my space" and dont feel it right to control what they are sentimental about. 

I have a small felt / push pin board in the kitchen. It HAD a photo of STBXH and I and all three s/kids - including SD21 from who I was disengaged from - on the board. 
No one but me seemed to notice the push pin went straight through the middle of her face... Ah well, the photo is gone now.  (Channeling my "inner voodoo"  must work.)

SoDisappointed's picture

Thanks to everyone for their honest responses. I don’t feel bad anymore about not having the pictures up. My thoughts in no particular order...

1) They don’t come to visit and it’s not their home. Why should they care? It’s not their home and they have no say.

2) Its where I live and my comfort and peace of mind is important to me. They are not. Their choice is to exclude me, so I chose to exclude them. If DW is not OK with no pictures, she can go address the root cause.

3) How many pictures do they have of me? At most one, the family picture of all of them at our wedding. We can display THAT picture. Even Steven!

4) My DW has an office she goes to everyday. She can have her pictures there. I work out of the home and have pictures of my kids in there. 

5) The bedroom is OUR room and is reserved for just us. Her daughter’s picture is there, as is my two daughters in one picture. Let’s move all of those to some other place. 

sandye21's picture

If the Skids do not feel 'comfortable' in your home, they should not be comfortable with having their pictures displayed there - right?  She can put them up in her office or a special place where you do not have to look at their sorry faces.  And, as you stated, THEY don't display your picture in their house.  It appears your DW is looking for something about you to complain about so she can justify her lack of support for you.  She's drawing at straws.

Years ago SD gave DH a very large picture of she and her husband.  At first I placed it on the wall.  As SD grew nastier, the picture was moved to a less conspicuous place.  Finally, I redecorated and it just 'disappeared'.

queensway's picture

Unfortunately yes. They are in my husbands home office. I try not to go in there very much but when I do and see them I want to barf sometimes.

Bad

Stepaside-1987's picture

I have pictures of both his kids and of mine along with his grandkids and my grandkids.  I don't care about the pictures - as far as I am concerened it is our home.  So I display both.  And I will add that two out of the 4 Skids make sure they know I am nothing to them.

ItsGrowingOld's picture

Your wife needs to stop discussing you and your marriage to her children.  They are taking her lead on this.  She's complaining to them and it's causing problems.

Have you asked your DW to not discuss you and your marriage to them? 

SoDisappointed's picture

Yes. More than once. She asked if I read her emails, which tells me she IS discussing it with them. 

marblefawn's picture

When SD got married, as "gifts," to us, she gave us SEVEN photos from her wedding: her with her dad before the wedding, her dancing with her dad, her walking down the aisle with her dad...and one with me in it with my husband, his brother and mother, but not her. That's because I was not included in any family photos, of course. I hated the frames she chose and I'm the one who decorates the house and dusts the house. I left one photo out of my husband and her and put the rest in a box. It's in a corner I avoid.

When I went to SD's small apartment after the wedding, she had, no kidding, 11 photos displayed from her wedding and I wasn't in any of them. That's ironic because I paid for the wedding, wrote 150 invitations, arranged all the flowers, got the balloons, made the directional signs, carted around the bride's grandmother and tended to her nasty wounds when she fell. BM did nothing except show up for the parties, makeup, hair and nails sessions and bitch to anyone who would listen about why my husband would ever want to be married to me.

I know what you mean about even the sight of 'em triggering a negative response. I don't have happy memories of the day she married, except that I was so terrified of SD and her mother that I dropped 23 pounds without even trying!

By the same token, I didn't think I could put them all away because of my husband. We don't have a lot of photos of anyone, and none from our own wedding, so I don't feel too guilty, but I did feel obliged to leave out one.

My mother never misses a chance to give me crap about this decision, but...I also have no photos of my mother out, for obvious reasons. Most of our photos are of my husband and me in faraway lands and my dog -- only things that conjure good thoughts.

Because your situation is so raw and recent, maybe go get some photos made of you and your wife and put more of those out to dilute her kids' photos. Move the kids' photos to that room you never visit. If you ask her to put them away, I don't think it will help your marriage.

SoDisappointed's picture

I have asked her now repeatedly if she wants to get outside help to try to save our marriage. And what do I get in response? “You are putting a lot of conditions on me. I feel like now you are giving me the ultimatum.”

So there it is... It gets turned around and I am the bad guy again. I am so done with this ☹️

Rags's picture

We are not family photos on the wall kind of people.  We have family photos, they are in albums and there are a few small ones in magnet frames on the fridge and on a magnet board that goes in the entrance hallway from the garage.  When we have a house.  Right now.... all are in storage.

We collect tribal carpets  as well as other artwork from our travels and expat adventures.  Those are the the things we display in our home.

I do have a few small pictures of family on my desk in my office at work but they are small, tasteful and there only for my own smiles.

An interesting wedding photo experience... about 10 years after my divorce I ran into my XILs while on a business lunch.  They invited me to their home for coffee.  I accepted  and after my last meeting that day I stopped by their home during my commute.

It was creepy.  A number of wedding pictures of their daughter and I were still prominently displayed in their home in the same places they had been when she and I were married.  No pictures of her subsequent weddings or of her with her 2nd and 3rd DHs.  There were a few pics of her three all out or wedlock spawn by both of her subsequent husbands who married her only after squeezing out their puppies.

My XMIL saw me glance at one of the portrait sized wedding pics on the wall of their family room and commented that the last time they had seen her happy was early in our marriage (before she went on her quest as a cavern crotched adulterous whore).  XMIL teared up when making that comment.  So I left that mausoleum of a lamented past marriage and never went back though I did run in to them periodically when I was working from that office and they never failed to invite me over. 

 

marblefawn's picture

To be honest, SoDisappointed, you can't tell much from the written word. If you asked her if she wants to get outside help and she's hearing an ultimatum, maybe it's in your tone, maybe it's in your demeanor or maybe it's in her head. Are you asking or are you making threats? Are you just asking her in a threatening manner?

You're both raw from what's happening, so she may be jumping to conclusions or putting words in your mouth. But I hope you're being honest with yourself about your part in the discord, if there is any. You sound hypersensitive in your writing, so maybe, just maybe you're putting words in her mouth or jumping to conclusions? If you're having anxiety events because of seeing the photos, that's a little beyond something you may be able to handle yourselves. Maybe you should separate for a while so you can concentrate on you and she can figure out what's real and what she's inventing in the height of this discord.

Maybe some space will salvage what you once cherished. But you have to know to take it when you need it.

SoDisappointed's picture

I keep saying that I don’t know what to do because anything I have tried has not worked. I ask, in a calm tone, what she wants. I ask, again in a calm tone, if she will go with me to counseling because I am trying this disengagement is new to me, hard for me, and I will make mistakes. 

Things are raw here. I am doing my best to offer space and understanding, but I keep hearing that “it’s not as cut and dry as that” and “you make this all about you”. I have taken responsibility and asked forgiveness for anytime I may have overreacted, but it’s still new to me and difficult doesn’t begin to describe how hard this is for me. I’m human, I have feelings, and I will make mistakes. But I take responsibility and try my best. But this is very one sided and it no longer feels like a partnership, much less a marriage. 

I have told her the no pictures thing was earlier when I was trying disengagement one my own and dealing with the PTSD of her son going off on me. I had since told her to put them back up, but she doesn’t recall that at all. I wanted to see how others were handling this situation.

fairyo's picture

Marblefawn give OP a break please. I can identify with everything he is saying and what does hypersensitivity mean? That he is in touch with his feelings and expressing them openly and candidly in order to save his marriage?

Like me, he has tried everything to keep his relationship alive and I know that what he puts here is only the tip of the iceberg, as it is with many others. Only when you have walked that road and realised there is no path for you, that that path is only about the other people in your life who do not wish to please but only to destroy you? Is that a path you would willingly walk?

I tried to do everything, even re-engage, in order to put things right because I had been made to feel it was all my fault- but even that self-sacrifice got no response because they wanted me gone. When I realised that was what he wanted I went. 

Sometimes there is no other option for people trapped in these webs. Please accept that.

SoDisappointed's picture

i appreciate your understanding. I am always doing a self-check that I am not reacting in anger and that I respect everyone and offer them space and understanding. I listen to try to understand and find that path back to what we once had. But that’s gone and now I just need to move on. 

disrestep's picture

Before or after disengaging from the adult skids, would I display their pictures anywhere in our home. No, no, no thank you. 

For a while I felt like I was being pressured to put out their pictures when we use to exchange holiday gifts with the skids, because all we got from them were pics of them with DH and them with the Gskids. One time OSS and his hateful wife sent DH and I a picture of gskid sitting in front of a big picture they have in their home of the DH and his late wife. Now, seriously, you know they took the pic and sent it to us on purpose. One of DH relatives actually asked us why don't we have pictures of the adult skids or their kids out?  really, none of their business I gather.

The pictures the skids displayed in their homes were shrines of their late mother and DH, tons of old wedding pics of DH and their late mother, and pics of their whole family the way it was 20 years ago.

Dh and I joked about sending all the adult skids our beautiful wedding pictures so they would get the message about why every chance they got, they kept giving DH and I pictures of their family the way it was before my arrival. I would not even waste postage to send them anything any longer.

Even though DH and I have pretty much disengaged from them, we see no reason to have pictures of people we do not get along with, and cannot respect our marriage. I think it is a normal human response to be repulsed by a picture of someone who hates you for no reason and who has been so hateful to you.

Any person should feel comfortable in their own home. A spouse should respect the fact that placing pictures of anyone who has been nasty to the other spouse is not being respectful of the abused spouse. A home a couple shares is their home and not a shrine to hateful adults who do not want that couple to be together to begin with.

 

sandye21's picture

It DOES make you wonder if the skids display YOUR pictures in THEIR house.  I'll bet the OP's picture isn't prominately displayed in his Skids houses!  They dislike the OP as much or more than he dislikes them.  I agree - having to look at someone who has been rude and rejected you on the walls of your home would be hard for anyone to swallow.

In my case, we were expectedd to place SD's pictures all over the place but when we visited her home a small photo of us would be hastily placed on the refrigerator.  I can understand that she would not want her Mother to see our picture but then, she should expect the same from me.  As far as nosy relatives asking where SD's pictures are I am just honest - and say I don't like her.

Siemprematahari's picture

Funny there is one pic of my SD who is now 26 but was 11 when the picture was taken at our wedding. Its on a book shelf and I moved it behind other bigger picture frames so you barely see or know its there. Every time I look at the book shelf I just giggle to myself and find pure joy of not seeing her ungrateful, self-entitled, disrespectful face Dance 4

SoDisappointed's picture

Why would I want pictures of these a$$holes in my house? But DW keeps throwing this BS in my face that she cannot have pictures of her kids displayed. WTF? Can I put pictures of old girlfriends up? Maybe something else she might find offensive?

This is all just BS. If I hear “It’s like it’s not my home” after we redid the kitchen, bathrooms, bought new living room and dining room furniture, picked out deck furniture together, and painted the entire house with colors we chose. But pictures of these bratty kids will make it “ours”? More like make it hers. 

sandye21's picture

Just wondering how many pictures of your kids you have on the wall.  I'd venture to guess not many.  And why do they have to go on the wall? 

I can't blame you for not wanting the skids 'staring' at you all day.  Does your DW have a room that she gravitates to?  If not, maybe build her a small 'she' shed where she can hang as many pictures of the mean skids as she wants.  My guess is that the 'she' shed will not be good enough - she will want them in the house.  As I wrote before, I think she is drawing at straws to justify her lack of supporrt for you.

SoDisappointed's picture

I took my kids pictures out of the bedroom, but her daughter’s picture is on her nightstand. I said no to her a$$hole son, and most of her pictures have all 3 kids. Not my problem. 

I have my kids pictures in my office (I work from home). It’s my space and she spends no time in there. She can put her kids pictures up in her office. We have no other pictures up except 3 of us in the common areas. And a couple in the bedroom. 

Her son is not allowed here, and her daughter “isn’t comfortable” here. The other son never comes here either. So what’s the big F’ing deal? She is picking small $hit to complain about and try to make me be the bad guy. Not my problem

How about stepping up and supporting your spouse? Or maybe commit to the marriage and go to couples counseling? Or maybe just talk to me?

Ispofacto's picture

We can't put pictures of anyone on our nightstand.  There's nothing like having wild monkey sex and turning around to find someone "staring" at you.  No way.

SoDisappointed's picture

Well, that is certainly not a problem in our home.