I feel furious and betrayed: DH and OSD conversation
OSD23 calls DH last night, during the Superbowl, to have a heart to heart he begged for after a humongously insulting email she sent him a week ago. The email was a first - that level of vitriol i have not yet seen in her. Her sibs - yes, but even compared to them she was just so much more vicious. I think even though she is out of the country she keeps in touch with BM's household where periodically she gets wind of what is happening with DH and SS and YSD, and then she rushes into battle to tell DH what else is wrong with him, how he failed as a father, what kind of a f***up he is, etc - just like her mother has done for the last 20 years. So DH takes it in the bedroom, and they keep talking for well over 30 minutes. Here are the highlights:
- she cannot get over the fact that when he drove her to school a few years ago he told her that his relationship with me is the most important in his life, and it made her cry, and she thinks he is a failure as a parent;
- he failed again when he did not exude enough upon learning that SS had been admitted into a graduate program, the "best in the country" in his field; but if she could just cry for herself and leave it at that she is so incensed for her younger brother she never wants to speak to DH ever again;
- he needs to stand up to me to defend her and her siblings from me because she feels he is not loyal if he does not -
at which moment my DH starts telling her sweetly that he does precisely that, and he and i had several big fights over her decision to go to grad school last year which entails leaving her student loans unpaid ( she has not contributed a cent to his portion, which is growing at an alarming rate, higher than her portion). I felt at the time and do now that her statement "why would i waste my 20s working" was the height of selfishness and irresponsibility. I certainly did not sign up to pay her student loans. But i digress.
So hearing him telling her that we have fights over her decisions and f***ed up finances, i walked in the bedroom at that strategic moment and stared at my DH. He mumbled something about being on the phone with his daughter, i said calmly that he should call her back, and seeing that i must have looked like death he hung up. That was a minor victory. However, I felt furious. I was betrayed. Wasn't I? I have asked him before to not talk about me with his kids who treat both of us without any respect. He maintained that he needs to be able to talk to them in a "therapeutic" fashion and to have them vent their anger at me to work through the issues... i said i was really uncomfortable with him giving them permission to bash me, and he promised to stop. Turns out, he did not. He tells me what i want to hear and them what they want to hear, and has no clue of healthy boundaries. What else is new.
Tell me if i am wrong:
I do not discuss our rare difficulties with anyone in our mutual circle. He has his sister he can vent to, but she is a sweetheart, and i am on great terms with her, so whatever he tells her, and there isnt much, she will not use it against me. I don't care what he tells her. The skids, however, are vicious, enmeshed with BM and totally narcissistic. They will share any whiff of a problem in our marriage far and wide. Why is it so hard to draw boundaries and say, Pilgrim Soul is my wife, we are in love, you need to treat her with respect; and how about those Yankees? A backbone looks really good on a guy... he is like a ragdoll that his precious children drag around behind them, punch and kick, and all the while he is trying to pretend that he is riding the tiger. The tiger is riding him. The tail wags the dog. I rest my case in disgust.
Thank you, DMNM! I thought
Thank you, DMNM! I thought so. And no, he has no degree in psych. He is the last person to handle a personality disorder of this magnitude. His idea of dealing with narcissists is to placate them so that they will be happy and might throw him some crumbs of love off of their table - that they will not invite him to join them at.
Please, please, please next
Please, please, please next time you are out with others - bring up your DH's sexual issues - doesn't have any? - don't let that stop you. Make up some. Talk ever so sweetly about his "performance issues". Let him know what it is like to be BETRAYED by someone who is supposed to love you.
And as for the not being "excited enough" about the bro's grad school - they both need to grow up. I promise you where I went to grad school is absolutely unconditionally the top program (not just in the US but the world). My parent's reaction "they were embarrassed that I was quitting a good job and going back to school". Did I hate them over that? No. Never crossed my mind.
You know and of course anyone with half a brain realizes these are not normal human beings.
Ha! Yes, a taste of his own
Ha! Yes, a taste of his own medicine! Sounds "therapeutic"!
The problem is, this is exactly what his ex used to do for 20 years.
I told him last night, don't turn into her! Why would you?
Did you like being the center
of every negative, nasty conversation she would have with anyone and everyone?
Thank you, oldone, for your example of your parents' response to you going to grad school. Goes to show that where you have a normal, loving relatinship between kids and parents, no matter what the difference of opinions is, things do not break down, hatred does not raise its ugly head, narcissistic rage does not flare up.
They are not normal human beings, thank you for confirming that.
No, they are not parent plus.
No, they are not parent plus. There are loans she took out at a low rate ( it was before my time, i met her when she was a sophomore, i believe) and only her name is on them. And then there are loans that her father took out for her at a much higher rate, 8.5%, that have only his name on them. She did not sign for those, and he did not co-sign hers, i believe. However, if she had paid off anything, and she claims to have done so to the tune of several hundred dollars here and there, she is paying off HER lower-rate loans, not his higher - rate ones. Does it make sense? Calling Suze Orman!!! I am trying to make her show mandatory viewing for DH. His financial past is a black hole... but he thinks it is just lovely that the princess is in grad school ( making pottery on the side - it's all good as long as she is having fun) while the loans are sitting there unpaid, and thus growing every day. I am the bad guy for refusing to go along with that.
I hear you, HRNYC, but their
I hear you, HRNYC, but their *verbal* agreement is that they are all hers ( he took more loans out for his son, and his youngest is a senior in high school) and the OSD is going to pay them off... as soon as she is done saving the world. Suze Orman would say to my DH, you cannot afford to pay off your kids' student loans if you have not saved enough for retirement. To my SD I would say, no, you cannot go traveling and living the high life, and you do not have time to pursue hobbies, you need to pay down loans before they have ballooned into something completely unmanageable.
I posted about this stuff before and i do think this was the first time ANYONE has said to the SD, No, you cannot do what you want because you need to do what needs to be done. She threw a fit! I questioned her choices! She wants all those around her to constantly provide narcissistic supply and validate every breath she takes.
HRNYC, i agree with your
HRNYC, i agree with your approach, and would steer my kids in that direction.
I am from Europe - to me paying for college is a very foreign concept. Going into
6-figure debt for a job that pays barely 30K seems the height of insanity. Paying 70K interest on 50K loan as snickers said, is a dreadful waste of money. I do not even think
parents "owe" their children any support beyond high school. It is fine if they want to do it,
but it is not an entitlement.
It's all about the entitlement for me: i find it such a horrible attitude, and DH failing to correct it just kills me. He raised monsters and prefers to stay in denial because he wants an easy breezy relationship with them. But they throw him under the bus in so many different ways: from not paying loans to treating him like crap every step of the way.
His "therapeutic" attempts are pathetic.
Snickers, congrats on the
Snickers, congrats on the repayment process starting finally! Woo hoo! None too soon.... The numbers are horrifying though... i hope it does not come to 70k being thrown away. Good idea about the terms of the loan... my DH's loan is pretty much the same, OSD's share is around 50k, plus the SS has around 20K, i think.
JUCO??? Are you out of your mind? The OSD is a cross between the next Mother Theresa and Jane Goodall. No junior colleges for her, nothing but Ivy League all the way. She DESERVES it! She was born to make the world a better place - everyone fall face down so that she could march to her crown of glory walking all over people.
HRNYC gave you some good info
HRNYC gave you some good info on the PLUS loans; the only thing I want to add to it is that these can never be pinned on his daughter in any way. Even if he had a signed agreement with his daughter that she's pay him back for the PLUS loans, it'd be unenforcable. That's the great (sarcasm) thing about student loans, they have their own set of special rules. Good luck on ever getting her to pay them back.
I had the same thought, WTIH!
I had the same thought, WTIH! He had been trying to talk sense into her for as long as i have known her, with things getting progressively worse. I keep pushing him to push therapy on skids - OSD does not see the need for it for herself... she is studying mental health after all - it is a joke. DH has had therapy and i feel that his therapist just blessed all of his attempts to establish some kind of connection with skids because DH painted a very rosy pic of what sweet angels they were.
That's pretty astute!
That's pretty astute! Spineless wonder, lol.... I will be sure to remember the quote. Blood in water indeed. You are right that he had no malice, he just obediently follows the brats in whatever direction they drag him. But we did have several conversations meant to pre-empt exactly what happened. Professional help is the next step, i agree.
Yes, it is tempting to be a
Yes, it is tempting to be a bitch and to have it be known throughout the land ...
DH and I did have a heated debate afterwards, and i repeated ad nauseum, that this is a non-negotiable for me, and he cannot do this again. Then he counter-attacked, repeating the OSD's
deranged complaints. Then it hit me: he is like a weather-vane, with no real grounding, just turning whichever way the wind is blowing. That is why his attempts at correcting their behavior are doomed: he has no real understanding what is good, what is bad, which way is up or down. Despite being very very smart in other domains, this one is a total morass: he justifies anything the skids do just because he does not have a moral compass? a backbone? self-respect?
Here everyone has a story of this nature... I ended up telling him that i am this close to losing respect for him. This was strike 2, as far as i know ( there might have been others i am not aware of). Strike 3 - and respect is gone.
Yes, let's invite a
Yes, let's invite a professional and ask all of our questions!
I can tell you, i talked to a gf of mine who is a psychiatrist about these things,
and she thought my DH needs to go back to therapy to explore his own potential
masochistic tendencies. On some neurotic level, abuse must work for him. He spent 20 years
in an abusive marriage, where the BM put skids on a pedestal ( it it any wonder they hate to relinquish it?) and put him down at every opportunity. As soon as the golden girl ( aka OSD23)
graduated HS, BM kicked DH out of the house for being SUCH a horrible husband and came out as a lesbian a month later. Did not have the guts to come out first. DH almost lost his mind.
So does 20 years of abuse and lies teach you to expect abuse from your loved ones and to welcome it because it makes you feel right at home? I know your DH's situation is different, and your situation with your 3 vipers of SDs is extreme. If you don't mind, i will share your thoughtful response with my DH as a warning that doing nothing, or doing things the way they were always done leads to nowhere. Leads to an impasse.
I also have an interest in making things better because even though i have a father and a SM and a step-sister, i have no relationship with any of them, outside of an occasional post card from my father. It is such a loss for all those concerned, for him, for me, for my kids. My when i very infrequently call my father and hear my SM's tense voice somewhere in the room with him, telling him what to do or what to say, it makes me cringe. She is hateful. I do not want to play the same role vis-a-vis my skids. On the other hand, they are so selfish and hurtful that i do not see what role i can play other than steer clear of them. And watch DH, as you said, pit us against each other.
Deep sigh... thank you for
Deep sigh... thank you for sharing. What a sad, frustrating situation.
Here is what your post made me think of, i found this tonight on a divorce-related website.
When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron. ( A therapist offers this book to her client)
“Take a look at what I was reading just this weekend,” I suggested. As she skimmed the passage I’d noted, her eyes filled with tears. I asked her to read it aloud:
“We think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.”
http://judithruskayrabinorphd.com/2012/10/02/mourning-your-divorce-facin...
I like it! It seems we all want the picture perfect family and are so troubled by its absence. But there is comfort in acceptance of status quo, in creating room for a multitude of feelings. I wish i was a Buddhist!