Help and guidance
I won’t go through the details of how I got here, but leave that to you to read my other posts under adult stepchildren. Suffice it to say NPD 30SS with one child (2 years old) and another due in September that he uses as pawns. Like most here I deal with the sense of abandonment from DW due to her inability to set boundaries and put our marriage as something important in her life. I am new to this site and tried partial disengagement once before, just from 30SS. Now this is complete and total disengagement from all 3 skids as they have been influenced by the toxic rhetoric from their older brother.
My problem is that this is so new and foreign to my way of thinking that I don’t know if this is something I can accept for myself because if I knew this is what my marriage was going to be like, I would not be married. But I love my DW, or at least the person I knew before I knew her NPD son showed his true colors and how much he controls her.
To be fair, I know that when grandkids are involved, it’s a huge hurdle to overcome. And with a new baby due in 4 months, and the fact that he already took her visitation of the 2 year old, I know she is afraid of being excluded fro the birth of her second grandchild. And after the birth, I feel the reality is she will want to be there more and more. They only live 20 minutes away(oh how I wish it were farther).
So for at least the next six months, I see this as a monumental struggle for me. I don’t want to be around any of these disfunctional people. But the feelings of abandonment and her inability to take any sort of action at all make me wonder if this is something I want at all any more. She and I have a very different view of what the commitment of marriage is. I know I deserve more, and I had that until the narcissist took control of the person I pledged my life to. It all came crashing down just 6 weeks after we were married. And at just 10 months into our marriage, I feel we haven’t even had a chance to grow as husband and wife. And with the drama and pressure her kids (all 3 now) are putting on her, I’m not sure disengagement will help at all.
From what I have read here, I guess what I’m feeling is “normal”, even though nothing about this feel normal or healthy to me. How does one get through these ups and downs? I fill my time with healthy activities outside the home with friends and family. But I feel part of my marriage has died and I am second choice at best. I really don’t want to be anybody’s second choice because I want and deserve more than that.
I know
Thanks mapitout. I know there are lots of us going through these same emotions. I don’t know if my expiration’s are unreasonable or if my idea of what are marriage should be is just antiquated.
When you marry a spouse with
When you marry a spouse with children, you expect that there is going to be some compromise and some sharing of time. What you don't expect, especially when the skids are adults, is for your marriage to be held hostage to satisfy the immature wants of coddled adult children. The person you married wants to make sure he or she still has an unchanged relationship with his/her children, and that there is unblocked access to the grandchildren. No one else has to compromise....except for you.
Unfortunately in so many of our circumstances, we are the sacrifice the spouse uses to show the poor hurt adult skids that they are still #1. The kids continue to complain; the scared to death parent does nothing; the skid thinks that grants them permission to continue their poor behavior/snubs/exclusion tactics/protecting the Holy Original Family from the family intruder. The bio parent then whines they are now in the middle.
You, as a person who married this spouse expecting reasonable behavior out of adult children, this can be a tough pill to swallow. You expected to be a valued spouse and partner, not a Sacrificial Lamb to appease poor widdle adult children. But sacrificed you are, especially when there are grandchildren in the mix. You are just supposed to take it so everyone else is happy and your spouse loses nothing. It's ok if you are made to feel less than.
Your wife has a right to see her children/grandchildren, but you have the right to have a spouse put you first and be treated with respect. If you don't want to accompany your wife on a trip to see her children, you have the right to make that choice, but you have to find a way to not feel abandoned when she does it. Can those things be overcome? That depends on the two of you. When you know your spouse has your back, it makes it easier to do your own thing when your spouse is gone. Over time it gets easier, and I look forward to a little bit of down time.
I've been in your spot, hence my user ID, but I had several years invested before the proverbial $hit hit the fan. Had it been the length of time of your marriage, I would have invested in a few counseling sessions before determining if I wanted to continue in the marriage. Your wife needs to show you that you are her priority as a partner, and that while she may go visit her children, she is happy to return to her life with you. Absent that, I don't there is a foundation to build a future marriage on.
Thanks
Everything you have said hits home with me. I am going to request we go to couples counseling and even let her choose who we go see. Navigating this alone without a third party to look at it objectively feels like a recipe for failure.
I keep rereading this...
Your words capture everything I am feeling and I cannot stop reading your post. It’s as if I read it one more time I will see the answer. But there are no answers, just intentions to try to find a way forward.
Your part about me feeling sacrafised hit me hard because I feel I have given up so much, on more than one occasion, whereas the disfunctional family continues to get everything they want. This marriage feels so one sided and that breeds resentment.
I am hoping time will bring some change, but I think that is only wishful thinking. Maybe from DE, but I think she is too scared and week. Definitely not from NPD 30SS, because narcissists never change. They are already perfect and change would nullify that. So I guess the reality is that I hope time will bring clarity.
I dont know if disengagment
I dont know if disengagment is normal. Having done it, I dont agree with it. To me it feels like tolerating the intolerable, ignoring the dysfunction for the sake of a marriage. I felt compromised - it went against everything I stood for. With the increasing compromises and constant ingress of an adult step child into what I considered my marriage space, I called it quits. I am in process of getting divorced.
The situation with my STBXH made me become who I am not. Made me compromise my values, made me give in on things I dont tolerate with my own child. It whittled away who I am. Deep down it had always left me unsettled as if I was betraying myself (and my son). It was heavily weighted to me making accommodations for other people. If the situation was fair, would they not try to accomdate me? Consider my feelings and thoughts? Or was it always going to be a situation where I needed to give in, to tolerate, to live with what I didnt want? How on earth was this what a marriage meant or was supposed to be?
My second marriage took from me - it made me less of who I am and who I am supposed to be. The moment I realised that. that I was whining and whinging about my husband, moaning and groaning about my marriage, was the moment I realised I made a mistake. I could not fix things with my husband. He didnt see our marriage the same way I did and didnt want the same things for us as I did. He clearly was going to choose his pregnant SD over me - and I dont blame him for that. In the end I let him have her because it was the only way I was going to find me again. By next month this time I will be officially divorced. It is the one thing I did right in a disengagement process: disengaging from my husband.
During my first marriage I
During my first marriage I allowed the toxic situation to drive me to be someone I didn't much like. During the end of that tragic learning experience I rediscovered the person I have always enjoyed being. I commited to myself a that point to never loose touch with my core self again. For the most part I have kept that promise.
I wish you the best of fortune on the next phase of your life adventure.
I too did that
I learned a lot about myself in the end of my first marriage. I saw a person I never thought I could become. I realized I need to be true to my core values, no matter what.
That’s what makes all of this so difficult for me. My core value of what a marriage is looks nothing like what I am in right now. I would like to try to salvage it, but I honestly know the skids are never going to let DW have her own life.
And even with disengagement, which is something that I know I will struggle with forever, I don’t know if the repeated hurtful things like her going to spend time with her “family” on holidays is something I am willing to accept.
Honestly, I see the writing on the wall and she has made her choice. I am not competing with her kids, and never will. I am also deserving of more than someone’s second choice or convienence.
I have told DW that we need an outside third party to help us navigate the pain on both sides. I am willing to listen and be open to what they have to say. But she needs to commit to that too. So far, all I see is resistance. She knows it’s wrong and doesn’t want someone else telling her that too.
Its over ☹️
Your response hits home. I
Your response hits home. I have felt guilt that my bio children have witnessed me to be weak, spineless and someone they know that I am NOT! The irony is that since you were always the symptom and never the problem your STBXH will see this now someday. His relationship with her will continue to be disfunctional and the hostage-taking will simply take on new and different demands unrelated to you until one day he looks back and thinks he threw away a perfectly good marriage for nothing. She was always the problem.
This could be me as well...
I have felt all the things you have written. I am not the person I was due to the skids rude behavior and exclusion of me at every turn. I have compromised every time and they have gotten their way 100% while the DW gets to have her cake and eat it too.
When the DW cries that she is “stuck in the middle” I can’t stand it. They put themselves there by their lack of backbone, inability to set boundaries, and putting their kids above their marriage. They clearly are not ready to be married if they are going to let their kids dictate their lives. The skids need a parent and not a best friend that supports every stupid decision they make.
Time will tell if I end up in the same position as you. I am willing to see how disengagement works, as long as she respects the boundaries I have setup. She should because they are exactly what her NPD son has put in place on his side.
What I won’t do is compromise my core values and let some disfunctional a$$hole define my value. I am free of them, which is liberating to some degree. It is upsetting that I hear her parroting some his toxic rhetoric back to me, so I’m not sure she will find her way back to our marriage.
I Did NOT Do Well Today
I knew there would be times I would get tripped up. And even though I was aware and thought I was on the lookout for them, I stumbled big time today.
After two consecutive weekends for DW to be with her kids, free from me, and my sending 24SD gifts for her birthday, I really expected nothing in return. Which is exactly what I got. No “Thank you for the card and gifts”. So while it would have been nice, that’s not how they were raised and I really couldn’t care less.
What I did not expect was to be unfriended by her on Facebook. Her mother and I share one Facebook account, which her kids all know, so I took it as just another way for her to further exclude me. What I should have done was simply block all the skids from the account and look at it as a blessing. They get back exactly what they put out.
But, stupid me asked DW why her daughter unfriended me and said that after two weekends of them getting what they all asked for, time without me, the timing sucked and I was hurt. I am entitled to have feelings, but the feeling should have been “Thank God! Now I can just block them all!”
So this blew up in my face because now apparently I’m only ok with her spending time with them if something changes. WTF? I expect NOTHING to change! What I didn’t expect was to be further excluded. But DW cannot see it that way. I am now putting “conditions” on her and being unfair. Again... WTF?
So I asked if she would be open to getting outside help (couples counseling) to try to work through our issues and see if we can salvage what’s left of this marriage. Again I was told that we didn’t get much out of it before and I only want to find someone that agrees with me. Holy Crap! And she went on to say I am giving her an ultimatum about what to do with her family.
So... This is NOT going well. The writing is on the wall and it is clear that she has put no value in our marriage and the love/hate triangle has to come to an end.
I am truly sorry. You must be
I am truly sorry. You must be hurting badly.
Please know that this is not because of you or your fault. It may boil down to you and your wife being incompatable. As simple as that is, it still hurts. You have tried to work things out, you have tried to accommodate your wife - and her kids. Sometimes your spouse just cares more about cow-towing to a kid than seeing the damage they are doing to their marriage.
Sometimes the best gift you can give yourself and your spouse is the kids. Let her have them. They deserve each other.
SoDisappointed, from what I
SoDisappointed, from what I've read this doesn't seem to be going very well for you. I'm sorry that you are hurting and I can tell from reading your posts. You are making an effort to get counseling to save your marriage but she doesn't seem interested. If this is the case what other options do you have left? If you continue down this road you will only get more resentful and bitter and when you look back you will not be the same man that you use to be. Situations like this change people and I would hate for her to diminish all the love and joy you have to offer. I think you deserve someone who appreciates you and loves you for the wonderful man that you are.
If you want to keep fighting for your marriage by all means but one day you will wake up tired and fed up. You will know with absolute certainty that its time to move on. Wishing you positive vibes, strength, and guidance.
Thanks
I have accepted the fact that I have done all I can. You cannot want more for someone than they want for themselves. See my last east post on knowing when to call it quits. ☹️
I do want to say thank you, and everyone here, for their kind words of understanding. I am a man that has real feelings and emotions that I am not afraid or ashamed to show. I have love and joy to give to those willing to recognize and accept. It does not make me weak, but rather, makes me strong because I know who I am what my value is in this world. Those that abuse that will be left behind.
I get where you are coming
I get where you are coming from. I resemble in may ways your description of yourself. Just don't make the mistake of hanging on to a forlorn hope any longer than necessary. I tried that in my first marriage and it cost me time that I could have enjoyed rather than suffered through and pain that I did not need to experience.
Take care of you.
Thanks
I am not hanging on to any hope right now. The truth is I have been hanging on to hope for the past three weeks, trying to see if there was anything to build a future on. But the more time went by, the worse things looked. My hope to see something only showed that she had already made her choice, and the marriage and I didn’t matter. Her words and actions were all to justify her decision to herself.
As soon as I left the X made
As soon as I left the X made no attempt to contact me, find out how I was, if I would be coming back etc. At the first chance he had he had the house valued for sale and packed up all my things ready for collecting. Those were not the actions of a man who wanted to contimue the relationship in any way, shape or form, they were the actions of someone who had been waiting at the traffic lights for the green light instead of running a red. Did I do him a favour? Who knows but I certainly did myself one- go for this and set her free too.