Abuse

MrsBun's picture

Hi everyone, I'm new here. I have a situation and I don't know how to proceed. I have several of my own biological children, preteen all the way down to toddler, and I have been married to my husband for several years. My husband has been the caregiver of his teenage daughter for most of her life. He has sole custody, however, due to her issues, she does not live with us currently. During the course of our marriage she has broken many of my things, tried taking my things, breaking my kids things, bullied my kids, used my words to describe herself (for example, saying I don't feel safe in my own home, and then she turns around and says it to my husband), tries to manipulate everyone, chronic victim, lies, sneaks out, found broken glass and weapons under her bed, has made up lies about me to other people including her mom, etc. I feel abused, it feels like my emotinally abusive previous marriage. My kids also feel abused by her. It has been a month since my husband has seen her, and he was hoping to start seeing her on a regular basis away from the home. I want to be ok with it, but to me it feels like he's seeing the person who abused me, and I have a lot of emotions with that. Anger, hurt, sadness, fear, etc. My husband is easily manipulated by her, and I personally don't think she even wants to see him, she just wants him to buy her things. I fear that if he goes and sees her that things will start to get bad again. For many years I was depressed, miserable, unhappy, overwhelmed to the max, and right now I'm happy, stress free (for the most part, except when I think of him seeing her), and our marriage is in a really good place right now. I don't know what to do, I don't know how to feel differently, I know what my boundaries are, but I feel he is incapable of setting up appropriate boundaries for himself.