The holidays will soon be here, and that means a trip back home to visit our families. Both sides are aware of what's going on. My family has been very supportive of US. I have received a lot of encouragement to keep trying, work on myself, try to see things from DH's point of view, not let this consume me, and be sure I have done everything possible to get through this. I've been called out when I've said or done things they see as unfair to him and praised when I've done things that are for myself. His family, on the other hand, has been all about him. We have been together 25 years (including dating and marriage). I have never been accepted as a "real" member of the family, particularly since I couldn't produce the prize pig, er, biological child to provide the proper link.
Besides our marriage counselor and me, the only people DH talks to about this are my MIL and BIL. BIL is very anti-family anyway. Until the MLC, the only contact he'd even had with DH was the occasional brief phone call about once a year. He moved far away from the family because he couldn't stand to be around them or in the area. He never comes home during the holidays, so I shouldn't have to worry about him. The place I need to place my emphasis is how to handle myself around my MIL since I know I can't control her behavior.
She has pretty much set herself up as the saboteur of our marriage. She listens to her son whine and cry about how hard things are. Instead of telling him he needs to look at the whole picture, what his role is in this process, and why he feels the way he does, she just keeps encouraging divorce. She doesn't understand why he didn't leave me years ago since he is so unhappy. Every time I see her number come up on caller ID, I wince because I know I'm going to get mowed down again. Luckily at this point we are down to once a week or less.
She actually told him she thought I might kill him and then myself because I am so depressed. He told her he didn't think that was true. When he told me she'd said that, I was deeply hurt as I've never had those kind of thoughts. I have thought of killing myself, but I have never thought of killing him, either as part of my own suicide or independently. My pdoc, counselor, and our marriage counselor all told DH that was a ridiculous statement, that I was not capable of such an act and had never said or done anything to point toward that. Plus in the vast majority of murder suicide cases, it's the MAN who does it. If a woman does it, it's almost always herself and her kids. BIL got in on the act and said he agreed with MIL.
I asked DH to go back to them and stand up for me. He did it but then complained I had "emasculated" him. He uses this term a lot. I truly don't understand why. I think he must have some very strange ideas about what it means to be a man. I asked him why standing up for me was emasculating because it seemed to me that defending your wife's reputation would be just the opposite. He said, "It's because I had to go back to them and tell them they were wrong because they had different feelings from you." That made no sense to me, but at that point, I decided no sense was going to come out of the conversation. And even after MIL had the expert opinions, she said they didn't matter; she was still going to be worried. DH did not see this as a problem, stating, "She's my mom. Of course she's going to worry about me."
But again, I can't control what she says to him or what she thinks of me. What I need to do is figure out how I get through this holiday with his side of the family knowing his mother thinks I could take him out at any moment and has never even once tried to look at how all this might be playing out from my side. (Ironically my father has tried very hard not to defend DH but to at least try to look at it from his POV and give me ideas about what midlife is like for men and why he might be doing some of the things he's done.) Do I go there for holiday dinner? Do I avoid his family? If I go, what do I keep in my mind to help me stay sane and behave civilly? I have to be able to control myself. Sarcasm is one of my great defense mechanisms, so I have to be able to turn that off or things will get nasty quickly.
I'm truly torn about what to do. If I don't go, I avoid subjecting myself to all that stress, but I feel as if MIL wins because she gets her precious baby boy all to herself, in person, to continue working on him. I know she blames me for the fact we don't live near her, and since her other son doesn't really give a rat's behind about family other than putting on a bit of a show when he absolutely has to, she doesn't have kids nearby. If I do go, then I subject myself to a great deal of stress, but I also stand my ground. Whether she likes it or not, I am her DIL. G-d willing, I will still be there for her son long after she is gone. I have been there for him all this time. I haven't been perfect, but I have done the best I can. My worth as a person or a family member should not be dependent on whether I can produce an heir. This isn't Victorian England, and she could have been a grandmother if her son weren't so against adoption.
So what do you think? How do I do this, and how do I keep the focus on me instead of DH and MIL? This is a classic example of my need to work on detachment!
Author
Topic: 
Interacting with DH's FOO