[MadLuv]

Alimony was paid. I guess the delay was to make me nervous. It worked. Who knows what happens next. I journaled this to show even 3 years after a divorce things can get worse. I have 10 more years of alimony and it will be a long 10 years of this and something tells me that there is more to come.


Something else NEW!! My D33 told me that her dad ,who she referred to him by his name, showed up at his Mom’s house last year after he was told by his brother and cousin that she was ill and he better go see her and make it right. So, he showed up one night. He spent the night and got up the next morning and left. She said, grandma saod thr first thing she noticed was how old he looked. He told her he walked a lot and was completely off his diabetes 2 meds.

She told D33  he was my best kid growing up. He did what he was told with not hesitation. His brother would behave like, how many beating do I have to take before you will make me do this. She now said, he checks on me constantly and offers to have me come live with him and you dad I can’t even speak
To. I asked if she felt good about the visit. She said, I think she is at
Peace . That, it is was it is, but she does not expect to see him again. She did not speak glowingly of the visit. 

Very quick in and out. D33 said, if that was my kid and he abandoned his children I would be so distraught. I told D33 we have all lost. Ge abandoned all of us. It just shows thT he is not well and still not doing anything to look at why. 
D33 also is so confused that he bought this big expensive house and she still lives in the old house in another state. She checked as both OWife her and her D  work technically under my daughter , but also a different state. They are both still employed in the old state.

She said, it’s very telling that they aren’t living together. That they didn’t move with him. I said yes it is.

[beyondblessed]

ML, he still sounds like complete train wreck.  It's interesting about how he's becoming more unraveled at the 3 year point of the D.  My xh was still acting like a $h!te at that point, too, like still doing things to try and bait me into contact and exhibit some sort of imaginary control.   Needless to say, I didn't bite and let him to his OW and happy life lol

Now,  8 years later, OW is out of the picture,  proclaiming how he's apparently wronged her too, like she's an innocent victim 🙄🙄,  and xh has evidently been expressing his regret of the demise of our marriage  to mutual friends and  also to my dad as of late.  The things these people do make no sense.  They are disordered.  They ruin everything good and still keep running.  Like my xh, it catches up to them.

With your xh, it is telling that he has distanced himself from the new wifey.  I predict it won't be long before she's the next one getting the boot.  One thing is for sure, things won't be getting any better until he owns up to his choices and does the work to fix himself.  Even then,  he'll have a long way go.

[KayDee]

he was my best kid growing up. He did what he was told with not hesitation. His brother would behave like, how many beating do I have to take before you will make me do this. She now said, he checks on me constantly and offers to have me come live with him and you dad I can’t even speak

Wow - you're probably done with all the analysing - but this jumped out at me. We know of fight and flight as fear/trauma responses. But there are also freeze/flop and fawn. Your xH, his response was obviously fawn (prob. leading to extreme people pleasing and the crisis we all know and love )  - whereas the other brother, he was fight and seemed to somehow have maintained some resilience/resistance. Don't want to speak ill of xMiL but ---- beating a child into compliance? It sounds like a regime of fear.

Sorry you are still having to deal with this. Must be hard to thoroughly detach when these money and legal issues resurface.

[MadLuv]

BB- right? He is a train wreck. I'm not sure if it is getting worse because he has jumped fully in this life and all the past must go or because of jumping right in and still not happy, so he can't have the past reminding him? IDK, but it definitely shows he is not well and has not made any noticeable progress. I am
Not sure how their relationship will turn out. I know she is going no where. She has a materialistic dream right now. I guess it will be when he decides he cant keep up the facade of a millionaire.

This woman lived in an  very low income apartment her whole adult life and now has 2 homes and drives a Mercedes dressed in designer clothes and draped in diamonds.  Her disorders and his disorders combined are the train wreck. If they continue to live in 2 different states and she just commutes on the weekends this could go on indefinitely. An Avoidants dream marriage! Haha

Now,  8 years later, OW is out of the picture,  proclaiming how he's apparently wronged her too, like she's an innocent victim 🙄🙄,  and xh has evidently been expressing his regret of the demise of our marriage  to mutual friends and  also to my dad as of late.  The things these people do make no sense.  They are disordered.  They ruin everything good and still keep running.  Like my xh, it catches up to them

  crazy!! And he tell’s your Dad???  It’s all such a waste, isn’t it?  You know, my XH  told me things that I did to make him feel less than. “I got mad because he bought me a weight scale for xmas even thou I told him I wanted one” hahah. He said, I don’t know if all of this is what I made up in my head or it’s real.

Well, I am sure that I did and said  many things to make him feel bad in 30 years. I told him that he made fun of me also and made me feel bad. It’s knowing that it is not meant to purposely hurt and  that you tell the person how it makes you feel.  Apparently I did and that made me someone he couldn’t please and then grew to become the resentment of needing someone who made him feel better about himself. The issue at hand is his avoidance hasn’t changed. So, at some point all this will reoccur. For now he seems to her the perfect man, but those little things she is doing that annoys him are building. He doesn’t have 30 more years of life, so maybe she will make it. If she does than I guess she traded a life style for true happiness. It wont be a first.

KD- I highly doubt his mother beat them as it sounds, but I definitely think they were children that got the belt. However, I do think they all are a product of their mother’s coldness and after meeting her narcissistic Dad I saw exactly where it stemmed from. His mother is a everything is great”  mother. So, his avoidance totally makes sense to me. They were not allowed to complain. I did find that interesting when D33 told me that. 

What was more interesting was that her grandma told her anything that appears negative. I will say that she was the one I feared not seeing it as it is and blaming me. She has changed towards me, but I do think obviously she see him.  Her other son that she referred to is on his 3rd marriage and also is a mess. XH used to laugh in disgust at that brother and honestly XH is now living a life with a woman worse and paying for her kids. At least his brother is still involved with all his kids from other marriages.

It’s been complete silence since I dropped the small claims suit. I just feel a bomb is getting ready to be set off and I don't know when. Somehow no matter what I will make it through it. I am still jobless and will most likely have to early retire, so We will just have to see what is in store.

Thank you for replying. It’s always so good to get other perspectives. Sorry for all my typos. I always journal from my phone. Not the best for catching errors or hitting the wrong thing when typing.

[beyondblessed]

ML, the only thing we know for certain, is that both our x he's are a product of messed home environments.  I truly believe it goes with the saying, what is normal to the spider, is chaos for the fly.   I think we all carry different levels of baggage from our childhood environment and upbringing, but the trauma and chaos to them is the normal because it's what they were conditioned to believe and function in.  My parents were not perfecf, but compared to xh's, they were saints.  That is a huge reason I can understand why xh is the way he is and did the things he did.  Yes,  he still chose his path and actions, but he was guided by what he learned in childhood, and that is truly a shame.

[MadLuv]

Bb-agreed. I think it is recognizing your faults or behaviors they are linked to that upbringing and not blaming your parents, but doing the work to try and change what you can to not repeat history and knowing that you can’t change it all. Breaking habits is hard !!! Some we don’t realize and some become such a norm that maybe it takes a discard from an MLCer to even help us see things we hadn’t addressed yet

I still have work to do, but I will say the last conversation I did have with my XH I did apologize for things I recognized on my end. I also told him that I did see how this happened for him, but it would have never happened for me in a way of dealing with distress. I also told him that you don’t bring people into your life and have children and then treat them like this. It is unacceptable. His response, yeah. His apology after all my insight and truth darts?  “I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened to me”

I actually loved that last call. I was no longer tip toeing trying to save anything or avoid him running farther ( which he certainly has)  I at that moment did what I had to do to move forward with no regrets.

[KayDee]

What was more interesting was that her grandma told her anything that appears negative. I will say that she was the one I feared not seeing it as it is and blaming me. She has changed towards me, but I do think obviously she see him.  Her other son that she referred to is on his 3rd marriage and also is a mess. XH used to laugh in disgust at that brother and honestly XH is now living a life with a woman worse and paying for her kids. At least his brother is still involved with all his kids from other marriages.

With a HUGE caveat that I know nothing about your xMiL, I would just be mindful of not being drawn into a triangulation. Your XH has shut MiL out, maybe she is looking for an ally. Some people are very divisive that way, the 'you are either with me or against me' mentality. And, as you say, this is inter-generational. Where does the buck stop? My therapist often repeats - we as human beings have an uncanny way of becoming (or doing) the thing we fear the most. Salient words.

[MadLuv]

You are absolutely right. I was referring to my D’s interaction showing where she is. I have no communication with his mother. We send holiday cards and she likes my fb posts only if they involve the kids or grandson, but never mine alone. That’s what I meant. She is aware, but still on her son’s side no matter what( understandingly) I am Not a huge fan of hers and have no relationship anymore. I have and will continue a relationship with his brother and family. They are coming this summer for a weekend. It’s odd, but I think you have to choose who you want to have in your life and his kids and my kids deserve to be able to get together and they choose to do it here.

[MadLuv]

My D33 who has been a little disconnected since October started talking to me about her  Dad. Said she has been snooping. Iam glad she is talking, but also hard to try to not engage in things on my XH with my kids this seems first not great for me.  One, I know that she would never talk to him about me and  2 I feel a little used for her venting. However, Ilike she feels comfortable opening up again.

She said this XMAS he sent a box with gifts for everyone. When opening the box they were just all thrown in non wrapped. That it was process of illumination on what gift went to who. They all just got one gift. She said, she got knock off slippers of a name brand and that her daughters he bought the real slippers. She was furious about that. She said, why would he do that? Why would we all not at least get the same and why would his pwn daughter get the cheap knock offs??

So, I have thoughts on this. I told her that I think he feels he has to buy thr name brand fpr them and he cant agford it, but he wanted to send you something so he bought what looked like the real thing, because he isnt creative enough to come up with something else. With that said….it is disturbing. The non wrapped gifts also. There was no effort. She threw everything in the trash.  She told me that she told her brother he had a gift from him and he never picked it ip so she threw his out also.  My S31 never said a word to me.

Just another crazy  thing. Any thought?

[amazinglove]

I went thru this with my own dad tbh. In my epxerience, men are completely useless when it comes to gift giving - if they have been relying on a wife to handle everything in this dept for years. I remember one xmas - the first one after my parents seperated - my dad arrived and literally threw an unwrapped walkman (that's how long ago it was) at me! I think there is resentment too that they have to be 'in charge of this' and someone else isn't wrapping/handling for them and if they are narcissistic a lack of interest really in thinking about the other person enough to gift something thoughtful. In a nutshell, it fits right in with the kind of self-centered, petulant, MLC behaviour we see on here. I think possibly in your H's case, he is trying to impress the granddaughters -  and feels more secure, like his D will accept him in any case.