I KNEW it was too good to be true!!!!!!!
I KNEW my mom would NOT keep her nose out of it or recognize my right to keep bro away from my kids.
Yesterday was all "I don't want to know, to be in the middle, happy to enjoy you for you, etc...."
I just got a call telling us my niece spent the night. Gpa ran into xsil at the pharmacy. She felt awful, has an infection, Gpa brought niece home. No biggie. My kids still want to see my parents. She just wanted to not "blindside" us.
Fine. I will not go out of my way to see niece, but I won't punish my parents for being nice to her mom.
THEN my mom tells me that the ONLY thing bro had a problem with was how husband talks about me around them. He made some comment AT EASTER about me. Six weeks later my bro had to corner him to berate him about it? The phones and mail didn't work unless my kids were around???
Mom then says husband left Easter with-o saying goodbye or thanks and mom was a little upset by it. Gfgbro saw it and was upset. I could see that. IF gfgbro hadn't CHASED us out of there. He SPECIFICALLY told husband that all he did was upset them and had no right to be aorund them.
My parents are not always thrilled with husband. husband TRIES. But he doesn't answer overly personal questions except with a joke. He will NOT go into details of his job search and his plans in the meantime with them. My mother STILL wants him to outline his actions every week to prove that he is spending 40 hours a week jobhunting. TO HER. Not for his own use, to manage his time. TO HER. She has called me upset about it, just like last time he was job hunting.
My mother has claimed to not want to know the problems with my marriage. But she asks very pointed questions of us AND the kids to find problems that don't exist and are none of her business if they do. When we first married she did some triangulating to make sure I wasn't "changing loyalty" away from her. It took a little while for me to see, but husband and I figured it out. We have tried to be very careful not to give her places to try to dig into our relationship. She has even offered to "fund" a divorce a couple of times.
husband is not perfect. He drives me nuts pretty often. He does a couple of things my mother and father dislike. It is reciprocal. He hates the way my mom runs him down and pushes gfgbro forward as the "perfect" child. She explains away anything gfgbro does and brings up stuff I did before we were married or even earlier. Even more he HATES that if a joke can be taken in the wrong way it will be - if husband tells it. But bro can repeatedly tell us, esp ME, the "joke" about why the woman had 2 black eyes. (She should have listened the first time is his "punch" line) It is told every time gfgbro doesn't like the way Jessica or I behave.
husband also uses the word "yell" to mean berate. It is how his entire family, and MANY other people I know, use the word. It does not always mean that voices are raised. husband is far more upset by that low vicious voice than by shouting. Mom and gfgbro, and to some extent I, use the low tone when angry. I do it less because I learned it isn't effective. He shuts down rather than copes, so if I want change I use a more effective tone of voice. Both Mom and gfgbro use it to sink in claws when other people are a couple of yards away or if kids are just a few feet away. I know they do because they do it TO ME. If husband says that they "yelled" at him he refers to the below the belt hits and that vicious tone of voice, not raised voices. It has been almost 20 years. There are words that mom and gfgbro use that are not in line with the dictionary definition, but that doesn't count. All husband has to say to have them trumpet that everything he says is wrong is to use the word yell. That ONE word, used inaccurately but consistently, will have them GLEEFULLY saying that nothing he says is true. Everything is a lie because he used that ONE word the way he learned it growing up. I had NO idea that entire arguments were untrue and terrible behavior was fine if one person used ONE WORD inaccurately.
Isn't this junior high behavior? Don't adults either say something to work it out OR get over it and move on? I know, if husband responded to gfgbro, that he did it out of protectiveness after seeing me in tears and seeing our kids frightened. He would move heaven and earth to keep me from crying and them from being upset. Esp after so many years of gfgbro's koi.
And my mother's koi. I am SO not surprised that she called this morning. She knows that every Sunday I am home and husband is at church all morning. It is her fave time to pull this koi.
I am sure husband is not blameless. I am also sure that neither he nor the kids did anything to deserve abuse. period.
The facts are that the ONE thing that I said MUST change for gfgbro to have a continued relationship with us is to never again pull the "you must listen to me say what I want, however nastily I want to say it, for as long as I want to say it" and not let us end the talk until we are both calm enough to be rational. For YEARS, since before Wiz was born, that is the ONE thing I have asked. I drew a line in the sand. Gfgbro knew it. I gave him a "second" chance about a year ago. It was the ONE thing that I mentioned. I have begged forgiveness for stuff I did NOT do, just to keep peace and make my mother happy. I have made HUGE efforts to change the way I speak and act around my bro, at his demands. I asked ONE thing. A reasonable, rational, not even very big thing.
No way gfgbro got his dysfunction alone. no. WAY.
It is time for me to stick to my line in the sand. No more nightmares for my kids. Period. No more gfgbro.
I KNEW my mom would NOT keep her nose out of it or recognize my right to keep bro away from my kids.
Yesterday was all "I don't want to know, to be in the middle, happy to enjoy you for you, etc...."
I just got a call telling us my niece spent the night. Gpa ran into xsil at the pharmacy. She felt awful, has an infection, Gpa brought niece home. No biggie. My kids still want to see my parents. She just wanted to not "blindside" us.
Fine. I will not go out of my way to see niece, but I won't punish my parents for being nice to her mom.
THEN my mom tells me that the ONLY thing bro had a problem with was how husband talks about me around them. He made some comment AT EASTER about me. Six weeks later my bro had to corner him to berate him about it? The phones and mail didn't work unless my kids were around???
Mom then says husband left Easter with-o saying goodbye or thanks and mom was a little upset by it. Gfgbro saw it and was upset. I could see that. IF gfgbro hadn't CHASED us out of there. He SPECIFICALLY told husband that all he did was upset them and had no right to be aorund them.
My parents are not always thrilled with husband. husband TRIES. But he doesn't answer overly personal questions except with a joke. He will NOT go into details of his job search and his plans in the meantime with them. My mother STILL wants him to outline his actions every week to prove that he is spending 40 hours a week jobhunting. TO HER. Not for his own use, to manage his time. TO HER. She has called me upset about it, just like last time he was job hunting.
My mother has claimed to not want to know the problems with my marriage. But she asks very pointed questions of us AND the kids to find problems that don't exist and are none of her business if they do. When we first married she did some triangulating to make sure I wasn't "changing loyalty" away from her. It took a little while for me to see, but husband and I figured it out. We have tried to be very careful not to give her places to try to dig into our relationship. She has even offered to "fund" a divorce a couple of times.
husband is not perfect. He drives me nuts pretty often. He does a couple of things my mother and father dislike. It is reciprocal. He hates the way my mom runs him down and pushes gfgbro forward as the "perfect" child. She explains away anything gfgbro does and brings up stuff I did before we were married or even earlier. Even more he HATES that if a joke can be taken in the wrong way it will be - if husband tells it. But bro can repeatedly tell us, esp ME, the "joke" about why the woman had 2 black eyes. (She should have listened the first time is his "punch" line) It is told every time gfgbro doesn't like the way Jessica or I behave.
husband also uses the word "yell" to mean berate. It is how his entire family, and MANY other people I know, use the word. It does not always mean that voices are raised. husband is far more upset by that low vicious voice than by shouting. Mom and gfgbro, and to some extent I, use the low tone when angry. I do it less because I learned it isn't effective. He shuts down rather than copes, so if I want change I use a more effective tone of voice. Both Mom and gfgbro use it to sink in claws when other people are a couple of yards away or if kids are just a few feet away. I know they do because they do it TO ME. If husband says that they "yelled" at him he refers to the below the belt hits and that vicious tone of voice, not raised voices. It has been almost 20 years. There are words that mom and gfgbro use that are not in line with the dictionary definition, but that doesn't count. All husband has to say to have them trumpet that everything he says is wrong is to use the word yell. That ONE word, used inaccurately but consistently, will have them GLEEFULLY saying that nothing he says is true. Everything is a lie because he used that ONE word the way he learned it growing up. I had NO idea that entire arguments were untrue and terrible behavior was fine if one person used ONE WORD inaccurately.
Isn't this junior high behavior? Don't adults either say something to work it out OR get over it and move on? I know, if husband responded to gfgbro, that he did it out of protectiveness after seeing me in tears and seeing our kids frightened. He would move heaven and earth to keep me from crying and them from being upset. Esp after so many years of gfgbro's koi.
And my mother's koi. I am SO not surprised that she called this morning. She knows that every Sunday I am home and husband is at church all morning. It is her fave time to pull this koi.
I am sure husband is not blameless. I am also sure that neither he nor the kids did anything to deserve abuse. period.
The facts are that the ONE thing that I said MUST change for gfgbro to have a continued relationship with us is to never again pull the "you must listen to me say what I want, however nastily I want to say it, for as long as I want to say it" and not let us end the talk until we are both calm enough to be rational. For YEARS, since before Wiz was born, that is the ONE thing I have asked. I drew a line in the sand. Gfgbro knew it. I gave him a "second" chance about a year ago. It was the ONE thing that I mentioned. I have begged forgiveness for stuff I did NOT do, just to keep peace and make my mother happy. I have made HUGE efforts to change the way I speak and act around my bro, at his demands. I asked ONE thing. A reasonable, rational, not even very big thing.
No way gfgbro got his dysfunction alone. no. WAY.
It is time for me to stick to my line in the sand. No more nightmares for my kids. Period. No more gfgbro.
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