bloodymediocrity
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General vent (but advice welcome anyways) incoming.
My 13-year-old daughter’s mom’s partner (but not married yet) informed her (and her younger half-sister) that he’s planning on proposing this weekend. Daughter is feeling really stressed out about this and I really wish he wouldn’t have mentioned anything at all and just popped the question on his own so they could more delicately inform the kids, instead of dragging daughter into a nebulous wait-and-see mode of waiting.
I guess it shows he’s really confident she’s going to say yes and I hope she does, but she’s said things in the past that suggest that she might not. Her mom has a really bad habit of using daughter to vent about the would-be-stepdad which is not something I’m fond of.
I know this is kind of a not-my-monkeys-not-my-circus problem, but I’m also anxious about it because if I was a betting man I see her saying no, and damn would that make shit at her other home awkward.
So to put it concisely the conflict with your sister-in-law can be summarized as this: The door to your sister’s room (in your house) made noise that you found annoying, her boyfriend came down shirtless and you made a comment of front of her parents that embarassed them, and then blamed her for the comment you made?
I mean, yeah, of course you’re going to have conflict with that whole family now. And your husband isn’t really doing anything to help navigate this.
Your dislike of your sister-in-law is poisoning your relationship with the mother-in-law, and you cannot seriously expect the mother-in-law to choose you over her own daughter. So you need to make peace with your sister-in-law, or abandon hope of a relationship with your MIL.
For what it’s worth, the way you describe it here, your sister-in-law sounds like she’s acting like a normal 20 year old. She’s doing things that are mildly annoying at best, and you came down way too hard on her. Maybe there’s a pattern of behavior that you haven’t mentioned here, but if the worst thing they did was make too much noise because of a problem with your door, well, they aren’t the assholes here.
It’s time you set up some boundaries with your mother. It’s going to suck, but you need to do it now instead of after when the baby is born.
You need a hard line with her and let her know that you’re not going to let her trash your in-laws anymore.
“Mom, I don’t have it in me to listen to you bad-mouth my in-laws.” And if (realistically, when) she pushes that boundary, you stop talking to her. Yes, she’s going to feel bad. She’s going to be angry. You have to stick to it.
Every time she does something that triggers your anxiety, you exit the conversation.
She won’t like it, but you are not responsible for her emotions. You need to be taking care of you and eventually taking care of that baby. You cannot manage her emotions for her and you’re only going to hurt yourself and your family in the long run by trying.
If she’s not at the baby shower, that’s on her. “She couldn’t make it” is all you have to say to anyone who asks about it.
BPD is tough, but trying to manage the emotions of someone who has BPD is a losing game.
Hey LW – good job. Really, you’ve made a very difficult decision but I am absolutely confident it was the right one. It hurts now for sure, but in the long run you are saving yourself many difficult years. You should be very proud that you were smart enough to realize these facts about your ex-fiancé. In the coming weeks and months you’re going to realize other red flags you have overlooked. It will get easier though.
You keep saying “I’m an introverted and private person” without explaining the relevance. The subtext I’m getting is that you don’t want to break up because then you’d be alone. This is the exact type of person an abuser seeks out, because they are easier to control.
Boyfriend aside: are you happy with your life? Are you doing things you enjoy? If boyfriend ghosted you tomorrow what would your life look like?
If the answer is yes you’re happy with your life, why isn’t your boyfriend happy and excited for you?
Is your boyfriend happier when you’re happier? When things go well, is he excited for you?
If not, really sit on what that means for you.
You wrote over 1500 words about what a terrible boyfriend he is. And they are all legitimate. He sounds like a terrible boyfriend. What is the hesitation?
Going forward, you need to have dealbreaker red flags and then act on them when they come up. Here’s some suggestions:
– Doesn’t want you travel without him
– Cheats and lies to you
– Makes you feel bad about yourself
– Belittles your passions
– Makes you feel like you’re “not empowering women”
– Makes fun of your lack of friends
– Doesn’t empower you to make other friendsThese are all dealbreakers on their own, and yet you’ve tolerated every single one.
It sounds like to me you’re socially isolated, which his actions have certainly affected, but it sounds like you struggle socially without him. This is where your focus should be once you get the nerve to ditch this dork. It’s important to have reliable friends outside of your significant other. I think you’re afraid that this guy has some sort of power social capital (“…I would never make it as a tattoo artist without him because I don’t know anyone & he would bring me all of my clients.”), but guys who talk like this have casual acquaintances at best and lame friends. If you’ll break up, I’m willing to be you’ll get a lot of “I liked you better anyways”.
A money focused construction worker who is a part time DJ ain’t all that.
One thing you might want to consider is if you’ve been falling in to the “I’ll be happy when…” pattern of thinking. A lot of people get stuck in a pattern of thinking that happiness is a thing to achieve.
“I’ll be happy when I graduate college”
“I’ll be happy when I get married”
“I’ll be happy when I buy a home”It’s great to have goals, but it’s important to realize that they are only a portion of being happy. If you want happiness, you will need to learn how to find joy in the way things are now, not how they will be 6 months/1 year/5 years from now.
Enter an obligatory “a therapist can help you with this” tagline here.
I think you can have a gender-neutral conversation with your mother that you’re not comfortable knowing about the details of her dating life. I think that’s a reasonable request
You do have to accept that your mother is actively dating, and you need to unpack why the gender of the person she is dating seems to matter so much to you.
I think your mom would benefit from enlisting the help of a family therapist to help her kids adjust to the new status quo. But you do need to accept that you do not have a way to “stop or discourage her” from dating women, seriously or otherwise.
Are you an adult or a minor living at home still?
Yeah, you’re absolutely not over reacting at all.
Your fiancee had shown you who he is. He’s more concerned about what his garbage dad thinks than you are.
I don’t know that this is fixable without years of therapy.
Be grateful this happened before the wedding.
The bar for male friends is really deep in the basement, isn’t it? I was at “yes, absolutely end this friendship permanently” about 3 sentences in, but it just kept getting worse.
I think @Anonymousse really said everything well. I have a lot of doubts about your therapist’s skills given what you presented here. They don’t seem to be appropriately alarmed about this friend’s behavior, assuming you were truthful with them.
Good point about the anxiety @Copa
A lot of times anxiety gets redirected to something that’s easier to worry about than what the actual source of stress is. That is what my first thought with this letter is. It’s easier to worry about your boyfriend’s grades than it is to reflect on if you are actually happy in this long-distance relationship.
