Hey Guize ~
I posed this question in a PM & now am wondering how others relationships with their mother/s have influenced or been in relationship with life partners.
I.E. Hubby's mother has been very open about disliking me & even has gone so far as to attempt to sabotage our relationship.
She has read a personal letter that I sent to him, opened it read it then hid it... could never figure out why he hadnt gotten that ltr. His sister found it hidden away in the back of a closet when moving. His mother grabbed it from his sister telling her it "was filthy". Sis told us about it later.
Just a few hours before he asked me to marry him she took him out away from me & proceeded to point out to him all of my real & perceived flaws & WHY he shouldnt marry me. Even telling him that the Military didnt "allow" him to "get married".
Has said that our daughters are NOT his biologically & therefore are not her grandchildren.
Has said she WISHED he'd divorce me.
His father has called me a bitch (fairly so we were verbally fighting) but had even once stood up to deck me (hubby stepped between us).
My father has called him a "just a big dumb kid". But only to me & my mother he turns his tail & backs down when around hubby. NOW yrs later he idolizes his skills with hubbys work & his actual physical strength.
MY mother sends a msg that hubby can do no wrong again IDOLIZES him. Loudly proclaims to pretty much anyone how good hubby is as a Daddy. That he is very intelligent, and strong & giving. WITH those comments tho she very much adds that I am some awful person who has "a lot of problems". When hubby told her that I had moved out because he had done something very bad her response was "WE all know Sam is very hard to live with and has a lot of problems." He tried to tell her that it wasnt anything I had done HE had hurt me she shushed him and again said I was very hard to live with.
How have your partners mothers treated your partners & you. WHAT kind of a relationship did / do you have with your partners parents? Siblings?
WHO has been the social caretaker of those relationships? YOU? your Partner?
I.E. I have always been the one in the past who made sure there was communication, visits etc. with hubby's parents & sisters (his step sibs HE did). I also was the one who impacted the time & communication with MY family members. As in I was the one who talked on the phone or set up if we were having a family function Bdays & the like. And when were physically WITH family members they talked mostly to me. He remained quiet & very little to say unless it dealt directly with car repair or work type stuff.
I hope others will share an answer to my questions its been a topic of discussion with hubby & I and we wonder how others handle toxic or even NON toxic parents.
Peace, Sammy

>>>I.E. Hubby's mother has been very open about disliking me & even has gone so far as to attempt to sabotage our relationship.

This happened in my last relationship but to a lesser extent in my current relationship. I have known my fiance's family since the 1970's and my parents are friends with his parents so I suppose that all helps.

As I just said - a lot of "his mom hates me" stuff happened in my previous relationship - I was living with someone for a few years and my ex's mom would have all these "family" events and I clearly would not be invited - the "family" would extend only to her biological family (husband, daughter, my ex) and clearly NOT to me. In fact the night we broke up it happened at his parents house and his MOTHER, not him, took me home. She dropped me off and looked me square in the face and said "I think you better pack up your stuff and call your mother". NICE!!! NOT!!!!

I think all moms in some way have a bit of an issue with any woman with "their little boy" but I think for those who come from toxic backgrounds as no doubt a lot of SA survivors do, that it may be even worse. I dont think its a function of how the mom views YOU in particular but the world in general. And obviously a case of inappropriate boundaries...

>>>She has read a personal letter that I sent to him, opened it read it then hid it...

Again - lack of boundaries...

>>>Has said she WISHED he'd divorce me.
His father has called me a bitch (fairly so we were verbally fighting) but had even once stood up to deck me (hubby stepped between us).

Why do you want to even have any kind of relatoinship wiwth someone who does that??? Why do you want your hubby to have a relationship with someone like that?? Why bother??? Its no good for you to be around people like that - life is short and youv'e had more than your share of crap - dont even waste your BREATH with people who dont treat you with dignity and respect. Its not worth it. Who cares if they are your parents or his parents or anyone.. !


>>>How have your partners mothers treated your partners & you. WHAT kind of a relationship did / do you have with your partners parents? Siblings?

>>>WHO has been the social caretaker of those relationships? YOU? your Partner?

For the most part my partner comes from a mostly functional family. During the phase of his adolescence when he was abused (it was not by a family member by the way) there was a lot of unspoken tension and anger which was really encouraged to be suppressed, a lot of rules and regulations, a significant amount of emotoinal neglect, and a lot of "hush hush" about everything related to sex and relationships - which is what caused my fiance to go outside the family to get "advice" on all of that stuff from someone else - unfortunately the person he chose to seek that support from turned out to be a pedophile.

>>>I hope others will share an answer to my questions its been a topic of discussion with hubby & I and we wonder how others handle toxic or even NON toxic parents.

Basically now I'm the one with the more toxic set of parents but there are some things that my fiance's parents do that drive him insane. For the most part they really neglect themselves and their house, surroundings, etc, and in some ways his mother still operates her relationship with her sons on a basis of control and guilt. However, the good thing is that they live 3.5 hours drive from here

There are times when he has a hard time being with his family but fortunately he does not see them more than 3x per year at the most. There are MORE times when I have a hard time being with my own parents - mostly because they live closer (1 hour drive) and also my dad's emotional state has and continues to be really unstable. I am never sure when my dad is going to be "sane" or not.

As far as my fiance's parents and family - I leave the management of that relationship completely to him. Its NOT my responsibilty to ensure he has a relationship with them - that is his own business. And if he wants to call them or not, or have any relationship with them or not thats his own business. Fortunately even when I start to step into that area my fiance gets pretty blunt with me and tells me to back off. But if he didnt want to have an active relationship with them I dont think I'd do much to try and cultivate that, especially if they really hated me or I thought they were particularly toxic to him.

Really there is NO requirement that you have to spend ANY time with ANYONE who is toxic to you. Every time my fiance and I go to visit his or my parents, we work out a deal beforehand on how we will handle it - and most of the time we decide that if things get too hairy, we will just leave. NO questions, no muss, no fuss. To hell with family duty - if ANYONE including my parents treat me with less than dignified behaviour, I'm outta there.

Yep, I agree with PAS on this one. In all my past relationships I have tried to let my partners determine what type of relationship they want with their family. My ex bf's mother is a toxic person & I never really got along with her. She enjoyed bringing up his ex gf every time I saw her -- don't really know why she found that necessary. She'd tell me she missed the ex (they were friends) she showed me projects they'd worked on together, and she generally painted a picture of my ex, her son, as the bad guy, which fits with her view of men in general. (some of you may question whether she had justification for that opinion, all i can say is from what I witnessed the ex gf's behavior was outrageously selfish, but there are always two sides to every story. Nevertheless, generally one would hope that a mother would at least keep her loyalty to her child, even while acknowledging that he behaved badly)

She always talked about what a bad kid he was & has been in total denial about the abuse & its affects on him. She was very sympathetic about her daughters' realizations about abuse, but always discounted his...can't really understand that at all, I guess she is so steeped in the toxic 'women are victims and men are evil' that she can't even see the goodness in her own son.

He has recently decided that it is not in his best interest to maintain contact with either parent, which I think is a smart move on his part. When he was really down & out & depressed, he was at his mother's house one day & she made a comment about how she didn't understand how the kids could all complain so much about their childhood -- that all she remembered was them playing all the time & having a great time. (!!?!?) Four of her six children are actively seeking therapy to overcome the SA of their childhood. Talk about denial.

I always avoided engaging in any kind of discussion about any of the above points with her. I focused my energy into my relationship & if anything just supported my ex bf in acknowledging what I had seen when he questioned her comments or behavior's appropriateness. I never felt that she was the type of person that deserved my attention or efforts -- so maybe that is why she'd throw out the comments about the ex at me. Of course, then you get to the question of which came first -- my attitude or her comments & I can't honestly say. I did try in the beginning to have an open mind toward her & give her the benefit of the doubt.

Anyway, I don't think toxic people like that are even worth dealing with.

Overall, I find it sad because given my current situation with my ex, I lay a lot of blame at her feet for teaching him that women are selfish, self absorbed, vain, uncaring and shallow. He has sought out women in his relationships that continue that trend & that has only served to reinforce his negative attitude toward women. He has worked hard in therapy to overcome that fear of being close to women, but if you follow my other posts you can see that he hasn't gotten too far. In fact, that is probably the aspect of his recovery that has posed the most difficulty to him & he just can't seem to believe that it is possible for men & women to relate in a non-adversarial relationship. Meeting & getting to know his mother is all the explanation it takes to understand why. I expect that even if he had not suffered the sexual abuse as a child, his mother's influence would have had a similar negative effect on his adult relationships.

Of course, then you get into the responsiblity of each of us as an adult to forge our own pathways in life, but you were asking about mom here, so I'll leave that for another thread.

-BB.

Man.. with a family situation like that its no wonder your ex has such problems.. and its just so hard but I feel the same way about my ex-boyfriend - there were just TOO many things stacked against us to even have a chance at making the relationship work. Not saying that survivors of horrible childhoods can't have relationships or do not deserve them - but you do have to be with someone who's done a lot of healing and soul searching BEFORE they get to you (and someone who's committed to continue to work on the issues that still affect his life and affect the relationship). I think that survivors necessarily have to get into a phase in their life where they are self focussed in order to really get a handle on healing - and in that phase it is difficult if not impossible to really "be there" for another person. I can recall in my own recovery from abuse that I was tremendously self oriented for a lot of my 20's which really didnt do much for the relaitonshps I was trying to have. THen again I was with guys who were also very self focussed and dealing with their own issues.. man.. talk about a recipe for disaster.

I seriously doubt that I'd be able to make the current relationship I have with my partner work if he hadn't had all the crap and pain that he had with ex girlfriends, as well as his own personal pain that he'd already worked out in therapy before we met. (And the same goes for me -I know I had a part in the destruction of my previous relationships too).

Safe to say I dont think I would have wanted to be with him before now. Prior to us meeting he was an alcoholic and a drug abuser.. which pretty much precludes the possibility of having an intimate and workable relationship. In fact when we first met the issue of his abuse, his relationship track record, and his past alcoholism and past heavy drug use did raise a red flag - but my decision to go forward with a relationship was based on all the work (AA, therapy, etc.) that he'd done up to this point and his obvious commitment to ongoing self-improvement.

I guess I'm very glad for the friendship we had prior to our relationship - I was able to find out a lot about him and get into the relationship with my eyes open (well partially, there have been a lot of unanticipated challenges along the way but for the most part things are improving as time goes on).

PAS

Wow, how appropriate that this came up with the other stuff that is going on. Just found out yesterday that my ex's mother came to town for the holiday & was pushing him to come join her get-together for thanksgiving. He declined, but I realized that her arrival in town pretty much coincides with his freaky behavior...not that it excuses anything, but it sure explains some of it.

He had decided to cut ties with his parents, but hasn't had a confrontation with them to discuss it with them (knowing how self-centered they both are, it is probably not worth the effort & emotional expense that it would take from him), so she called him & tried to push him into coming for the dinner.

Once he told me about it, he started talking, acting, etc more normal again. Chalk one more outburst up to toxic-mama syndrome. Poor kid...(he's in his 40s, but when this comes up I see this small boy who just wants love & attention & approval from his mom )

So lets just say that today & am very thankful for my own family & for having been fortunate enough to grow up without even knowing there were women like this in the world!

-BB.

P.S. I used to think people who painted this kind of portrait of womanhood were sexist jerks...until I witnessed it for myself.

I hear ya - until my brother dated some REALLY sketchy women and treated him with such abuse and pain, and until I saw some of the mom's of my ex boyfriends, I couldnt get it either. Safe to say there are some really messed up folks out there, of BOTH genders.