Family Matters
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Re: My disfunctional family...HELP!
Let me just say that, as usual, some of the people on this board are absolutely ridiculous.
1. You have every right to judge your sister; she's your family. You can't force her to be a productive member of society, but it's perfectly fine to show (and tell) the people you love that they suck at life and need to get off their ass and take care of their own kids. This is not a "boundary issue."
2. DH calling your mom lazy is NOT "emotional abuse," and whoever said it was should apologize to actual victims of very real emotional and psychological abuse. It's a fight. People say mean things during a fight. Sometimes those mean things are true. If your mother didn't feel like she was lazy and if your mother had a better handle on her own mental health issues, she never would have slapped DH for saying it in the first place. Both your DH and your mom are wrong, obviously (and you know this), but on no planet does this actually count as abuse. People throw that word around too lightly these days. If you want to know what abuse is, come over and I'll show you the scars. I imagine that since you said you were shocked about the hitting, this isn't a common occurrence - lucky you.
3. The bottom line, which you already know, is this: your family is messed up. Unless you want to be messed up, too, you need to get out of that house and live on your own. If you're working 30+ hours a week I can't imagine why you can't find a crappy hole-in-the-wall one-bedroom apartment somewhere.
Oh, family. You can't change them unless they want to change themselves, no matter how hard you try. But come on - it was just a fight. Fights happen. Don't make it easier for fights to happen by living in tight quarters with these people. Duh. But you do not need to send your DH to a therapist over this (if I were your husband and you forced me into therapy, I wouldn't be your husband much longer). Your mom and sister clearly need some professional help because apparently they're so bad off they can't even hold down a job or get out of bed, but if they aren't willing to get it, you can't make them. But yeah, you should make it clear to your mom that hitting is not okay and she probably shouldn't be welcome in your lives again until she apologizes.
The responsibilities of taking care of nephew were falling on DH and I. Finally, we said enough. We did not make the decision to have a child because we know we aren't ready, so why are we taking care of him? We stopped helping pretty much all together, so the troubles fell on my mom. She is the primary care giver of him. It's so insane.
I meant the boundary issues is that I have a hard time saying no to people in my family. I end up getting walked on. I'm working on that.
I agree with #2. Yes, he did say very mean things during the fight. My mother was telling me what he was saying was emotional abuse, he's going to always be like this, blah blah. I didn't know if I should believe her, or if she was trying to get me "on her side". She even went so far as saying "good luck living with someone like that for the rest of your life. That should be fun". Pissed me off! I guess now I see that he wasn't being abusive, thanks.
Perfect example of my mother: A few months ago I told my mom we might move up north in a couple of years, so DH can be near his family. Her exact words: "Are you going too?" SERIOUSLY! Of course I'm going, we are married. Then she started crying.
Well thanks for your help. Things have been better now that we haven't had to see each other, hopefully it stays this way!