SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Yes, you belong on SI. Without a doubt. You're in turmoil because you don't quite know what is true and what is not. That alone is evidence of your belongingness (that doesn't look like a word, but Maslow ensures me it is ) --- truly, the BIGGEST betrayal of all is the kind of manipulation you are experiencing. It is betrayal and infidelity of the highest order, IMO.

You're not ready, yet, to act, to pull away all the way.

But that's okay. You'd be shocked to know how long I stayed, even after I recognized the manipulation and abuse for what it was/is.

It's okay. You'll do things in your own time. And in the meantime, people will ask---as they asked me---"Why are you with this man, this family?"

It's not an accusation. It's a valid question. It's one you'll answer in your own time.

As for the shower, wedding, etc., I would stick to your guns about the shower, with one caveat: your eleven-year-old needs to be protected from this nonsense, and you have the power to do so. Keep her home. There will be plenty of other people there for the bride; she will get over it. Or not. Either way, your daughter needs protection.

I know how hard that is; I had to pull my kids from my inlaws' life---and also from my own father. It's terrible, and it's hard, and there's massive fallout.

And yet, my kids are safe. That's all that matters.

As for the wedding. Well, I'm not big on attending functions where I am not really welcome, nor am I big (any more) on keeping up "appearances." You know the bride is not concerned with appearance; she's concerned with pot-stirring.

If you MUST go to the wedding, attend the ceremony, then leave the reception after a short while. No drama, nothing other than niceties shared, perhaps with the strangers who are attending, so that there is no potential for hurt feelings.

(ETA: I just read your post stating your intentions regarding the wedding, and think you've made an excellent decision. Great job!)

As someone staring down the barrel of a daughter's wedding, I can't begin to fathom the allure, for some brides, of creating extra drama. Good lord, the event itself has plenty to occupy oneself!

Don't join the fray. Your instinct to pull back is not antisocial; it's a HEALTHY self-protective impulse.

Will others talk? Who cares? They're doing that, anyway. (That last sentence? That is what ultimately freed me. When I got to a place where I really didn't care who believed what part of the nonsense created by my husband or any of his agents, I was able to start thinking constructively and working toward making choices that were healthy FOR ME and, by extension, for my kids.)

Millions of hugs to you.

[This message edited by solus sto at 11:01 AM, June 27th (Thursday)]

Not to scare you or anything, but you do realize that you absolutely cannot attend the wedding, right? You have repeatedly stated that you aren't going....and yep, you're gonna be punished for it. BUT if you get bullied into attending (after your repeated 'not going' stance), your 'punishment' is going to be increased exponentially in the long run.

You are NOT wrong. Those people are all incredibly toxic and just downright mean. After re-reading the thread and seeing your update, I want to run to my closet and f'n hide.

You know that you cannot 'win' with these people. None of them. Nothing *good* that you do will ever be appreciated, they will always find 'something' to bitch about. So stop worrying about their opinions and do what is right for YOU. If they don't like your decisions.....so f'n what? They can all go and be all 'toxic' somewhere else and the beauty of it is that YOU don't have to listen to it. Adopt a *talk to the hand* attitude.

"Titanium" is a good song to listen to. It helps me when I'm dealing with ridiculous, toxic spewage.....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CQ2cEuaQZA

As for his "she's my only daughter".....that's just rock-solid proof that he's a manipulative bully. People that ONLY care about getting *their* way will spew some of the most awful shit without even blinking about the emotional damage they inflict on others. It's all about *winning*. I have a special needs son and Sultan has said on more than one occasion that no one will want me with a son *like that*. It's disgusting and still turns my stomach.

You're doing fine, reddress.

Gonna...

I feel like his main reason for demanding that I be there is so they can rain down even more punishment on me.

What else can it possibly be?

He lives for it. Punishing me.

He can't wrap his head around the fact that I am pulling away for my own protection.

I'm not allowed to protect myself.

He can't make up one little lie about it if he wants to save face? Like I'm sick or something.

Yet when he plays all his bullshit games and rewrites history he is continually lying to my face. He has no problem lying whatsoever. To me.

Sometimes I wonder if it's me.

How can I be surrounded by this many people that are so toxic and crazy? The odds don't support that sometimes. Is it even mathematically possible?

How did I wander into this perfect storm of crazy?

Maybe it is me.

But I don't continually lie to anyone's face and rewrite history.

It's so confusing. I'm really much happier in a 180 state. I let myself get sucked in.

Maybe the "She's my only daughter" thing is what did it.

Damn. I think she might have heard it. If she did, she'll probably never talk about it.

Makes me want to run out and get a paternity test and slap him silly with the results.

[This message edited by loveisareddress at 11:56 AM, June 27th (Thursday)]

And-Solus-thank you for your response.

It is constant turmoil-not knowing what's true.

All the manipulation and abuse is the ultimate betrayal in the end.

I know all about removing toxic family members from your life. I started doing it at 16 and it's some of the healthiest decision making I have ever done. It started with my abusive birth father and his family, my MIL and the last to go was my half sister. My mother died when I was young so that doesn't leave much family but it's so worth it.

I'm going to repeat what was said above. You can not go to that wedding or any of the surrounding events. If you do you are rewarding their manipulative behavior and re-enforcing it so it will only continue to get worse.

I will add that whether or not you allow your daughter to go, I think you must make it clear to her that the reason you are not going is that you are choosing to not have toxic people in your life. Toxicity is contagious and you want to stay healthy. Let her learn from you. Don't let her think you are too anti-social or fragile to go. Teach her about healthy boundaries.

Do you feel as if you are always in the spin cycle? Your family dynamic is currently sick and needs healing. Healing will require all parties to be part of the process. And because you know that will not happen, just like a skin cancer on your back, you cut it out. Not just a little part of it, all of it. These people are draining your life out of you to the point of changing who you are at your core.

I recognize this on a slightly different level. My FWH has huge FOO issues. His mother treated me like an OW in her relationship with my H. Due to his weak coping skills due to years of physical and emotional abuse, he let her. He always sided with the people who hurt him, not the one who loved him. It was a sick dynamic that threatened our marriage. Finally after nearly 20 years of sh*t we had a MC tell my H to divorce me or them. He chose to finally cut them out of our lives. It was not pretty and he paid a price with them, but he got to keep me and 2 awesome kids.

I tell you this because toxic people bring poison into your life and you have to neutralize them in some way. They thrive on drama, control, hate, and attention. Do not participate in the drama, do not let them control you, show indifference to the hate and quit giving them your attention. Like vampires they will stalk on to another victim because you quit giving them life.

Books that helped me are People of the Lie as well as The Wizard of Oz and Other Narcissists

Good luck and get out of the spin cycle. You will be dizzy as hell for a short time and then things will get clearer.

So sorry for your situation.

Here are a few of my thoughts.

You have every right to rid yourself of toxic people in your life. There are several ways to do this - completely remove them from your life altogether - or do what you tried to do: show up for the rehearsal dinner, be there with your family, but not go to the shower or make a stink.

If you have 'taken' this type of treatment for years, then your standing up for yourself now is what is causing them to escalate. They are enraged that they can't have the same influence or effect on you.

They are striking out at you because your clamness and reasonability shows them what assholes they are being.

I don't know whether or not I would have attended the wedding, but I do agree that since you have repeated calmly MANY TIMES - along with the understandable reason - that you are NOT going to the wedding, it would be a big mistake to go. This - I feel - would encourage their feeling of superiority and influence and manipulation of you.

They have lost their power over you.

You have made a good start. Now I hope that you can let it go for yourself mentally and emotionally. The toxicity is still there if it is tormenting you.

I surely will be thinking of you - and hoping it works out for you!

love, one day---hopefully sooner rather than later---you will stop caring what your husband and his toxic kin think of you, and start caring about becoming safe and healthy---for yourself, and for your daughter.

Right now, it still seems tremendously unfair that this is required of you. It chafes.

And it is unfair.

The universe doesn't give a crap about "fair."

So allow yourself to realize that, as unfair as it is, you MUST take responsibility for your own happiness and well-being.

You're not going to get any sense of justice from these toxic relationships.

Your husband may see the light, mend his ways, and become the husband you deserve. There is not, currently, any indication he will do so, but it's possible.

His family? Even if your husband gets his act together, you will still be simmering in a toxic soup--unless you make the conscious decision to distance yourself.

You ask:

How can I be surrounded by this many people that are so toxic and crazy? The odds don't support that sometimes. Is it even mathematically possible?

It's not as unusual as you think. I'd suggest looking at your family of origin. Don't get mad, and don't get defensive; just look. There is likely something in it that made submerging yourself into the current toxicity seem all right.

I know, I know---this sounds like blameshifting. Trust me, it's not. I come from a toxic family (that I would not have identified as such ten years ago), and married in to one that was even more so. At the time, I thought my husband was different. I now see that I was groomed for marriage to dysfunction----that healthy just was not part of my repertoire.

What part of your history made this all right for you?

Whatever it was, you have the power to change, love. It takes lots of hard work. It will likely require excising (or at least erecting VERY solid boundaries around) certain family members.

It may require that you make very difficult decisions you don't even want to contemplate. To require, for example, that your husband identify and address his own dysfunction if he wishes to remain married to you.

And that is where it gets tricky. Because you can't change ANYTHING about him or anyone else. You can't change how other people think. You can't change how other people feel. You can't change how other people behave.

And there's the rub. Most of your posts still demonstrate a desperate desire to do just that. And you just can't. You will never be able to. You will have to let go, accept that others will think what they choose to think. Only then can you begin to heal.

It's tremendously liberating to learn that what others think doesn't matter a bit. It's astounding, really. Learning and internalizing this provides really rapid relief from a whole lot of the ills you're currently describing.

Be the best YOU you can be. Not to mold others' impressions, but because it's the right thing to do. Be the best woman, the best mother, the best you can be.

And fuck the rest of them.

Your husband will get on board, or he won't. There's not a darn thing you can do about it. STOP TRYING.

Somehow I get the impression that they poke you with a stick, then act shocked when you react, like look at her, there she goes again. EFF them!!

They are a bunch of aholes that aren't treating you with respect. Do what's right for you and get off the crazytrain that his family is driving. If you want to be with ws, that's your choice but its not necessarily a package deal with his family. Prune the that limb from your tree, its rotted. You do belong here if its what you want. Geez how exhausting they must be.

Lady: Both of my kids know I'm not going due to the toxic people. The kids and H are stuck though. They are in the wedding.

Lovedyoumore: Yes-I really do feel like I'm in the spin cycle. Everything is always spun to be my fault.

Whatsright: I don't know if they are capable of really seeing what a-holes they are being. They just want to win. I can sense H lurking around the edges, trying to get back in. I feel like it really is escalating due to my trying to detach and start a different dynamic.

Solus: I know I can't change him or them. That's why I'm becoming more and more detached. Unfortunately, I let him suck me back in last night and I will no doubt pay for it.

I'm not trying beyond the point of being there for my kids and making sure I take caere of the house and work when I can.

Really, I stopped trying last summer when I realized, or rather finally faced and accepted that I am dealing with very sick people here. H is the sickest one in the bunch, but according to him it's all me and my issues and yes, I understand it's nothing but projection on his part.

I know he will never try and fix this FUBAR situation or his FUBAR mind.

I just read People of the Lie.

I am surrounded by these kind of people-who can't face their own evil.

I know I need to get out someday. Still looking for more work. Still feeling like if I stay, I will be able to minimize the damage to my daughter.

I can't have him gaining PC and turning her into some kind of surrogate spouse like he did his so called "only daughter".

I can't have my kids living with him and learning to be like that. I have to be there for them as much aas it's destroying me to be here.

I feel like I'm between a rack and a hard place.

H is getting more twisted and crazy by the day-in his thinking and dealings with me. He tries to blame "chemo-fog" but to some extent, he has always been this way.

Last night he also demanded to see the bank account online. I don't know what he thought he was going to find. It's like he thinks his money is being spent on extracurricular activities or something. All I buy pretty much is groceries though.

I've also noticed that when I might catch him in the wrong spot, he'll create some kind of disturbance as a diversion.

I never ask him about iffy things anymore, because he will not give me any kind of reasonable honest answer-he never has.

But his need to have the upper hand and win no matter what is all consuming for him so he does it anyway.

One of these days, he's liable to self combust.

This reminds me of him. I know it's really about politics, but I see him as the enemy within:

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.”

It doesn't really even hurt all that much any more. I am facing who he really is. I've just got to try and figure out how to deal with it or go. Or how to get to the point where I can.

I might be just as sick as he is from trying to deal with it. I do feel kind of beat down a lot.

I feel like if I can get enough work and have some means not to feel so stuck, maybe I won't feel that way so much.

Another vicious circle.

Ostrich80: Yes, I feel like they are poking the bear too.

It's just mindblowing.

Who has time to do shit like that with jobs and everything else life has to throw at us?

Who has time to do shit like that with jobs and everything else life has to throw at us?

Drama llamas.

What strategies do you have to minimize your engagement in arguments? For example, have you ever tried responding to provocations with: 'I hear you.'

How has that worked? If you haven't used it, do you think it would help?

If you don't have strategies for preventing some of the arguments, SIers may have ome suggestions that would work for you.

Gently, I don't think staying with this guy helps your daughter if he says the bride is his 'only daughter'?

I hope you find the resources to get away from this guy ASAP.

[This message edited by sisoon at 3:19 PM, June 27th (Thursday)]

I say "Okay..." a lot.

I'm trying out "I'm sorry you feel that way" and "Interesting-I'll make a note of that" on occasion.

I need to just do this until I sound like a broken record or walk away.

One time I just walked away, took a shower and when I got out, it was like it never even happened.

Detachment was kind of working. I guess last night he just caught me off guard.

There was a time, when facing all his outrageous lies, I would have been a crying, screaming crazy mess.

Now, I'm very calm. Sometimes indifferent.

I'm making progress.

I'm taking the first little baby steps on atrophied legs I guess.

That's a great analogy: steps on atrophied legs.

Your "legs" will get stronger. They really will.

Being steeped in toxicity really can be debilitating.

That you SEE it, though--that's empowering. Because now you can take those baby steps toward freedom.

Millions of hugs to you.

Thank you so much-ALL of you-for your responses.

I'd probably be in the rubber room by now if it wasn't for you guys.

I kind of knew in my heart that it wasn't just me, but I've been wandering in the land of confusion so long it's hard to sort it all out.

I just had a brief chat with my kids and they seem happier now.

I know that by staying here, sometimes I'm letting them down.

But I can't go right now.

(I didn't tell them about the staying part-just letting them down)

They know it's not me or them.

They know it's him.

I think maybe they know I'm coping as well as I can under the circumstances and lack of resources.

Normally, I don't believe in sharing too much with the kids.

But they are old enough now to see and hear what happens and how he does things.

They know it's not right. Hell, even they know what toxic people we are dealing with.

Maybe I shouldn't mention it, but I don't want to deny what they can see with their own eyes.

I love them enough to allow them to trust their own judgment.

I can see confusion in their eyes after one of these episodes. I'm not going to leave them wondering why. I don't want them to ever think it's their fault.

He's broken and we all just humor him the best we can.

It is what it is.

Thank you again everyone.

[This message edited by loveisareddress at 5:03 PM, June 27th (Thursday)]

Another vicious circle.

Sound more like the Karpman Drama Triangle.

1.Victim

2.Persecutor

3.Rescuer

Everything is always spun to be my fault

They are persecuting you, the victim?

I feel like his main reason for demanding that I be there is so they can rain down even more punishment on me. What else can it possibly be? He lives for it. Punishing me.

Persecutor

If I deviate from the role of scapegoat and refuse to play it, I am punished.

Victim

He cried and pleaded with me. Put on those crocodile tears about how distant I am and how lonely he feels.

Victim

At that point, she began to lay it on very thick. Started saying I don't care about her and her wedding. Dad doesn't care about her and her wedding. Crying. Shouting. Badgering. Manipulating. Twisting her father's words around so she can make him feel guilty.

First Victim, then Persecutor

I know I'm being manipulated, but I've never been able to fight back against it without everyone turning on me.

Victim

Once you recognize the pattern, it's amazingly easy to step out of the role(s). And the "crazy" stops.

Yes. I saw that diagram in a book recently.

I can see it when it happens.

I recognize it.

But, sometimes, I feel powerless to step out of the mess.

Being able to see it now makes it all look even more ludicrous than it is.

But, sometimes, I feel powerless to step out of the mess.

Try Googling the "resolution" phase.

The basic concept underpinning the Karpman Drama Triangle is the connection between responsibility and power, and their relationship to boundaries.

Thanks.

Trying now.