SIL drama is ruining my marriage
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Anonymous
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My SIL's personal issues is causing major stress in my marriage. She is a recovering drug addict. Her ex was able to get sole custody of their child and she has limited supervised visitation. She has a hatred of her ex like you would not believe and it has consumed her. She has a long history of trashing her ex to their daughter. She got in serious trouble with the court for this. Those are her main issues with the court her drug abuse and parental alienation.
Her visitation can be supervised by a professional monitor or by my husband and I. IL's cannot supervise because of past enabling behavior that was to SIL detriment. H and I have basically been sacrificing a good chuck of our weekends supervising her visitation for the last 1.5 years. I really love my niece and do enjoy spending time with her so in that aspect this is not a burden. It's dealing with SIL who is like an emotional vampire and can suck all the happiness out of the air. Things came to a head in late March when I was supervising a 4 hour Saturday visitation. SIL cannot be alone with niece but I keep my distance as much as I can while being in the same room. One of the things the monitor has to do is make sure SIL does not speak badly of niece dad even subtlety. I know I don't even know how this woman has supervised visitation. If SIL does anything to violate any of the guidelines in her visitation plan her visitation period for that time comes to an end immediately and has to be reported. My niece mentioned that her dad was trying to install a fence around the pool at his house and was having some trouble. SIL laughed and said she did not know how a man child like her ex with the mentality of a baboon could install a fence. She then said he was too cheap to hire a professional and he was still the same cheap ass as he always has been. SIL knows that she cannot talk like this about her ex in front of their daughter. She knows this. I ended the visitation immediately and reported what had transpired. That is what I am supposed to do. I am now being punished for that. Because SIL did not adhere to the guidelines her visitation was suspended pending a review by the court, nieces GAL, etc. My report set her back to 0 you could say but I think she was already there. Bad mouthing her ex has the same consequences of a dirty drug test. I know what she said might be considered typical banter by an ex but it's taken very seriously by the court because of her history. It also shows she is not making any progress with her anger she has toward her ex. My husband and IL's think I overreacted. This has caused us so much stress. My husband basically said I was tired of being around his sister on a weekly basis that I ran with what she said to sabotage her. SIL says I took what she said out of context and misunderstood. That is total bullshit. We have argued over this non stop since it happened. H took the same classes I did. He knows what she said was totally inappropriate and not good for our niece. It's like they think as long as she does not test positive for drugs (she is still taking methadone) or falsely accusing her ex of child abuse then everything is fine and she is making progress. H is usually really good about not falling for his sisters BS but he has seriously regressed. I am so sick of fighting. After a huge fight where we both said some very hurtful things I left the house and went and stayed with my parents. I have not been back home since last Sunday. Since I have been away from the fighting I feel like this huge weight has been lifted from me. Staying with my parents I have an extra 45 minute work commute but I don't care. The peace has been nice. H told me to grow up and to come back home. I'm like go back home to what. To a man who chooses to believe the worst and be influenced by his drug addict sister. I told him that held no appeal to me and I wanted to stay separated for the time being. Do you think I am right to stay away or should I go back home? |
Anonymous
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You need to go home and resolve things with your husband because you're an adult.
The most important thing is what is in the best interest of the child. |
Anonymous
| Go home. Don’t ruin your marriage over a drug addict. Don’t supervise any more of SIL’s visits. Spend your weekends with your husband and get some distance from your toxic SIL. |
Anonymous
| You and your DH need counseling too. |
Anonymous
| You guys needs counseling. You did the right thing--your SIL knows that she's not supposed to badmouth her kid's father in front of her kid. I would decline to supervise any more visits and leave it to a professional. But you guys need to be on the same page about this stuff. |
Anonymous
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You did the right thing while under pressure, OP, so I congratulate you. SIL's family and friends SHOULD NOT be supervising her visits. I would go back home on that condition. Is this possible for you to engineer? It's really hard to disagree on such an important point with a spouse, but having been in that situation, you can't let it destroy your marriage. You can agree to disagree and move on. But no more supervised visits. |
Anonymous
| I would suggest that you now have a professional monitor take over the visits. I know that then you wouldn't get to see your niece but it would take you off the hot seat here. Also if you haven't yet, you might do some reading up on the dynamics of addiction in families. And the reality is if people want to behave like a codependent you can't stop them from doing it - just like you can't make an addict stop using. But it might be helpful to understand this better nevertheless. Good luck, OP! Hope it gets better! |
Anonymous
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Stay away and divorce him. I take it you don't have children? Run for your life. This family is dysfunctional and trashy as all get out and the problems are draining the life out of you. He's enmeshed with his family and his sister's addiction issues.
Why wasn't he monitoring? I'm sure when he does monitor, he does a shitty job of following the minimum guidelines/preventing his sister from trashing his niece's dad. You're doing the right thing. Don't go back. |
Anonymous
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I'm so sorry OP. You did exactly what you were supposed to do, and you did the right thing for the child. Good for you.
In terms of your marriage, I do think that you're right to seriously question going back. It sounds to me like you have married into a whole lot of deeply problematic relationships, of which your husband is very much a part. That won't be solved easily and this situation with your SIL has just uncovered/or highlighted what were probably already existing issues. If you want to work on your marriage then I think you will both need professional help in doing that. Fighting nastily, telling each other to "grow up", etc... are highly destructive marital habits. A healthy marriage would be able to weather disagreements or family challenges better than what you're experiencing (and perhaps contributing to). |
Anonymous
This +1,000,000. Run far, far away. Your DH is upset with you for properly doing court ordered visitation? Girl. Nope. Get out of there. |
Anonymous
Added some above, but this is spot on. |
Anonymous
Agree, this whole family is a mess and your DH is right in the middle of all of it. |
Anonymous
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I can't believe that the courts trust the SIL's family to properly supervise visits. You have been a saint to do so for four years, for taking the responsibilities seriously and reporting when you were required to. This niece is fortunate to have you in her life.
Clearly your DH can't be trusted to do supervision anymore so it's time for that responsibility to be taken away from all of SIL's family (including you) - not because you aren't capable but it's unfair to ask you to do it without your DH's support. The two of you can survive this hiccup in your marriage. It's a high stress situation and things can be said and done in anger. If you can't have a civil conversation with your husband about this to move on, then you definitely need to get a therapist to help. |
Anonymous
| I don't think you should go home, and I think you should think very seriously about getting a divorce. For your husband to argue "nonstop" with you about this for a full month, when you were 1) doing his sister a favor in the first place by supervising visits, and 2) doing the absolute, unequivocal right thing for your niece's wellbeing by reporting the violation, is not in any way defensible. And then to tell you to "grow up," to me that means that he thinks part of being an adult in his family is being berated and castigated for not enabling his junkie sister, and just taking the abuse. That's not a family I'd intentionally add children to. And since you don't have kids I don't think it's a family you have any serious obligation to remain a part of. |
Anonymous
| So sorry to read this - what an awful stress to put all of you under. I would make seeking help a condition of going back, if you want to go back. Growing up sometimes means taking care of yourself and getting away from what sounds like a pretty bad situation, when you were very much doing the right thing - both legally and ethically - on behalf of a child. |