Thoughts on difficult family situation?

[StephenCampbell]

@StephenCampbell, I know you are using this thread as a way to process your feelings and get feedback. That's understandable and I hope it has been helpful. However, the truth of the matter is that the relational problems you have described require seriously hard work on the part of multiple people. Additionally, this is not a race, but a lifelong journey we are talking about.

Look, I'm gonna give it to you straight and I'm a credentialed professional counselor who specializes in marriage and family work in addition to leading a marriage ministry, speaking at marriage conferences, trainings, etc.... What you are experiencing is a family problem that spans across multiple generations. Everyone involved has work to do and should seek professional help or additional support to work through this. Individual therapy, family therapy, marriage therapy, faith based support, community support groups or programs, etc. etc. etc.

You need to continue to work on yourself through individual therapy and I would suggest you and your wife get some marital/family therapy to address the struggles that are occurring between the two of you. From what you have described both of you have unrealistic expectations, difficulty with boundaries, communication challenges, differing views of parenting/family, etc.

As for your mom and dad, well, you can't control them and can't dictate whether they seek professional help or not. However, when you and your wife get healthy and learn to function as a team then you will together be able to positively negotiate family relationships with parents, children, extended family, etc.

My wife is open to couple's counseling, though she always adds "I'm probably still going to hate your mom though, and still feel the way I feel."

You say it seems like we both have unrealistic expectations, but that makes me think, if I myself just stopped having unrealistic expectations, would her expectations still be problematic? What about her expectations do you find to be unrealistic? What about my expectations do you find to be unrealistic?

If my parents didn't exist, my wife and I would have no problems and no need to go to counseling. So when you talk about a family problem spanning multiple generations and very difficult to tackle, on the other hand it's as simple as keeping my parents out of our life. I want to be close to them like I have been throughout my childhood, but I still have one foot in childhood, I wasn't ready to grow up, that's something I need to work on myself. I feel a sense of loss and tragedy when I think of the years past and how my parents are getting older, and how I'm not a kid anymore living with them, etc. I don't have an adult man's orientation in life. I feel hollow about the fact that childhood is over and that I can't just keep having the relationship with my parents that I've always had. Are you familiar with Alice Miller and the book The Drama of the Gifted Child? I think what she discusses there may apply to me to some degree.

When I sit with my wife and child and feel anxious and sad because I feel like she's keeping my parents too far apart from us, it's not just in a normal kind of way, like "of course you care about your parents," etc. It's in a "I would feel more comfortable and more at home with my parents than I do with my wife." That's what I'm dealing with to some degree. I'm not ready to let go of childhood, I'm somehow clinging to a certain dynamic with my parents, and before I was married there was never any problem with doing that, but now with the marriage and the baby, there's obviously this immense pressure to finally make the transition into adulthood and feel the most at home with my own wife and baby. I'm not there yet. Wouldn't you think that before Anything else happens, I need to feel the most at home with my own nuclear family? And Then I could talk to my wife about my feelings or desires involving my family of origin?

Those moments where I feel happiness wash through me usually are preceded by the following train of thought:

1. I am my own adult man, I have my own life, my own family, I'm making my life work and everything is going great.
2. My mom emotionally abused me growing up and it makes sense that issues would have arisen from that, and it also makes sense that I would want to keep her at a distance for a while in order to help myself grow up properly.
3. Given how my mom is, it makes perfect sense that my wife feels the way she does, she is far from the only person who has had serious problems with my mom.
4. My mom is a selfish, narcissistic person who treated my dad horribly, and cloistered and psychologically controlled her children in a way that prevented them from developing their own healthy adult selves.
5. Given all of this, I should have no issue with her not playing much of a role in my daughter's life, and certainly I should have no expectation of my wife to be friends with her.
6. I can rejoice that I've built a solid independent life with an income, a house, a wife, a baby, and a beautiful town to live in. I am a free man in a free society with a beautiful family, and there's absolutely nothing to feel unhappy about in any way.

My brain usually sort of scrambles these thoughts together and plays them in different sequences that can sometimes successfully result in a sense of complete freedom and joy. Just absolute joy. I can't even describe it. It's actually beginning to wash through me right now as I write this. The thought of living in this town with my wife and baby, and being free of my parents, the joy is just indescribable. Being my own independent man with a family; not having to worry about making my mom happy; understanding that given her issues and given how she raised me, it makes sense that she would be kept at a distance. When I orient myself fully in the mindset of an independent adult man, it's like taking a breath of air after being submerged underwater for eternity. I look around at the world, the streets, the blue sky, the parks, it's like a playground that I get to live in for decades with my beautiful family. What the flying **** could I possibly be anxious about???

 

[5105973]

Hi Stephen, I have get everyone ready for a hiking trip. I'll try catching up with this thread when I get to my destination if I have a signal or wifi there. There are many posts and they are a little longer than I can read without my morning caffeine jolt and from what little I've seen using my speed reading skills it looks like we are twirling in circles again.

Anyway, didn't want you to think I am bailing on the convo. It's going to be hectic and there will be a lot of kids under the age of 12 to manage so even if I can get caught up on the reading I might not get to reply.

Aw, crap...somebody is losing it over their nail polish smearing. Who cares about nail polish on a hike? Tween girls, that's who.

Man, if you ever get it together and I hope you do, you're in for some crazy fun memorable times. Get it together soon and as best you can. These girls screaming and giggling and flinging clothes and texting about outfit choices and making a mess all over the place were once babies like yours...only a few days ago it seems. It all goes by faster than you can comprehend. Don't waste it all angsting about your mother for poops sake.

Oh and I caught where you're frustrated with me not spelling our exactly what my grandmother said to me. Dude that's a story itself, very private and specific to me... and what difference does it make? If you feel compelled to know those details, you are totally missing the point I was trying to make and apparently I wasted time I could have spent setting the house up for my house sitter, banging my head against a rock trying to get through to you.
[doublepost=1464264770][/doublepost]Okay it got quieter and I read through better, but still without caffeine. I don't think I need to answer your questions because it looks like in posts to other people you again lay out the unpleasant truth about your mom rather than that "why do you think my mom is so scary?" stuff you laid on me. You were trying to goad me into a different reaction to your situation, one that casts your wife in a bad light and dude, I'm not going there.

Yes, you are right there is no reason on God's green earth you should listen to me or do what I say. It's just opinions and advice based on my personal experiences and some may translate to your situation, some may not. All I can do from the peanut gallery is throw it out there and let you sort it out and watch make your own decisions. Last thing in the world I want to be is another adult in your life making you feel compelled to do something. I do sound bossy, sorry about that...it is my writing style sometimes. You should work with your own therapist to develop your own judgement and capacity to make sound decisions.

All I can say is, if you think your wife is not making sense or being unreasonable or territorial, it could help to just shrug off your resentment and cut her some slack. That's really natural how she's acting, believe it or not, though it does show a bit of a stress reaction, too. It's an early maternal bonding instinct--been there done that, along with most of the population on the Baby Center forum over a decade ago. We were all trading stories about freaking out about our moms or mothers-in-law coming in and annoying the ever loving crap out of us. Generational clashes always intensify over a new baby, especially the first one out of a given couple. It's like a rite of passage. A very unpleasant one, but it happens. For me it eased up around 18 months. It depends on the woman, the kid, the circumstances.

Go through your therapy. Let your wife do her bonding nesting thingy. Figure out your mother another time later in your therapy. That's my suggestion to do with as you wish.

You got really awesome advice from others in this thread. I do think the entire points I was trying to make were totally lost somehow.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

I had hoped to give this thread a wide berth (as far as offering thoughts and contributions), although I have been reading it.

Very well, then, against my better instincts, I feel obliged to return to make a few points. And, I do not have the bottomless resources of 'the milk of human kindness' that some posters have very kindly treated you to.

Firstly, @StephenCampbell: Both @GrumpyMom and @mscriv have given you excellent advice. You are not listening to them. At all.

Secondly, - and given that much of the core stuff in your family problems concern boundaries, - inappropriate boundaries, the ability (or inability) to set them and police them, the refusal to set them, the refusal to acknowledge them - the real resentment I see in your posts at you wife even daring to contemplate the setting and policing of boundaries - I think it highly significant that - twice now - twice now!- you have attempted to broach, and breach, in an unbelievably arrogant and entitled manner - boundaries set (quite legitimately) by @GrumpyMom.

How dare you? Where she chooses to set her boundaries is None Of Your Business, and how dare you question them, and seek to challenge them.

And, - of all who have responded to you, - twice now - you have sought to challenge @GrumpyMom's boundaries, which I find interesting. Not merely because she has expressed criticism of your mother more forcefully than have any of the rest of us, but because - I really have come to think that you have an issue - a massive issue - with the right of women (other than your mother) to set boundaries in their interactions with you.

This is very eloquently - and repeatedly - expressed when you write of your wife's attempts to set boundaries. You really resent it - and this is the only word you have used, repeatedly, and you resent the change in the balance of power of your relationship with her, as well.

Thirdly: I am arriving at the conclusion that you are similar to your mother in character; your life revolves around you, your thoughts, anxieties, resentments, feelings, - your narcissism, as it were, and you are - or, appear to be - congenitally incapable of seeing anyone in your life (your wife, your child) as having independent agency separate from you, or, the right to such independent agency.

Of course, in case you miss the similarity, this is exactly, and precisely, the position your mother seems to have taken with regard to you.

Fourthly: Every time the thread moves on, and appears to be dormant for a few weeks, you feel this mad urge and itch to return, writing about your resentment (of your wife) and your desire to return to your mother's world and have her in your life. In other words, when the thread is not 'alive', I think you miss it. You strike me as missing the endless narcissistic attention you get form the thread revival.

Fifthly: I have yet to read - not just in this thread - but in any of the threads where she is mentioned, a single, warm, loving, affectionate, positive adjective about your wife. Nothing on the lines of 'she is clever, great company, generous, warm, decent, witty, kind....' Nothing. Nada.

And, after all of this, - from your posts, @StephenCampbell - I have absolutely no idea whatsoever of what she is like as a person, what her character is (apart from the intelligent, insightful and informed conclusions drawn by @GrumpyMom, who knows what she talking about and is willing to share her insights, and experiences.)

Anyway, in your posts where you discuss your wife, I detect neither affection, respect, liking, affection, desire, love, warmth, - just sulky resentment and self-indulgent anxiety.

Sixthly: It may have escaped your notice, but you are the father of a young child, and the husband of a young wife who is also a mother. If you are capable of fathering a child, (adult body bits, and all that), you are capable of ceasing to be a child.

More to the point, your needy narcissism means that you are taking up more psychological oxygen in your wife's life than she needs just now. Her job is not - or ought not be - to reassure you; her job is to mind, rear, and protect that kid, - from the world (and her in-laws) if necessary, and she decides that it is. Undoubtedly, very strong protective instincts will have kicked in - and , frankly, your wife is the mother of the child, not Granny.

Your task, put simply, is to support her. And your child. And, supporting her, means accepting the boundaries she has put in place. Renegotiation is not for now.

So, it is time to accept that if you have a job, a wife, a child, a man's body with the sort of attributes that allow you to father a child, it is time to stop acting like a child.

Accessing one's inner child is all well and good, but allowing that inner child to rule one as an adult is not to be recommended, especially when it prevents one from playing a full role as a competent and functional adult in one's adult relationships. You wife has one child, she doesn't need another, and it is not her job to reassure you; rather, instead, your job, indeed, ought to be to reassure her and support her.

Seventh: On Boundaries. And your wife.

Your wife set these boundaries as a nuclear option: She had to threaten to leave you, for you to even acknowledge that she had a right to express an opinion that you didn't like, and that didn't meet with your needs.

You have been told, endlessly, that these are red line issues for your wife.

Now, she is nailing down - and reinforcing - those boundaries, because of your inbuilt tendencies to seek subtle, and sneaky ways of finding loopholes. And, because, for her, the right to set boundaries on access to her child goes to the core of her sense of who she is and what she is and how she defines herself.

I get the sense that this is possibly the first time she has won - or won the right to have a say in - any 'boundary issue' difference of opinion chateau vous - and therefore, she is going to ensure that she will not ave to give an inch (because your stubborn personality means that you rarely give an inch until faced with a personal armageddon).

Stop resenting your wife, and start showing her - and your child - your love - and, above all, - some respect.

 

[Khalanad75]

My wife is open to couple's counseling, though she always adds "I'm probably still going to hate your mom though, and still feel the way I feel."

You say it seems like we both have unrealistic expectations, but that makes me think, if I myself just stopped having unrealistic expectations, would her expectations still be problematic? What about her expectations do you find to be unrealistic? What about my expectations do you find to be unrealistic?

If my parents didn't exist, my wife and I would have no problems and no need to go to counseling. So when you talk about a family problem spanning multiple generations and very difficult to tackle, on the other hand it's as simple as keeping my parents out of our life. I want to be close to them like I have been throughout my childhood, but I still have one foot in childhood, I wasn't ready to grow up, that's something I need to work on myself. I feel a sense of loss and tragedy when I think of the years past and how my parents are getting older, and how I'm not a kid anymore living with them, etc. I don't have an adult man's orientation in life. I feel hollow about the fact that childhood is over and that I can't just keep having the relationship with my parents that I've always had. Are you familiar with Alice Miller and the book The Drama of the Gifted Child? I think what she discusses there may apply to me to some degree.

When I sit with my wife and child and feel anxious and sad because I feel like she's keeping my parents too far apart from us, it's not just in a normal kind of way, like "of course you care about your parents," etc. It's in a "I would feel more comfortable and more at home with my parents than I do with my wife." That's what I'm dealing with to some degree. I'm not ready to let go of childhood, I'm somehow clinging to a certain dynamic with my parents, and before I was married there was never any problem with doing that, but now with the marriage and the baby, there's obviously this immense pressure to finally make the transition into adulthood and feel the most at home with my own wife and baby. I'm not there yet. Wouldn't you think that before Anything else happens, I need to feel the most at home with my own nuclear family? And Then I could talk to my wife about my feelings or desires involving my family of origin?

Those moments where I feel happiness wash through me usually are preceded by the following train of thought:

1. I am my own adult man, I have my own life, my own family, I'm making my life work and everything is going great.
2. My mom emotionally abused me growing up and it makes sense that issues would have arisen from that, and it also makes sense that I would want to keep her at a distance for a while in order to help myself grow up properly.
3. Given how my mom is, it makes perfect sense that my wife feels the way she does, she is far from the only person who has had serious problems with my mom.
4. My mom is a selfish, narcissistic person who treated my dad horribly, and cloistered and psychologically controlled her children in a way that prevented them from developing their own healthy adult selves.
5. Given all of this, I should have no issue with her not playing much of a role in my daughter's life, and certainly I should have no expectation of my wife to be friends with her.
6. I can rejoice that I've built a solid independent life with an income, a house, a wife, a baby, and a beautiful town to live in. I am a free man in a free society with a beautiful family, and there's absolutely nothing to feel unhappy about in any way.

My brain usually sort of scrambles these thoughts together and plays them in different sequences that can sometimes successfully result in a sense of complete freedom and joy. Just absolute joy. I can't even describe it. It's actually beginning to wash through me right now as I write this. The thought of living in this town with my wife and baby, and being free of my parents, the joy is just indescribable. Being my own independent man with a family; not having to worry about making my mom happy; understanding that given her issues and given how she raised me, it makes sense that she would be kept at a distance. When I orient myself fully in the mindset of an independent adult man, it's like taking a breath of air after being submerged underwater for eternity. I look around at the world, the streets, the blue sky, the parks, it's like a playground that I get to live in for decades with my beautiful family. What the flying **** could I possibly be anxious about???

Two quick things:

1. You're anxiety stems from being forced to grow up, to be your own man and head of a household. You're not unique in this in that majority of new fathers go through a "oh crap, this just got real" phase. This is made all that much harder from your mother raising you to be such a mama's boy. It's time to cut the umbilical cord.

2. Re-read half of the stuff you type here. Your wife has every right not to trust that you are just going through the motions and not truly working on your relationship with her. Through all of this you keep looking to that future when mommy can be back in the picture. That is not focusing on the here and now and not allowing the future to come when it does. Until you truly put the effort into quit worrying about a future with your mother, your wife will not trust you again.

 

[StephenCampbell]

For almost a month now the mom-ban has been in place, and we have been moving forward together as a family. The discussion still does come up sometimes between my wife and I, but the majority of the time I am making her breakfast, playing with the baby in the morning so she can sleep more, buying her random gifts, taking her and the baby to the park, to the mall, out to eat, etc. At this point my wife says I need to be okay with the possibility that she'll never be able to see my mom again, but that she's not necessarily saying that will be the case, she just wants to know that I would be okay with that. I said I would be. Before I let my mom back into my life to any appreciable degree, I am going to ensure that I am an independent adult, and so she is going to bump up against that fact really hard if she tries to interact with me in a way that plays on the loyalty bond she fostered throughout my childhood. If this means not seeing her for a year or two, so be it.

My wife has been making a list of "complains about my parents" in order to help her process her anger and sadness about everything that's happened involving both of them. They have both been extremely disrespectful of her, and treating me like a child with a wife who isn't to be taken seriously. I will allow that no longer. I've drawn the lines very clearly for my dad, and he may end up choosing not to visit us very much anymore because if he can't treat me like a child and criticize my wife, he feels "disrespected." It's really sad, but if that's what he decides, so be it.

The same lines will be drawn with my mom when the time comes, when I am in communication with her again. If she cannot undergo some serious transformation and come to a place where she can genuinely apologize for disrespecting my wife and for the pain and discomfort she caused her, I would never expect my wife to be able to have any sort of even semi-close relationship with her.

The bottom line is that right now, the majority of the time we are just living together as a family and getting distance from all this. And I have reassured my wife that she never has to have any kind of relationship with my mom if she doesn't want. I will be putting the burden on my mom to improve and to learn to apologize and connect and respect, rather than putting the burden on my wife to just "put up with her," "that's how she is," etc. My mom is probably incapable of change, so her relationship with my wife will be very limited unless she can find it in herself to look in the mirror.

Right now as I write this I feel comfortable, I feel no anxiety. When I come to this forum and write about my anxieties, I am working on them within myself, I am not bringing them up with my wife or letting them get in the way of the rebuilding process that my family is undergoing right now. For example, yesterday my wife had no idea that I was feeling anxiety for the majority of the day. I was grappling with all this stuff and having a hard time, made worse by the fact that my wife accidentally sent to her sister a text she meant to send to me, which read something like "If my dad was a pedophile and had molested me as a child, I would never expect you to be comfortable having him around our daughter. Emotional abuse to the degree that your mom did to you is the same to me." She said "sorry, just sent you a weird text by accident," but her sister replied with something like "that makes sense." Her sister has met my mom on a few occasions and it was very evident to her that she is a very strange person.

I feel pretty anxious about that because I don't know if her sister is going to end up talking about it to the rest of her family (they aren't that close to each other, so very likely not), but I have a feeling that her dad would not advocate for a total ban of my mom, and that regardless of her issues, he would see no harm in seeing her once in a while. Last time we were at his house my wife said something about my mom needing counseling, and her dad said "well she probably can't really change at this point," in a kind of "you've got to just accept her the way she is" kind of way. And he has also met her on a few occasions and finds her very odd.

Anyways, yeah, so things are pretty stable. I'm very clear at this moment at least, that whenever I start having anxious thoughts about my mom, I can just tell myself the following: It would be very simple for her to say "I'm sorry, I'm sorry I was only thinking about myself, I'm sorry I didn't respect you, I'm sorry I caused you pain," etc. Such a simple thing to do! If she refuses to do that, that's her business! Given how easy it would be for a normal person to do that, I can no longer just give her a pass and say "Oh well, you don't want to apologize or take any responsibility? It's okay mom, I understand, I'll try to convince my wife to like you anyway." Bull ****. I'm so done with that.

 

[Benjamin Frost]

For almost a month now the mom-ban has been in place, and we have been moving forward together as a family. The discussion still does come up sometimes between my wife and I, but the majority of the time I am making her breakfast, playing with the baby in the morning so she can sleep more, buying her random gifts, taking her and the baby to the park, to the mall, out to eat, etc. At this point my wife says I need to be okay with the possibility that she'll never be able to see my mom again, but that she's not necessarily saying that will be the case, she just wants to know that I would be okay with that. I said I would be. Before I let my mom back into my life to any appreciable degree, I am going to ensure that I am an independent adult, and so she is going to bump up against that fact really hard if she tries to interact with me in a way that plays on the loyalty bond she fostered throughout my childhood. If this means not seeing her for a year or two, so be it.

My wife has been making a list of "complains about my parents" in order to help her process her anger and sadness about everything that's happened involving both of them. They have both been extremely disrespectful of her, and treating me like a child with a wife who isn't to be taken seriously. I will allow that no longer. I've drawn the lines very clearly for my dad, and he may end up choosing not to visit us very much anymore because if he can't treat me like a child and criticize my wife, he feels "disrespected." It's really sad, but if that's what he decides, so be it.

The same lines will be drawn with my mom when the time comes, when I am in communication with her again. If she cannot undergo some serious transformation and come to a place where she can genuinely apologize for disrespecting my wife and for the pain and discomfort she caused her, I would never expect my wife to be able to have any sort of even semi-close relationship with her.

The bottom line is that right now, the majority of the time we are just living together as a family and getting distance from all this. And I have reassured my wife that she never has to have any kind of relationship with my mom if she doesn't want. I will be putting the burden on my mom to improve and to learn to apologize and connect and respect, rather than putting the burden on my wife to just "put up with her," "that's how she is," etc. My mom is probably incapable of change, so her relationship with my wife will be very limited unless she can find it in herself to look in the mirror.

Right now as I write this I feel comfortable, I feel no anxiety. When I come to this forum and write about my anxieties, I am working on them within myself, I am not bringing them up with my wife or letting them get in the way of the rebuilding process that my family is undergoing right now. For example, yesterday my wife had no idea that I was feeling anxiety for the majority of the day. I was grappling with all this stuff and having a hard time, made worse by the fact that my wife accidentally sent to her sister a text she meant to send to me, which read something like "If my dad was a pedophile and had molested me as a child, I would never expect you to be comfortable having him around our daughter. Emotional abuse to the degree that your mom did to you is the same to me." She said "sorry, just sent you a weird text by accident," but her sister replied with something like "that makes sense." Her sister has met my mom on a few occasions and it was very evident to her that she is a very strange person.

I feel pretty anxious about that because I don't know if her sister is going to end up talking about it to the rest of her family (they aren't that close to each other, so very likely not), but I have a feeling that her dad would not advocate for a total ban of my mom, and that regardless of her issues, he would see no harm in seeing her once in a while. Last time we were at his house my wife said something about my mom needing counseling, and her dad said "well she probably can't really change at this point," in a kind of "you've got to just accept her the way she is" kind of way. And he has also met her on a few occasions and finds her very odd.

Anyways, yeah, so things are pretty stable. I'm very clear at this moment at least, that whenever I start having anxious thoughts about my mom, I can just tell myself the following: It would be very simple for her to say "I'm sorry, I'm sorry I was only thinking about myself, I'm sorry I didn't respect you, I'm sorry I caused you pain," etc. Such a simple thing to do! If she refuses to do that, that's her business! Given how easy it would be for a normal person to do that, I can no longer just give her a pass and say "Oh well, you don't want to apologize or take any responsibility? It's okay mom, I understand, I'll try to convince my wife to like you anyway." Bull ****. I'm so done with that.

This is really excellent news, Stephen. I'm so glad to hear that things are working out. You seem to be seizing control of the situation and finally emerging from under the wing of your mother and breaking free to become a husband.

All I would add is that no-one is perfect; not you, your wife, your parents, posters here or me. And such was the closeness to your mother, I think you will always feel a strong pull towards her and guilt for 'abandoning' her and clasping to your wife. But you seem to have gone through an epiphany and freed yourself of much of that anxiety. The thought of your mother never seeing your daughter will cause you pain, but I wouldn't worry about it too much. I think if your wife finds her proper place as a mother, she will relax about the prospect of the odd visit.

 

[StephenCampbell]

So a bit of a sticking point has come up between my wife and I. Everything has been going great, but occasionally this question comes up: Does my mom have enough self-awareness that the way she behaves can be accurately described as intentionally manipulative and/or malicious?

We just went to the park, and I told my wife about something my mom said a little while back, thinking that we would just have a "haha, your mom is insane" moment, but instead it turned into a bit of a tense discussion about whether my mom is just completely run by a narcissistic program, or whether she has awareness of what she is doing and consciously makes decisions to manipulate.

What my mom had said was something like "You know your wife is going to be like this for several years at least" referring to the way she takes care of our baby, which is perceived as overly controlling and neurotic by both my parents. "They're like babies for several years, your wife is going to be like this for a while." So there's an implication in there that I've already agreed with her that my wife's care of the baby is somehow problematic, which I had not. And furthermore, it seeks to make me feel resentful towards my wife, right? The response she would have been hoping for was something like "yeah I know, I'm in a tough spot, I don't know what to do, I didn't know she'd be like this when we had a kid."

As far as I can tell based on my experience growing up with her, she has little to no self-awareness, and her selfish, narcissistic programing runs the show. Hence, she has little to no control over what she says, and it is all run from this selfish, narcissistic program. She didn't sit there thinking "hmm, how can I make my son feel resentful towards his wife and make him want to come back 'home' to me?" My view is that she legitimately sees a problem with my wife's parenting, BECAUSE of her narcissism, no doubt, but that her narcissism basically distorts her perception of everything. She actually sees a problem, she actually feels there's a reason to be worried about me and that I might be stuck with a problematic woman. She legitimately feels these things. She's not thinking "My son found a great wife, but I'm going to try and tear them apart because I don't want to 'lose' my son." That's her psychological process, but it's beyond her control, it's not a conscious thought process.

My wife gets really worried that if I see my mom that way, that it makes her look not as bad as she would be if she were making conscious decisions and was aware of what she was doing. She says it's a way for me to continue to see my mom in a semi-positive light, because ultimately she's a victim of her own narcissism. She very badly wants me to be open to the possibility that my mom makes calculated, selfish, manipulative decisions and that she actually meditated on her words. But my mom just doesn't have that kind of self-awareness. She's a very unconscious, oblivious person. I just really don't think that she has a conscious thought process about any of this. I think she has a severe narcissism problem, and that makes her legitimately see me as a victim of my wife.

What do you think? How do we sort out this disagreement? I've told my wife that it makes very little difference whether she has conscious thoughts or not, because the words and actions are still what they are, and it doesn't make it any better that her selfish programming is involuntary. I still will respond to it as though she consciously chose to do what she does. But she's still concerned about it.
[doublepost=1464729760][/doublepost]That might have been a false alarm. We just had a follow-up conversation where she felt much better and more reassured at the end, because I said: My mom does not get a pass for anything, I'm always going to see her as potentially capable of learning how to respect you, so any disrespect towards you will not be tolerated at all. She can't have the relationship she wants with our daughter because SHE cannot do HER part of that relationship properly, that's how that works.

She's naturally very on edge about this stuff, so before when I talked about my mom being run by a narcissistic program, she became afraid that I was going to start giving her a pass on her behavior and saying things like "well she's an innocent victim of her disorder, so just ignore what she says and let her have a relationship with our daughter." When I clarified to her that that is not the case at all, she felt much better, and joked "I'm not going to make you write this down and sign it, but I'm going to remember that you said this, you better not backtrack in the future."

 

[shinji]

So a bit of a sticking point has come up between my wife and I. Everything has been going great, but occasionally this question comes up: Does my mom have enough self-awareness that the way she behaves can be accurately described as intentionally manipulative and/or malicious?

We just went to the park, and I told my wife about something my mom said a little while back, thinking that we would just have a "haha, your mom is insane" moment, but instead it turned into a bit of a tense discussion about whether my mom is just completely run by a narcissistic program, or whether she has awareness of what she is doing and consciously makes decisions to manipulate.

What my mom had said was something like "You know your wife is going to be like this for several years at least" referring to the way she takes care of our baby, which is perceived as overly controlling and neurotic by both my parents. "They're like babies for several years, your wife is going to be like this for a while." So there's an implication in there that I've already agreed with her that my wife's care of the baby is somehow problematic, which I had not. And furthermore, it seeks to make me feel resentful towards my wife, right? The response she would have been hoping for was something like "yeah I know, I'm in a tough spot, I don't know what to do, I didn't know she'd be like this when we had a kid."

As far as I can tell based on my experience growing up with her, she has little to no self-awareness, and her selfish, narcissistic programing runs the show. Hence, she has little to no control over what she says, and it is all run from this selfish, narcissistic program. She didn't sit there thinking "hmm, how can I make my son feel resentful towards his wife and make him want to come back 'home' to me?" My view is that she legitimately sees a problem with my wife's parenting, BECAUSE of her narcissism, no doubt, but that her narcissism basically distorts her perception of everything. She actually sees a problem, she actually feels there's a reason to be worried about me and that I might be stuck with a problematic woman. She legitimately feels these things. She's not thinking "My son found a great wife, but I'm going to try and tear them apart because I don't want to 'lose' my son." That's her psychological process, but it's beyond her control, it's not a conscious thought process.

My wife gets really worried that if I see my mom that way, that it makes her look not as bad as she would be if she were making conscious decisions and was aware of what she was doing. She says it's a way for me to continue to see my mom in a semi-positive light, because ultimately she's a victim of her own narcissism. She very badly wants me to be open to the possibility that my mom makes calculated, selfish, manipulative decisions and that she actually meditated on her words. But my mom just doesn't have that kind of self-awareness. She's a very unconscious, oblivious person. I just really don't think that she has a conscious thought process about any of this. I think she has a severe narcissism problem, and that makes her legitimately see me as a victim of my wife.

What do you think? How do we sort out this disagreement? I've told my wife that it makes very little difference whether she has conscious thoughts or not, because the words and actions are still what they are, and it doesn't make it any better that her selfish programming is involuntary. I still will respond to it as though she consciously chose to do what she does. But she's still concerned about it.
[doublepost=1464729760][/doublepost]That might have been a false alarm. We just had a follow-up conversation where she felt much better and more reassured at the end, because I said: My mom does not get a pass for anything, I'm always going to see her as potentially capable of learning how to respect you, so any disrespect towards you will not be tolerated at all. She can't have the relationship she wants with our daughter because SHE cannot do HER part of that relationship properly, that's how that works.

She's naturally very on edge about this stuff, so before when I talked about my mom being run by a narcissistic program, she became afraid that I was going to start giving her a pass on her behavior and saying things like "well she's an innocent victim of her disorder, so just ignore what she says and let her have a relationship with our daughter." When I clarified to her that that is not the case at all, she felt much better, and joked "I'm not going to make you write this down and sign it, but I'm going to remember that you said this, you better not backtrack in the future."

Your wife reacted that way because you have a history of coming up with rationales and excuses to keep your mom involved in your life. Whether your mom is 100% cold and calculating, 100% oblivious, or something in between (likely), it hardly matters because to raise the issue at all comes across as yet another attempt at providing mom with an alibi.

Sleeping in the same room as your son for the first 16 years of his life is well beyond garden variety narcissism. Who knows how much of your mom's emotionally abusive behavior is premeditated? That's something to work out with your therapist who is privy to all the facts, who doesn't have a dog in this race, and who is qualified to render an opinion.

 

[mscriv]

When I clarified to her that that is not the case at all, she felt much better, and joked "I'm not going to make you write this down and sign it, but I'm going to remember that you said this, you better not backtrack in the future."

Just to clarify for you, the bolded part above, um, she's not joking. She's using humor as a safe way to let you in on what she's thinking and what scares her. In other words, she's communicating a boundary and an expectation to you.

 

[Clix Pix]

Some years ago a popular feature in some magazine targeted to women -- forget which one it was -- was entitled "Can This Marriage Be Saved?" and the story would be about some couple and their marriage. Sometimes things worked out, sometimes they didn't. I am reminded of that with this ongoing saga here......

 

[StephenCampbell]

Just to clarify for you, the bolded part above, um, she's not joking. She's using humor as a safe way to let you in on what she's thinking and what scares her. In other words, she's communicating a boundary and an expectation to you.

Right, yeah I understood that. I guess I used the word "joke" because she was joking about making me sign a paper. I know she wasn't joking about how I shouldn't backtrack from what I was saying.

 

[Benjamin Frost]

Right, yeah I understood that. I guess I used the word "joke" because she was joking about making me sign a paper. I know she wasn't joking about how I shouldn't backtrack from what I was saying.

You seem to be doing very well with the women in your life. Your assessment of your mother appears to be well thought through. Don't feel you have to change her, or, indeed, your wife. Just accept that we all have faults for one reason or another, and love each other as best we can.

In your case, the erection of a flaming wall between wife and mother seems desirable!

 

[BeeGood]

So a bit of a sticking point has come up between my wife and I. Everything has been going great, but occasionally this question comes up: Does my mom have enough self-awareness that the way she behaves can be accurately described as intentionally manipulative and/or malicious?

We just went to the park, and I told my wife about something my mom said a little while back, thinking that we would just have a "haha, your mom is insane" moment, but instead it turned into a bit of a tense discussion about whether my mom is just completely run by a narcissistic program, or whether she has awareness of what she is doing and consciously makes decisions to manipulate.

What my mom had said was something like "You know your wife is going to be like this for several years at least" referring to the way she takes care of our baby, which is perceived as overly controlling and neurotic by both my parents. "They're like babies for several years, your wife is going to be like this for a while." So there's an implication in there that I've already agreed with her that my wife's care of the baby is somehow problematic, which I had not. And furthermore, it seeks to make me feel resentful towards my wife, right? The response she would have been hoping for was something like "yeah I know, I'm in a tough spot, I don't know what to do, I didn't know she'd be like this when we had a kid."

As far as I can tell based on my experience growing up with her, she has little to no self-awareness, and her selfish, narcissistic programing runs the show. Hence, she has little to no control over what she says, and it is all run from this selfish, narcissistic program. She didn't sit there thinking "hmm, how can I make my son feel resentful towards his wife and make him want to come back 'home' to me?" My view is that she legitimately sees a problem with my wife's parenting, BECAUSE of her narcissism, no doubt, but that her narcissism basically distorts her perception of everything. She actually sees a problem, she actually feels there's a reason to be worried about me and that I might be stuck with a problematic woman. She legitimately feels these things. She's not thinking "My son found a great wife, but I'm going to try and tear them apart because I don't want to 'lose' my son." That's her psychological process, but it's beyond her control, it's not a conscious thought process.

My wife gets really worried that if I see my mom that way, that it makes her look not as bad as she would be if she were making conscious decisions and was aware of what she was doing. She says it's a way for me to continue to see my mom in a semi-positive light, because ultimately she's a victim of her own narcissism. She very badly wants me to be open to the possibility that my mom makes calculated, selfish, manipulative decisions and that she actually meditated on her words. But my mom just doesn't have that kind of self-awareness. She's a very unconscious, oblivious person. I just really don't think that she has a conscious thought process about any of this. I think she has a severe narcissism problem, and that makes her legitimately see me as a victim of my wife.

What do you think? How do we sort out this disagreement? I've told my wife that it makes very little difference whether she has conscious thoughts or not, because the words and actions are still what they are, and it doesn't make it any better that her selfish programming is involuntary. I still will respond to it as though she consciously chose to do what she does. But she's still concerned about it.
[doublepost=1464729760][/doublepost]That might have been a false alarm. We just had a follow-up conversation where she felt much better and more reassured at the end, because I said: My mom does not get a pass for anything, I'm always going to see her as potentially capable of learning how to respect you, so any disrespect towards you will not be tolerated at all. She can't have the relationship she wants with our daughter because SHE cannot do HER part of that relationship properly, that's how that works.

She's naturally very on edge about this stuff, so before when I talked about my mom being run by a narcissistic program, she became afraid that I was going to start giving her a pass on her behavior and saying things like "well she's an innocent victim of her disorder, so just ignore what she says and let her have a relationship with our daughter." When I clarified to her that that is not the case at all, she felt much better, and joked "I'm not going to make you write this down and sign it, but I'm going to remember that you said this, you better not backtrack in the future."

You come off as an extremely thoughtful guy with a lot of depth, so I get why you're wondering what's going on in your mom's head. However, was this conversation with your wife really necessary? There seems to be no upside in sharing this line of thinking with her, in this moment.

I don't believe you should be concealing things from her of course, but given your history, it seems like an unproductive line of thinking that could only serve to undermine what you've been working so hard to fix. Maybe it would have been better to capture that thought and process/deal with it on your own?

 

[Huntn]

I'm glad things are working out for the OP.

Unfortunately, I'm witnessing something similar in my family in reverse, without making comparisons to the OP's situation. Without going into details, I'm witnessing how one insecure dysfunctional person introduced into a family structure can ruin relationships. We've been trying for 6 years to make it work, but it's a losing battle.

I wonder how common this is?

 

[StephenCampbell]

Well we are slowly rebuilding. Ugh. I'm just so sad and frustrated about everything that's happened. Why couldn't I have respected my wife all along the way? Why couldn't I have stood up to my mom after our baby was born? My wife says that if she could go back in time and not meet me, she would. She says at this point in time the pain to happiness ratio with me feels skewed such that she would rather have avoided the whole thing. But she says that doesn't mean she doesn't love me now. She says upon meeting me it was inevitable that she would want to be with me and that she would fall in love with me, but given all the pain and betrayal she experienced, from an all-knowing perspective she would have, at this point, rather not met me.

Then she reassured me that while just over a month ago she wanted to leave, she hated looking at my face, etc, she now enjoys spending time with me again, misses me when I go to work, enjoys kissing and hugging, etc. But she still feels broken, like she's a distorted version of the bright, happy person she used to be.

In all honesty though, she has never been able to hide it when she's feeling blah, and much of the time now she looks very alive, happy, and radiant.

Several people have commented about how I never say anything positive about my wife, only things like "resentment, irritation," etc. The reason for that is the same reason that all these problems arose in the first place. I have problems being emotionally intimate, and I have problems respecting others and communicating affection. If I didn't have those problems, I probably would have never ended up putting my mom's feelings ahead of my wife's. I mean, the whole thing probably stems from me having been programmed to only care about my mom.

But this is a very difficult time for me and I have been experiencing a lot of hollowness and anxiety the last several days, because in marrying my wife, I saw somebody wholesome, pure, nurturing, stable, loving, etc, who would give me the opportunity to have a stable life and a family (it is very very very very hard for me to find someone who clicks with me enough that I would feel comfortable having children with them, and my wife and I just clicked seamlessly in that regard. No one else I had ever met in my life even came close, it would have been a nightmare to even imagine trying to have children with any other woman I've ever known). And I believe I have an emotional deficiency of some kind which makes me unable to be a full grounding source myself in a relationship, so I sought out someone who I felt would "hold everything together" so I wouldn't have to. It's possible that because of having an emotionally abusive, narcissistic mother, I sought out the warm, nurturing mother that I never had.

In any case, now that she feels twisted and broken, and I HAVE to be a stable, grounding source in the relationship, and an other-centered source of nurturing and care, etc, it brings up a great deal of anxiety for me because I'm still emotionally wired to feel "If she can't take care of me, this is all wrong, I need to be with someone who can take care of me all the time." The way I was raised set me up for not really being able to have functional adult relationships. I'm very uncomfortable being in the position of needing to hold things together, and my gut instinct is to just let go and say "well, if you can't hold it together, I guess it won't hold together." She really needs me now. She needs me to be a solid husband and father. If I can provide the grounding and stability she needs now, then she can reassume her role as a pampering, nurturing, loving wife, but I need to create that space for her first. I need to find a way to heal the wounds.
[doublepost=1465487133][/doublepost]She says we need to have a symbolic "sacrificial burning" of my mom. And she also is very excited about the idea of me writing a short story about our situation in which she ends up killing my mom. I'm hoping that one or both of these things will be a source of great bonding for us and further the healing process.

 

[5105973]

So, how's it going with the new psychotherapist?

 

[StephenCampbell]

I don't know. I like him a lot in many ways, he seems incredibly present and keen, and I wish I could just stay in his office for 10 hours at a time and talk to him about everything. I tend to start talking and then just jump from one thing to another often leaving things up in the air, and then the time runs out. He asks some questions and makes some suggestions, but I don't leave him much room to do so. It's just not enough, 50 minutes at a time. I need at least a four hour long session.

I've been feeling really bad anxiety most of the time for the past several days. I don't understand it. I mean, I used to get bad anxiety after my mom would visit... the last time she visited I couldn't eat for three days afterwards. So now that the six-month ban is in place, and we're six weeks in, I feel like maybe now that the initial sense of joy and freedom is past, the reality of actually getting severed from my mom is settling in, and I'm getting the same anxiety I would get when she would visit and I'd feel like my wife is depriving her of the relationship she wants with her granddaughter.

One thing I do know is that if my parents were visiting us regularly and my wife got along great with both of them, I would have no anxiety.

I want to be part of a larger community. When my wife and I interact with other people I always feel much better about everything, like I have my own life, my own community, that my parents don't have to be part of. I know they say you need people in your life aside from your spouse, but I always scoffed at that and would say that with the "right person" you can lean on them for absolutely everything, and vice versa, and neither of you would need anything else. That's probably a naïve, over-romanticized view. Just the thought of my wife and I going to visit some of our friends makes me feel very relaxed and at home.

But that brings me to the main thing I'm grappling with now. Trying to feel at home here with my wife and daughter. My wife and I moved to our current house when she was five months pregnant, and I felt so good about everything. It was really a wonderful time. I felt like I had everything in the world that one could ever want. We moved from a noisy little apartment in the city to this beautiful little quiet rental house in a suburb, and I just felt like my life was complete. My wife and I would do all sorts of things together, utilizing the last few baby-free months of our lives. Though I was not without issues. We did not do as much stuff as we could have or should have, because I had this issue of "needing enough time to myself," "needing my time to sit on the computer in my office and just relax," or whatever. I think I have an internet addiction.

The anxiety I feel now comes from so many things. It's just all of it coming together. I have difficulty being emotionally intimate and present with my wife, and so for much of the time that we've known each other I haven't been SEEING her fully, because I'm so in my head, and have trouble with emotional intimacy. For example, I secretly filmed the moment that I proposed to her, and I just watched it again the other day. When I look back at photos and videos of her, I see her more clearly than I did in the moment, because there isn't the discomfort of the emotional closeness. So I saw this beautiful, wonderful, sweet, adorable, just absolutely precious girl in this video, and I wanted to run to her and say "Oh my gosh you're precious and sweet and beautiful and perfect! I love you so much! I'm so glad you want to spend the rest of your life with me!"

Instead, what you see in the video is me proposing, but without very much verbal expression on my part. I'm smiling, but I'm not saying anything like "You make me so happy," or "I can't imagine spending my life with anyone else," etc. I feel awkward saying such things, and in fact I have felt awkward being emotionally intimate even with my own parents since I was about eight years old, so this has a long history. But I had always thought that it was an issue that would be localized to my family of origin, and would not spill over into romantic relationships.

So anyways, she's just bouncing off the walls with excitement, almost hyperventilating, and I'm pretty mellow. Knowing that I want to do what I'm doing, but not in touch with my emotions enough to feel comfortable properly expressing them in the moment. Most of the time I am disconnected from my emotions. When I think about this I start to feel really anxious because I feel like I'm missing my own life. I'm in my head and while I take part in events, I don't get to experience them the way I should. And the result of my disconnect from my feelings as it pertains to my wife is that over time, I would squelch her, so to speak. She was always so smiley and happy and full of life, but I would almost act as a damper on that. It would be like 12:00 noon on a given day, and I'd have a job or something at 5:00 pm let's say, and she would want to go out somewhere in the afternoon, and I'd feel like "I can't, I have my job, I don't have time." Over time I learned to better manage my anxiety regarding time, and learned that there is a lot of time between 12:00 and 5:00, and that it's very easy to go out somewhere in the afternoon without feeling rushed.

But I feel that this whole aspect of things is now a core piece of the anxiety in the moment. Time is passing, and many of my memories with my wife are tainted by my emotional disconnection and tendency to live in my head. I gravitate towards my computer, towards my phone, I have to make an effort to always listen to everything she says and to look at her, and when I do I feel wonderful! I'll often start smiling when I'm really keenly watching her as she's talking, and then she'll say "why are you laughing at me!?" And I say "I'm not laughing at you, I'm smiling with joy because I love you."

One of my therapists says that my tendency to see everything like a movie and to be watching myself from the outside comes from a childhood strategy for surviving the environment at the time. My parents would often argue, often about parenting strategies, in front of the kids, and I would just sort of hang out in my head and feel like it wasn't really affecting me in any way and I couldn't care less.

The big problem right now is that I am not grown apart from my parents yet, and my parents currently do not approve very much of my wife. And my parents have a great influence over the way I feel. So I imagine a situation where my parents were visiting a lot and everyone was getting along, and I would feel no anxiety at all in that situation. Then I contrast the reality with that, and it makes me feel like something's wrong with my wife, because "she's keeping our baby from her grandmother," she's "making my parents unhappy," in other words, she's not just going along to get along with them and accepting their problems as part of her life. And of course on an emotional level I still don't really FEEL like my parents' problems are that severe, and so the whole thing just makes me very anxious.

Once in a while I'm still able to win for myself those moments of peace and joy, where I see myself as an independent adult with my wife, baby, and home, and I would seriously kill someone if that would allow me to keep that feeling forever. I smile uncontrollably, almost laugh, and shout "Yes! Yes! Yes! Please stay! Please let me keep feeling this way!" but within seconds, the anxiety clutches my chest again....

What would be some good ideas for things I could do to help process all this and move forward? See, it's doubly difficult because my wife is not in her default happy and alive state right now. She's still feeling upset about everything that's happened, and she's struggling to see me as a solid man as I work through this. If she were there 100% the way she was before I messed everything up, it would be easier for me to transition away from my parents I think. But now I have to do it kind of by myself, and then "win" my wife over. I'm in the midst of a swirling whirlpool of confusion and anxiety. I feel like I can't fully "leap" away from my parents unless I can safely land with my wife, but she's going through her own process right now too!

I don't know why this severe anxiety has come on the last several days. I'm really mad about it. For most of the last six weeks we have been doing really well and have been happy together. I have been happy. I have been happy about going into summer with my family, without my parents being a burden. But now I'm just starting to feel hollow, almost like something in me is going "well, if my parents don't actually get to come back into the picture pretty soon, then this whole thing doesn't actually work for me, I can't be happy without them." Something in me pushes against my current family and situation, because that's what stands in the way of me continuing the 'status quo' with my family of origin. I can imagine the anxiety vanishing instantly if I was single and having the relationship with my parents that I'm used to. But that's not a happy ending, is it? It takes the anxiety away but only because I would have picked up an old crutch which prevents me from ever building my own life as an independent adult.

Anyways, what should I do? Should I go do some things on my own without my wife, to get some perspective? Should my wife and I not talk about this stuff at all? I feel like I could just forget about all of this once and for all, and just live my goddamn life, but **** that anxiety is still there!!!!!!!!!

Right now my wife and baby are upstairs on the bed, the baby napping. (My wife usually watches netflix on her laptop while the baby naps, because she wants to stay right next to her in case she needs something). I cannot tell you how much I want to be able to just go up there and look at them and BE in the MOMENT and just be HAPPY that I have a beautiful, amazing, loving, unbelievably devoted, thoughtful, loyal wife, and a beautiful baby daughter. I want to slap myself really hard when that anxiety in my chest doesn't go away. Why would it be there? What purpose does it serve? It makes no sense. And on the other hand maybe it does. I mean I had one psychological orientation my whole life, and it held me as a certain way in relation to my parents, and the core comfort zone of my existence was always being reunited with my brothers and parents. So stepping into a life where I need to be the core myself, and where I am the center of my own family, I suppose it makes sense that that could carry anxiety with it. I'm just afraid that I'm not going to be able to do this!
[doublepost=1465579330][/doublepost]By the way, when I go upstairs and look at the two of them on the bed while our daughter naps, my wife will look over at me and smile her sweet, adorable smile, and I will feel pretty good. It's just I don't have enough of my own identity separate from my parents, to fully be comfortable in the shoes I've put myself in. On a subconscious level I thought I could get married without altering my relationship with my parents. Instead I ended up learning that they have serious problems and that we probably won't be able to have much of a relationship with them at all going forward. It's tough.

 

[Khalanad75]

So stepping into a life where I need to be the core myself, and where I am the center of my own family, I suppose it makes sense that that could carry anxiety with it. I'm just afraid that I'm not going to be able to do this!
[doublepost=1465579330][/doublepost]By the way, when I go upstairs and look at the two of them on the bed while our daughter naps, my wife will look over at me and smile her sweet, adorable smile, and I will feel pretty good. It's just I don't have enough of my own identity separate from my parents, to fully be comfortable in the shoes I've put myself in. On a subconscious level I thought I could get married without altering my relationship with my parents. Instead I ended up learning that they have serious problems and that we probably won't be able to have much of a relationship with them at all going forward. It's tough.

This all right here is the biggest step in realization I have seen from you in all of this thread. This shows that honestly, you do know where the anxiety is stemming from.

You have always had mommy there as a lifeline. If you needed direction, or control, you could lean on her to get it. You now no longer have that due to the circumstances. And with that realization, I would personally be a little pissed. Not at your wife, but with your parents of not doing their job correctly in the point of setting you up to be able to be a adult and take care of life as needed on your own.

I do believe this self realization will help you over time be able to overcome the anxiety.

Marriage isn't easy. Marriage with kids even more so.

It all can get easier.... but that generally comes with time. Time to mature as an adult yourself, and time for your relationship with your wife and kids to mature together.

I wrote earlier in this thread that we were all "watching a grown man throw away his marriage due to his mom." I don't think that so anymore and I now see this more as a thread of a man in redemption saving his marriage. Keep at it.

 

[5105973]

I think you try to bite off more than you can chew. I think you don't understand that this huge upheaval and anxiety plus your wife not being herself is pretty normal for most people after their first kid. Sometimes it is even like that after every kid as everyone tries to find their new equilibrium and readjust to having another person in the house and being a parent or sibling to yet another person.

If you didn't have the whole mess with your parents to deal with, it would be something else mucking up the works. It sounds like your wife could use counseling, too.

I didn't realize you all moved during the pregnancy. Holy poop. Even a positive move is a huge deal. We did that when I was pregnant and believe it or not that played a part in my post partum depression even though it was a good move. I read Brooke Shields' book about her battle with post partum depression and a move was a factor in her PPD, too.

I can't express emotion very well or consistently either. Sometimes I feel detached from my emotions or like I'm watching a movie of myself, too. I pondered that abut myself and wondered about it, but never worried about it. In fact at times I found it useful, like when I got my dominant hand mangled and almost lost the use of it. I was cool as a cucumber through the whole thing, which let the doctors do their jobs and me do my physical therapy efficiently to the point you can't tell the severe damage I escaped. I find that without emotional reactions cluttering up a situation I can take the time to apply logic and reason and figure out optimal solutions to problems.

I guess the point is, rather than feel anxiety about a key component of my personality, I accepted it and tried to make the best use of it. Now if it were something that were negatively impacting my life or relationships, I would try to change it...gradually. You can't ever force a fundamental personality change overnight. But I find more often than not it gets me places to be this way.

I'm not an affectionate huggy type of person. In fact I've had to train myself not to flinch when other people hug me because I was always in a lot of fist fights growing up (rough neighborhood) and usually someone coming at you was a bad thing. Also my dad was a war vet with PTSD reactions and I picked up on his reactions, which consisted of hypervigilant combat reactions. My dad couldn't easily take a hug at all for years. You really had to warn him first and approach slowly. I became the same way by being around him, I guess, and having my own combat situations in my charming public school system.

Again, I accepted that makes me unique and learned to adjust for it so I function better in the life I have now. For example, I learned to anticipate when someone is going to hug me from their body language and often go to hug them first. I'm not super comfortable with the act of hugging itself, but I'm always pleased when I can pull it off and pleased by the fact someone wants to hug me. The number one person who hugs me most now is my dad.

What I do, is I take stock of the traits I DO have that help in interpersonal relationships and take comfort in them and use them. For example, I have a sense of humor. It makes up for not always being able to feel or express whatever emotion a lot of other people would feel in a given situation. Sometimes I do feel an emotion but feel frozen out of expressing it. Well I can always put on a calm smile and find that suffices. Sometimes there's no escaping feeling unbearably awkward and out of place. And you know what, that's okay.

There is an infinite variety of people and reactions out there. Don't try to force yourself into reacting or feeling or emoting a certain way if it doesn't come naturally to you. If you do want to change how you react or feel, make attempts to change gradually. But don't try to force a change overnight.

I know you so badly and desperately want thing to change and change fast. I totally get that. I understand why you want that. I understand your anxiety and I think you do, too. What I think you don't understand is that your anxiety and difficulties, as well as your wife's, are par for the course for the situation you're in. Accept that you can't change any of this at the Lightning pace you wish for. Believe that it WILL change. But rest assured these things take time.

As for being part of a community, that's not a bad idea if you can manage it. But a lot of new parents have difficulty in managing it unless it's with other new parents who understand the demands of babies and small children. So give it a try if you're inclined but be realistic about your expectations.

As for your therapist, well let's just say 50 minutes is reasonable. You can't reasonably expect anyone to devote four hours of time to your problems and be able to maintain full attention all the way through.

One last bit of friendly advice: stop idealizing your wife. The wonderful adjectives are...wonderful. But she's a human being. She can not nor should she ever be expected to be anything to you or for you other than another human being sharing your life. She's not there to be perfect and wonderful so you can feel secure about being a hot mess. I think you know that. Accept that she's got flaws and baggage of her own to deal with that has nothing to do with you.

She was never perfect, just really a very nice person. Don't put people on pedestals because people who do that have a nasty habit of then finding reasons to knock people off the pedestals they built. My friend whom I ejected from my life stuck me in a role similar to one you tried to cast your wife in. I can't fix her or her problems nor compensate for them. Your wife, nor any other human being can do that for you, either. There is no person out there who can undo, fix, or compensate for the damage done by a flawed parent.

 

[mountain]

That's a tough situation. If I were in your wife's shoe I would try to compromise and understand. But if your mom is causing trouble then that's another story.

 

[StephenCampbell]

That's a tough situation. If I were in your wife's shoe I would try to compromise and understand. But if your mom is causing trouble then that's another story.

Oh she did a great deal of compromising and understanding, for a long time. And I responded by continuing to push for as much visitation time as possible for my mom, while treating my wife's feelings like an inconvenience or even a stubborn, malicious construction. And so here we are.

My wife came up with an analogy today. She said that it's like we were all in a swimming pool, and I was hanging onto my parents while telling her "I love you, I want to be with you," and so after a while she was like "wait a minute, why are you hanging onto your parents?" and when she got to the point where she said "I can't be with you if you can't let go of your parents" I then panicked and finally started pushing against my parents and said "okay okay, I'll let go of them and be fully with you."

The key of the analogy though, is that she says I have to learn to swim on my own. She doesn't want me to replace my parents with her. She doesn't want me to go from hanging onto my parents to hanging onto her. She says I need to become my own person grounded in myself (i.e. learn to swim) before I can have a healthy relationship with her. It's true that my feeling is that I can't let go of my parents unless she's there ready to catch me, that I want her to take my hand so that I can comfortably let go of theirs. When I start to feel solid in my own shoes, and happy, I then get anxious and panicky if I find that my wife still isn't 100% back to normal with me in our relationship (i.e. not wanting to get that physically close again yet, etc). I say to myself at that point "Wait a minute! I was happy being separate from my parents, but you're still not 100% with me, so now I'm all alone! Ahhhh!" And that's where she says the part of me learning to swim on my own comes in.

 

[A.Goldberg]

Steve, the past couple posts you've made are really excellent. You seem to becoming much more aware of your thoughts/emotions/emotions and the reality you live in.

I get the sense that you idealize things a lot. An ideal wife. An ideal mother. An ideal relationship of family members, etc. I think a couple others have noted this as well. Idealization creates an expectation. When expectations aren't meant, it easily results in anxiety.

We did not do as much stuff as we could have or should have, because I had this issue of "needing enough time to myself," "needing my time to sit on the computer in my office and just relax," or whatever. I think I have an internet addiction

ime is passing, and many of my memories with my wife are tainted by my emotional disconnection and tendency to live in my head. I gravitate towards my computer, towards my phone,

It's okay to have your own space. My gf an I have been together like 5 years, living together for about 2. We're well aware we need separate space, alone time, time with our friends, etc.

Internet addiction is an interesting phenomenon and a new and expanding area of psychological research. I do a lot of work with drug addicts- but there's also food addicts, gambling addicts, etc. The common denominator usually is that these activities (drugs, alcohol, food, video games, computers, etc) cause pleasurable effects and become a coping mechanism. They are a means of escaping reality (either through euphoria or distorting ones focus from the real world).

I obviously cannot declare you and internet addict, but the few I have come across often use digital media to escape the reality they are living within where they feel discontent. For example, I'm working with a heroin addict who is currently sober, not too content (early recovery is VERY uncomfortable) but plays video games for hours on end- seemingly distracting him from his uncomfortable existence.

Point being, you're dealing with a lot of stress right now. You may/not be a computer addict, but the bigger and more important question is what are you trying to escape?

Relate the above comment to your mention of stepping back from the arguments and trying to take a back seat. That's avoiding the problem- escaping. AVOIDANCE creates the cycle of ANXIETY. You're may not be addressing the stressful problems adequately, therefore they maneifest as anxiety- this often nonspecific feeling. The more anxious you become, the more stressful things you avoid, the more anxious you feel.

Escaping the issue by receding "into your head" what causes anxiety. Have you ever heard the expression "you need to get out of your head?" Try to live in the moment, rehashing thing through your brain does nothing.

Instead, what you see in the video is me proposing, but without very much verbal expression on my part. I'm smiling, but I'm not saying anything like "You make me so happy," or "I can't imagine spending my life with anyone else," etc. I feel awkward saying such things, and in fact I have felt awkward being emotionally intimate even with my own parents since I was about eight years old, so this has a long history. But I had always thought that it was an issue that would be localized to my family of origin, and would not spill over into romantic relationships.

How is your self esteem? Often times it's hard to express love for others when you don't love yourself first. For one, you've expressed feelings, to put it bluntly, for being a subpar husband- conceding that thought definitely a blow to the ego. I'm not sure you would have said that about your self on page 1 of this thread- so that's great progress! Now you've identified something to change and your taking steps. It's a hard processs, give yourself some credit!

My parents would often argue, often about parenting strategies, in front of the kids, and I would just sort of hang out in my head and feel like it wasn't really affecting me in any way and I couldn't care less.

Interesting how obsessive your mom seems about proper parenting! Refer to my point about anxiety and hiding in your head.

Then I contrast the reality with that, and it makes me feel like something's wrong with my wife, because "she's keeping our baby from her grandmother," she's "making my parents unhappy," in other words, she's not just going along to get along with them and accepting their problems as part of her life. And of course on an emotional level I still don't really FEEL like my parents' problems are that severe, and so the whole thing just makes me very anxious.

You obviously have a close (but likely unhealthy codependent) relationship with your mom. Mom relationships are weird- she brought you into this world, raised you, you will always have a special relationship. It sounds to me like you have some resentment towards your wife as you feel she is impeding on your sacred mother-son bond. Resentments are okay to feel- but they can't be ignored. Resentments grow into big ugly monsters, cause anxiety and other issues, etc. You must address them- understand where they stem from, why you feel them, if your resentment is valid or if you have some false belief, etc. The natural go to is blame the other person, but often after reflection usually stem from your own misconceptions, unreasonable expectations, your own wrong doing, etc.

Resentments not only apply to other people, if you're like me and most other people, you probably have a number of resentments towards yourself you could explore.

What would be some good ideas for things I could do to help process all this and move forward

Patience!

I don't know why this severe anxiety has come on the last several days. I'm really mad about it.

You're questioning the viability of your marraige. You're concerned about your self worth as a good husband. Your worried about losing the relationship with your mom. Tons of uncertainty, self doubt, etc. Questioning your future, happiness, etc. You have a lot of fear spinning though your head. Maybe outside issues to- a negative comment from your boss, financial constraints, etc.

It's not surprising to me your anxious!!! I would be too in your shoes. I think as you continue to explore YOURSELF, your present situation, and actively work towards resolidifying your marraige and place, you will feel better.

This is a HUGE undertaking. It's not going to happen overnight. Your psychology has developed over years upon years of experience and learning. You can't easily change these things overnight. That's why self exploration and therapy are for!

Perhaps it would be beneficial to talk to your PCP (or reccomended psychiatrist) to prescribe medication to deal with your anxiety (and possible depression)-- if you have not already. Such Meds are not a cure or even a bandaid. They're a tool to help facilitate change WITH THERAPY. As a general rule SSRIs (Lexapro, Celexa, Prozac, Zolooft etc - some better than others) are great for anxiety if you wait for them to kick in. Some of the blood pressure drugs are fantastic too (propranolol, clonidine, etc). There's few good reason to take Benzodiazapines (Valium, Xanax, Klonopin, Ativan)- esp for extended periods!!! But that's a whole separate topic... Lots of options out there and many with little-no side effect profiles if managed appropriately.

Anyways, what should I do? Should I go do some things on my own without my wife, to get some perspective? Should my wife and I not talk about this stuff at all? I feel like I could just forget about all of this once and for all, and just live my goddamn life, but **** that anxiety is still there!!!!!!!!!

I think it's best to keep your negative talk of your mom to a minimum- or discussions that will evoke a negative response. Use your friends and therapists to talk about things. Ex. Telling your wife you miss your mom probably won't make your wife feel good. Honestly is important, you should be, but there's a lot of tension around the mom issue so avoiding the discussion [with your wife!] might be a good idea. On the other hand, it's important you discuss the issues as they arise with someone else.

I want to slap myself really hard when that anxiety in my chest doesn't go away. Why would it be there? What purpose does it serve? It makes no sense. And on the other hand maybe it does.

It's a survival adaptation. It works great until it malfunctions and is used inappropriately. Look back on my discussion about avoidance and anxiety- Google it. Ask your therapist about it. Stress can be a good thing- a motivator, something to overcome. Stress advancing to distress is when you have a problem. When your anxious, stress builds and builds into distress. Everything in life becomes more difficult.

These are all things to address with your therapist. I think a psychaitrist (or trained mental health prescriber) might be another good resource to look into if you haven't already. There's no shame in medication if you need it. It may make this journey much more tolerable and improve the success. I encourage my patients to use all the tools available to help improve their conditions- therapy, meds, diet, exercise, artistic expression, etc. Why limit yourself/put all your eggs in one basket?

In this case, not addressing your anxiety will likely only fuel issues in your relationship!

I've written way too much here. I'm impressed with you though Steve. It sounds like you're really working for this. I hope your wife recognizes this- the reality is though it takes time for recognition of change, especially those close to us. It sucks to try as hard as you can but not feel like your recognized. The reality is you've likely over the years have caused many reasons for doubt and mistrust with your spouse. Things take time, hang in there!

 

[5105973]

Steve, the past couple posts you've made are really excellent. You seem to becoming much more aware of your thoughts/emotions/emotions and the reality you live in.

I get the sense that you idealize things a lot. An ideal wife. An ideal mother. An ideal relationship of family members, etc. I think a couple others have noted this as well. Idealization creates an expectation. When expectations aren't meant, it easily results in anxiety.




It's okay to have your own space. My gf an I have been together like 5 years, living together for about 2. We're well aware we need separate space, alone time, time with our friends, etc.

Internet addiction is an interesting phenomenon and a new and expanding area of psychological research. I do a lot of work with drug addicts- but there's also food addicts, gambling addicts, etc. The common denominator usually is that these activities (drugs, alcohol, food, video games, computers, etc) cause pleasurable effects and become a coping mechanism. They are a means of escaping reality (either through euphoria or distorting ones focus from the real world).

I obviously cannot declare you and internet addict, but the few I have come across often use digital media to escape the reality they are living within where they feel discontent. For example, I'm working with a heroin addict who is currently sober, not too content (early recovery is VERY uncomfortable) but plays video games for hours on end- seemingly distracting him from his uncomfortable existence.

Point being, you're dealing with a lot of stress right now. You may/not be a computer addict, but the bigger and more important question is what are you trying to escape?

Relate the above comment to your mention of stepping back from the arguments and trying to take a back seat. That's avoiding the problem- escaping. AVOIDANCE creates the cycle of ANXIETY. You're may not be addressing the stressful problems adequately, therefore they maneifest as anxiety- this often nonspecific feeling. The more anxious you become, the more stressful things you avoid, the more anxious you feel.

Escaping the issue by receding "into your head" what causes anxiety. Have you ever heard the expression "you need to get out of your head?" Try to live in the moment, rehashing thing through your brain does nothing.



How is your self esteem? Often times it's hard to express love for others when you don't love yourself first. For one, you've expressed feelings, to put it bluntly, for being a subpar husband- conceding that thought definitely a blow to the ego. I'm not sure you would have said that about your self on page 1 of this thread- so that's great progress! Now you've identified something to change and your taking steps. It's a hard processs, give yourself some credit!


Interesting how obsessive your mom seems about proper parenting! Refer to my point about anxiety and hiding in your head.



You obviously have a close (but likely unhealthy codependent) relationship with your mom. Mom relationships are weird- she brought you into this world, raised you, you will always have a special relationship. It sounds to me like you have some resentment towards your wife as you feel she is impeding on your sacred mother-son bond. Resentments are okay to feel- but they can't be ignored. Resentments grow into big ugly monsters, cause anxiety and other issues, etc. You must address them- understand where they stem from, why you feel them, if your resentment is valid or if you have some false belief, etc. The natural go to is blame the other person, but often after reflection usually stem from your own misconceptions, unreasonable expectations, your own wrong doing, etc.

Resentments not only apply to other people, if you're like me and most other people, you probably have a number of resentments towards yourself you could explore.


Patience!



You're questioning the viability of your marraige. You're concerned about your self worth as a good husband. Your worried about losing the relationship with your mom. Tons of uncertainty, self doubt, etc. Questioning your future, happiness, etc. You have a lot of fear spinning though your head. Maybe outside issues to- a negative comment from your boss, financial constraints, etc.

It's not surprising to me your anxious!!! I would be too in your shoes. I think as you continue to explore YOURSELF, your present situation, and actively work towards resolidifying your marraige and place, you will feel better.

This is a HUGE undertaking. It's not going to happen overnight. Your psychology has developed over years upon years of experience and learning. You can't easily change these things overnight. That's why self exploration and therapy are for!

Perhaps it would be beneficial to talk to your PCP (or reccomended psychiatrist) to prescribe medication to deal with your anxiety (and possible depression)-- if you have not already. Such Meds are not a cure or even a bandaid. They're a tool to help facilitate change WITH THERAPY. As a general rule SSRIs (Lexapro, Celexa, Prozac, Zolooft etc - some better than others) are great for anxiety if you wait for them to kick in. Some of the blood pressure drugs are fantastic too (propranolol, clonidine, etc). There's few good reason to take Benzodiazapines (Valium, Xanax, Klonopin, Ativan)- esp for extended periods!!! But that's a whole separate topic... Lots of options out there and many with little-no side effect profiles if managed appropriately.



I think it's best to keep your negative talk of your mom to a minimum- or discussions that will evoke a negative response. Use your friends and therapists to talk about things. Ex. Telling your wife you miss your mom probably won't make your wife feel good. Honestly is important, you should be, but there's a lot of tension around the mom issue so avoiding the discussion [with your wife!] might be a good idea. On the other hand, it's important you discuss the issues as they arise with someone else.


It's a survival adaptation. It works great until it malfunctions and is used inappropriately. Look back on my discussion about avoidance and anxiety- Google it. Ask your therapist about it. Stress can be a good thing- a motivator, something to overcome. Stress advancing to distress is when you have a problem. When your anxious, stress builds and builds into distress. Everything in life becomes more difficult.

These are all things to address with your therapist. I think a psychaitrist (or trained mental health prescriber) might be another good resource to look into if you haven't already. There's no shame in medication if you need it. It may make this journey much more tolerable and improve the success. I encourage my patients to use all the tools available to help improve their conditions- therapy, meds, diet, exercise, artistic expression, etc. Why limit yourself/put all your eggs in one basket?

In this case, not addressing your anxiety will likely only fuel issues in your relationship!

I've written way too much here. I'm impressed with you though Steve. It sounds like you're really working for this. I hope your wife recognizes this- the reality is though it takes time for recognition of change, especially those close to us. It sucks to try as hard as you can but not feel like your recognized. The reality is you've likely over the years have caused many reasons for doubt and mistrust with your spouse. Things take time, hang in there!

Very well said and very enlightening. I didn't ever really make the avoidance-anxiety-Internet addiction connection myself. Well then, I'd better hang out here less and attend to the laundry and vacuuming more. Blechh. But it's true, when I have the energy to keep on top of my chores, I do feel lighter and less inclined to check FB and forum posts. Lol.

It's also a very astute observation that it's hard to love others when you don't love yourself. Even decades later when I've learned to quite like and respect myself, it's sometimes very difficult in certain circumstances to express my emotions or even feel any at all after early attacks that wore down my self esteem at crucial points in my development.

As I've stated, I've learned to make lemonade out of that particular batch of lemons. But I did not have the access to and benefit of therapy to help me change this trait altogether. And truth be told, I've come to prefer myself as I am. If I didn't, I do now have the ability to afford and get therapy to change. But being the way I am is simply too advantageous in a crisis to risk changing. It's also very advantageous in political discussions, as I'm finding in these current troubled times. My friends and family get so worked up over politics and I find I can calmly discuss and find merits to any side of a discussion, because I'm incapable of getting emotionally invested and just stick to objective facts and figures.

I'm sure that's a result of being like Stephen and often finding myself on the periphery of a parental maelstrom. I had two strong willed opinionated people always having arguments practically on a daily basis. My mom was especially vocal. But dad could certainly hold his own. They're still at it. It's quite comical to me now, but growing up with it was certainly an experience! It's no wonder I react to potentially emotionally evocative situations by being reserved and withdrawn. I would imagine there's that in common with Stephen, but he will have to tell us himself if that's the reason he does it.

 

[StephenCampbell]

Thank you for all the wonderful thoughts and advice.

This morning the bad anxiety was still here (Yay! NOT!), but I think it's becoming clarified for me a bit more. My wife suddenly joked about how she's going to tell our daughter that my mom is a monster, and told me about this video game she was playing where some little girl said that the definition of a monster is someone that you're afraid of. So she said my mom could be considered a monster since me and my brothers were afraid of her when we were little, and even other adults who meet her today often label her as "intense" or "scary."

I said "yeah I can see how she would be thought of that way."

Then she want on to talk again about how angry she is that my mom brought so much stress into our lives during the fragile early months with our baby. I apologized again. She said she doesn't need apologies, she's just angry.

As all this was happening it began to clear up for me that this anxiety of the past several days is probably the same anxiety I felt after my mom would visit and I would feel absolutely horrible, like a mom was ripped apart from her infant, and resentful towards my wife for interfering with their bond. At one point I did tell my wife that I get stressed and overwhelmed with the fact that we need to reconnect and bond as a couple, but we have this nine month old that basically takes up all our time. She didn't have much sympathy, saying that if we hadn't had a baby, I would still be attached to my mom without knowing it, and at whatever point we had a baby, we would have run into these issues. She's probably right. It's still stressful and overwhelming for me though, at this point. She does know and understand that as it pertains to my struggle to separate from my parents. But when I say anything about how it would be so much easier for us to reconnect without the baby, she just says that none of this would have happened without the baby, so it's a meaningless thought.

Anyways, so I guess in the last week I relapsed a bit in terms of how I feel regarding my mom in relation to my wife and daughter. When I imagined being fully comfortable again with facing the reality that my mom has big problems and that my wife's feelings make a lot of sense, and orienting myself towards being a husband and a father before anything else, and making peace with our relationship with my mom being very limited going forwards, the anxiety began to fade. But then it comes right back, it doesn't give me much of a break. I'm still right in the thick of struggling with the fact that my mom is not going to be in our life the way I wanted her to be. And there is some resentment towards my wife there still, but I can see that it's not fair to hold anything against her when I look rationally at everything that's happened and at the way I treated her. It's just tough. I thought I was past the point of getting any anxiety surrounding my mom not being able to be as close to my wife and to our daughter as she wanted, but I guess not. Something in me still responds to my mom first. It may be much more difficult to get rid of than I'd hoped. I'm worried. I play a scene in my head where my wife and I have gotten divorced, and I'm talking to my mom and we're saying stuff like "Yeah, that wasn't the right marriage. She seemed nice at first but she just turned out to be really cold. You'll find someone good now!"

Of course, the post-divorce conversation with anyone ELSE would go "You divorced your wife so you could be with your mom!? You idiot!"

But that pull is there. That pull to just go back to her and just pick up my childlike bond with her and breathe a sigh of relief and say "Okay, this feels right now. Now I'm happy."

And of course, the image in my mind of the "right" woman who would then come along, would be someone who was more like my mom, and who would get along great with my mom.

Don't worry, my head is on straight. A couple decades of being stitched together with my mom is a difficult thing to get free of though, I tell you....

 

[5105973]

Thank you for all the wonderful thoughts and advice.

This morning the bad anxiety was still here (Yay! NOT!), but I think it's becoming clarified for me a bit more. My wife suddenly joked about how she's going to tell our daughter that my mom is a monster, and told me about this video game she was playing where some little girl said that the definition of a monster is someone that you're afraid of. So she said my mom could be considered a monster since me and my brothers were afraid of her when we were little, and even other adults who meet her today often label her as "intense" or "scary."

I said "yeah I can see how she would be thought of that way."

Then she want on to talk again about how angry she is that my mom brought so much stress into our lives during the fragile early months with our baby. I apologized again. She said she doesn't need apologies, she's just angry.

As all this was happening it began to clear up for me that this anxiety of the past several days is probably the same anxiety I felt after my mom would visit and I would feel absolutely horrible, like a mom was ripped apart from her infant, and resentful towards my wife for interfering with their bond. At one point I did tell my wife that I get stressed and overwhelmed with the fact that we need to reconnect and bond as a couple, but we have this nine month old that basically takes up all our time. She didn't have much sympathy, saying that if we hadn't had a baby, I would still be attached to my mom without knowing it, and at whatever point we had a baby, we would have run into these issues. She's probably right. It's still stressful and overwhelming for me though, at this point. She does know and understand that as it pertains to my struggle to separate from my parents. But when I say anything about how it would be so much easier for us to reconnect without the baby, she just says that none of this would have happened without the baby, so it's a meaningless thought.

Anyways, so I guess in the last week I relapsed a bit in terms of how I feel regarding my mom in relation to my wife and daughter. When I imagined being fully comfortable again with facing the reality that my mom has big problems and that my wife's feelings make a lot of sense, and orienting myself towards being a husband and a father before anything else, and making peace with our relationship with my mom being very limited going forwards, the anxiety began to fade. But then it comes right back, it doesn't give me much of a break. I'm still right in the thick of struggling with the fact that my mom is not going to be in our life the way I wanted her to be. And there is some resentment towards my wife there still, but I can see that it's not fair to hold anything against her when I look rationally at everything that's happened and at the way I treated her. It's just tough. I thought I was past the point of getting any anxiety surrounding my mom not being able to be as close to my wife and to our daughter as she wanted, but I guess not. Something in me still responds to my mom first. It may be much more difficult to get rid of than I'd hoped. I'm worried. I play a scene in my head where my wife and I have gotten divorced, and I'm talking to my mom and we're saying stuff like "Yeah, that wasn't the right marriage. She seemed nice at first but she just turned out to be really cold. You'll find someone good now!"

Of course, the post-divorce conversation with anyone ELSE would go "You divorced your wife so you could be with your mom!? You idiot!"

But that pull is there. That pull to just go back to her and just pick up my childlike bond with her and breathe a sigh of relief and say "Okay, this feels right now. Now I'm happy."

And of course, the image in my mind of the "right" woman who would then come along, would be someone who was more like my mom, and who would get along great with my mom.

Don't worry, my head is on straight. A couple decades of being stitched together with my mom is a difficult thing to get free of though, I tell you....

Yeah man, it sucks. You're getting there, though. I think it might help if you and your wife would agree to also take a break from talking about your mother. Considering the woman is banned, she may as well be there given how much time, effort and energy you both expend on thinking about her, brooding about her, and talking about her.

Don't you all have any hobbies or follow any sports teams or something you can talk about instead? I'd go stark raving nuts if I talked about my mother-in-law as often as you and your wife talk about your mom. I take it you're in the USA--warm weather time. Time to get out of the house, strap the baby into a jogging stroller or any sturdy stroller and go walking! You can do picnics and outings with other new parents. Play board games together. Do a puzzle. But holy cinammom buns don't talk about mom.

You do have a really cool wife. She's smart and awesome so yeah, hell no you don't want to be giving up that to go back to hang with your mom. Jeez man...that would be more than a little bit...well you don't want to end up all Norman Bates in Psycho. Did you ever see that movie? I actually haven't but it's such a part of pop culture I know all about it, and I've seen enough clips. I read that the actor who played Norman, Anthony Perkins, oddly enough did have an unhealthy attachment in real life to his mom for a while and needed therapy so he could have a somewhat normal life. I might see it sometime when the kids aren't around. I don't recommend you watch it with the wife though. Heck no. Watch something funny. Or watch something with lots of car chases and explosions or spaceships. On low volume so you don't wake the kid.

Speaking of kid/s, gotta take mine swimming. Good luck and enjoy what's left of the weekend.