Painted in a Corner

I haven’t posted in a while, but that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been drama. For the most part it has been quiet drama. As usual, the in-laws are all smiles and sweetness, but the lies and manipulations never end. I simply cannot take any more of this and have refused to visit with them for over a month now. It’s simply pointless to sit there listening to them when I know every-other sentence is a lie and every new conversation has deeper meaning beyond simply making small talk—meaning they are fishing for information and they are trying to manipulate yet again.

My husband and my in-laws have painted me into a corner. I don’t want to divorce my husband, but he will not be my partner in life. He is cheating on me, not by having a sexual affair, but by making his sister and mother his life partners rather than me. I have lost almost all autonomy.

My in-laws make almost all of our decisions for us. My husband sees nothing wrong with letting them decide where we will live, how we will live, what our financial investments will be, what major purchases we will make. He denies that he’s letting them do this, but the evidence is right there to see.

We are supposed to be house-hunting soon. So, rather than talk to me about where we would like to live and what type of house we’d like, he goes to his family and discusses it with them. I can barely get him to talk to me about it. And when I do, my dreams get shot down every time with statements like, “My sister said such-and-such neighborhood isn’t any good,” “My mother wants us to have a bigger house, so we have to put our money into the size of the house rather than in the quality or in the acreage, etc.,” “My sister said she will tell us when the market is good enough to purchase a home. Right now she wants us to wait.” You get the picture, right? Why can’t he see this? Why does his family get to make these decisions?

My husband says that if I don’t like it, I can take it up with them. Yet, when I tell them that my husband and I will make the decisions about what we do they just laugh. And it’s no wonder. They KNOW my husband will cave in to their demands. They have him emotionally blackmailed. He’s so afraid they will think less of him—even make him a blacksheep—if he doesn’t abide by every one of their wishes.

There are now stores that my husband and I are not supposed to shop in because his family doesn’t like them. I finally convinced my husband we should shop there anyway because we don’t have a six-figure income and we need to spend more thoughtfully than the rest of his family. I think the only reason he agrees with me on this is because we have no choice financially speaking. But he’s always afraid his family will find out where we did our shopping. Who cares? Why do they even have to ask us where we got stuff? I mean, they quiz us about where we buy our toothpaste, garbage bags, walnuts . . . everything. Who cares? I don’t even know where my own family gets their stuff. I assume at the stores that are local to them, but I would never presume to make it my business to know.

My husband says that if all of this upsets me, I need to speak up to his sister and mother. I am willing to do this. I’ve wanted to do this for a very long time, but he’s had this rule throughout most of our marriage that nobody is allowed to say anything displeasing to his sister or mother. (I can speak freely to his brother for some reason, but I’m never allowed to speak freely to the females. I can only placate them. Then he wonders why I don’t enjoy spending any time with them, but that’s another issue.) He says his sister wants to talk to me about all of this because she wants us to become friends (said the spider to the fly), but I think that HE thinks I’m only going to placate her further. When I tell her what’s TRULY on my mind, my husband will want to divorce me for sure. I don’t want to divorce him. I only want him to grow up. But what can I do? He’s forcing me to have the very conversation that he DOESN’T WANT me to have with his sister. Is he looking for an excuse to divorce me? Is this his round-about way of trying to be grown up? (By getting me to speak up to his family rather than him?)

I also want to tell his sister that I know she lies and manipulates. She thinks she’s so sneaky, but most everybody can see right through her. My husband is not going to like me giving her this revelation.

I’ve been so stressed out over this whole matter, which is why I haven’t posted recently. It upsets me to even type this out.

I’ve tried everything for over a dozen years to make this a happy marriage and to keep our marriage together, but I am all out of ideas. I can no longer focus on the marriage. Through prayer and counseling I have reached the conclusion that the best I can do is to do the right thing at every step. If the marriage ends in divorce at least I will know I tried all that I could. I just wish my husband would/could do his part. I could be happy if he would be my partner in life, but I can’t force anybody to do that.

Here’s something that would be funny if I didn’t have to live in the middle of it—whenever my husband’s family comes over we have to go through the home hiding things. One time I had a box of snacks on the counter and my husband was madly searching for a hiding place because he didn’t want his family to know that we had snacks in the home. (Oh, we’re such immoral people!) Another time, we had fruit on hand, and he wanted to hide this too. I asked him why, since it wasn’t junk food. This time it was because it was his mother’s favorite food and he thought she would be upset at the fact that we got our own supply of this fruit but didn’t get any for her! I said, “You can offer some to her when she gets here.” And he said, “It’s too late. I should have already told her about it. Now she’ll wonder why I didn’t tell her we had it.”

Can you believe this? I wouldn’t if I weren’t living it. It’s so bizarre that I can’t even make sense of it. My brain feels like it’s permanently warped from trying to even make sense of it.

I can’t live like this much longer. I’m approaching my middle years and I’m sneaking around hiding things like an eight-year-old sneaking a cookie from the cookie jar. In my own home, no less!

I’m going to stop here, because I’m feeling so aggravated by all of this . . . Why can’t those people mind their own business? Better yet, why can’t my husband make them mind their own business?