Thank you for giving me my sanity back
Your responses re: my DH being unable to keep my private conversations to himself really helped me. I see that this is all too common and is founded on guilt and the fear that DH will lose the SD's love. I have decided that I am the only one who can provide my own happiness.
I made it clear to him that he can visit his adult kids anytime. But, they are not welcome in my home. I have bent over backwards all these years to make dinners, put on birthday parties, graduation parties,take them on lavish, all expense-paid vacations, take in the pregnant SD when she had no place to go, paid for rent for over a year, yada, yada, yada. I am done. I respect myself enough to end it. I know he is having a difficult time with my disengaging. But, as I explained, this is my life, I deserve respect and I refuse to put myself in a position of being disrespected again by his utterly mean, nasty, disrespectful 30 and 40 somethings.
They disrespect him, too. Never a father's day card, never a birthday card, never even a Christmas card or phone call. Yet, he goes all out.
Disengaging is so freeing. I no longer remind him about birthdays or scramble to buy birthday and Christmas gifts. No more of SD coming on vacation every year and me watching HER kid while she lays in bed....doing nothing. And, the other one who comes and ignores me, then sends thank you letters addressed to "Grandpa" from her and each grandchild, carefully omitting my name in all letters (depsite the fact that I am the one who invited all of them). No more being hurt, ignored, treated as if I'm a non-person.
Thank you for pointing out that I'm not crazy. THEY are the toxic ones.
Oh, they are going to be so
Oh, they are going to be so pissed that you are not chasing them around, begging them to have a relationship with you, so that they can snub you.
Enjoy your disengagement!
truer words...
Truer words were never spoken. My SD23 baits me into a text conversation so she can snub me. I disengaged years ago but now she had a baby so we wanted a fresh start... Literally yesterday she texted me a picture of the baby.. sweetest boy ever, I responded and she snubs.. Its such a game.
The longer you stick with
The longer you stick with disengagement, the more you start realizing how much more peaceful your life is becoming. I will never understand why some men do not see rude, crude behavior directed toward their wife as something to not be corrected--for any reason. Why would you love anybody who holds hostage your love --at such a fragile place? To me, that is not love; but it is just me obviously.
I stopped trying to understand it, glad you are doing the same. Enjoy the new peace and focus on you!
CONGRATULATIONS on your
CONGRATULATIONS on your DISENGAGEMENT!!! What a liberating feeling and now don't you feel a sense of control & peace of mind in your life? I'm sure you do!
Continue on this wonderful journey and ALWAYS take care of you darling!
Mean, nasty and disrespectful
Mean, nasty and disrespectful..... this used to be the SpermClan. For the first several years of your marriage my bride adopted the perspective that if she was nice and gave the SpermClan what they wanted they would be nice to SS when he was on SpermLand visitation.
Nope, that never happened. They neglected him all through his toddler years (to the detriment of his health) and manipulated the shit out of him as he got older until two things changed. 1. My bride quit being nice and started shredding them. I had been of that mind the whole time. But since she was the one who was "a party to the case" I had to stay more in the background than I usually would. 2. SS became old enough to stand up for himself and use the facts we kept him abreast of to bare their idiot asses when he was in SpermLand on visitaiton and they pulled their manipulative crap.
Interestingly they would not stop their maniplations though they became far less overt once my DW started beating and bare-ing their asses when they got nasty. As long as they were on the hook for CS, they kept attempting to ply their manipulations of SS. They even tried it after he aged out from under the CO even though he let them off of the hook for 4 more years of CS they owed for his college years. Once he turned 18 the CS would go directly to him rather than to my DW.
They whinned and cried and bitched and sobbed that it wasn't fair for them to have to keep paying and that money was taking food out of the mouthes of his three younger SpermIdiot spawned half sibs by two other baby mamas. I pushed him to keep their asses nailed to the wall (even after he enlisted in the USAF he could have collected CS if he was a full time student which he was was since all of his training was through the CCAF and he was a full time student.).
Dammit kid! You missed a great chance to pay them back in Spades for their manipulations and neglect.
Once he let them off of the hook for CS through college they continued to try to maniplate him into sending money to help support his three younger SpermIdiot spawned also OOWL half sibs. He never fell for that crap. Thats my boy!!!!!!
He let them off of the hook and has been nearly completely disengaged from them since. So much so that he asked me to adopt him when he was 22. We made that happen.
*dirol*
While I am usually not a fan of disengagement... in hind site.... it has been a great decision for my SKid to dump the shallow and polluted half of his gene pool.