Toxic future in-laws
Over the past two years at the start of our engagement, me and my fiancé have been trapped in a relentless cycle of emotional manipulation, constant tension, and exhausting guilt trips from his parents.
This prolonged ordeal recently peaked during a high-stress crisis involving their passports, where his parents dragged us into a state of absolute chaos, forcing us to absorb the pressure of the family's frantic disorganization.
Yet, in a staggering display of hypocrisy, the moment the passport crisis finally settled, the father chose to delay his own critical heart surgery for 2+ years multiple times. He ended up in the ICU last month and said he’d rather die than do surgery. He now when his sister said he couldn’t see her kids has agreed to it. The doctors offered to do it in 3 weeks but he once again pushed it to September proving that the family’s urgent timelines are entirely dictated by emotional control rather than medical necessity.
This behavior is just the latest chapter in a lifetime of dysfunction; my fiance had a remarkably bad childhood shaped by these same toxic patterns of manipulation through guilt and non encouragement.
Throughout our relationship, his parents have consistently made passive-aggressive, disparaging comments about me, while his mother has frequently toxic-shamed us by claiming they are a "B family" (second-class family). The final straw was a selfie of his dad in the ICU his mum sent him after a fight of complaining he doesn’t call enough and should have travelled to see his dad in the hospital.
Now, his parents are not attending our upcoming wedding due to the latest ICU stay. You can’t travel with only 20% of an artery working.
When my fiance has sent a firm boundary a text saying he is taking total space and silence to protect his mental health, us and our wedding. His father weaponized his past ICU stay to evade accountability. He sent a highly melodramatic text claiming that if he had listened to my fiancés advice in the past, he "wouldn't be here today." Another case of I am victim, and to trigger guilt right before our wedding this summer.