r/marriedintoenmeshment

Any tips or suggestions, im a 36M married to 32F who is an only child. My in laws involve themselves in every single decision, she tells them legit every single detail about things including things I tell her about my family. We have an 18 month old that has only fueled their control and need to be involved. They think they are the superior grandparents and have called themselves the babys “favorite” multiple times and my wife does nothing about it. Exhausted.

This is brutal, miserable and depressing and unless you’ve been in it you don’t know how much an absolute long term mindf**** it is.. especially to try to describe what’s “wrong”..

It’s death by a thousand paper cuts and after almost 19 years (been togther since 21 and have 3 kids).. the betrayal and resentment I just cannot cope with. What hurts worse is we did 8 years of marriage therapy and became a united front and he halfway broke out of it.. set boundaries,. Etc,, then we had a trauma and wow.. it’s a 180 I cannot even describe and like his mom hijacked his brain.

I feel sorry for him because he’s not a narcissist and is a fearful avoidant who has been ruined by his mother,. And whatever insane regression has been triggered I cannot seem to bring him out of. Marriage therapist privately eluded to CPTSD but it’s weird because he functions normal at work and stuff.

This dynamic is so devastating I’d rather have been with a husband who cheated on me and divorced that way.

I want nothing more than to divorce these disgusting dynamics and I’m so angry I’ve wasted my precious lfie being stuck in this and there is NO rationalizing, understanding or logic with these people.. you either accept being treated like a sidekick surrogate and hand over your kids to be sucked into this cult and just lie down and take being mistreated OR you’re the bad guy and going to be painted as such.

It doesn’t make sense. Enmeshment doesn’t make sense. No matter how much of a bigger person you are, how much therapy you do, how much you strive to understand.. when you’ve got a jealous and passive aggressive MIL she makes sure she has already pitted everyone against you including the husband you have your kids with.. the worst is when they’re a vulnerable narcissists ..

God id give anything to have messed up marrying into anything else.. and i dont want to sound like im minimizing cheating.. I know that deeply hurts (been cheated on by exes) but somehow for me would feel much more cut and dry than dealing with this and would not destroy my mind and physical health.. if that makes sense at all.

The part that really hurts is I’ve seen him start turning into the man he was meant to be thru the years in therapy.. he cried and said he was sorry for not prioritizing me, for not always being there for me and that he always would.. NEVER in my life did I know this scenario exists where they can literally after 16 years just regress.. sooooo badly that their baseline is even worse than it was when you started therapy.. by 3x.. its like watching an addict relapse ..

I think I need to start doing individual groups or therapy for myself so this doesn’t continue to eat at me while I decide what to do with the life I have left now that I’m 41..

As a wife it’s the most degrading and demeaning thing to be with these men.. you have sex with me and I almost died having our 3 kids.. I do everything for you but it’s like I’m the side chick and the mom is the wife,. And the insanity of trying to get him to see
How screwed up this is is like too much for me.

I understand the neuroscience of how and why this happens but I’m struggling still thinking about my kids and how this emotional abuse is sooooo subtle it’s hard to see and how it can damage them

No matter what, I’m somehow the outlier and always in the wrong. Genuinely how do they convince themselves that the deranged things their enmeshed parent does it always right? I feel like I’m in an episode of the twilight zone.

12 months ago my now ex and I had a baby. I had not met his parents until halfway through my pregnancy, and I thought they seemed lovely and overly supportive and nice. Wrong. Complete dysfunctional enmeshed shit show. As soon as my baby was born she instantly became obsessive, overbearing and pushy.

Nothing was ever good enough for her.

I didn’t want her in my delivery room (mind you some random lady I had known for about 5 months)? I was the bad guy, even to my ex. I didn’t want any (not even my own mother) visitors in the hospital for 3 days and then she was the first person to meet baby and hold her outside of her father and I? I’m awful and even now my ex doesn’t think I deserved 3 days to recover because that was upsetting his mother’s feelings. Then she showed up everyday after that for a week until I asked for some space, I was the bad guy again how dare I? Don’t I know that his mother is “exploding with love and just wants to help”?

Then she wouldn’t stop kissing my newborn baby despite having HSV-1, but how dare I stop a devoting grandmother from giving the love she must give in order to have a relationship with my baby?? When she intimated me in my own home and yelled and cried and begged to have her own way with my child, stating that she loves my child more than I do, that I would never understand, that this isn’t my child - this is her child’s child, “well sometimes she comes across a little much but she didn’t mean it like that she ALWAYS means well”.

How about when she spent the next 4 months crying, manipulating him, telling him I was an energy vampire, that I was manipulative, sending her relatives after him to convince him to leave me and to never choose a woman over his mother? “She was hurt, she’s done everything she possibly could to mend this with you”. Then when she did finally apologise, she first went lawyers to get fee quotes about grandparent rights to my child before reaching out again asking for a visit.

After all of this, plus more… I allowed visitation again under these circumstances: I am to be present during visits, and she cannot kiss baby or share utensils/saliva, visits to be once a month.

2 visits is all it lasted, with the third planned for today but his parents have cancelled stating they no longer wish to visit LO under my circumstances, and that they would rather not have a relationship with her than to abide by those rules.

And the ex? Well he believes I caused this! How dare I, now look what I’ve done, look what I’ve caused them to do. Don’t I know they apologised? Why can’t I just let them have unlimited unsupervised access to my child? It would make them happy dammit! They have done everything in their power at this point to fix this. You had it out for them from the start you just never liked them. You’re a narcissist, my mother is so perfect and lovely how can you not you see that?

Everything except any actual changed behaviour, any effort to rebuild the relationship, any respect for the mother of their grandchild..

Even when we went to couples therapy and therapist told him unequivocally that his mother was completely in the wrong, we have done nothing wrong to her, his mother is controlling and manipulative and knows which buttons to push on him to get an emotional reaction to control him. Even then, it’s like oh but my mum isn’t like that, she wouldn’t mean it that way, she’s just how she is, it’s a cultural thing.

I feel like I’m going insane.

I am 37F and my partner is 50M enmeshed with multiple .members of his family. They have a happy compliance enmeshment family dynamic. They also manipulate using love nombing and the niece ( who is 29) tells me to not let me take away her ownly uncle.

We started therapy about 2 months ago, and the therapist does not want me to mention family.

The therapist is focusing on :

1. removing the villain hat - my partner feels he lost soo much time with his family because of me and their family blames me for everything
2. strengthens the relationship
3. touching the family dynamics

He said that there is so many of them ( 2 sister, one brother, two niece, and a few nephew) that his strategy is to create a protective bubble around me and the relationship, and have his family absorb a portion of him.

It is also the fist time that he see that even though my partner is enmeshed with them, he is also trying to enmeshed with me. Its whoever has the strongest pull.

I am currently NC with about 90% of the family since the sister told me I am manipulative, controlling, and a protagonist. She kicked me out of all the family group and told me off in front of my mom. Worse she add her children partner to the group chat (youngest is 29,) and they now reach out to him saying uncle we miss and love you. She also is telling other family member to not let me destroy the family.

My partner only said that's how she feels and he doesn't want to get involved. That the whole family is upset with me. He is also incapable of making a negative comment of his family even when his 29 year old niece got pregnant form her sister ex-boyfriend and had an abortion.

My therapist hopes that as he removes the villian hat on me and my partner comes out the trance and set small boundaries, the dynamics will intensify, they will push back and me partner can see the family as they are .

Its all confusing as one time he will say they are non negotiable, or he won't do any compromising with them and others that I'd he has to work with his relationship with his family he will work on it. He came back after I kicked him out, he wants to go to therapy, he pick the therapist and is paying for weekly session. He has not missed a session in this time. He is on daily calls and chats with everyone.

I would like to get in contact with anyone that had success breaking through, hear your story.

how long it took? Are they still NC ? Is your partner LC or NC?

In the meanwhile., I am messed up and am going to therapy. I want to be strong enough to leave this relationship in a year before I am consumed.