r/marriedintoenmeshment

My husband is completely enmeshed with his mom. They used to email each other 3 times a day at certain times so they would know each other was okay. They lived close to us and made my life a living hell. My daughter just had his phone and he still texts all throughout the day with his mom. Kisses her ass and is so mean to me. Screams at me, is such an asshole. I want to leave but also just need to vent. I have never been a priority. Why do these people pull innocent people on and ruin their lives? I hate him so much

Me (F24) and my husband (M26) have been married for two years. We married early because my dad was choosing medically assisted death and we wanted him at our wedding before he was gone. His family has never really liked us, and at one point my husband used to tell me things like, “they’re not like that,” and “they like you I don’t know why you’re creating problems.”

He had an eye opener when during my dad’s funeral his mom said that she needed him more than I did at that time, and since then he’s heavily distanced from his family.

He graduated from university this Sunday, and invited his family, me, and his boss and their family (we’re really close with them). We let them know while the ceremony starts at 6, seating starts at 4:30, the drive can be up to 2 hours to we suggest they leave at 2 and maybe we can use the extra time for pictures.

It’s a big event full of many people so seating does in fact matter. My BIL said to that, “I’m not leaving at 2 for an event at 6.” Sure, fine, we said that’s ok we’re leaving early because graduates need to get there early anyways.

We left on time, took pictures, got in line. By the time they got there I had saved seats and my husband was with the graduates trying to get things going. I get asked if he’s wearing his pin.

For context his mom got him a pin to put on his tassel, it has a picture of his deceased dad. His dad passed away 4 years ago. We forgot it at home, it wasn’t like an oversight or anything my cat had kidney failure and we were rushing the morning of Sunday to get her to the vet before we left. She got hospitalized, we didn’t even want to go to the grad at that point, but still did. Whatever he could grab that he knew he would need (cap and gown) is all he really grabbed and we left.

So I told them we must have forgotten with everything going on this morning. Both MIL and BIL start going about how unappreciative he is of gifts, how that was his dad and he doesn’t care, yada yada. I firmly say “he forgot, there’s no reason to make a big deal out of it, we are dealing with a possibly dying cat.”

BIL gives me a look and says “you don’t need to say that,” and starts patting MIL shoulder and rubbing her knee and saying it’s okay to her quietly.

Ceremony starts and MIL says she bought him stuff to wear around his neck and asks when he can come grab it. I message him and he says he’s in the grad lineup and he can’t really leave unless he’s wanting to go very last. I let them know and BIL gives me another weird and mean look.

BIL later asks me how my cat is doing, I said I don’t really know. He tells me I shouldn’t be spending so much time and money on a cat and just to put that one down and buy another one. I give him another very firm answer of “that’s a life and that’s my cat.”

Last Sunday we went for his honours ceremony (just me and him), and we invited his friends for dinner afterwards because they’re his closest friends. Someone from the medal ceremony recognizes me and asks me how he’s doing and asks if he remembered his medal. His family did not know about this because he only had one ticket to the medal ceremony and he wanted to prioritize me, and he knew they would freak out if they found out.

Freak out they did, BIL started whining about “I see how it is,” and “I see my place in his life.” I said he had one ticket, and in his wife. “No like his brother isn’t important.”

Mid ceremony he asks if I brought a camera and I say no, I’m using my phone. He asks why I would forget that, and I say well because of my cat but regardless it didn’t matter because professional pictures are being taken of him and he doesn’t like pictures anyway. I thought that was the end of that (we will get back to that later)

Then MIL and his grandparents get up after he gets his diploma and say they’re in physical pain so they’ll wait for him in the car. I say okay. BIL asks me if I have plans afterwards, I tell him “not really but we haven’t eaten even a little today so we might be grabbing food, if we have time maybe a restaurant.” Said nothing about us not being able to take pictures, or them not being allowed to join us.

They leave before the ceremony even ends. It’s 8PM when they leave, 8:30 I message to let them know an usherer just told us the ceremony ends at 9. They’ve already left, but that was my attempt at letting them know they have to wait a little longer.

When the ceremony is done we just grab McDonald’s on the way home, we get home around 11 because of the drive. The second we get home MIL snaps at my husband and says “you hurt us, we aren’t important to you and we know that. You went to dinner without us, you don’t want pictures with us, and you threw away your dad pin. The least you could have done is say hi!”

BIL is gone, it’s just me and my husband and MIL. he tries to explain he has no idea what that’s all about because he hasn’t even had a chance to talk to anyone today, she keeps cutting him off so I tell her “you wanted him to say hi to you in midst of over 10 thousand people while he was graduating?”

She snaps at me, calls me a smartass says I ruined the whole mood and snapped at BIL all day, yada yada. We fight, when she realizes she has no basis for what she’s saying but I do she starts crying and saying “I’m grieving and you’re hurting me!”, and “you wouldn’t know what I’m going through” (my dad died less than a year ago so I snap and have to leave)

An hour later I go down to apologize for yelling and calling her self centred. She apologizes for personal insults and explains she was grieving and BIL was feeding her with information. We don’t believe her because she takes no accountability, not really, just blames it on BIL. But hey it’s progress, at least we aren’t fighting.

The next day my husbands best friend shares messages he’s received from BIL where BIL says my husband is a douche and didn’t care about family.

Says:

And they made plans after without telling any of our family or inviting us

For example I found out he invited yall to dinner last week for the medal ceremony and didn't invite any of us or anything

My mom bought him balloons got him a special custom pin with my dad on it for him to wear and he didn't even take it with him

He wasn't even willing to take pictures with me or anything

He always puts friends over family and blames everything on us

(And more, it’s a lot)

So now to an extent we believe MIL, but the thing is this behaviour from SIL and BIL always stem from MIL initially being upset.

SIL is in another state and pregnant so we couldn’t really include her, but the other day when MIL asked me to fix her IPad I saw suspicious messages from her about how I must have purposely told my husband that we’d get there early so only I got pictures with him, and MIL agreed.

I’m just so done with them, this happens regularly over smaller stuff but I thought they could put their feelings aside for a big day such as a graduation. Instead they made it so incredibly shitty for them and the worst part is if he were still in the enmeshment then they would have made me see like the villain but because he’s not he is now. He would technically be happier and more peaceful in it.

I don’t even know if this is truly an enmeshment but a pattern I’ve seen is MIL gets upset at one of the kids and all the kids get upset at that one of the kids and often make up lies to have more “grounds” for being upset. It’s usually my husband, sometimes it’s SIL, rarely it’s BIL.

And spouses get dragged in always. Unless it’s BIL, because he only has a girlfriend I guess.

The worst part is my husband is the youngest, the rest are all pushing thirty or over thirty. You’d expect less childish behaviour from them.

Recently we’ve also noticed that all three of them come up with stories that don’t exist, and if you play into them they add on to it. So for example MIL said a month ago, that when my husband was down in his room he was telling her everyone he invited (but her) and then walked away and she had to beg to be invited. I was standing right there in the hallway. He asked if she wanted to go because he wanted her there, and she said yes.

I played along with it and said he actually was going to ask you with a golden ticket and flowers which is why he left, to go grab them. And she started crying and saying she wish she knew, and that he just seemed like he wasn’t going to invite her at all. And she’s glad he still sees her as someone he gives flowers to and it’s not just me.

I don’t get why she played along because I added on to her lie, surely she knew I lied. Didn’t seem like it though.

Anyways, would love to hear thoughts and opinions since everyone around us is making us the bad guy.

I (F) am currently in married to my husband for 1 year. We’ve been together for 8 years. For a long time, there has been a severe enmeshment dynamic between him and his mother. He has historically defended her bad behavior, shared private relationship details with her, and allowed her to cross major boundaries.

Lately, we’ve been trying to do heavy boundary work. He is seeing a therapist who specializes in enmeshment. Yesterday, he actually had a good conversation with his mom where he told her he was prioritizing me and our relationship, and that he was going to give me some space from her. I felt like we finally took a step forward. He has really shown growth in the last month realizing he needs to put my himself first, our relationship next and THEN his family. He is navigating right now what his own wants are and trying to ensure through therapy what he wants is not influenced by me or his mom. I totally respect this autonomy and have seen it - I don't want to become his mother I want an equal partnership with respect and integrity. When discussing where we see our future with boundaries with both agreed no more secrecy, oversharing our personal life, discussion of me/our relationship with his mom, him standing up promptly when boundaries or my respect is violated by his mom. I believe him on this and can feel the shift in his priorities already. Often where most of the triangulation would happen was in one-on-one interactions with his mom during the week. I found out she would call in the morning and ask if i was working and if not, try to arrange a visit or interaction with him that day. With that, there have been times hes deleted communication from his devices between himself and his mom, omitted the truth about their conversations to me, and actually lied about seeing her. Sometimes we would have plans, he's saying hes going to the sauna, tell me hes going alone and then i'd find out later he went with his mom. She would sometimes send photos of the two of them or reveal this interaction through information he told her in these interactions later on and using that to influence our decisions (ie. what we are doing this weekend). I have just realized I was being emotionally abused by her for the last 7 years, my husband was in a way enabling it through gaslighting (he is truly sorry) and I have essentially been living with a third person in our relationship. I have asked if there is a negotiation to make me feel more emotionally safe with these interactions such as inviting a brother or doing them when I can tag along. He is insisting that his therapist says to do what feels right for him (autonomy) and he wants this. I just feel like it is unfair to me. His brothers do not have these one-on-one interactions with her throughout the week and still have good healthy relationships with her so I don't understand why it is necessary and why there can't atleast be negotiation on the quantity (once a week). I have suggested a goal can be to have weekly dinners as a family together so he is still maintaining that relationship or 1-2 times a monthly one-on-ones but weekly while recovering from enmeshment and knowing his mom was using him as a primary attachment in the past and it was like a form of emotional infedelity to me, really hurts. If i need to respect his autonomy in "feeling this is right" than do I need to step away if I don't see myself not having resentment in a relationship where you do one-on-one interactions with your mom when your brothers don't require that, and we are already doing weekly visits with the family as a whole.

This brings me to my core issue. My nervous system is in absolute shock. I have tightness in my chest and a sick feeling in my stomach. I am realizing that I am fundamentally not comfortable with these weekly, exclusive 1-on-1 dates with his mother continuing into our future marriage.

Here is the data that makes me feel like I’m not crazy:

1. The Siblings Don't Do This: His brothers do not have weekly, exclusive 1-on-1 dates with their mother. His dad doesn't either. They all maintain good relationships with her without this intense frequency. He is being cast in a unique role to manage her emotions.
2. The Timing is Isolating: These 1-on-1s are explicitly scheduled on weekdays when I am at work or unavailable, structurally ensuring that I am excluded and a private alliance can be maintained.
3. I Am Not Anti-Family: I am 100% fine with seeing his family once a week. I am happy to do group dinners, weekend gatherings, or events where everyone is included. What I am against is the exclusivity and privacy of these weekly 1-on-1s, because that is where the boundary erosion and secret-keeping always happen.

Am I being rigid or unreasonable for making the elimination of these exclusive weekly 1-on-1 dates a non-negotiable condition for me?

I can't believe we finally did it.

My husband attended an 8 day IOP for developmental trauma, betrayal trauma (mine), enmeshment, depression, etc. It was extremely expensive (money out of savings, half gets reimbursed) and stressful, but it was also life-changing. Major breakthroughs -- it was 9 hours of therapy a day! Individual and group.

He came home much less defended, recognizes the narcissistic patterns he inherited from his parents despite not having a personality disorder himself, and is finally able to admit how badly his parents failed him... it was an incredible program. His Ken Adams-trained therapist was the one who referred him. The progress he made there was substantial enough that I felt ready to try couples therapy with him again (previously his defensiveness and flooding meant his feelings were always centered in session, which was re-traumatizing for me). I found us another Ken Adams therapist (this one is a "preferred provider") who thankfully made it very clear in the first two sessions that we needed to go into an indefinite (not necessarily permanent, but indefinite) period of NC for our marriage to heal. My husband is sad, guilty, grieving, feels like he is betraying his family -- but this is alongside an incredible new awareness/understanding of the fact that he has to choose the marriage, kick his parents out of his "inner circle," and replace them with me, his wife. He does love me, so he is actually doing it.

I don't think this would ever work with a man who didn't show a lot of signs of having an intact self underneath the enmeshment. My husband is very compromised by his abusive upbringing, but I could always see "the real him" in there. He needed to mature emotionally -- his parents failed to raise him. So it took us 20 years and so much loss and pain for me, but I (shockingly) can now say that I really genuinely think we are going to make it and have a good marriage for the second half of our lives.

I do not think this would have been possibly without the IOP. I could never have helped him reach the insights he reached during the program, and I don't think weekly therapy would have gotten him there either. If anyone wants the name of the specific program, you can message me/chat with me and I will share it. It cost 10k (I know). Genuinely money we don't have. But I can say it was worth the scary hit to our savings. My husband said that it saved his life. He said he didn't know his life needed saving, but he can now say that it did not just change his life, but saved it. Previously he had been stuck in a year-long depression that was getting deeper and deeper since I started setting more boundaries and distancing myself from his parents more. It was a hellish year and he was feeling worse and worse by the week, not better. So he really entered the program at a severe low point. It was terrifying for both of us, and a real leap of faith.

My husband was willing to go and admit his brokenness -- I am not sure this could work on a person who was unwilling to admit how badly they were failing in life. Even with that admission, he was still so defended, and some of the therapists at this program were quite confrontational. He said it was a week of being called out left and right. He said he had no idea he was such a bullshitter.

Anyway... I hope this helps someone. I hope it helps you to assess wither you think a program life this could help your spouse.

I was emotionally abused by my MIL and FIL for 20 years. It was hell and I am severely traumatized by it but with just 3 days of no contact and my husband clearly and strongly holding the line, I feel deep changes happening in me and in the marriage. You have to cut the abusers off. For 20 years I was gaslit, the abuse was denied, and I was further harmed by oblivious therapists who don't understand betrayal trauma or enmeshment. Now I have my own therapist, my husband's therapist, the couples therapist, and the team at the IOP who have all affirmed that yes, I was abused, and yes, I need to be protected, and yes, I am literally traumatized by my MIL.

I can also say that for the first time, I feel like my marriage is private, a sanctuary belonging only to my husband and me. I realize now that I had been living in a fishbowl under MIL's surveillance... basically a panopticon, as horrific as that is. She had access to so much. Constant photos, updates, group texts, transparent/open-hearted sharing (my efforts)... it was making me ill. Now we are alone the way a husband and wife should be.

I could keep rambling but I will stop here. Again, I really hope this helps someone. I'll update again eventually. I am so sorry for all of us who have suffered this. It really is hell. For some couples, it can heal, but if you are just starting out, save yourself and leave, because it's more likely it won't be salvageable. I think my case is probably the exception rather than the rule.