My Life Experiences

No one can take advantage of you without your permission.
Fire your sister.
Stop paying for the storage unit and let them auction off the contents.
Move away from your toxic families.
If it's a choice between his mother and siblings and his children, your husband SHOULD choose his children first without a second thought.

Excuse me, he SHOULD be choosing his children and you above all others. That's how it should be when you create a family with someone...your nuclear family comes first. If they cannot or will not understand that, then it is time to distance yourselves.

You urgently need counseling, individually and together. Moving will not heal the past that has led you to the current situation. A emotionally healthy people would not have allowed this to happen. His family did not put you in debt. Sure, they asked but you said yes. You decided to go into debt.

Why? Sounds like you both are trying to buy their love. Can't be done. They are who they are. They are going to use you where ever you live. Your husband will continue to feel unloved and they will continue to use his insecurities to take from him.

Why does it matter if they are angry with him? What do they do for him thst makes him feel good? He needs to choose taking care of you and his kids over taking care of his parents and siblings. I'm reminded of two truths. One that a person leaves their parents to bond with their spouse. The second is that a parent takes care of his children. They are not able to take care of themselves. How can you give your children security when you're so far in debt and worried about your relationship with parents and sibs? How can you teach them about healthy relationships when your own relationships are so damaging? Your focus must be on taking care of yourself and your children if they are to have better life than yours.

I agree that you should move. You need distance from these people. The furthest away as possible. And of utmost importance is to get therapy so you can get out of these destructive relationships.

You all need to move away again.
If you can't say 'No, we're not doing this. You ran up the debt - it is your problem' - it's the only way for you to have some healthy boundaries.
If your families 'play on the love' - they are USING you and your husband and it's not a healthy dynamic nor is it 'love'.
You don't treat people you love like that.
Your husband SHOULD choose you and your kids over his parents/siblings.
When you married you cleave onto each other and begin a new family and commitment to to your marriage and kids now comes BEFORE any prior family association.
Your husband needs to stop worrying about them.
They'll be mad (who isn't mad when they lose a meal ticket?) but they will quickly find someone else to use.
Your husband needs to GET MAD at being used like this and being put in this position - and he needs to walk (no, sorry - RUN) away from this and take you and the kids with him.

A.,

Your family didn't manage to put you in debt. You and your husband made poor choices, likely knowing their situations, and managed to get yourselves enmeshed in their situations.

One of the hardest words for some of us to learn is "no".

My guess is that your husband is holding out hope that sometime, somehow, he's going to get something from his family-- some sort of validation-- that he's been missing since childhood. My guess is that this informs his choices.

Without going into details, I also had a childhood and partial adulthood which could be described as hellish. As a child, those needs I had which were never met-- I still kept turning to the same emotionally-bankrupt people to fill them. That was MY mistake. What they could not give me as a child they most certainly did not have to offer as an adult.

What I can also speak to, however, is how incredibly scary the potential of being permanently cut off is. I chose to end contact with a very toxic parent and it took me a long time with lots of counseling to identify how bad the situation was, how I was choosing to stay in a dance of dysfunction with the parent who was still damaging me, and to work up the self-esteem to see that I could make the choice to demand more (in this case, counseling with the parent) and deserved to be treated better.

This took about 2 years of counseling before I got to this point. And when I did, I grieved it like a death. It was, in some ways-- the death of having hope that this primary parent would love me for who I was, without all the hoops to jump through and conditions which made the relationship so sickeningly unhealthy. It was the end of wishing I'd had a better childhood, accepting that it was never going to change, and accepting that I was going to be persona non-Grata for the rest of my life with that part of my family.

I also had to accept that, in closing that door, I lost my own voice with some of the people I loved. That parent decided to tell everyone that I was mad at them because they didn't give me a present. No joke. 12 years later, this is still the 'reason'. Sometimes, bad blood is just going to happen and you have to accept that it's better not to be engaged than to continue to re-engage and trying to clear my name. Only more nonsense really, and for families which seem to churn with nonsense and drama, 'making nice' will mean being sucked back into it.

Your husband will need a lot of understanding and unconditional support as he moves through these different feelings. One of the worst things my (then, now ex) husband said to me at the time was that I needed to just 'get over it'. While I was a 30 year old grown woman on the outside, there was still that sad little kid on the inside who was mourning the love she couldn't ever get from that parent. It is a terribly sad state of affairs to see that your parent/family is not capable of loving or caring in any sort of healthy way, and that the ways in which 'love' were given were so incredibly damaging-- that takes a lot of time to heal from.

So, know that this can be like a death, it can be a huge heartbreak to admit that no matter what we do, we cannot *fix* our parents or siblings. Focus on what you can fix. Perhaps couples and/or individual counseling will help. Yes, we as married adults should always put our own family's needs first, (or course, there are catastrophic circumstances, but lets just go with the usual stuff here) and your husband is going to have to come to a place of accepting that his family can't be fixed by him alone. He'll also have to accept that HIS love cannot make them be more healthy or loving, and accept them for who they are and what they do or don't have to offer.

Sorry this is so long, I just wanted to share that it is possible, but indeed painful, to move forward. Please have a lot of compassion for your husband as he moves through these emotions and find some outside support so this doesn't destroy your own family.

You can be kind-hearted and still say "no" to giving these people any more money. "I'm sorry, we can't afford it." You are not obligated to get yourself into debt for your family.

You don't have to move away from family, just learn how to say no.

You have kids now. You know what it feels like to love your kids, right?

Would you stop loving them if they didn't lend you money? Or if they decided to live somewhere else when they are adults? Or for doing what they need to in order to take care of their own kids? Of course not, because real love has nothing to do with these things, right?

If your husbands family would stop loving him if he moves away to take care of his kids, then, (I hate to say this because it will probably very hard for him to hear), but I don't think they really love him in the first place. So, he has nothing to lose.

You and the kids are his family now. He should be putting y'all first. Leave with bad blood? So its okay for them to take advantage of your family but you don't want bad blood? Seems to me there already is.

I suggest couples counseling and individual counseling. You both have a history of bad childhoods. You are exposing YOUR kids to that same environment and for what purpose? None. You can't fix people who don't want to be fixed.

What is my opinion? First, get away for crazy family. You and your husband need to go to counseling to learn how to deal with family and how to put each other and YOUR family first guilt free.

The gravy train needs to stop. Fire your sister, get his brother to pay you back and stop paying on the storage that his sister has. Enough!

That's my opinion.

well, you don't need to move if you learn how to say 'no' and mean it. but that's easier said than done when the acquiescent patterns are this deeply ingrained. clearly you both need counseling so that you can learn to put each other and your own family first without feeling guilty about it, and how to be loving and firm with your extended family.
if moving is what you need to do in order to refocus, then do that. but it doesn't stop there. being a pleaser to this extent will require some deep work to overcome. good luck!
khairete
S.

You need to learn the word "NO". Say it with me. NO, I'm sorry we can't help you.

Let's practice it again. NO. We cannot loan you ANY money.

If you can't say NO? You are going to continue to be used and taken advantage of. Stop doing the same thing and expecting different results!!!

There's no bad blood. It's allowing people to manipulate you in feeling guilty for no longer GIVING them...

Doesn't matter where you live, you will still have the same problems. Being able to say NO and sticking to it. Wealth redistribution doesn't HELP ANYONE... it only hurts them. They will not learn to provide for themselves...

Good luck!

You were here recently about family and boundaries. I think it would be great if you could tell them NO in no uncertain terms.

Look at it this way, if and when you are out in the street will they help you get some place to live for your family? No, I don't think so. Your immediate family - hubby and kids - come before the rest of the family. You must make sure that all is good with your immediate family before you can help anyone else. Period. So when family comes begging as they will, you have to cut the bank of you off.

Your credit rating will be ruined with them borrowing and not paying you back. You already have $2500 you will never see. So stop the craziness and let them learn that they have to care for themselves. I know it is hard but so is life.

The family is already pushing him away. He won't leave them with bad blood. He will be providing for the family that he should be. How long can you throw coins into a fountain before your coins are all gone and you have nothing to show for it? Sometimes you can't be hearts and flowers you have to be blunt and mean it. Life is too short. You can't control them. You can't make them happy.

Do for you and your family. I have in laws that would have bankrupted us if I let my husband give money away for "just because" with no real need.

Got to take a stand one way or the other. The choice is yours.

the other S.

PS Family is great but it can be a detriment as well. I have seen so many posts about how the family has "taken" advantage of the poster when it is the poster who has to break the cycle and move on and let the chips fall where they may. We are all responsible for ourselves and help others when we can. I know it takes a village but the village has to be healthy in order for it to work properly.

We were going to move away , but ended up not doing it and are satisfied with our decision. Moving will not stop people from these behaviors and asking for gifts. It may subside a little, but money gram makes it easy for family to ask.
I honestly am glad that my kids are learning that we can love our family, but still be firm and choose to have boundaries. It also affords us the opportunity to talk about decisions that effect our lives and how to make the right ones. Thankfully we have excellent friends who are like family who provide examples of making the right decisions.
Sounds likes tough choice , but doing what is best for your family IS the most important right now whether extended family likes it or not.

Yes, move away. Right now that is the only boundary you and hubby are able to uphold.

It is hard to say no to something that you are not aware of. You and your husbands' caretaking for your relatives is probably so innate in you both that it is not even recognized by either of you as a boundary violation or 'taking advantage of'.

It is hard to set limits with something you don't see or recognize or some dysfunction that has been "normalized" to you both.

John Bradshaw has a book called Healing the Shame That Binds You. It helped me understand some concepts. Two things stood out in the book for me. He says:
1) being a human doing vs. a human being.
Meaning that you are so used to doing the dysfunctional behavior that you don't think or feel what it is doing to you. You are so busy doing that you don't "feel" how wrong it is. You learn to ignore these internal feelings because they have never been validated.

2) hockey players don't hang out with chess players because they don't know the rules.
Meaning that you and your husband grew up with the same rules so the dysfunctional dynamic made sense to you both, and allowed you to enable each other. You both need to stop being "hockey" players and leave the team.

You will both need patience, empathy and therapy. Counseling is when you need help to make an objective decision. Therapy is when you need help undoing learned, dysfunctional, and destructive patterns of behavior. It allows you to develop insight and recognize the triggers that draw you to toxic situations and people. You and your hubby need therapy.

See, I have more nuts then branches in my family tree :-).

It has been a month since I cut off from my last family member. It took me 20 years to see her toxicity because I was taught to enable and accept her behavior at all costs to myself.This was my job growing up, and how I earned the other family members love.

It is a hard and lonely but healthy road, and it is so much better that my kids are away from this.

Best of luck to you!
Right on Nervy Girl!

Both you and your husband felt unloved and uncared for as children. That pain is still with you. So no matter what your family members do to you, you so want their love that you lend them money, hire them for work they don't do, pay the debts they default on, and probably much more than you haven't listed here but to which you allude. They are also eating up your energy.

You moved away because you knew the problems. But the tug of the past was so strong that you moved your children back so they could "get to know their family." Which means you brought your children into everything about these relatives, including their negativity and mooching behavior. Your children are learning from you, which is that you never say no to relatives no matter what, and you always give in. So they are learning that they, as your children, are not as important as these other people.

Your husband SHOULD choose his children over his siblings and his mother. But he is not able to. So you both should consider some good family therapy to learn why you let people take advantage of you, and consider moving away again for the sake of your children. Your relatives do not have a future. Your children do. If his family is using the withholding of love and affection as a weapon, that does not make them right. They were not good to him (and yours were not good to you) when you were younger. You had terrible childhoods. So all you know how to do, because you still crave the love you didn't get way back when, is to make sure your children do not have good childhoods and secure financial futures. Please get some help - you know what's right, so you just need some help to build a backbone so you can actually do what's right.

Good luck to you!

I do understand the importance of family, and that in many societies, people's responsibilities to their kin continue after marriage. In my husband's home place, that is how it is done. It has meant that we have paid for numerous nieces' and nephews' education/skill training, mostly because those things are relatively cheap compared to costs in the US, however they couldn't have afforded them. We support his aging parents to a fair extent. The key, however, is that there is a definite end point and there is some reciprocity with the siblings/nieces/nephews. When they finish school or their training program, they need to make their own way, aside from occasional small gifts when we visit or for special events. We also can count on them to help us out when we are in their country--care for our kids, treat them like family, house us, etc. From what you are saying, your and your husband's kin are not holding up their end of the deal. They aren't reciprocating (your sister isn't doing the work for which you are paying her, nor are the other family members helping you when you need it). They also aren't moving on to become self-sufficient; they seem to keep coming back for more. Moreover, your sister-in-law and sister aren't figuring out how to take care of themselves because they can keep leaning on you. So your 'help' is hurting both you and them. It is time to stop.

I understand you don't want to just drop them cold, and you don't have to. However, you two have to start setting up boundaries and sticking to them. For example, how would it be if your husband gave his sister notice that he will pay one more month's rent on the storage facility, after which he will take his name off the rental agreement? Either she puts her own name on it and begins paying the rent or she finds someplace to move the stuff. With your sister, the same thing. Tell her that she gets one more month to start doing her work right and if she doesn't, you cannot employ her any more. She CAN find another job, I'm certain--you were paying her about what someone gets at a minimum wage job. In every case, you need to stop enabling their dependence on you all and say no to the mooching until they are standing on their own feet and can reciprocate with you. That gives everyone their dignity and builds a real, healthy relationship.

Moving away would solve a lot of the problems, however I do know you want to keep some connection. Also, the patterns you learned from growing up are still going to be with you and I bet they have shown up in your lives in other places. So you should assume you need to DEAL with them, not just hope that moving away from the mooching family will solve everything.

One important step towards dealing with the childhood effects would be to start attending meetings of Al-Anon or Adult Children of Alcoholics. The program will help you to identify the effects from growing up in that chaos and how to change the patterns you learned. I've been there, and I can say it was incredibly helpful. Psychotherapy can be really helpful too. I agree with the others that you and your husband need to learn new ways of dealing with your kin (and yourselves). Wishing you much luck!

Updated

There is NOTHING WRONG with your husband choosing you and your children over his other family!!! You and his children are his nuclear family, and nuclear family ALWAYS comes first - before anyone's mother, father, siblings, etc. Your husband should feel ZERO guilt about putting his nuclear family first, and getting the hell away from his toxic mooching family!

Move back to your small town (or anywhere else that is far away), pay off your debt, and get your lives back!!!

We had to completely cut all ties to my mother-in-law (but she was the extreme). She has ruined my brother-in-law's life, his 4 marriages, and continues to do so. My husband also has VERY limited connections with his brother, who is very messed up. I have set very clear boundaries with my own mother, and with myself regarding how much advice and how help I will give my mother when she gets herself into bad situations. This is the only way we can have a relationship. And for 1/2 a year I had to cut off all communication with her until she realized I was serious about my boundaries.

You have to do what is right for the health and mental welfare of your family. You are responsible for your children not your parents. I don't know about you, but I spent my childhood raising my mother, and I finally realized at age 39 that never should have been my burden and I was done with it, and there was no way I was going to let it affect my children even remotely close to the way it affected me.

As someone else said, your relatives are taking advantage of your love. Set VERY clear boundaries. Make it clear they are boundaries that you both must follow, not threats or ultimatums. Don't let them drag you into a discussion or an argument. Tell them this is a choice you have made for your family and they have the choice to honor your wishes or not, but it IS their choice if they decide never to see you again. They are the ones who are refusing to honor the boundaries you have set and they know if they want to see you all they have to do is stick to those those boundaries. If they say they have boundaries for you too, then that shouldn't be a problem, because you don't really want them in your life anyway.

I hope that helped. Just don't get drawn into an argument and keep repeating that you wish they could be in your life, but it will only work if they follow the boundaries you set. OH, AND MOVE AWAY! YES, MOVE AWAY. You don't have to live near them! Move now!!!!!

Your husband seems to be having a hard time managing the emotions of his family members, and I don't blame him one bit for being confused and upset.

He wanted his children to know his family. They've come to know his family. That job is done.

It might help him to understand that the attitudes of his relatives are not his responsibility. He's not guilty of anything, really, so he doesn't have to be afraid of what they will say or do. Their attitudes are their own responsibility. His responsibility is doing what he knows is best for his immediate family.

If the kinfolk react by being angry and saying cruel things, it's sad, but they *could* have responded with understanding. They chose not to - possibly by preference, possibly by habit and training.

The thing is that if you stay with such negative (at the least) people, you learn from them and become more like them. You're more likely to change, yourself, than change them. People like that drag you down into the cellar.

It's fine to be kind (or at least not hateful). But sometimes it's necessary to do it from a distance, for your own well-being and the the well-being of your children.

If his family "hates him" for leaving, they will be the losers, because your husband is trying to be a good man, a good husband, and a good father. He could tell them, "We do better back where we lived before, and that's where we're going to go," and not ask for their permission or their approval. Or you all could sneak out of town at midnight in time-honored novelistic fashion.

But I hope he takes the step, one way or another. His heart may break as he does it, but it won't break as much as seeing his immediate family fall apart because of not leaving. A counselor might help him get this straightened out in his head, once you have moved, because it's a really difficult situation to be in.