My DD has moved back in with me but won’t make a decision about her abusive marriage

I’m so very sorry about your sister paddyann54.

An update on our situation.
I’m not advising my DD one way or another but have told her that, whilst there will always be a place for her here, she can’t keep going back to her husband and running away when things go wrong.

She is having counselling and slowly getting stronger mentally. I’m fairly confident that she will find the strength to break away and hopefully start living a happier life again. It will just take time.

We’ve also had a discussion about living arrangements and she now has her own space upstairs where she can retreat too and also give me some space.

Thank you everyone for your support and advice.

Paddyann, I was very sorry to hear about your sister. I do not believe that people suffering from emotional abuse are necessarily complicit; I experienced this and lived with my parents for a time, which made me realise I had to confront the situation and become independent.
The OP stated that her daughter had returned home on numerous occasions as her husband had been emotionally abusive (she struggles to accept this). So she is leaving the situation frequently, taking her frustrations out on her mother, only to return with nothing changed. People have to make their own decisions and I am very sorry that your sister was not able to leave this abusive situation.

Hi GramaJ ,

You are doing your very best for your daughter .

Of course, you are sympathetic and supportive .

Take heart .

Wishing you both lots of luck for the future .

ThanksVioletsky it was nearly 30 years ago,but it never leaves you .
It does make me sad that abuse victims are somehow seen as being complicit because they stay in the relationship .Thats not the case ,its often part of the abuse to make them feel they cant survive without the abuser.That happens over a long period of time ,little things and people are removed from their lives ,one at a time ,until they aren't really the person they were .
All and any efforts to seperate them from their abuser are treated suspiciously as if parents and siblings and friends "have never liked him ." or the one I heard often "you just want him for yourself"
To refuse a bolt hole is the biggest mistake you can make ,if they are strong enough to leave dont ever coerce them to go back and sort it out .You may never get them away again.

I miss the sister she was ,happy smiley ,singing round the house ,she was a good bit older than me and married when I was 9.I dont miss the person she became,the worry ,the sleepless nights .Comforting my parents .
Thankfully ,in some ways,my dad died just months before she did .She was his blue eyed girl and his heart was broken watching the life she had .
I hope the OP can save her daughter from the same fate ,its the toughest thing to watch knowing theres nothing you can do but wait .

Im so so sorry to hear that paddyann and I agree with you.

If we know a relationship is abusive, that doesnt mean we know everything, so much more could be happening behind closed doors that we don't know.

A safe space can be life saving and there is no cost too steep to offer or find it elsewhere until the person in the abusive relationship can heal

easybee
if she stays with him without a bolt hole she may well come to realise how unreasonable his behaviour is and take action of her own volition.

Or one of them might end up dead ,like my sister

So many echoes of my own experience over the last year with our DD. 10 years of their marriage, 7 years of 3.00am tearful phonecalls, or both of them yelling at each other - every family birthday or Christmas ending with them rowing. He became increasingly disturbed, wild spending, threats of suicide. Then he tried to have her evicted from 'his' house. Even when she had separated from him she spent months weeping 'because she still loved him'.

So they sold up, she paid him off and moved in with us with Gson. She had been on sick leave for 9 months. All went well till letter from work outlining phased return. Boom.

The extent of how broken she was became clear. I became the focus for everything wrong. And I mean every little thing and some very big things.

She accused me of child abuse - of giving her the worst childhood in the world. Tried to get between me and her dad, bless him he was so upset.

Finally in March bought a house and moved out, Last words to me were hope you ** off and die.

I only kept my sanity while she lived with us in the last months by keeping busy outside the home, taking breaks away, walking walking walking and earphones on when I got home.

We trust them to men and the men break them so badly they possibly can never be fixed. We will blame ourselves. But life will go on and we can make some of the pain go away. Hopefully.

I feel very sorry for the predicament you and your daughter find yourself in.
You because you home life is disrupted by your worry about your daughter's situation and her unreasonable behaviour in your house; she because she is desperately trying to hang on to her marriage and your palpable dislike of your son in law makes her defensive and resistant to your advice.

Stop trying to advise her and forcing her to make a decision; listen sympathetically but tell her she has to make her own decisions and don't be drawn. Don't make your house so easily available to her next time there is an upset; suggest that running away solves nothing and in returning to her husband she has to accept the consequences.

If you pressure her into leaving him she will blame you; if she stays with him without a bolt hole she may well come to realise how unreasonable his behaviour is and take action of her own volition.

GramaJ, as has been suggested here, I think your daughter might benefit from seeing a counsellor - preferably someone who is qualified in relationship counselling. Maybe the best help you could give her would be to pay for some sessions, if you can afford to do so. (Rather than doing her washing, making her meals, etc.) IMO often it can be much more helpful for a person in crisis (your DD) to talk about their problems with someone who isn't a family member or a friend. Good counselling support might help your DD to realise that she's an abused wife (if that's the case) and thus help her to move on with her life, away from this man, for ever.

OPa daughter said she wasnt being sympathetic, thats the relationship that matters here

VioletSky

I am sorry but you don't sound very sympathetic. You know your daughter is having mental health issues but you arent respecting her feelings at all.

You say you want her out of this abusive relationship but then you make her unwelcome in your home which should be a safe space and talk about everything you do for her as if that comes with strings attached, when that should just come naturally.

The types of help you could get her are suppott with counselling, support to regain financial independance and her own place support to rebuild her life in a way that doesnt leave her trapped between two sitiations where she can only be unhappy with him or unhappy with you.

To me, you are the unsympathetic one, not OP.

She has just had a knee replacement done, and her daughter came to stay, purportedly to help her mother.

No one said a word about the daughter having mental ailments of any kind.

What is wrong with her is that she cannot decide whether to leave her husband, or to stay with him, even although she finds him abusive.

GramaJ: tell your daughter that you love her, but she cannot go on like this and run home to you every blessed time things go wrong at home. Either she does something, like kicking her husband's backside, or her own, or demanding a divorce on grounds of incompatiility or mental crueltly or anything else that can be proved, or she trys wholeheartedly to make her marriage work.

I don't know, and neither do you apparently, why she stays with this man, but that is her lookout and the decision to stay or leave him is hers to take too. Tell her nicely that if she is leaving her husband, she will need to find a place to stay, because she cannot live with you. It just does not work, does it?

“The freedom programme “ is frequently recommended on mumsnet. It might be useful to your daughter. I haven’t gone on the site but it might have also advice for family trying to help domestic abuse victims

Sound advice Glorianny and you make a good point about the OP's D possibly feeling that she needs to please two people she loves, and is unable to please them both.

GranmaJ has said that her D who is the subject of this thread does not have children, which makes sense or presumably she'd have said she had her D and her GC living with her.

I didnt mean to sound judgemental, thats just what I took from your post.

I strongly feel your daughter needs a safe space in order to leave this relationship.

Perhaps you can get her into a refuge instead where she can get the right sort of support for this.

Is it possible to have the same username twice on gransnet?

GramaJ I think what your daughter is trying to tell you when she says you lack empathy is that she needs your unconditional support. She needs you to stop urging her to leave her husband and to step back. At present she has two people she loves both trying to manipulate her and make her act the way they want her to, and she probably feels she is bound to lose one of them.. I know it will be hard, because when our children are hurt we feel it as much as they do, but if you could step back a little, stop putting pressure on her and assure her that you will be there for her no matter what she decides, and you recognise that she loves this man, even though he isn't good for her, it might help her more. It won't be easy and it will be more painful for you but it may give her the ability to see the relationship more clearly. I think when someone criticises a person we love we are all more inclined to defend them and insist they aren't as bad as all that.
I hope you can manage to help your DD and to look after yourself, some counselling might help you as well.

Great post M0nica.

What an awful dilemma GramaJ. I totally agree with paddyann and Grandpanow.

Sitting down with your D and talking about her living arrangements with you is a good place to start. By taking some responsibility with household tasks like cooking and washing, your D will be reminded that she's an adult and not a child who does not, and cannot have any control over her own life.

This may be a case of miss matched expectations. IMO you are being supportive, empathetic and respectful of her feelings. If she doesn't think so then she needs to say where she feels your efforts are failing, have the opportunity to say so and allow you to do the same.

Her husband is emotionally abusive and as NannyJan has said "she needs to realise this for herself".

GramaJ In a situation like this, you are as much a victim of this situation as your DD. patterns of abuse cannot be contained between the abuser and victim, they inevitably spill out and draw in those who hold the victim dear. This is why so many abusers will try and alienate their victim from their family because they know that their victim's.

I deliberately use the word 'abuse' because domestic abuse isn't just violence and verbal abuse. It is also the use of emotional abuse to control someone and this is what your SiL is doing.

Your daughter is the victim of abuse, and victims and their abusers often get into a co-dependent relationship like this, where the abusive partner, has his victim dancing on a string. By threatening to leave and then 'forgiving' their partner.

Try and see your DD as a victim. Do some research, perhaps you could talk to a domestic abuse charity yourself to seek help and advice.

I fully understand your need to vent how you feel. it must be such a difficult situation for you. You are as much a victim of your SiL as your daughter.

every time they had a disagreement, or should I say she disagreed with him, he threatened divorce.

I was married to someone like this for 9 years! When I finally said I wanted a divorce( I had always said if he heard me say those words I would mean it, not use it to get my own way) he panicked and promised to change. They never do.

Sadly she needs to realise this for herself.

You are in a difficult situation. In a way you are enabling the situation to continue by providing a safe space so that a decision can be postponed. I would do exactly the same but at the end of the day only your daughter can decide her future. I would think though, that you are perfectly entitled to make as much noise as you want in your own house. A heart to heart may help clear the air. That and a step back might help your daughter clarify her mind.

I was supposed to be responding to Hithere's post.

GramaJ

Thank you paddyann54 and Grandpanow

Nothing to do with the subject I am just surprised Gransnet lets 2 different people choose the same user name. Also have I missed something is GramaJ a name from a TV series or book or something? I have never heard of it before?

I agree with Grandpanow you need to talk with your daughter Gramaj and explain how you feel, you love her and will help where you can. You do need some boundaries in your own home. It's so difficult when our children are adults, we have to let them make their decisions/mistakes.

Thank you paddyann54 and Grandpanow

Apologies, there was another gramaj in the past
www.gransnet.com/forums/relationships/1272944-Can-t-say-the-right-thing-to-my-daughter