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Question
My husband chose his sister over our marriage and its heart breaking. I have been taking care of my husband for the past eight years and I’ve been the sole provider. I have taken care of all his needs and that of his family. I have provided a home for his son whom I love dearly with no issues. But now, he has his sister staying at our house. She’s a grown woman in her fifties. And she wants to live in our home which has caused severe amount of stress on the marriage.
She’s been here for months and we constantly argue. My husband is now yelling and punching walls, which is something he has never done. Anytime I broach the subject of her getting her own place, he loses his temper and starts to yell and get so angry at me. I’m about ready to ask them both to leave my home. I am at the brink of a nervous breakdown. I work as a hospice nurse, so I’m well versed in dealing with difficult behaviors. However, the strain is unconscionable.
She’s messy, rude, manipulative, and vindictive. She also uses the “sister card” to get him to do everything for her, even things she can do for herself. My husband and his sister came from a poverty-stricken background. She is a drug addict who currently smokes marijuana all day and is on disability, even though I’m certain she can work if she wanted to. When I mention her finding her own place, she talks to my husband and nothing changes. I feel she is not our responsibility. His responsibility is to me. The strain in unbearable. Please help.
Answer
The tension in your home comes through loud and clear in your difficult question. Everyone seems overwhelmed and agitated. I don’t know anything about your husband’s mental or physical health conditions, but regardless of his capacity, he’s contributing to a volatile and unstable situation. His own instability prevents you from working together to find a solution to this complex living arrangement. Ideally, you’d work with him to solve this, but this painful reality may require you to make some unilateral decisions in order to create personal peace.
It seems like you don’t have a problem taking care of your husband and his son. Is that the case? If so, then would having her leave your home resolve your family stress? Or, is her presence exposing the fractures in your family life? In my experience, stressors don’t create new dynamics as much as they reveal what’s already not working. For example, new parents soon discover unhealthy communication patterns when the wear-and-tear of a new infant pulls them apart instead of together. Your sister-in-law might be a very difficult houseguest for any family, but it seems that the bigger problem if your husband’s unwillingness to choose you over his sister. My guess is that this was happening in other areas of your marriage long before his sister showed up.
This is the dynamic I recommend you address with your husband. If he becomes violent and unsafe when you try to discuss this with him, then it’s time to stop talking and the focus shifts to protecting yourself. Even though it would be ideal to have the violent and difficult people leave the home, be prepared to encounter resistance when you ask her to leave. If there is resistance, it will come from her, him, or both. Your peace and safety are more important than your location, so make sure you aren’t settling for familiarity at the expense of your health.
You clearly can take care of yourself (and others), so don’t let your worry about the future stop you from moving forward to create peace. Your mental and physical health can only take so much. Since you can’t make either of them see your perspective or care about your peace, you have to determine how critical this situation is. You’re in a tough environment, but you’re not powerless. The options aren’t ideal and certainly don’t line up with how you imagined life would turn out for you, but you don’t have to stay here.
Setting boundaries with your husband and his sister isn’t the worst thing that can happen. The worst thing is that you continue to live in harmful and unsafe conditions that steady erode away your mental and physical health. Even if you decide that staying for a while and enduring these conditions is the best option, then you’ll feel peace knowing that you’re doing the best thing. However, if you can’t feel peace, then don’t stop searching for the solution that brings the peace and safety you need.
Geoff will answer a new family and relationship question every Friday. You can email your question to him at ge***@lo************.com
About the Author
Geoff Steurer is a licensed marriage and family therapist in St. George, Utah. He specializes in working with couples, pornography/sexual addiction, betrayal trauma, and infidelity. He is the founder of LifeStar of St. George, Utah (www.lifestarstgeorge.com) and Alliant Counseling and Education (www.alliantcounseling.com). Geoff is the co-author of “Love You, Hate the Porn: Healing a Relationship Damaged by Virtual Infidelity” and creates online relationship courses available on his website www.geoffsteurer.com. He hosts the Illuminate Podcast and has created the Loving Marriage educational vlog on YouTube with his wife. He earned degrees from Brigham Young University and Auburn University. He is married to Jody Young Steurer and they are the parents of four children.
You can connect with him at:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCc05gV4t9A0B8-TDT1EfWhQ?view_as=subscriber
Website: www.geoffsteurer.com
Twitter: @geoffsteurer
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Sonja HopkinsOctober 16, 2019
It is obvious that you have a problem. Your husband and his sister don't have a problem...they have behavior. Until their behavior becomes their problem, it will continue to be their behavior. There is an old saying: "If you can't wean the baby, you have to sour the milk." Setting boundaries isn't about telling them what they have to do...it's about establishing what you need in order to remain in the situation. To the degree they are willing to honor your boundaries you will know whether you can remain in the situation. There need to be natural consequences for the violation of boundaries that are clearly communicated when the boundaries are established. Since you are the breadwinner, you have a lot more leverage then either of them do. In the event you withdraw your financial support what would they do? Maybe it's time to find out. For instance, if they respond with "are you kicking me to the curb?" You response might be: "No, I'm not kicking you to the curb....your behavior is doing that." This isn't really about them - it's about you and what you've taught them about how to treat you. Your task is not to seek for peace in your life. Your task is to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. SImply put....don't blame a clown for acting like a clown...ask yourself why you keep going to the circus.
The struggle is realOctober 16, 2019
Amen to others who have commented who were also hospice workers. I made the mistake of sticking up for family members when they stayed a year in our home with their destructive dogs. My spouse (like you) kept trying to kick them out nicely but I was foolish and kept feeling sorry for them all while they manipulated us, (me imparticular) and rarely helped around the house. After a horrible incident with their dogs and mine they moved out. Our marriage took a big hit in the year long struggle and now we are mending it and I take a lot of the blame for that. If your husband is going to be physically aggressive and always angry with you then I guess you give him the ultimate ultimatum, but with love and a non-emotional delivery as best you can. Give it to him straight "If your sister does not leave and you choose to continue to make me support her and her drug habit in our home, I will start divorce proceedings in two weeks if she is not gone and you refuse to get counseling with me." The end. Do get a lawyer first as CL suggested. Your sister-in-law has no right or business living with you; destroying your marital intimacy and deepening wounds in your already fragile marriage. Either he will care enough to take you seriously and let go of his manipulative sister or he will stick with her first because blood is thicker then marriage to him. I feel for him as I am easily manipulated by others and their "hardships (they bring on themselves) as well". If I could go back and redo this last year I would have kicked the extra family members out with in two months and their dogs would have gone to the shelter to be adopted by people who could care for them properly, "no if and or buts" and certainly I wouldn't have allowed their dogs to hurt my own dog. They kept telling me they were "working on it" when it came to getting rid of their dogs until it was too late. Don't be as stupid as me. Often we allow ourselves to be manipulated by those who have been through severe trauma as children as we feel we are helping make up for how crappy their childhood was and we want to prove we are better then their parents were. However there's nothing we can do or say that will help them out of their victim mentality and they will always play the victim card to serve themselves. They are survivors and manipulate others to survive. We choose how much manipulation we're willing to take till we hit a tipping point then we free ourselves. Good luck and prayers for all.