Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
My partner's harmful relatives barge into our residence, manipulate her emotions,
and abandon me to handle their chaos while she stays helpless.
We have been in a relationship for four years and
I've been engaged for seven months. We are trying to
plan out a wedding for roughly fall next year. Her
childhood was terrible and abusive. To put it mildly, her
(00:22):
parents were raging narcissists, and she was the scapegoat for
her two brothers. She was abused and thrown out the
moment she turned eighteen. She was, however, a great student
and hard worker, so with some scholarships and a part
time job, she has a great career and is pretty independent.
The problem is, though, is that she still had contact
(00:43):
with her family. None of them have changed, while actually
something has changed. They have become more financially dependent on her.
They enjoy slowly creeping back into her life and emotionally
blackmailing her for support or whatever she can do. They're
not pleasant about it either. They're rude, smug, and generally
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enjoy being a nuisance. And my fiancee can't say no
no matter the horrible things they say, or how they
outright try and intimidate her openly. I've always known her
family history and have always supported her through the issues
with them. But in the last year or so they've
become far more brazen and asinine. They come over to
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our house more often. They make messes all around the place.
Her mother acts like she's the fucking stepmother from Cinderella.
Her dad drinks all my fucking beer and empties out
half the fridge. Her brothers stop by occasionally to act
as mouthpieces for their parents. They practically trash the place
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and leave us to clean the mess. And where is
my fiancee in all this, quietly standing in the corner
practically shaking. I'm no fool here. There is legitimate trauma.
There's her need to feel love by them, and her
hoping they will appreciate her. Before one of you noble
commenters states the obvious. She's been in therapy for this
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for years. I've tried to establish bone dairies for nearly
two years. I've been trying to push these ass clowns away.
But this is her house she purchased, and no matter
of contributions financial or otherwise, will she let me have
a say on who comes into her house. She's been
beaten down mentally and emotionally by them for so long.
(02:30):
She has told me recently that she wants to earn
their approval, how they were right about her, how she
needs to be better for them. I've had too many
emotional conversations with tears and begging to count, hoping she
will take the steps to get better. But she's an adult.
I can't force her to do anything. I love her,
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but I can't help but feel so resentful of what
she's doing. It's agonizing watching someone you love, someone who
you know deserves so much better, openly destroy themselves for
people like her family. It's been painful watching her cry
herself to sleep one too many night because of them.
I've tried too many times to help her get out
(03:14):
of their clutches. But I have to think of the future.
Hot happens when we have kids, What happens when she
is postpartum and invites them over, What happens if there
is a medical emergency for either of us. What if
our finances get tight and they still demand money. This
is the in law family from hell, and I won't
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be able to avoid them. Tomorrow. I'm going to tell
her how I want to delay the wedding until firm
boundaries are established. If she resents, I walk, I can't
do it anymore. I refuse to watch a slow death
like this any further update. One the night after I
made the first post, I had decided that I was
(03:55):
going to have a heart to heart with my Finesse
about her family. However, she came back from work the
next day early, and I already was off that day,
so I initiated to talk a little sooner than I planned. Essentially,
I told her how this arrangement was not sustainable. I
did not feel comfortable marrying her due to how much
involvement in her life her family has, and I certainly
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did not feel comfortable bringing a child into this w
earled with them. I didn't want to tell her cold turkey,
no contact with them, but strict limitations to start with
on then coming over and what they can do around
the house. I also requested couple's therapy before marriage. She
wasn't happy. She was just staring angrily at me while
(04:40):
I spoke, then started yelling at me when I finished.
She told me I don't understand their dynamic, that it
worked for her. I told her that their abusive users
who will bleed her dry, and I have never seen
them show any decency to her. She told me she
just had to work harder for them to appreciate her.
I basically yelled at her that a pair paran's child
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shouldn't have to beg and plead and work for them
to be loved. I finally told her that she sets
limits with them where I walk. She was livid, and
since I was living in her house, I was kicked out.
So the past few days I've been staying in a
hotel and I've had my stuff taken out and put
into storage, and frankly, it's been great. I am going
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to stay with family for a few weeks around mid July,
and after that I'm going to go house searching for myself.
I have spent the last couple days relaxing, catching up
on movies and video games I haven't had time for,
and could go back from work to a quiet room
without her family tearing the place apart. Yesterday, however, things
came to a head. We have basically been no contact
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since she booted me out, but I know every Saturday
her family loves to spend the afternoon over and she
uses me as a shield from their abuse. However, in
a very petty move, I simply kept my phone muted
all day and played disco illusion. I knew she would
call back for help with her family, and at this
point point, pure resentment was kicking in for her, and
I wanted nothing you'll do with her issues. By the
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end of the night, she had sent me over a
dozen texts and finally two frantic voice mails begging me
to come home. I decided to come over to check
up on her. Long story short, she was sobbing in
the living room, and when I came to talk to her,
she was practical lee crushing my back, hugging me, and sobbing.
I gave her time to cool off and ask what happened.
(06:25):
Long story short, her parents and brother came by to
gift money from her and say horrible shit to her.
She wanted to have me come over to help, but
I was ignoring her. And when she tried to have
one of her friends help out and everyone basically said
fuck that, it all started clicking in for her. She
kicked her family out, but not before they said some
utterly vile shit to her. I won't repeat. She kept
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apologizing to me and told me over and over to
come home. I told her plainly that I had started
to build up heavy resentment towards her for some time,
and while I loved her and understand it was trauma
and not her being outright abusive, there was major issues
that would need to be addressed if we were to
move forward. One she sells the house and moves. We
(07:10):
make roughly the same amount of money, and we will
buy a house together. I am a grown asked man,
and I will not live in a house I have
no equal agency over to her family. Will never step
a foot in it. They will never come over. They
will be treated by me in a very threatening manner
if they try and come in. Three she gets a
new therapist and we start pre marital counseling, for she
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never makes me interact with her family. Five we will
go l C with her family right now, But make
no mistake, we are working towards full end C on
her end. I told her I love her, we have
been together for a while now and have beautiful memories together,
and I know she is suffering from abuse, but these
are non negotiable, and if she has a problem with
any of them, then we have to go out separate ways.
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She told me she's realized for a while now that
her family is toxic and unhealthy. She wants to make changes.
She has accepted, but some of these will take a
while to see through. For now, I'm going to stay
in the hotel until I head back to stay with
my family. She is welcome to come over, but I
have made it clear her house is not somewhere I
want to go. Her and I are both off tomorrow,
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so we will spend the day here and maybe go out.
This is obviously not over yet, but I might not
post anything else until mid August or so. Update two.
Despite all intentions of not updating until much later, with
the hopes of an improved relationship with my fiancee and
her establishing boundaries with her toxic family, we are now
(08:39):
broken up. Essentially. What happened was after last weekend, where
I left her for the time to deal with them herself.
She seemed to finally grasp the situation and was open
to changes, including boundaries and a possible move. We spent
Monday and Tuesday hanging out in my hotel that I
was staying in until I went back to my family.
For a couple weeks. The other night, she was being
(09:00):
very vague with texting when she originally was supposed to
come over. She came much later than expected, and I
knew something was up. She basically unloaded on me how
I was abusive, controlling, overly, demanding, and unsupportive. It took
me five fucking seconds to figure out she was repeating
verbatim some sort of rehearsed speech from her parents, And
(09:21):
to be honest, I was so agitated at this point,
despite making a huge gamble on her, I decided to
be a prick about it. I asked her if her
family told her to say this. She said they suggested
it to her, but she came up with it herself. Sure.
I asked her to explain in detail what I did.
She said I was living like a parasite off her.
(09:42):
I reminded her that I'm paying fifty to fifty for
her fucking mortgage, fifty to fifty for utilities and groceries
as well. I have my own car, I pay for
a job that makes just about as much as hers,
unlike her fucking leech parents who demand payments on the
weekly and raid the kitchen on the weekd I told
her to try again with something better. She looked flustered
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and said I was trying to isolate her. I kinda
smirked like a jackass and told her that I have
always supported her many friendships that she has destroyed on
her own because no one wants to deal with her
family or be used as a shield like me. I
was practically demanding to know at this point why she
is so hell bent on destroying her life for these people.
She just kind of shouted that I don't understand her
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family and she's just trying to earn their love back,
and was boshily ranting at that point. It's just so
staggering to see up close. I have ventured into a
few subreddits to get perspectives, and if you have any
familiarity with them, you'll see how people who are victims
of abuse by their own family can be so utterly
broken by it that it'll wreck their brain to where
they truly believe they are the problem and they deserve
(10:48):
the abuse. Well that's how she was. She was utterly
broken and didn't want help. She didn't want to get better,
She just wanted to get worse. It hit me like
a truck honestly the realization I really did feel like
a fool for trying, even if it was what I
was supposed to do in the first place. She was
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practically berserk at this point, and I was just mentally
exhausted and needed her to leave before someone called the police.
She finally left, but I had a few concerned neighbors
check on me. Some of her friends are aware, as
they have messaged me checking on the situation. I told
them the truth and that I just needed to be
alone to think what to do next. Right now, they
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have revealed that she has given them similar rants after
they expressed concern for her. One had even heard that
she may be possibly at risk of losing her job.
She is definitely having some sort of mental break. From
my understanding, she is now completely isolated. She is actually
sprinting into a horrible, lonely life right now. There's nothing
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I can do for her at this point, and as
selfish as it sounds, I'm just glad it's going to
be behind me. Update three. Things have kind wrapped up,
but there were some loose ends. I completely forgot to
change my mailing address, which I should have done asap,
so a couple important things got sent to her house.
I had to go pick them up, plus a final
couple of items I want f or my move that
(12:16):
I left there and decided I wanted to actually take.
She was being difficult and not responding to messages in
regards to them, so I had to go get them
from her myself. I brought a mutual friend just in case. Thankfully,
she was at least cooperative in letting me get my stuff,
and it wasn't much of an issue. Everything else was, though.
She had a lot of nasty things to say, telling
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me she was already sleeping around, telling me how happy
she was now that I was gone, telling me she's
finally free of me, how she's going to be so
much better off without me, a lot of generic insults
and horrible things you would commonly expect from a nasty breakup.
And you know what, it was so fucking obvious. It
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was a rehearsed script from her family, and you could
easily see how miserable she was. She looked like a mess,
like she hasn't slept in days. The house was a mess.
She wasn't even yelling it. She sounded so exhausted and
broken when she said it She didn't even smile when
she said anything, just a face contorted in hate and anger.
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She was not the woman I knew anymore. That person
was gone. When I was getting ready to leave, she
was still going on. I was fed up and told
her something along the lines of congratulations. Your friends are gone,
your human shields are gone, your engagement is over, your
support is gone. Anyone who ever treated you like a
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decent human being is gone. It's just you and your family.
I hope you're happy while they bleed you dry. It
probably didn't go like that, but something like it. She
just stood there, literally just stood there and looked at
me with indifference and walked away. As I walked out
the door. As we were leaving, the mutual friend, Tiffany
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asked if I was okay. I reassured her I was,
and I'm just trying to get myself set up to
go home next week. She also confirmed that she hears
my ex Tod lose her job for not showing up
for several days and basically ghosting them. They're going to
try an intervention next week and asked if I could participate.
But I'm not delaying my travel because, frankly, I just
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want a clean break. I know for a fact that
if I stay involved and only going to be witnessing
the slow decent to either a full break or a suicide,
I just can't do that. Despite all this, I'm actually
excited for the future, and I have realized that I
ignored way too many red flags at the beginning. Even
with everything that happened, I know I'll be doing good
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and I'm going to be all right. I expect this
to be my final update. I'm still in town until
Sunday afternoons, so something could happen while I'm still here,
but if anything does, it won't be exciting story. Two
parents asked me to give my sister a second chance
after she maxed out multiple credit cards using my identity,
but I'm torn between rehab and court. My sister, who
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is addicted to meth, opened up several credit cards in
my name and maxed them all out quickly. It looks
like they were used mainly at grocery stores and Target
slash Walmart. I found out about it because I was
served at court summons last week at my apartment. When
I looked at my credit report because I thought someone
had obviously screwed up I saw all sorts of accounts
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I didn't recognize, along with a collection account. The grand
total of everything is a little over fifteen thousand dollars
and it looks like all of the accounts were opened
around August slash September of last year. The address for
them all read at my sister's house, which is an
attached apartment at my parents house. I called my parents
immediately and told them what was going on, and they
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said they would talk with my sister. A couple days
go by and I call them again. They said they
were looking to get her into rehab as she confessed
she has a meth addiction. I had talked to a
friend in law school who said, my only remedy is
to get the police involved, unless I wanted my credit
to be ruined for years. When I told my mom that,
she said to hold off on it and to come
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to the house and we could all sit down and
discuss what to do. Yesterday, I go to my parents
house and I sat down with them and my sister.
She apologized for opening the accounts, and she told me
she was addicted to meth. She said she got my
social Security number from an old tax form. She said
she used the credit cards to buy gift cards and
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groceries slash household items to trade for meth. She said
she's using a lot less lately and she is thinking
about rehab. I told all of them what my friend
told me, and it turned into my mom telling me
not to do it. She suggested that I could pay
the money back over time, and when my sister was
able to, she could start making payments back to me.
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I've seen how drug addictions were, which is how I
know when is more like if and most likely won't
slash can't. I do want my sister to kick the methddiction,
but I'm also trying to buy a house when my
lease is up next year. My credit score right now
is in the high four hundreds, which would never qualify
me for a mortgage. I explained this to my parents,
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and I could tell they knew what it meant for me.
They knew just paying it off wouldn't solve my problem.
There are tons of ninety day late marks on my
credit the closed credit cards, the collection account, and now
the subpoena. I told them all of this and they
offered to pay it all off immediately, which still doesn't
solve the problem. They said to at least think about
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their offer and to please not call the police over it.
They said she needs rehab, not jail. This morning, my
dad called and told me he and my mom understand
my frustration, but to please give my sister a second chance.
They offered to basically buy a house for me, and
I'd repay them. The only thing I gave them was
that if I decided to go to the police, i'd
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give them a heads up first. I'm torn as to
what to do here. I do agree she probably needs
rehab more than jail, but she also committed multiple crimes
and used my identity. Then there's the fact that I
could be looking at a zero percent or very low
interest rate home loan for my parents to buy a house.
I'd imagine that would come with the stipulation that I
(18:24):
eat the loss on this. What's my course of action here?
I'd like my credit score to go back up, but
there's a human element involved. Update one. A couple of
days after my up, I decided I was just going
to make the police report and let my parents know
I was doing it. Not a lot happened at first,
and I was told an investigator would take over the case.
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What was nice was that the police report did allow
me to knock everything off of my credit report. My
credit score shot up about two hundred and seventy points.
I now have literally zero bad marks on my credit.
Last week, I spoke with an investigator for about five
minutes and let them know I didn't lose any money
out of the situation and my credit was back to normal.
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He told me to keep watching my credit just in
case it happens again. Didn't think a lot more of it.
About two hours later, my mom calls screaming at me
that my sister is going to jail. She basically said
I was a piece of trash for sending her to
jail when she's trying to get help. My sister talked
a lot about getting help, but never went to rehab
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or even really looked into it. Apparently, my sister did
confess to everything to the investigator and was arrested at
my parents house. She spent a grand total of one
night in jail and was released the next day with
a court date in August. My parents got her a lawyer,
and it sounds like she's just going to get court
supervision with restitution and mandatory drug rehab, which is probably
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the best case scenario all things considered. My parents will
pay the restitution, I'm sure, but that didn't stop my
mom from expl floating at me. I was uninvited to
our family's July fourth celebration because my mom said it
would be difficult for my sister to see me. That's cool,
I guess let's coddle the meth user who stole my
identity to get more meth. I know I'm sort of ranting,
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but it's just frustrating. The legal system seems to have
done its job perfectly. It's my family who is being unreasonable.