Let's say a couple were married and both parties were beloved by both families. Let's say that the marriage dissolves, through no one's particular fault, just through the usual reasons of stress and children and geography and growing apart. Now, let's say that the husband's parents take in the wife and kid -- and the wife's family lives in the same city -- until the wife finishes out her school semester and gets her own apartment. Is this a damaging thing to their relationship with their son?
My aunt says "yes" because it makes the husband feel unwelcome in his own family. My uncle says "yes" because, when the same thing happened to him, it ended his relationship with his parents. My analyst says "yes" because it alienates the husband from his family, and perhaps might be a little bit of a "fuck you" from the wife. The husband has moved to another city and avoids the parents. I think the parents have an agenda that has nothing to do with the happiness of the couple.
I am also very happy that I don't live in Texas and so am not sucked into this any further than this post.
Monday, March 09, 2009
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13 comments:
Unless this cast of characters joins up with a Rabbi and a dog missing one if its paws and walks into a bar, I have no idea. Sticky situation...
Most likely "yes," but it all depends on the break up scenario. If there really aren't any hard feelings (beyond a general sadness that the relationship ended), it could be just fine. Lots of people end up friends with their exes. Not me, mind you, but "people."
Dr. No, how about 2 bloodhounds (who are being split up by the separation -- there is the real tragedy!) and a self-proclaimed faith healer? The faith healer is the wife's father, which is probably part of the reason she didn't go stay with her parent.
GayProf, I've heard of those mysterious people who stay friends with their exes. What's up with that? In this case, they have to remain vaguely civil since they have a child. Not that a child is any prerequisite to civil behavior of exes.
So, would the ex-husband prefer that his child live on the streets instead of with hir grandparents (his parents)? Seriously--if a parent of a minor child moves out and leaves that child behind, he really has very little standing to criticize the living arrangements of the family he abandoned.
Seriously--it seems to me more likely that the fact he "has moved to another city and avoids the parents" that is damaging to his relationship with his parents. Do men ever bear any responsibility whatsoever for their family and emotional lives? I guess not when there's an ex-wife or a mother to blame. Yegads.
Historiann.com
Sorry about all of the "seriously"s--clearly, my jaw dropped and hit the floor, and I'm having trouble with my typing now.
Seriously.
Only if the son wants it to be.
Ann hit it almost 100%. Son moved to another city and avoids the parents - which means he's avoiding his CHILDREN, which is unforgivable. And those grandparents are wily. They will always have access to those kids - something that is a big problem in many divorces.
While the grandparents may indeed have ulterior motive, it's still nice that they've taken in those in need for a few months. (Who knows what the wife's relationship with her own parents is like?)
And the husband's leaving the son behind is what sounds most damaging to me...
Thank you, everyone, for your input.
I confess that my initial reaction to the situation was very much like Ann's and Lori's. Then, the other people mentioned in the post gave me a different perspective, and I began to wonder if I was being fair. (I also began to wonder why I care, but the people involved are family, so there is that impulse.)
Lori, you are so right: The grandparents' ulterior motives are to hang on to the grandbaby. Since he is an adorable little grandbaby, that's wholly understandable; but their advice to the couple in question may not be in anyone's best interest except keeping the kid near them. Otherwise, they see themselves as helping out a loved on in need (she did prove to be the sanest one in the entire extended kin network).
I fear I have made the husband out to be more of a bad guy than he actually is. In his defense, he didn't up and abandon the wife and kid, as I seem to have implied. His job kept sending him to the other city, which is about a 5 hour drive away from where they were living. So, when he and the wife agreed to separate, he decided to move closer to his work.
They decided to have the wife keep custody of the kid to prevent removing him from his daycare and because she would have a larger support network with both families in the same city. Although, I also think that she is a bit more experienced at the work of taking care of the child being as she has had to do most of it anyway.
In the wife's defense, she's staying with his parents because, as dysfunctional as they are (he does have very good reasons for keeping his distance from them), hers are worse. See my comment about self-proclaimed faith healers above. His family has the garden variety, WASP dysfunction. Hers has restraining orders and ex-cons with sexual assault and attempted murder records.
Also in her defense -- and Ann nailed it here -- the husband is emotionally distant in general. Whether the bad marriage led to the distance or vice versa -- well, that's what goes on inside a marriage (so I hear). But the dudes in his family were brought up in that old school of stoic masculinity that does leave all of the emotional caretaking to their wives. In this new school, that sort of bullshit leads to divorce.
But, now I've written another post in the comments!
Thank you again!
(Just to go for the dirty observation: my word verification is "fallus.")
Sometimes couples reconcile, and then people like the grandparents wind up looking like heroes, or at least don't have to make up with the re-instated daughter-in-law they cut off. And yes, the son has to take responsibility for his relationship with his parents now he's grown.
I hope that it all works out well - as well as it can in this kind of situation. That's quite a story!
And, no, no one knows what goes on inside the marriage but them...
I feel an obligation to update on this story. I finally spoke to the husband in this scenario. He has a tendency to avoid everyone when he has problems because, first of all, he is a dude, and dudes tend to think that talking about your problems means that you are too weak to handle them (thank you bullshit concepts of masculinity). He avoids, too, because he doesn't trust the motivations of some of the people in whom he has confided in the past. He has good reasons for this.
Anyway, I finally spoke to the husband, and he says that he is actually quite grateful that his parents took in his wife and son. He had been very close to his own grandparents, so he would like his son to be close to his son's grandparents.
Something similar could very well have happened to me, IF my marriage had failed while I was still impoverished/in school/etc, and IF I had lived in the same city as my former in-laws...
[I always held the cherished position of "favorite daughter-in-law"]
I don't fault grandparents for wanting to hang onto that grandbaby - my own parents are grateful for every millisecond they get w/my son (which is a significant block of time, thank goddess, but somehow never NEVER enough!)
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