Post by Cicero on Jul 9, 2005 11:17:35 GMT -8
Hello everyone. I am so glad I stumbled onto this forum. I have felt alone and insane with this for a long time. I cannot tell anyone else this story, but the anonymity of the Internet makes it possible to finally get this off of my chest(it is really really long and probably pretty boring so I won't hold it against you if you don't read it):
I am engaged to the woman of my dreams. She is smart, successful, kind, beautiful, and possibly a victim of covert incest. Her family is a well to do family, her father and brother are lawyers, her mother a housewife and they live on a lake in a gated community. I on the other hand come from a meat and potato working class family. We met nine years ago and it was sheer joy from the moment we laid eyes on each other. We fell completely in love with each other and remain that way to this day.
When we first met her parents insisted upon driving by my parents home. They drove by and as soon as her father saw the house he called it a dump and told her she was not to see me anymore. A week later he told her I was "too fat, too poor, and too criminal." (I had a couple of minor misdemeanors from my younger, stupider days which dear old Dad looked up in the courthouse, his claim was that he was working on a case with a similar last name. )
We of course kept dating clandestinely and a month later she was off to college so we decided to bide our time. We dated and they kind of figured it out but didn't really say too much about it. In order to gain their approval she told them that I was attending a four year university but the truth was I had just started a two year college with plans to transfer after a few semesters. On New Years Eve of that year I inadvertently left my wallet at her parent's house. They found it and of course rifled through it finding my two year college ID card. He woke her up, slapped her in the face (she was Daddy's little girl so this was quite traumatic for her) and said that she could be friends with me but she could not date me and I was not welcome at their house. In fairness they had some legitimate complaints about me, I was a full time student without employment at the time and often drove her car the 30 miles to school 3 days a week. I had taken up unofficial residence in the off campus apartment they were paying for.
We decided after much discussion that we would resume dating in secret and be careful that they did not discover that we were both still staying in that apartment. This went on for a time. They occasionally complained to her that I never referred to them as Mr. or Mrs. so and so and never used sir or Ma'am when I saw them briefly while picking her up or giving her a lift to visit them (they didn't trust her to drive herself anywhere).
All of this took a very heavy toll on me. I became depressed, withdrawn and bitter. My grades plummeted and I did nothing but watch television and eat. My fiance was also prone to fits of violent rage toward me at the time.
Well we worked our way through her rage and my depression. I was attending a four school by the time she started graduate studies and of course I moved with her again unofficially to graduate school. We dated and cohabited in hiding again through both years of her graduate studies.
Things improved with her a bit at this point.
I spent the summer after her graduate studies visiting her at her parents house, boating, fishing, and was even invited to dinner quite often.
That fall she started her PHD program. They invited me to dinner over Thanksgiving break and abruptly took back the invitation. This was when they sank their teeth into me again. They hammered her with insults toward me and once again forbade her to date me or they would withhold funding for her PHD program. They ordered her to date a classmate she met that showed interest in her. One Sunday she told me to leave and proceeded to do as they had told her. For two weeks we were apart. This was the longest two weeks of my life. I was miserable, depressed, and angry.
Well, her feelings for me won out over her desire to please her parents and we got back together once again in secret. It was easier this time because we live 150 miles away. Last summer her brother got married. They wanted to pick her up to go to the city he was getting married in for a week. It was about three hours away and we had planned to go to an amusement park on the day they decided to pick her up, our plans were made well in advance of their proclamation of her schedule for that week. She said she would go to the amusement park and then drive herself to the wedding in time for the rehearsal dinner and such. They went completely off the deep end and threatened to stop paying for her apartment so she couldn't finish her PHD. She of course complied. (Bear in mind she was 25 years old by this point.) A few days before they were to pick her up she finally decided to tell them what she thought. She called her Mother and went off on her. Eight years into a relationship you get to see their best and worst sides. I had never seen this side. She yelled about the control, the manipulation, and dared them to ever threaten her with her education again. She also demanded her tax forms so she could file for financial aid to pay for her own apartment and demanded that her credit card bill be forwarded to her so she could pay it herself. Of course the Niagara Falls manipulation tactic came into effect. Her Mother sobbed and cried and begged her to let them pay for her apartment and so on. She acquiesced on the support thing and told them that that she was dating me whether they liked it or not. I resumed driving her 150 miles each way to visit them and was very polite to her Mother. (Her Father would never come out to greet her or see her off.)
Things were good (relatively) until this week. She went to a family reunion with them and according to them there weren't enough beds in the place for me to come along. (of course her cousins brought along their spouses and people they were dating.)
On Wednesday night my fiance and her cousins went out to a bar. She got pretty drunk and some guy was hitting on her. Her cousins disappeared and she was left with no ride home. The guy had a cell phone and offered to call a cab for her but only if she gave him her telephone number. (Nice guy eh?) She gave it to him and he instead suggested they go for a walk before he called the cab. Just then her parents showed up to pick her up and before she walked away he kissed her. She was quite drunk and probably allowed the kiss to go on for too long. She called me the next day and told me what had happened and after my initial knee jerk reaction I told here we would talk about it when she got home. She called me at work twice that day apologizing profusely. Well, her parents of course saw this as a golden opportunity and began sand bagging me again thinking that there were cracks in the foundation of our relationship. Every time I have spoken to my fiance since that night her Mother always comes up with an excuse to be in the room and orders her off the phone. To my surprise my fiance complied. LIKE A FREAKING TEENAGER. She called me this morning and in between interruptions from her Mother she told me her Mother had told her not to get into the hot tub"because she might fall getting out." Again she complied. While we spoke this morning my fiance started talking about the idea of getting married and how much of a pipe dream it was. She said her family would never support it and mine wasn't wealthy enough to support it. She also talked about the fact that I am still finishing college when I should be done by now and basically reiterated all of her parents thoughts about me as if they were her own. (we have had so many discussions of the thoughts her parents drill into her head and convince her that the thoughts are her own) I finally had enough and told her exactly what I thought of her Wednesday night escapade and what I thought about her family. I told her if she wasn't happy with me to say so and we would part ways. She apologized and admitted that her parents were manipulating her again.
Now that I have told that incredibly long story above I will tell you why I think she has been covertly molested.
First, my fiance's Mother is obsessed with her. She calls sometimes 8 or nine times a day.
Every time they get upset with her they drone on about how she is hurting them and how they were up all night crying.
Her Mother when she was young used to lie on the bed with her and say they were lovers on the nights her Father's poker nights.
Her Mother always drones on about how they are best friends and that she can tell her anything.
They have raised guilt tripping to an art form.
Her Mother gets jealous of mine and her Father's relationship with my fiance.
Her Mother manipulates my fiance's Father to the point of rage about me. (I think she tells him lies about me as well but I can't say for sure)
The list above is just a few of the symptoms.
The real stink of all of this is that when we are away from her parents my fiance and I have a healthy very strong relationship. We are best friends that also happen to be in love. She is the first person I tell about my problems or successes. She confides in me about every thing. We communicate very well and our friends often ask us for relationship advice because they can see how well we work together. Rarely do we argue and when we do it ends up in a very constructive and frank conversation. Even this morning's telephone conversation/ argument turned into a constructive discussion.
I am finally getting over the damage her parents have done to me psychologically. I am a very strong resilient person. I am going back to classes this fall, have a good well paying job in the banking industry and am in the early planning stages of starting my own business.
I know how complicated abuse can be. I was physically and emotionally abused as a child and without therapy I faced and overcame my demons. I let go of my rage and forgave my family. We are in the process of building a good relationship today.
I do not know how to fix this though. I try to point out the issues with her family and it comes across as bitterness on my part rather than a genuine desire to move forward. I often wonder to myself if it isn't some how just bitterness.
Now the BS appears to be starting again. I am finally putting my life together and here come the future
in-laws. I am all ready starting to question myself again. The old thoughts that maybe they are right about me are creeping in and my anxiety levels are going up.
I am considering what I call the "nuclear option." That is to tell them all of the nasty secrets she has told me about them and to tell them the entire truth about my relationship with their daughter. I know they would cut her off, and we could be free of them for the rest of our lives. The problem with this is that she loves them. I could not bring myself to hurt her in that way even if I wanted to.
Well, wow this got long. My apologies. I wrote it out mainly to get it off my chest. It has been therapeutic. If you actually had the staying power to get to the end of my post I admire your fortitude and invite you to comment, ask, questions or share any insights you might have.
I am engaged to the woman of my dreams. She is smart, successful, kind, beautiful, and possibly a victim of covert incest. Her family is a well to do family, her father and brother are lawyers, her mother a housewife and they live on a lake in a gated community. I on the other hand come from a meat and potato working class family. We met nine years ago and it was sheer joy from the moment we laid eyes on each other. We fell completely in love with each other and remain that way to this day.
When we first met her parents insisted upon driving by my parents home. They drove by and as soon as her father saw the house he called it a dump and told her she was not to see me anymore. A week later he told her I was "too fat, too poor, and too criminal." (I had a couple of minor misdemeanors from my younger, stupider days which dear old Dad looked up in the courthouse, his claim was that he was working on a case with a similar last name. )
We of course kept dating clandestinely and a month later she was off to college so we decided to bide our time. We dated and they kind of figured it out but didn't really say too much about it. In order to gain their approval she told them that I was attending a four year university but the truth was I had just started a two year college with plans to transfer after a few semesters. On New Years Eve of that year I inadvertently left my wallet at her parent's house. They found it and of course rifled through it finding my two year college ID card. He woke her up, slapped her in the face (she was Daddy's little girl so this was quite traumatic for her) and said that she could be friends with me but she could not date me and I was not welcome at their house. In fairness they had some legitimate complaints about me, I was a full time student without employment at the time and often drove her car the 30 miles to school 3 days a week. I had taken up unofficial residence in the off campus apartment they were paying for.
We decided after much discussion that we would resume dating in secret and be careful that they did not discover that we were both still staying in that apartment. This went on for a time. They occasionally complained to her that I never referred to them as Mr. or Mrs. so and so and never used sir or Ma'am when I saw them briefly while picking her up or giving her a lift to visit them (they didn't trust her to drive herself anywhere).
All of this took a very heavy toll on me. I became depressed, withdrawn and bitter. My grades plummeted and I did nothing but watch television and eat. My fiance was also prone to fits of violent rage toward me at the time.
Well we worked our way through her rage and my depression. I was attending a four school by the time she started graduate studies and of course I moved with her again unofficially to graduate school. We dated and cohabited in hiding again through both years of her graduate studies.
Things improved with her a bit at this point.
I spent the summer after her graduate studies visiting her at her parents house, boating, fishing, and was even invited to dinner quite often.
That fall she started her PHD program. They invited me to dinner over Thanksgiving break and abruptly took back the invitation. This was when they sank their teeth into me again. They hammered her with insults toward me and once again forbade her to date me or they would withhold funding for her PHD program. They ordered her to date a classmate she met that showed interest in her. One Sunday she told me to leave and proceeded to do as they had told her. For two weeks we were apart. This was the longest two weeks of my life. I was miserable, depressed, and angry.
Well, her feelings for me won out over her desire to please her parents and we got back together once again in secret. It was easier this time because we live 150 miles away. Last summer her brother got married. They wanted to pick her up to go to the city he was getting married in for a week. It was about three hours away and we had planned to go to an amusement park on the day they decided to pick her up, our plans were made well in advance of their proclamation of her schedule for that week. She said she would go to the amusement park and then drive herself to the wedding in time for the rehearsal dinner and such. They went completely off the deep end and threatened to stop paying for her apartment so she couldn't finish her PHD. She of course complied. (Bear in mind she was 25 years old by this point.) A few days before they were to pick her up she finally decided to tell them what she thought. She called her Mother and went off on her. Eight years into a relationship you get to see their best and worst sides. I had never seen this side. She yelled about the control, the manipulation, and dared them to ever threaten her with her education again. She also demanded her tax forms so she could file for financial aid to pay for her own apartment and demanded that her credit card bill be forwarded to her so she could pay it herself. Of course the Niagara Falls manipulation tactic came into effect. Her Mother sobbed and cried and begged her to let them pay for her apartment and so on. She acquiesced on the support thing and told them that that she was dating me whether they liked it or not. I resumed driving her 150 miles each way to visit them and was very polite to her Mother. (Her Father would never come out to greet her or see her off.)
Things were good (relatively) until this week. She went to a family reunion with them and according to them there weren't enough beds in the place for me to come along. (of course her cousins brought along their spouses and people they were dating.)
On Wednesday night my fiance and her cousins went out to a bar. She got pretty drunk and some guy was hitting on her. Her cousins disappeared and she was left with no ride home. The guy had a cell phone and offered to call a cab for her but only if she gave him her telephone number. (Nice guy eh?) She gave it to him and he instead suggested they go for a walk before he called the cab. Just then her parents showed up to pick her up and before she walked away he kissed her. She was quite drunk and probably allowed the kiss to go on for too long. She called me the next day and told me what had happened and after my initial knee jerk reaction I told here we would talk about it when she got home. She called me at work twice that day apologizing profusely. Well, her parents of course saw this as a golden opportunity and began sand bagging me again thinking that there were cracks in the foundation of our relationship. Every time I have spoken to my fiance since that night her Mother always comes up with an excuse to be in the room and orders her off the phone. To my surprise my fiance complied. LIKE A FREAKING TEENAGER. She called me this morning and in between interruptions from her Mother she told me her Mother had told her not to get into the hot tub"because she might fall getting out." Again she complied. While we spoke this morning my fiance started talking about the idea of getting married and how much of a pipe dream it was. She said her family would never support it and mine wasn't wealthy enough to support it. She also talked about the fact that I am still finishing college when I should be done by now and basically reiterated all of her parents thoughts about me as if they were her own. (we have had so many discussions of the thoughts her parents drill into her head and convince her that the thoughts are her own) I finally had enough and told her exactly what I thought of her Wednesday night escapade and what I thought about her family. I told her if she wasn't happy with me to say so and we would part ways. She apologized and admitted that her parents were manipulating her again.
Now that I have told that incredibly long story above I will tell you why I think she has been covertly molested.
First, my fiance's Mother is obsessed with her. She calls sometimes 8 or nine times a day.
Every time they get upset with her they drone on about how she is hurting them and how they were up all night crying.
Her Mother when she was young used to lie on the bed with her and say they were lovers on the nights her Father's poker nights.
Her Mother always drones on about how they are best friends and that she can tell her anything.
They have raised guilt tripping to an art form.
Her Mother gets jealous of mine and her Father's relationship with my fiance.
Her Mother manipulates my fiance's Father to the point of rage about me. (I think she tells him lies about me as well but I can't say for sure)
The list above is just a few of the symptoms.
The real stink of all of this is that when we are away from her parents my fiance and I have a healthy very strong relationship. We are best friends that also happen to be in love. She is the first person I tell about my problems or successes. She confides in me about every thing. We communicate very well and our friends often ask us for relationship advice because they can see how well we work together. Rarely do we argue and when we do it ends up in a very constructive and frank conversation. Even this morning's telephone conversation/ argument turned into a constructive discussion.
I am finally getting over the damage her parents have done to me psychologically. I am a very strong resilient person. I am going back to classes this fall, have a good well paying job in the banking industry and am in the early planning stages of starting my own business.
I know how complicated abuse can be. I was physically and emotionally abused as a child and without therapy I faced and overcame my demons. I let go of my rage and forgave my family. We are in the process of building a good relationship today.
I do not know how to fix this though. I try to point out the issues with her family and it comes across as bitterness on my part rather than a genuine desire to move forward. I often wonder to myself if it isn't some how just bitterness.
Now the BS appears to be starting again. I am finally putting my life together and here come the future
in-laws. I am all ready starting to question myself again. The old thoughts that maybe they are right about me are creeping in and my anxiety levels are going up.
I am considering what I call the "nuclear option." That is to tell them all of the nasty secrets she has told me about them and to tell them the entire truth about my relationship with their daughter. I know they would cut her off, and we could be free of them for the rest of our lives. The problem with this is that she loves them. I could not bring myself to hurt her in that way even if I wanted to.
Well, wow this got long. My apologies. I wrote it out mainly to get it off my chest. It has been therapeutic. If you actually had the staying power to get to the end of my post I admire your fortitude and invite you to comment, ask, questions or share any insights you might have.