Mods, please move this if it belongs in another section.
My fiancée has PTSD and a lot of it has to do with her family - her mother failed to protect her, our of denial, from CSA by a now deceased neighor/authority figure, a (now deceased) uncle who lived under the same roof was a raging alcoholic (didn't physically assault her AFAIK, but repeatedly verbally abused her, her sister and her mother), she was heavily parentified and was a breadwinner before she was a teenager, etc. Deadbeat dad did emotional gaslighting (telling her how much he loves her and then ghosting for years at a time) - he's largely out of the picture as my fiancée herself doesn't him at the wedding and so on.
Naturally, I take a dim view of her family - thankfully they live several hours away. I've set some boundaries - no child of mine that we may have can be left under MIL's unsupervised care (fiancée did not object), we've agreed none of her relatives will ever move in with us, etc. Still, in many ways she's still acting as their parent, and is now in her hometown trying to sort out the legal mess that is the family home (MIL, SIL, GMIL, an aunt and multiple cousins live there). MIL doesn't lift a finger, SIL (a college-educated adult, but has never lived outside the family home) took ages to get copies of the legal paperwork. The other night I asked to have a look at the scanned documents, I read them and, long story short, I realized neither MIL, SIL nor my fiancée seemed to have even read them, nor have they had a lawyer look at it. Maybe it's learned helplessness by MIL and SIL. I'm angry and upset that my fiancée is still taking up the burden of her family's problems - a lot of her insomnia is to do with worrying about MIL and so on, then she sleeps until noon and has a hard time concentrating on anything. I'm at a loss as to what to do, part of me wishes she would break contact with them, on the other hand she has no friends of her own here, and SIL is not so bad, at least compared to the others. Also, I worry that if she's not ready to take care of herself first (though she recently agreed to try therapy), then it's hard to believe she's ready to be a mother - on the other hand, while it's not quite "now or never," we can't just wait and wait. Thoughts? Advice? Insights?
My fiancée has PTSD and a lot of it has to do with her family - her mother failed to protect her, our of denial, from CSA by a now deceased neighor/authority figure, a (now deceased) uncle who lived under the same roof was a raging alcoholic (didn't physically assault her AFAIK, but repeatedly verbally abused her, her sister and her mother), she was heavily parentified and was a breadwinner before she was a teenager, etc. Deadbeat dad did emotional gaslighting (telling her how much he loves her and then ghosting for years at a time) - he's largely out of the picture as my fiancée herself doesn't him at the wedding and so on.
Naturally, I take a dim view of her family - thankfully they live several hours away. I've set some boundaries - no child of mine that we may have can be left under MIL's unsupervised care (fiancée did not object), we've agreed none of her relatives will ever move in with us, etc. Still, in many ways she's still acting as their parent, and is now in her hometown trying to sort out the legal mess that is the family home (MIL, SIL, GMIL, an aunt and multiple cousins live there). MIL doesn't lift a finger, SIL (a college-educated adult, but has never lived outside the family home) took ages to get copies of the legal paperwork. The other night I asked to have a look at the scanned documents, I read them and, long story short, I realized neither MIL, SIL nor my fiancée seemed to have even read them, nor have they had a lawyer look at it. Maybe it's learned helplessness by MIL and SIL. I'm angry and upset that my fiancée is still taking up the burden of her family's problems - a lot of her insomnia is to do with worrying about MIL and so on, then she sleeps until noon and has a hard time concentrating on anything. I'm at a loss as to what to do, part of me wishes she would break contact with them, on the other hand she has no friends of her own here, and SIL is not so bad, at least compared to the others. Also, I worry that if she's not ready to take care of herself first (though she recently agreed to try therapy), then it's hard to believe she's ready to be a mother - on the other hand, while it's not quite "now or never," we can't just wait and wait. Thoughts? Advice? Insights?
