My husband and I have been married for over 6 years and have 3 kids. We have had our fair share of ups and downs but one thing that I feel that is taking a huge toll on me is our families. He has a large family of 7 siblings and I have 5 siblings and live near my dad and step mom.
I am in school full time to become a teacher and my husband works long hours and every day I seems like family calls for one reason or another. Please don't get me wrong, I love our whole family, but for the past year my husband's sister has called weekly to ask if we/I can babysit her children. we have had to cut it off a few times because of the frequency of it and she will stop for a month and then is right back at it. However that is not all.
Sometimes my husband's sisters call to cause drama and they thrive on he said she said issues and put us in the forefront. It causes my husband to stress out and it just makes me mad. His other sister has a drug problem and calls to ask for narcotics (recently after my husband had an emergency appendectomy) and her drug addiction has caused us many fights and near separations. She has tried to get him to hide things from me regarding her addictions because she knows I don't agree.
It feels like his family calls quite often for favors and if we say we cannot meet the favors in some way than we are chastened. My family isn't so demanding with favors but they wonder why I never call, they think I don't like them if we don't text or talk daily. I am not a big phone talker and have told them this several times and I am very busy with school.
I am beginning to cringe whenever our phone rings. I will just turn it off for the whole day because I am honestly just exhausted by our families. My husband agrees and empathizes to a large degree but if we bring up to our families our feelings they act like we are moody, or his family thinks it is all me and I am just a psycho and my family thinks it is Mark keeping me from them and that he is controlling. It is none of that.
We just want to live our lives normally and often times we both are a little reclusive. I don't understand what is wrong with that? We love to help family but they begin to take advantage. I have begged my husband to move and he disagrees and says our children will be heartbroken and feels like we are stable here. I fear our marriage will end because of our families being too involved if we don't take a huge step in some way.
It is not as easy as you think to tell our families to back off but this is something we have both created. Can anyone else relate? How do you cope with large and demanding families?
I am in school full time to become a teacher and my husband works long hours and every day I seems like family calls for one reason or another. Please don't get me wrong, I love our whole family, but for the past year my husband's sister has called weekly to ask if we/I can babysit her children. we have had to cut it off a few times because of the frequency of it and she will stop for a month and then is right back at it. However that is not all.
Sometimes my husband's sisters call to cause drama and they thrive on he said she said issues and put us in the forefront. It causes my husband to stress out and it just makes me mad. His other sister has a drug problem and calls to ask for narcotics (recently after my husband had an emergency appendectomy) and her drug addiction has caused us many fights and near separations. She has tried to get him to hide things from me regarding her addictions because she knows I don't agree.
It feels like his family calls quite often for favors and if we say we cannot meet the favors in some way than we are chastened. My family isn't so demanding with favors but they wonder why I never call, they think I don't like them if we don't text or talk daily. I am not a big phone talker and have told them this several times and I am very busy with school.
I am beginning to cringe whenever our phone rings. I will just turn it off for the whole day because I am honestly just exhausted by our families. My husband agrees and empathizes to a large degree but if we bring up to our families our feelings they act like we are moody, or his family thinks it is all me and I am just a psycho and my family thinks it is Mark keeping me from them and that he is controlling. It is none of that.
We just want to live our lives normally and often times we both are a little reclusive. I don't understand what is wrong with that? We love to help family but they begin to take advantage. I have begged my husband to move and he disagrees and says our children will be heartbroken and feels like we are stable here. I fear our marriage will end because of our families being too involved if we don't take a huge step in some way.
It is not as easy as you think to tell our families to back off but this is something we have both created. Can anyone else relate? How do you cope with large and demanding families?
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