As it was happening to us we couldn’t understand why and said nothing trying to give him time and just prayed about his attitude toward us for 7months. I never spoke negatively to my daughter about her spouse. We did suggest he go get any job to get them some savings for when they leave. That did not happen. And in hindsight to everyone it looks that plan.B was most likely plan.A all along. I have told my daughter it’s not our life or our decision what they do and since we aren’t included in the conversation of her future that it is up to her to talk to her husband and get answers on what the plans for her health were. She did get him to ask his mother just Thursday if she could take care of her if needed and when I was told she will be on call, I felt a huge relief and did my best to comfort her. I looked up things on the internet with her to see where she is going. I feel I have gone above and beyond. The $ we have given have no strings. Our daughter became ill after their marriage and is very sad situation. I am helpless from here on and have only insured she has a good start the best I can. We do feel he is manipulating her illness for his financial security but regardless there is nothing we have said or can do about it without my daughter feeling hurt. He knows we will never let her suffer. I can’t just show up on moving day and start therapy programs by spending his money. It has to be my daughter to do that and she is too timid to insure her health doesn’t deteriorate.
As for the questions of their spirituality, we are Catholic and he is episcopalian. He had always gone to church with us when he was around, the 3yrs he was away he did not go to church unless his mother insisted or else I visited they came with me. Now he goes to his church rarely but because of his mother. She was very against him marrying a Catholic. My daughter hurts too much to be in church. She reads her bible daily and watches mass on tv but I can’t do anymore for either of them but pray for them. They are adults, I can’t do anymore.
This situation is terrible. I still love my son in law and pray so much for them both. I only want to know how to move forward now that this has been done in such a disrespectful way to us.
I hope to be able to say no next time he wants $. Now that he has a job I’m sure medical bills can be financed by him. He will go on to be a high paid lawyer in future and can pay his own way from here on out without using up our future. My life will not end and I don’t plan on curling up in grief. I’m only sad hurt and concerned for my daughter and what a future relationship will be like between us all.
I would not be so sure he’s going to wind up with a high-paying position, as the law is a notoriously competitive field. Law grads who fail to pass the bar exam actually tend to do a bit worse than graduates with only a bachelor’s degree for the first five years or so, although they do tend to catch up and do better eventually. Even those who pass the bar exam, though, don’t have a median salary as far above the median salary of those with only bachelor’s degrees as people imagine. It can take many years of career advancement before they get into the salary range that people imagine lawyers make.
Yes, I think it is time to pay bills having to do with your daughter’s health directly (or transportation to see you or electronic access to communicate with you and others she holds dear), and after that direct your son-in-law who is no longer a student to take out loans from a lending institution if he and your daughter need money. You have given them a great deal with no strings attached, it is time to draw a line, and his attainment of a law degree is a reasonable time to draw it.
If he talks to your daughter in the contemptuous way you describe, their marriage is headed towards the rocks. Since your daughter has time on her hands, you might want to give her books such as those written by John Gottman, so she can learn what kind of communication to accept or not accept. You are right; she needs some help in advocating for herself. She needs some way to be in contact with her support system outside her new home–not just you, but her friends and other relatives, too. I think I’d concentrate on that.
The other thing to do is to take care of yourself. Of course this is upsetting. Don’t try to beat yourself into not being upset about it. Try to get in a place where you can put it in God’s hands, take one day at a time, and follow the Serenity Prayer path of doing what you can do and accepting what you can’t. That is a classic prayer for those who have found they are powerless over the evils in this world, and between that and the prayers that meditate on the Passion, it is among those things that helps us to align ourselves with God in a way that makes enduring such a situation possible.
*God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.*
