How do you deal with those you cannot trust?

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EasterJoy

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There is a family in my husband’s family who is moved away but is going to be closer to us again soon. I wrote something that offended them many years back (10?). They–wife, husband, at least one of the children–exploded in rage, which they expressed to my husband, telling him they felt sorry for him that he was married to me. I tried to apologize, but it didn’t work. My husband insisted that I leave the matter alone, which I did. I never said a word about it to his mother (she was a widow).

I was then shunned for two or three years. They would literally drop my mother-in-law off at our house and not come in with her, even though she was in her late 70s, had bags to carry, and we had snow and ice on the sidewalk. If at all possible, when they came to pick her up they would arrange to do it when I was not at the house. If they did come in, they would never accept hospitality, but always had a reason they had to leave again immediately. (This was not their habit before the incident that upset them) I would find out occasionally that they had arranged to have lunch with my husband or had invited the rest of the family to some performance their kids were in, but I had not been told until after it was over. That kind of thing.

Eventually, things thawed, and they stopped finding excuses why they could not attend family gatherings at our house. Nothing was ever said about it to me.

I don’t trust them. I walk on eggshells when they are around. Maybe the original incident is ancient history to them, maybe they still hold it against me; I don’t know. I cannot know. I don’t dare ask, because that kind of question is how this all got started the first time around. I would rather not go into the details, but suffice it to say I broached the subject of how to raise a question about something that bothered me with one of them, and the one I asked got livid at me, instead, but behind my back, to my husband, not to me. On that account, even if I were to get a direct answer from them, I don’t think it would be reasonable to believe them.

Does anyone else have experiences to share along these lines? They will be here for a family gathering that we are hosting over the holidays (I’d rather not say when), and I’m already stressed out about it. I wish I could cancel it, but unless we magically have a major freezing rain storm at exactly that time, that isn’t going to happen.
 
I guess it really depends on what you did. Unless it’s something truly unforgivable, I think it’s time to clear the air and move on. That would mean bringing it up.

As much as you don’t trust them, depending on what you did, they may not trust you or think that you could possibly be looking at the situation with a more grown up perspective.

Or, is what you said really no big deal and these are just nutty people? That could be the case too.
 
EasterJoy said:
There is a family in my husband’s family who is moved away but is going to be closer to us again soon. I wrote something that offended them many years back (10?). They–wife, husband, at least one of the children–exploded in rage, which they expressed to my husband, telling him they felt sorry for him that he was married to me. I tried to apologize, but it didn’t work. My husband insisted that I leave the matter alone, which I did. I never said a word about it to his mother (she was a widow).

I was then shunned for two or three years. They would literally drop my mother-in-law off at our house and not come in with her, even though she was in her late 70s, had bags to carry, and we had snow and ice on the sidewalk. If at all possible, when they came to pick her up they would arrange to do it when I was not at the house. If they did come in, they would never accept hospitality, but always had a reason they had to leave again immediately. (This was not their habit before the incident that upset them) I would find out occasionally that they had arranged to have lunch with my husband or had invited the rest of the family to some performance their kids were in, but I had not been told until after it was over. That kind of thing.

Eventually, things thawed, and they stopped finding excuses why they could not attend family gatherings at our house. Nothing was ever said about it to me.

I don’t trust them. I walk on eggshells when they are around. Maybe the original incident is ancient history to them, maybe they still hold it against me; I don’t know. I cannot know. I don’t dare ask, because that kind of question is how this all got started the first time around. I would rather not go into the details, but suffice it to say I broached the subject of how to raise a question about something that bothered me with one of them, and the one I asked got livid at me, instead, but behind my back, to my husband, not to me. On that account, even if I were to get a direct answer from them, I don’t think it would be reasonable to believe them.

Does anyone else have experiences to share along these lines? They will be here for a family gathering that we are hosting over the holidays (I’d rather not say when), and I’m already stressed out about it. I wish I could cancel it, but unless we magically have a major freezing rain storm at exactly that time, that isn’t going to happen.
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I wouldn’t trust these people either.

How about just basic room temperature family civility, but not go out of your way to spend time with them?
 
It doesn’t sound like your husband had your back on this. It sounds like he remained neutral. If he sided with you, why were these family members ever at your house? It sounds like you were supposed to, and are still supposed to walk on eggshells and just suck it up.
 
That is an excellent point. When we were first married, my family did not treat Mrs. Rover well. That lasted two holidays (should have been just one)… then I essentially fired them. Had to be done. More my mom than anyone else… I eventually hired her back… as a temp. LOL
 
oldrover said:
That is an excellent point. When we were first married, my family did not treat Mrs. Rover well. That lasted two holidays (should have been just one)… then I essentially fired them. Had to be done. More my mom than anyone else… I eventually hired her back… as a temp. LOL
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Funny!
 
These situations are tough.

OP, you said “I walk on eggshells when they are around”. Can you identify why? What do you fear, and how can you eliminate that fear?

Do you fear how they judge you?
Do you fear that they may speak badly to others about you?
Do you fear that the party may be crashed and you will be blamed?
etc.

My initial reaction to this kind of situation would be to decide to simply not care what they think of me, and act accordingly. I wouldn’t stress myself out to be constantly avoiding conflict, but of course I would still keep the strain on the relationship in mind and try to be polite accordingly. But if I was treated with disrespect, I wouldn’t let them walk on me due to my discomfort in confronting the situation.

What perspective does your husband have on this? Is there a way you could work together to arrange a solution?

That aside, though, I think you really need to identify what it is that makes you feel fearful/unsafe around them, and confront that issue internally.
 
I treat people I cannot trust, yet have to be around with politeness and formality so they never have any ammunition to use against me.

They would have to let thier guard down and demonstrate that they truly accepted my apology before I could trust them. I would not seek answers to past things.You don’t have to be liked by them or gain acceptance by exposing feelings that will perhaps be trampled on.
 
oldrover said:
That is an excellent point. When we were first married, my family did not treat Mrs. Rover well. That lasted two holidays (should have been just one)… then I essentially fired them. Had to be done. More my mom than anyone else… I eventually hired her back… as a temp. LOL
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😃 very good.
 
dshix said:
These situations are tough.

OP, you said “I walk on eggshells when they are around”. Can you identify why? What do you fear, and how can you eliminate that fear?

Do you fear how they judge you?
Do you fear that they may speak badly to others about you?
Do you fear that the party may be crashed and you will be blamed?
etc.

My initial reaction to this kind of situation would be to decide to simply not care what they think of me, and act accordingly. I wouldn’t stress myself out to be constantly avoiding conflict, but of course I would still keep the strain on the relationship in mind and try to be polite accordingly. But if I was treated with disrespect, I wouldn’t let them walk on me due to my discomfort in confronting the situation.

What perspective does your husband have on this? Is there a way you could work together to arrange a solution?

That aside, though, I think you really need to identify what it is that makes you feel fearful/unsafe around them, and confront that issue internally.
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Covert aggression is the gift that keeps on giving. You only have to see one e-mail ripping you up one side and down the other that wasn’t meant for you–one that offers sympathy to your spouse for having to be married to you at all–to see how different the face you see can be from the one you don’t. (My husband got an e-mail from this relative, hadn’t read it in its entirety but just enough to see I’d made his relative extremely angry, passed it on to me to deal with, and didn’t realize until after I had read it that it was something I should never have been allowed to see in the first place.) You don’t have to find out later that you were left out when you used to be included to wonder how often that is happening. You only have to prepare to offer hospitality that used to be accepted but is now turned down so many times to realize your bids for reconciliation are not wanted and your hospitality is not wanted any more. After a few years of that, when the frostiness gradually thaws, you don’t greet the change in weather with pleasure so much as with trepidation.

If I were completely honest, I’d say I was afraid of saying something and offending them without ever getting direct communication to that effect. I miss that I used to think they liked me very much; now I don’t believe they do and wouldn’t believe them if they said they did. (I would believe it if they went out of their way to include me when they didn’t have to in the same way they went out of their way to exclude me without my knowledge, but I do not expect that will happen. They now talk to me at family events as if nothing had ever happened, they aren’t overtly frosty, but they don’t make any effort to be around me when family gatherings don’t force us into the same room.)

Emotionally, I resent that I don’t have any way to confront this directly, I resent that they have made my husband a “favorite” even though I have always done the lions share in the way of hospitality. Intellectually I know that the naive belief that direct communication was a possibility is what got me where I am today. I’d say my husband is a little irritated that I have known his relatives as long as I have without catching on to that. He’d have my back if it came to anything direct, but he is not a fool to rush in where angels fear to tread. They make the pretense of accepting me socially, and he is not willing to lose a sibling because the sibling still has all the same faults he learned to accept a long time ago. In theory, I agree. Emotionally, yes, the whole situation upsets me, anyway.

But yes, the situation is what it is. My husband agrees that it is not fair, but thinks that trying to believe we can make it fair is a fool’s errand. We can have them as they are or not at all. Since it is not very often and putting up with people you don’t like for the sake of those you do is a fact of life, he doesn’t have much to offer except that.

Maybe that’s all there is to say. I don’t know.
 
EasterJoy said:
Covert aggression is the gift that keeps on giving. You only have to see one e-mail ripping you up one side and down the other that wasn’t meant for you–one that offers sympathy to your spouse for having to be married to you at all–to see how different the face you see can be from the one you don’t. (My husband got an e-mail from this relative, hadn’t read it in its entirety but just enough to see I’d made his relative extremely angry, passed it on to me to deal with, and didn’t realize until after I had read it that it was something I should never have been allowed to see in the first place.) You don’t have to find out later that you were left out when you used to be included to wonder how often that is happening. You only have to prepare to offer hospitality that used to be accepted but is now turned down so many times to realize your bids for reconciliation are not wanted and your hospitality is not wanted any more. After a few years of that, when the frostiness gradually thaws, you don’t greet the change in weather with pleasure so much as with trepidation.

If I were completely honest, I’d say I was afraid of saying something and offending them without ever getting direct communication to that effect. I miss that I used to think they liked me very much; now I don’t believe they do and wouldn’t believe them if they said they did. (I would believe it if they went out of their way to include me when they didn’t have to in the same way they went out of their way to exclude me without my knowledge, but I do not expect that will happen. They now talk to me at family events as if nothing had ever happened, they aren’t overtly frosty, but they don’t make any effort to be around me when family gatherings don’t force us into the same room.)

Emotionally, I resent that I don’t have any way to confront this directly, I resent that they have made my husband a “favorite” even though I have always done the lions share in the way of hospitality. Intellectually I know that the naive belief that direct communication was a possibility is what got me where I am today. I’d say my husband is a little irritated that I have known his relatives as long as I have without catching on to that. He’d have my back if it came to anything direct, but he is not a fool to rush in where angels fear to tread. They make the pretense of accepting me socially, and he is not willing to lose a sibling because the sibling still has all the same faults he learned to accept a long time ago. In theory, I agree. Emotionally, yes, the whole situation upsets me, anyway.

But yes, the situation is what it is. My husband agrees that it is not fair, but thinks that trying to believe we can make it fair is a fool’s errand. We can have them as they are or not at all. Since it is not very often and putting up with people you don’t like for the sake of those you do is a fact of life, he doesn’t have much to offer except that.

Maybe that’s all there is to say. I don’t know.
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I see that there are many layers to this. I, like you, am the kind of person who much prefers to confront conflict very directly, so I really sympathize with you in this situation where the best course of action seems to be to just “let it blow over”. As you probably know, the scary thing with just letting it lie is that there’s always a risk of it exploding if someone says the wrong thing at the right time.

As you have stated it, the main source of your discomfort with the situation is that you are unable to confront the problem directly, even though your personality makes you want to. Regardless of whether more fault lay with you or them, you want to air it out. But you can’t (and really mustn’t).

It would be silly for me to advise you to “just stop wanting to confront the conflict”. That’s like telling a tall person to stop being tall.

This is my advice:
  1. Do your best to lower your expectations on having a good relationship with them or being liked by them. I have had similar experiences to yours with people who are very abrasive and refuse to confront the conflict, and the only solution that I have found effective when forced to interact with them is to treat them like I would a little known acquaintance: polite, with a smile on my face, but with no hopes of becoming friends.
  2. You mentioned that one of your fears is of “saying something and offending them without ever getting direct communication”. I can really relate to that: it is very frustrating to not know how or when others may have negative thoughts of me. Pray for the grace of humility; that virtue can help you let go of the woundedness of others’ bad judgements.
  3. Make sure that your husband knows that you aren’t going to try and confront the conflict, to give him assurance that you’ve “figured out” how to deal with his relatives. Also ask him to try to give you moral support when they are visiting, because of your discomfort with the situation. You don’t need him to keep you safe, necessarily, but having him nearby supporting you for the first few times you interact with them may help you relax and “retrain” your feelings about the whole situation.
  4. A small tactical point: You mentioned that they rarely resort to direct attacks, but rather veiled, hidden ones, which you or your husband can’t really respond to without seeming to be the aggressor. When these occur, silence is your best tool. Whether it be in conversation, or on email, or any other medium, it is often best to just not respond to the attack at all, pray to Our Lady for humility, and move on.
I hope any part of this might be of help to you, and I pray that God’s grace will be with you in this trial.
 
dshix said:
I see that there are many layers to this. I, like you, am the kind of person who much prefers to confront conflict very directly, so I really sympathize with you in this situation where the best course of action seems to be to just “let it blow over”. As you probably know, the scary thing with just letting it lie is that there’s always a risk of it exploding if someone says the wrong thing at the right time.

As you have stated it, the main source of your discomfort with the situation is that you are unable to confront the problem directly, even though your personality makes you want to. Regardless of whether more fault lay with you or them, you want to air it out. But you can’t (and really mustn’t).

It would be silly for me to advise you to “just stop wanting to confront the conflict”. That’s like telling a tall person to stop being tall.

This is my advice:
  1. Do your best to lower your expectations on having a good relationship with them or being liked by them. I have had similar experiences to yours with people who are very abrasive and refuse to confront the conflict, and the only solution that I have found effective when forced to interact with them is to treat them like I would a little known acquaintance: polite, with a smile on my face, but with no hopes of becoming friends.
  2. You mentioned that one of your fears is of “saying something and offending them without ever getting direct communication”. I can really relate to that: it is very frustrating to not know how or when others may have negative thoughts of me. Pray for the grace of humility; that virtue can help you let go of the woundedness of others’ bad judgements.
  3. Make sure that your husband knows that you aren’t going to try and confront the conflict, to give him assurance that you’ve “figured out” how to deal with his relatives. Also ask him to try to give you moral support when they are visiting, because of your discomfort with the situation. You don’t need him to keep you safe, necessarily, but having him nearby supporting you for the first few times you interact with them may help you relax and “retrain” your feelings about the whole situation.
  4. A small tactical point: You mentioned that they rarely resort to direct attacks, but rather veiled, hidden ones, which you or your husband can’t really respond to without seeming to be the aggressor. When these occur, silence is your best tool. Whether it be in conversation, or on email, or any other medium, it is often best to just not respond to the attack at all, pray to Our Lady for humility, and move on.
I hope any part of this might be of help to you, and I pray that God’s grace will be with you in this trial.
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That does help. I’m reminded of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, who took the opportunity to bear wrongs patiently as a major part of her Little Way. Yes, I’m pretty good at getting along with complete strangers. I can do that.

I also need to remember that now that I’ve gone through being shunned and learning to cope with it, there isn’t much they can do to me. What are they going to do if I offend them? Refuse to have anything to do with me? Been there, done that. What if they respond more directly? Well, alleluia! I can do direct communication, too.

I don’t have to feel some need to fix a situation I wasn’t ever given the opportunity to fix, either. If that’s what they want, oh well. Let them have that, if they’re determined to have it. There is nothing I can do about it. They aren’t the only relatives we have. We’ll live, and when it comes to covert aggression, isn’t living well the best revenge?
 
EasterJoy said:
That does help. I’m reminded of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, who took the opportunity to bear wrongs patiently as a major part of her Little Way. Yes, I’m pretty good at getting along with complete strangers. I can do that.

I also need to remember that now that I’ve gone through being shunned and learning to cope with it, there isn’t much they can do to me. What are they going to do if I offend them? Refuse to have anything to do with me? Been there, done that. What if they respond more directly? Well, alleluia! I can do direct communication, too.

I don’t have to feel some need to fix a situation I wasn’t ever given the opportunity to fix, either. If that’s what they want, oh well. Let them have that, if they’re determined to have it. There is nothing I can do about it. They aren’t the only relatives we have. We’ll live, and when it comes to covert aggression, isn’t living well the best revenge?
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Very good. 🙂 I think you’ve got the right perspective to move forward with minimal damage to your own mental health.
 
dshix said:
Very good. 🙂 I think you’ve got the right perspective to move forward with minimal damage to your own mental health.
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I think I just needed someone to say, “Yeah. Stinks, but there are no magic options. There’s nothing to do but just accept what you have to accept and do what you have the option to do.”

I mean, I would have been interested in some magic option I hadn’t thought of, but part of accepting is confirming that accepting is necessary. The heart will insist on a 2nd opinion; it won’t take its own head as a physician.

Anyone who still wants to chime in is more than welcome to do it. For some reason, it just isn’t easy to deal with it today.
 
I can kind of relate to what you went through.

The difference for me is that my husband wants me to just forget everything and act toward “someone” as if nothing ever happened. Nothing is ever discussed in his family, so it happens again and again. And I am prevented from saying anything because to do so would be considered disrespectful. “Someone is old and won’t be around forever so I should just put up with them.”

So, what I have decided after years of this occuring is that I want nothing to do with this person. 😊

I can’t have everyone like me ( and like you, I thought they did) but to have them go and talk behind my back and not to my face… I decided enough was enough. I can never trust them again. I wonder now what was ever true, and what was always a lie.
 
IMHO, OP, your husband needs to be tougher. He can’t sacrifice your mental wellbeing to keeping cordial relations with a sibling. You need him to put you first, and more importantly, they need to know and see he will put you first. Again, JMHO.
 
oldrover said:
IMHO, OP, your husband needs to be tougher. He can’t sacrifice your mental wellbeing to keeping cordial relations with a sibling. You need him to put you first, and more importantly, they need to know and see he will put you first. Again, JMHO.
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I couldn’t agree with you more.
 
oldrover said:
IMHO, OP, your husband needs to be tougher. He can’t sacrifice your mental wellbeing to keeping cordial relations with a sibling. You need him to put you first, and more importantly, they need to know and see he will put you first. Again, JMHO.
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If they were being overt about it, he’d tell them where to get off. More to the point, they’re not even doing anything covert any more. They’ve stopped the offending behavior, which even when they were doing it was always cloaked in “plausible deniability.” Now, though, they’re just acting as if there was never any problem in the first place. If we were to say anything now, the chances are they’d claim they didn’t have the least idea what we were talking about and act for all the world as if we had suddenly developed a paranoia disorder.

They didn’t invite him places and tell him I wasn’t invited or make a point of not inviting me when I had some right to expect to be invited. Instead, a mutual friend would come to town, someone they had to know a month in advance was coming, someone they’d have made a point of bringing by to our house for dinner in the past, but now they’d include my husband on the spur of the moment at times that I couldn’t go. They’d drop his mom off at our place and tell her they were late getting somewhere else, couldn’t get out of the car, bye-bye, or they would happen to have some reason they needed to drop her off at a time I’d wouldn’t be there. When we were hosting family gatherings, it would happen that they’d have a conflict and couldn’t come. It was things like that.

Each instance had an innocent explanation, but it was a change from the way they had done things in the past. More to the point, this was a strategy I knew they had used on others in the past, too: as in, they had openly said “well, we’ll just…” When I was in their “in” group, they were quite open about it. Did I call them on it then? I was not such a fool! These are relatives, and not even my relatives. I wasn’t going to stir up that bee’s nest. They’d have denied that this pattern even existed. So yes, he could have called BS, he knew what was going on, but he also knew this relative and that was not likely to do any good. They knew the psyche-speak to rationalize it; nothing good was going to come of calling the relative on this petty way of dealing with things.
 
When I put it that way, I think I ought to be relieved they’re not trying to establish a more intimate relationship. That was kind of a hell; it made me wonder if I was crazy or imagining things. Then I would feel depressed and lonely about being left out. I’d punish myself for doing the thing that had offended them in the first place, even though it is the kind of thing I would have worked out with someone else.

I do not need that again. I certainly don’t want to be in the spot where they’re openly talking about doing this stuff to other people again. I don’t think I could keep my mouth shut.
 
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