Has anyone had a positive outcome where the husband has favored his BD?
Here's the backdrop. We've been married for over two years. Very quickly, I noticed that my husband treated his teenage daughter differently that his sons (we have full custody of the children). It really is a double standard. The boys are not allowed to get away with nearly what she does. If they talk back or speak rudely or disrespectfully, they get a consequence. If she does any of that, my husband just lets her do it without saying anything or any recourse. It's setting her up to be a beast to live with, she already is for that matter. It's like there's a storm and dark cloud brewing when she is the room with us, most of the time. I do not deserve to be disrespected and on my own I am not one to put up with it. If it were just me (or say me and my own child and I don't have any), I would never allow a child to be so rude to me and get away with it. If I do say something now, my husband doesn't like it and thinks I should just let her do it because he says sometimes it's not worth the argument it will create. There wouldn't be an argument, if he had kept her accountable in the first place. I don't know what to do because I have tried to tell me husband he is treating her differently and give specific examples and he has excused for letting her be that way. Things like he's afraid that it will push her into a dark place, if he disciplines her or push her away, or he hates dealing with it because he feels like he's going into a cage with a ferocious animal. I am so frustrated and fed up. Any help, advice or encouragement from someone who's been there and it's gotten better??
So, your married to my dh too
So, your married to my dh too then and I see you have his two sons and princess daughter.
My husband could not care less about his two eldest sons. But his baby daughter, the spawn of Satan. The most spiteful, hateful, vindictive woman God ever breathed life into. He worshipped the shit that came from her bum. It ended two years ago after 8 years of hell when she gave birth to her first child, her nuclear weapon for breaking up our marriage, and dh was told if he wanted to see it he had to leave me. Just another bit of her crap dh wanted me to suck up. I didn't, I told her she was never welcome in my home or life ever again, told dh to go with her. I was finished with the two of them. I would not tolerate being isolated, humiliated and ignored by her, or being verbally abused by him every time I complained about this cow.
He never left. You see while its all going good for men like this, while they have what they perceive as two women fighting over them, they're rapt. When they stand to lose their wives over it, when the consequences of treating their daughters better than their wives and expecting their wives to suck it up lands on them and the wife hands them over to the spoilt, selfish, lazy, self centred daughter with the over inflated sense of entitlement, who cannot so much as boil water, they dump the daughter and cling to the wife.
Do they love us more. No, they love themselves more than wife or daughter and they stay where their bread is buttered. Men like this are at best extremely selfish, at worst narcissists. My dh is a narcissist.
I'm sorry to hear that your
I'm sorry to hear that your husband was so abusive.
My husband is not abusive; I do resonate with you with you say that his daughter thinks she's entitled and he has helped her to be that way.
I guess you didn't get a positive outcome.
That's where you are
That's where you are completely wrong. Your husband is just as abusive as mine was. You see supporting their daughters when they are clearly in the wrong is destroying their daughters, it's not teaching them right from wrong, it's not bringing them up to be strong healthy independent women. He is emotionally crippling his daughter. That is abuse.
You are unhappy, he is not taking care of your needs, he's too busy trying to keep his daughter happy, he allows his daughter to disrespect you and make you feel uncomfortable in your own home. That is emotional abuse. When you try to express your concerns and it becomes a fight, that is verbal abuse.
He treats her differently to how he treats his sons. What, you think the boys don't feel that. Of course they do. He is emotionally abusing his boys.
Your husband is my husband.
But I do have a happy ending for me. The day I banned that woman from my house was the day I took my life back. I am the only winner in this entire mess my dh created. I have grown and learned from it all. I have developed a sense of self worth, I have self esteem and confidence. I am just as important as everyone else. And no one will ever make me feel unwanted or unwelcome in my own home ever again. The inner strength I have gained due to the 8 years of hell I lived through was well worth the pain. It is something money could have never bought. This had to be earned. I have changed, grown and become a far happier and wiser person for the experience.
My husband is now only beginning his journey to mental health. He has years of hard work ahead of him. He may or not make it. That is up to him. I have learned that he has to make himself happy. It's not my place to do everything his way so he can be happy. I used to walk on egg shells around him. Now I don't, nor do I feel I have to. I treat him with love and respect, I expect the same back. He knows that now.
His daughter, well who knows. But I doubt she will ever recover, she doesn't think there's anything wrong with her, so how can she fix her life, how can she learn and grow when she is already perfect.
My husband is at least excepting that he could have done things very differently. That he is responsible for the outcome. An outcome I might add, that I am happy with. So, I have had a very happy ending. I am a very different woman now.
I guess it's good that you
I guess it's good that you managed to save your marriage and it sounds like your husband is beginning to get help. So, that is even more hopeful for you.
Now that you say it, I agree that he is emotionally crippling his daughter, further, he's an enabler to her. And perhaps I am considering the emotional abuse, to me, part. I never thought of it that way.
I am seeking help. I told my husband that I was ready to leave and that he could have his life with his daughter back. And that he is not showing me love or respect by doing these things. I said he didn't want me to leave and at first he wanted me to call a counselor that we've seen in the past, but I told him "No, you do it if you care so much about the marriage". He did, so I am willing to go to counseling. Maybe I'll decide that we have to go to counseling until we come up with an agreement and a plan of action that we will stick to. And if we don't or he doesn't change, then I don't have the answer for that, at this very moment.
Well done. Even better you
Well done. Even better you made him call the counsellor. He needs to start putting in too. You cannot do it by yourself. A marriage is about two people, each looking out for the other, each wanting the best for the other. Men like our husbands are basically selfish.
Your dh like mine did it all his way, it was about him and his daughter, until the consequences of that started to impact on him. Until he too was told, the marriage was over. Like your dh, he asked me to phone a counsellor, like you, I said, if you want the marriage to work, start making an effort, you make the appointment. But I refused marriage counselling with him. I told him to ring our GP, make an appointment with him, and sort yourself out, then when you address your issues if necessary we can go to marriage counselling. I believe he now sees, it's not marriage counselling we need. That he needs to work on himself.
He is seeing a psychologist and on medication and things are much better. I am taking care of myself, picking him up every time he perhaps raises his voice or uses a tone I don't like. I do not let things slide now for the sake of keeping the peace. If I don't like something I speak up. I don't do it in anger, I just say how I feel and why it will be my way. Unfortunately for us it has to be this way. My husband has a personality disorder and I need to make sure that he does not destroy me with it. He needs to learn to manage it. But for now, things are okay. Time I guess will tell how things go in the long term. But I have learnt and grown a lot. I have survived life married to a narcissist, many people don't. But it will be a life constantly maintaining and managing things. It will be hard work. The option is to leave because he has a mental illness and really and marriage is about in sickness and health. So, I have learnt in order to help him,I have to take care of me. But, if he should become emotionally or verbally abusive again, I will have no hesitation in looking after me first. However it won't take me 8 years to recognise I am being abused this time. I'd jump on it straight away, so I'm not expecting things to ever be that bad again,
I like that admitted to your
I like that admitted to your husband that he needed to work on his issues; I think mine needs to do that separately too. I think I'm going to bring that up now. I am not perfect, but I have certainly has years of counseling where I had to deal with my junk to be able to be more healthy. I'm sure I could benefit from some counseling now, too.
It's good that you keep short accounts and don't let things build up. It can be hard, but, you're right speaking up is the best thing you can do for the relationship.
Thanks
Marriage counselling is an
Marriage counselling is an easy way out for these guys. They can convince themselves still that they're okay we are the problem.
For things to work out, for counselling to be effective, you first have to admit you have a problem. I think these men look at marriage counselling because they see us as the problem. That is why I insisted my husband address his personal issues before I would consider marriage counselling. He is still seeing his psychologist, has been since January, but he hasn't mentioned marriage counselling again. I think he has learnt that I was not the problem, that my concerns were valid in his sessions, but I also feel that without medication nothing would have changed.
Be strong. You are not wrong here. They mess our heads up for so long that we question ourselves and our sanity. We are not insane. Sure we are not perfect, but we are not insane and in this regard, we are not wrong.
As for him being afraid to pull her into line because it was like going into a cage with a ferocious animal. My husband was exactly the same. These men are narcissistic and they raise narcissistic daughters. These girls when they don't get their own way, fly into narcissistic rages. No one can change her, not even dh, the man who raised her to be this way. Your dh must first save himself and pray his daughter learns from that.