@NYC Susan wrote:
@Mominohio wrote:
@NYC Susan wrote:
@occasionalrain wrote:
@NYC Susan The OP wrote that her daughter's husband would not allow her and their son to visit them previously and that he had refused their invitations as well. To me, he sounds anything but wonderful. Maybe my requirements for a husband are different from those needing a village of friends, family, and professionals to help them manage their marriages.
If my husband brought outsiders into our marriage, discussed me and our relationship with them, I would find it a betrayal.
You're certainly free to handle your own marriage however you would like, but you're not in a position to judge this one.
I'm sure none of us here can judge this particular marriage, that is true. But what we can judge or have opinions on, is exactly who should be and who shouldn't be involved with a couple's marital issues, and to what extent.
I think some of us believe that short of abuse (in which case she should absolutely be able to depend on her mother/parents to help her get out), she is an adult, and needs to find the solutions to her issues outside the family with counseling, if the couple can't fix things themselves.
Too much input from parents and family usually just makes things worse, and sides are taken where the true and complete story is often never presented.
Being available to a child going through a hard time (adult child or otherwise) is not about taking sides. It's about allowing the child to vent and work through emotions so he or she is better equipped to confront the problems and try to fix them with a clearer head.
My parents never told me what to do re any relationship I ever had, but they were certainly there for me when I needed them to listen and be supportive. And I would never dream of bad-mouthing my children's partners or forcing my input into their lives. In my experience (and again, I worked in the mental health field for a long time), most parents are more than willing to listen when their kids need to talk, and most of them do not become overly involved. It's normal and natural for someone who is overwhelmed to turn to their parents.
Your experience - and the experiences of people you know - may be different. But having the support of family and close friends has been proven to be enormously helpful to those going through difficult times.
Obviously, we're all free to parent in the way we think best.
eta: Just wanted to add that a main part of my original point was my objection to a poster who does not know this family yet felt she could judge the daughter as having made a "poor choice" in a husband. None of us here has the knowledge or the right to say such a thing.
Again this isn't about lack of support. It's about the fact that adult children, even when things are bad, cannot and should not dictate to their aging parents that their needs are always top priority. (not meaning to make the OP sound like she has one foot in the grave or anything like that).
And one absolutely does not have to be in the same physical location for that support, help, venting, and working through emotions. One can do all those things from a distance as well.
Part of being an adult is handling our own issues. It means being aware of others needs and wants, and not always having to insert ourselves as the most important thing, even sometimes when we feel we really need to. As adults, we no longer should expect to come first in every circumstance in our parent's lives any longer. In reality, the paradigm is shifting, and their needs should gradually begin to become more important than ours.
None of us know for sure, but it is quite possible that based on the sister's rant, this daughter may have a history of being needy/demanding or placing herself in the middle of other peoples plans. For the OP to find the rant so out of character for her sisiter, and out of the blue, it makes me think that the OP really has some introspection to do.
And as in a previous post, I'm willing to believe that all this has happened for some reason, maybe the daughter does indeed need to be there at that time, for bigger and more significant reasons than we know now, or will ever know, as that should be private between her and her family.
But this idea that adult children take precedence over every other thing and relationship in a parent's life is not healthy and somewhat selfish.
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