First time poster to the forum who's benefitting greatly from Dr. Harley's instructional materials.

I was wondering if there's anyone out there who's encountering difficulties reconciling issues with their in-laws after a spouse's infidelity?

My situation in a nutshell:

1) Neither my wife or I were happy in our marriage.

2) Late last year, my wife confessed to a brief affair

3) The affair was a massive and probably long overdue wake up call for our relationship

4) We've since implemented Dr. Harley's methods into our marriage and are starting to achieve true intimacy for the first time in 18+ years together.

5) It's obviously early days yet but I'm very encouraged and truly happy for the first time in my life about the loving and positive direction our marriage is heading in.

For me, the struggle now has been to reconcile issues I have with my wife's father (her mother has unfortunately passed) and sister. I learned after the affair that my wife had expressed a desire to seek divorce and/or another partner, and both members of her family had been fully supportive of that. The sister in particular was in favour of my wife flirting with and attracting other men, though she claims she did not encourage her outright cheating. Shortly after I found out about the situation, she referred to herself as playing the role of 'devil' while my wife was having the doubts about our marriage that ultimately led to the affair.

Now that we have our marriage back on track, both are appearing outwardly supportive and are saying they simply wanted her to be happy, and they're glad its with me. However, I am having a hard time reconciling that with the fact that they were both fully in favour of my wife dumping/replacing me. I'm not so naive that I don't realize and appreciate that my wife is their blood and thus they'll always take her side on any issue, but I still feel betrayed at a very basic gut level by people who I once thought were in 'our' corner.

As a result, I find I am very resistant to spending time with my in-laws and find it difficult to conceal my ambivalence towards people I no longer feel any affinity or connection towards.

Any suggestions on ways to overcome this family fallout?

Welcome ... many of us on these boards deal with the in law issues. It seems case after case family takes sides. We cheer the in-laws that actually stand up for the betrayed because that is actually a rarity here.

Trust has been broken and the threat the in-laws are to you, your marriage, and your family is a valid concern.

I have thought long and hard in my situation because my WH's family are actually supporting his adultery, abandonment, and divorce. I didn't realize until WH was fully entrenched his mother is a serial cheater and has remained wayward for decades.

My first question to you does your in-laws have their own adultery in their family? I only ask you this because of how I suggest you go about your relationship with them.

If they are themselves adulterers who are still wayward today, then my recommendation is No Contact with them for life. This may seem harsh, but they will never be a friend to your marriage until they are truly and fully repentant.

If they are themselves adulterers but have now repented, you see their true remorse, then I would take the same stance as your FWW, Trust and verify. They must be walking their talk, and you must have a way to verify their words. I would make sure your FWW has an EP with them here as well, she is to never speak to them about your marriage problems or any problems you may be having. That intimate conversation should stay between you and your wife only.

Finally if they have never been adulterers then I recommend the same advice as above. They will need to walk their talk and do what is necessary to earn your trust. They should be open and honest wanting to build trust and you should see remorse and repentance. Again if you are not seeing that and they are still blameshifting, then you need a strong EP with them. I don't recommend NC, but I would limit interactions and again have an EP in place "No IC with family ever."

Thanks PI,

I appreciate the advice. Btw, is there any page on the site that summarizes the acronyms? I'm afraid I'm not fully in the loop on some of these.

FF, I agree and understand your hesitation about spending time with them. Some folks here have mostly cut such toxic relatives out of their lives, and you might want to consider that. The issue should be negotiated in a way that makes you both happy with the default position that you do nothing with them.


And what if she were a serial killer? Or a pedophile? Would they be saying such stupid things? The truth is they don't care about your wife. They would sit by idly while she destroyed her life because they don't care enough to get off their dead [censored] and try to help her. Would a caring person sit by while she destroyed her life? Of course not. A caring person would support her in being GOOD, not bad. These people supported her in being a liar and a cheater. Her father and sister don't give a rip about her or your marriage.

I would cut them out of your lives, if I were you. And I would make sure they knew why.

I should probably emphasize that neither the father or the sister condoned or encouraged the extramarital affair itself. What they condoned was her finding another man and/or divorcing me if she honestly felt that was the only way to achieve happiness. I do hold the sister more accountable as she saw the other man's influence growing in my wife's life and didn't counsel my wife to stop the flirtation. The sister was very 'militantly' against me at the time, judgemental behavior that she has somewhat acknowledged since as a mistake. The father is very biblical. It's not in his nature to advise divorce but he did encourage my wife to do that if that's she felt she needed to do that be happy. We had been trying for a LONG time to fix our marriage without getting anywhere. He says he was dead set against her seeing another man while we were still married and I do believe that to be true.

Which means they supported the affair which reflects a lack of caring. They said they support anything basically as long as she is "happy." And my response to people like that is always: "Thank God she is not a serial killer!"



Did you know about the affair before you did? And if so, did they tell you? The father must have used some other type of Bible, because the Christian Bible does not condone adultery to seek happiness. In fact, it teaches the opposite. Being happy is a result of being good, not bad. Adultery does not make people "happy." It ruins their life.

Neither the sister or father knew about the affair until my wife confessed it. The father was greatly disappointed in my wife. As fate would have it, his wife cheated on him as well so he feels there's an aspect of this that runs in their family. The sister did not know about the physical affair until after the fact either. She did however know my wife was going out for so called 'business' lunches with the OM and had been encouraging of the relationship. The sister was convinced I didn't love my wife and that we would never be happy together.

Basically, the sister was exceedingly naive thinking she could encourage my wife to play with fire and not get burned. She was advocating her finding another man and THEN divorcing me. I am the sole breadwinner in the family, so as often seems the case, there was some consideration of how my wife might extricate herself from our relationship and still pay the bills.

The sister in particular sounds very weak on boundaries and as if she believes married people can have close flirty relationships with opposite sex people.

What's her situation? Is she married? If so its only a matter of time before she is a WW herself.

You don't window shop for replacements while married. Any fool knows that's not commitment.

Wow, with friends like that, who needs enemies? She may be naive, but she is dangerously so if she believes there is justification for an affair.

What kind of new man has THOSE standards!!!!

I can see the dating ad now: WLTM A married woman with weak boundaries. Doesn't even need to be separated. In fact preferably she is being advised by wayward relatives to juggle men while figuring out who makes best financial sense.

Did they really think someone with the lowest standards EVER would be a catch?

FF,

The sister in particular was in favour of my wife flirting with and attracting other men...she referred to herself as playing the role of 'devil'

Is this sister divorced because she cheated or is she a serial cheater on her now husband? I only ask because if she is a unrepentant cheater it would turn my strong suggestion to eliminate her from your life into a definite suggestion.

Was the OMW told what happened and did your WW get STD testing?

God Bless
Gamma

I believe I would eliminate her from my life simply because she was in favor of your wife flirting and attracting other men -- even if she were "repentant."

She is dangerous. She has poor boundaries herself, and she is no friend to your marriage.

Thanks for the replies. This has given me some good information to mull over going forward to decide how to best deal with these difficult relationships.

The difficulty with this is that things are not often as black and white as we need them to be.

The sister is a good example of this. No, she's not a cheater and no, I don't think she feels it's a good idea to flirt with men when you're married. In fact, she strongly opposes this in her own marriage.

Basically, she was well intentioned but highly misguided, thinking she was doing a good thing in empowering in her sister to leave me. IMO, the mistakes she made were twofold.

1) She only listened to 1 side of the story and assumed that I didn't love her sister anymore based on the difficulties we were having at the time.

2) She moved past being a sounding board for her sister's venting and instead actively interfered in someone's else marriage, becoming a advocate for my wife to consider other men as viable options and/or divorcing me.

In truth, the sister has always been a very opinionated and meddlesome person and it's a quality of hers that I have always found distasteful. However, with this situation, it crossed the line and become something that threatened my life and my future.

She has since sent me a text apologizing for judging me, but if anything, that made me more angry. Not only did I find it to be cowardly to apologize via text, but judging me is the least of what she should be apologizing for. What about giving up on me as a person and recommending my wife should leave me, thus robbing me of my family and children?

One of the big problems I am facing now is that the parties to this are now backpedaling in an effort to minimize their own complicity and assuage their own guilt over what they did. I was so focused on my wife and our relationship when this first happened, I didn't really delve fully into her family's role in this. And it seems the more time that goes by, the more invested they are in sweeping this under the carpet and acting like they personally did nothing wrong.

Family Fallout,

The Policy of Joint Agreement (POJA) applies to all situations, to include family interactions . Dr. Harley has an entire chapter about applying resolving conflicts about friends and family in his "Lovebuster" book.

It is clear that you are uncomfortable with these family members. It seems as if you are looking for rationale reasons why you should be involved with the family and your feelings towards them are negative. Rather than trying to change the way you feel about them, it is more important to come to an agreement with your wife about how to interact with these family members. Note that the default position is to do nothing - which means no family involvement until you are enthusiastic.

My H and I had a somewhat similar situation. My H was at his mother's house on the other side of the country when he contacted his affair partner via email. They then talked on the phone and emailed for several days with the full knowledge of my mother in law. Her view was that my H should do "whatever made him happy". Of course, she was entirely willing to throw me under the bus and have my husband continue to be a complete wayward idiot. I no longer speak to my mother in law. i have nothing to say to her. My husband talks to her occasionally on the telephone, but he has not seen her since that visit in the fall of 2009. For him to do otherwise would be a terrible offense to me.

AM

Thank you for posting this. I'm also seeing the same behavior from the friends and family members who bought into the slander and virtual reinvention of our marriage. It's as if the various friends and family are now saying "Oh sh**, well, um, it seems she's not going to leave you after all. Now that I've spent months cheering the demise of your marriage and talking trash about you with your wife, I don't really know what to say to you now..."

In my story there's an added dimension to this problem. Rather than taking any ownership for poisoning friends and family members, my FWW has actually defended their actions. She has argued: 1) All these people had their own "issues" with me long before she spent an entire year slandering me to them and reinventing the history of our marriage. Consequently, how can I possibly blame them for the way they now feel about me and/or having sided with her in her decision to end the marriage? 2) They are her "friends" or "family." Of course they are going to side with her and support her (despicable behavior). They just want her to be happy. Consequently, how can I blame them for having been supportive of her?

MelodyLane had a different analogy, but said the same thing. Here's' my analogy:

Imagine your son, daughter, friend (whatever the relationship) came to you and said:

"Listen, you know I've had difficulty making ends meet lately, but I have come up with a fantastic idea for making a lot of money -- and I really want your support. I have decided to sell crack! Yep, I'm gonna change my life and become a successful crack dealer..."

What kind of friend or family member would possibly be supportive of such a plan? Seriously? How despicable does the wayward's behavior have to be before someone says "No sorry, I can't be supportive of that. You're doing the wrong thing?"

We hear stories about people who walk right on past someone being raped, mugged, beaten etc and never think twice. It appears to me there are people who have been in my life who were not only willing to walk on by, they were willing to cheer for the perpetrator...

Driven,

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