SIL update- is this normal?

iVillage Member
Registered: 12-17-2003
SIL update- is this normal?
7
Tue, 09-20-2005 - 1:14pm

I've posted here before about my SIL, who had "Al", the psychological abuser wacko boyfriend. I am happy to report that Al is now an ex-PAWB. When the lease on his and SIL's apartment was finally up, SIL bought a house on her own, and split with him. He's currently sleeping in a camper in his friend's driveway while his own house is being finished. (Poetic justice, we thought, after two years of making her sleep on the couch while HE slept in the bed that FIL bought for HER. :P)

Oh, he stood on his head to get to move with her, I'll tell you. Couldn't he crash with her? Couldn't he store his stuff at her place? Couldn't he couldn't he couldn't he? She did, alas, consent to store some of his electronics there, but she didn't bend on the subject of him, so it could have been a lot worse. We're already starting to see an improvement in DN's behavior- she's still somewhat sassy, but she now at least does what her mother says, whereas before Al had her thinking she didn't need to do that either.

But the question is this. This all shook out around the end of August. This past weekend, SIL came to a party I was having, and from her conversation you wouldn't have known that she had broken up with him. It was Al says this, Al does this, blah blah blah. I did check with MIL to make sure she hadn't let him back in, and she hadn't. Is this normal, for this soon out? I mean, I realize that he's scarcely been gone a month, and that someone who was forced to have him as the central focus of her life for seven years isn't magically going to find new topics of conversation overnight; but I'm going by how abusers are treated in my own family, which is, out on their butts they go, and are ever after referred to as "'s father", with pursed lips, and mentioned as seldom as possible. What is normal here? I think I may be the one who needs the slap with the clue-by-four this time. ;)

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iVillage Member
Registered: 02-08-2005
Tue, 09-20-2005 - 1:38pm

Hey Erin!

5yrssm 
iVillage Member
Registered: 11-12-2003
Tue, 09-20-2005 - 2:08pm

My take on her is that it's too early.

CL-Blueliner4

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-08-2005
Tue, 09-20-2005 - 2:25pm
Oh Lord have mercy lol



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5yrssm 
iVillage Member
Registered: 12-17-2003
Wed, 09-21-2005 - 12:15am

<>

Can we get video? :D

The thing that worries me is, I don't know how much she *can* cut off contact with him, being as they have a daughter together. I've spent enough time lurking here to know how important that cut is, but how do you make it when there is a kid to whom the guy does have some visitation rights? (Therein lies another rant, but I'll save that.)

I'm not sure how much the ILs are helping, either. I know they told the truth about him not moving in, because DH could corroborate that, but this incident burned me. I think I kind of did a crappy thing, but you know, I really don't care. DH and I, his best friend P and P's wife were all at the ILs' house the weekend of DH's class reunion. The ILs were out, and I happened to glance over at the end table and see a slip of paper...with Al's cell phone number and "How to contact Al for the next six months" written on it. Now, P has Al figured out too, so I look at P and go "Can YOU think of a reason they need to have this?" P responded, "Nope. If they have anything to say to him, they can pass it along through somebody else. Tear it up." So shred it and dispose of it we did.

I feel kind of bad for messing with their stuff, but dang it, there is no good reason they still need to be running around contacting this man, and if they do have anything to say to him there are plenty of people who can pass it along without them prolonging contact and making this worse on SIL than it already is. Makes you wonder just what *else* they have been up to...which might go a ways towards answering the question in my OP, now that I think of it. :P

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iVillage Member
Registered: 11-12-2003
Wed, 09-21-2005 - 1:27pm

She can set boundaries, she can have the visitation be supervised by a neutral third party, public pickups and drop-offs, etc.

CL-Blueliner4

iVillage Member
Registered: 12-17-2003
Wed, 09-21-2005 - 1:56pm

<>

Therein lies the key, I fear. She's also going to have to want to shut MIL up when she goes on these things about how "he loooooves his daughter" that she so dearly loves to do. MIL tried to pull that one on me, and I said, "MIL, look. I will concede to you that he loves her as much as he is capable of loving another human being besides himself. However, in somebody that self-centered, I don't know that that is saying very much. So, quite frankly, I don't want to hear it."

Y'know, it doesn't seem fair- why can't we share our strength with people who need it most?

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iVillage Member
Registered: 11-12-2003
Wed, 09-21-2005 - 2:05pm

If I had the answer to that, I'd be rich, babe.


She has to build the strength from within.

CL-Blueliner4