Oh my.......just reading all these all these posts have me smiling, and tears rolling down my face, plus a few chuckles, and the biggest, warmest feeling ever!! You all are the BEST. So much caring, support, advice, and enough sweetness that I feel like I'm in a candy store. :o) I truly love you for all the joy you give, and the big hearts you have. I'd be truly lost without you in my life. Fun2B, "Decorating shouldn't be a chore, but a joy."...very wise words. I've been concentrating on the work and not the joy, I'll work on that and my decorating this weekend! Thank you! Janet, you made me laugh with your DH's 'one spoon, one plate, one glass' and a LOT of tools.....while your 'junk' clutters up the house he thinks. LOL. Men! I don't know how to you make all those wreaths with everything on your plate, and all the pain you deal with too. So very hard on you!! Sending you love and prayers, always. Nana and Jane, sweet friends who know just the right thing to say about my Dad. :o) I'm sure you are right that he's watching over me. I think of him with every bit I do as he always said he loved how it looked and showed me how much he enjoyed it. You've given me an idea on some decorating, will tell you when it's done!!! Marlene, dear friend, could I please borrow your DH !! :o) I love all you said, and you really nailed it too! I really want to thank you for the compliments on my decorating. Hope I can live up to them. Party, you have a Mr O. too, including the obsessed golf part ?! What did God do....CLONE these guys??? LOL. You are right, (tho I don't recall him being a Scout,) if I give him a task he's pretty good at saying ok. I do think he'd draw the line at actually going thru bins or decorating. But he'd bring them in, if I asked. He seems to think if I don't ask, then I must not need help. Jeeez. You on the other hand are a huge help, I loved what you advised....."my advice is to choose a subset of decorations that are your favorites or most important to you and begin decorating. I think you need the decor to feel like the holidays and I think you need to go through the process of decorating." I am going to do this!! Phoggie, so nice to meet you! And thank you. I'm so sorry for the loss of your husband, and I hope I didn't make you sad with my complaining about my Mr. O. I know you must miss him terribly. Several of our ladies here are dealing with the same huge loss in their lives and I need to apologize to all of you if I was insensitive. I also regret you are another of us who suffer Fibro, but you're in good company here for sure! That is wonderful you've been asked to decorate for a home tour! You must do beautiful things. I hope you can share pictures with us. Yes, holiday depression this time of year is pretty common unfortunately. Since my Dad died, I sure had a bad time the last two Christmas'es with it. And fighting it this year, but at least I'm beating it for the most part. I look forward to Christmas Eve with family, but Christmas day makes me sad. Here 'alone' and its just another day. (Mr O still goes to golf course, tho its closed, and just practices. Or watches football.) I hope you hang around with us and keep posting, we're glad to have more members in our little "gang". :o) Hugs back to you. There's a lot of WISE women on this Forum, I sure know how to pick my friends! Y'all are Keepers! hugs, Karen

You've got two very young children and lots of history together -- What you have is so very important that you REALLY need to try to save it. But 'saving it' does NOT mean "suck it up"! You've already done plenty of that and it's not working... Right now, you're exhausted and feeling resentful; and hard as it is for you to believe, your wife is probably *also* exhausted and resentful. Caring for two little ones at home all day is truly exhausting, and the lack of sexual intimacy in a marriage with young children is legendary. It's become a running gag on TV precisely because it is so true... Get yourselves into counseling! It sounds to me like your wife may have some anxiety issues; and you and her parents have been enabling her for years. Weaning her from all of her crutches will take time, and possibly even medication -- but it can be done, and you all will be better off for it. It's not hard to see how her fears will be passed along to her children if they're allowed to continue. Of course you should be able to have the occasional night off. (As should she, and the two of you together.) And as others have already pointed out, what's with the homework duty? YOU are not the one who's going to be a teacher, and if her own work is not up to snuff, how is your fixing it helping her? Or the kids she will go on to teach? If she were trying to get into medical school, TOP grades would be necessary, but to teach? Sometimes 'good' is plenty good enough. Make some changes Struggling, and do it NOW. (Before you're so darned tired that nothing could work.) Stop just sucking it up and start talking to her. Organize your thoughts, and make a list (yes, a paper list) of the most important two or three points you need to make. Find ways to explain your points that are short, simple and kind; and don't let her get away with twisting your words into things you don't mean. Ask her to repeat back to you what you said (and meant) so you know that she understands you, and be sure to emphasize that it's because you want your marriage to last that you're saying these things.

When my 83 year old Mom visits or I visit her, she tells me things like, "do you know how much laundry soap to use?". Or she asks if I can cook such & such. I'm 62, I know how! Haha. I have just decided to learn from this to make sure I don't do the same things to my adult daughter. I guess she still sees me as a little girl. I can't change that, but I can change my own thoughts, and not get aggravated with her. I quit trying to please her many years ago-- but I can still respect her as my mother.

Ok, so for others to think it is weird to read it, imagine how I felt when I first met them. I get that it may sound off the wall, but who could honestly make this up? I have to laugh, my gosh, I WISH it were all a joke. I was so absolutely confused when I met them, not only am I in the beginning stage of my relationship with my now husband, but the confusion with the fact that I AM A GOOD PERSON, and yet, everything I did in their eyes was wrong, and after so much of that you begin to question yourself. It's difficult enough to learn the dynamics of a family, but a family like this is just overwhelming. Like I said, I never met a family like this before. I recently made the cult analogy to my husband as a joke, then I started thinking that their behavior really is cultish. Sylvia, one thing I noticed about the Grandma is she does back down when the other "outsider" (I'll call her "Suzy") in the family stands up to her, but it's short lived. That marriage had years of problems because of the Grandma, and they finally moved out of state. When I first met the family, they'd all talk about the Suzy and bash her constantly, behind her back of course. And I thought, oh my gosh she must be a terrible person. Then, I met her, and she was totally nice to me, and I could tell she felt uncomfortable around the family. That's when things started to click, and I slowly began to realize that Grandma feeds everyone with her negativity, and I think the daughters learned this from the Grandma. So when I finally had the blow up with the sisters, and the family came back to me faulting me and blaming me for how I communicated with them by email, I was so completely frustrated and I went off on a tangent about all the nasty things I felt about this family, and told them how I think they treat people with such disrespect, especially Suzy. My husband grew up with it his whole life, and was so used to it that he never realized it until I started pointing it out. He knew his sisters were rude and warned me, so I don't mean it like he's completely oblivious, but when I asked him if Suzy had ever been rude to him, he said no, and then I started to point out how your family always bashes her, but it never seems justified, then he started to pay attention, and realized much of it was a fabrication from Grandma's negative attitude. Suzy is like me, she isn't really one to conform, though she's not rude either, but everyone has a breaking point. From what I hear, they've had a lot of marital problems and I suspect it's because of Grandma and the family. I mean, come on, anytime you are in the presence of people who whisper when your back is turned, you CAN tell, you can sense it. That's what the sisters have done to me, and I suspect they've learned that from Grandma. I get what everyone is saying about be nice and gently disagree, but they are so persistent it's irritating. And, you can't have a conversation with one person, they all have to chime in together, so it's like you against all of them. When I get frustrated, you can see that I'm frustrated. And they get defensive. I've learned to start walking away, when I can, but sometimes I regret not saying something, and at the same time I don't want to be "that person" at the party who crashed it because she blew her stack. LOL. Lonepiper, I do agree - I'll never be good enough, and my attitude is changing to the idea that if you don't like me for who I am, too bad, get over it. I suppose my distancing myself from them is my way of rebelling. If I get visibly angry with them, I get the "well EXCUSE me" attitude, and then they won't come over for a year, which frustrates my husband that they ostracize us. So, it's a viscious circle. If my husband didn't have a close bond with his family, I could care less, but again, I also have to think of his needs, so I try to be the bigger person. Txnursing, it's not that we let the guilt trip get to us, it's the anger that follows it that I can't stand. It's like dealing with a five year old. The Uncle is the worst. It'll be like this - he'll ask us to come over. My husband will say that we have plans with my family. Then he'll insist on my family coming over. THAT appalls me, as if my whole family is supposed to change their plans because what Uncle has going on is more important or better than what my family could possibly be doing. Seriously, that's his attitude, and he's very pretentious, everything is about "image" and he acts like people want to live his lifestyle of entertaining everyone all the time. Sometimes we just want to sit home and watch a movie. Screw your image if you are a nasty person, right? He doesn't ask us much anymore, but now it's like we've been ostracized. We get invited to family functions, more or less like it's expected of him, but that's it. And, he's given me the cold shoulder since I didn't go up during a holiday and kiss his family's butt after the sister incident - they wanted me to "brush it under the carpet" and swallow my pride once again (oh, and this was an "intervention" that took place at a mutual friends house). I stood my ground, refused to spend the holiday with the family, and this is the end result. My husbands friend said to me at that time, why do you always have to swallow your pride and they just keep treating you like crap and it's supposed to be ok? Honestly, it's reached a point where I'm bordering on despising them, but I think that's a good thing because a healthy attitude in this situation can only be one of, "I don't give a crap" what they think. silversword, your response made me laugh. I wonder what they'd do if I plugged my ears and did the, "la la la la la la la la" as I walk away. *Chuckle*