I told my husband to choose me or his parents – I don’t regret it

I know people will judge me for cutting my child’s grandparents out of her life, but unless you’ve been in my shoes, you have no idea.

I first met my husband’s family in 2002, when I was 27, a few months after we started dating.

2

2

At first they were very cheerful and happy, maybe even a little overly friendly.

But David seemed tense.

After one of our first meetings he asked if I liked them, and then said, “They’re not as pretty as they seem, you know.”

Over time I figured out exactly what he meant and after over a decade of increasingly toxic behavior, I told David he had to choose: me or them.

Luckily he chose me and eight years ago he cut ties completely. I have never been happier.

One in five families in the UK cut off contact with family members. Ten percent cut off contact with their mothers and twenty percent cut off contact with their fathers.

I became paranoid

Alarm bells first started ringing for me when we had been dating for about a year.

David’s mother was often late – once even two hours when we had Christmas dinner – or suddenly changed her plans.

I would call it ‘awkward for the sake of being awkward’.

Before our wedding in April 2008, my mother offered us £1,000 out of the blue.

My in-laws, on the other hand, said that they had already spent enough money on their son throughout his life and that they didn’t want to do it anymore.

But I found it strange, because I grew up in a generous family.

When we had our daughter in 2012, their strange behavior became even worse.

They wanted to see their granddaughter whenever they wanted and got angry if we said no, even if a visit clashed with her bedtime routine.

They started accusing us of keeping their granddaughter away from them, which was far from the truth.

Eventually I became so paranoid that I would text them every Monday morning detailing what I was doing that week so they could see when I was free.

It made me very tense and they often replied: “No, not this week, thank you.”

That night we Googled narcissistic personality disorder. That was a eureka moment.

Amanda

One day they said they wanted to open a bank account for our daughter, but David didn’t trust their motives, as his mother once spent all her savings on herself.

And when his grandfather left him £250, his parents said they would invest it. He never saw it again.

During my second pregnancy in 2013 I had a miscarriage (when the baby has died but the mother has no symptoms). After that we asked if we could stay overnight in their caravan on the coast, but they said no.

David’s father then stopped liking my posts on Facebook, even pictures of his granddaughter. They also made jokes about my weight, comparing me to an overweight friend when I am not overweight at all.

In 2015, at our daughter’s third birthday party, a friend made comments about my mother-in-law’s behavior. She had seen her doting on every child there, except her own granddaughter.

That night we Googled narcissistic personality disorder. That was a eureka moment.

David read a book called You’re Not Crazy — It’s Your Mother by Danu Morrigan and checked off a list of narcissistic traits.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was Christmas 2015 when my daughter came home with a toy torch that she had been playing with at their house after they had told her not to.

The end of our Latin

Furious, they made her apologize and told us to return it immediately. They nagged me about it so much that I finally posted it.

In January 2016 we finally sent them a certified letter telling them how we felt.

We said we had had enough and explained how frustrated we were with the relationship.

They emailed us saying they were very angry and accused us of being cruel, but when we met them in person they didn’t say anything to our faces.

Because they felt like they were losing us, my father-in-law said his wife got sick, without specifying how, and that David should call her. We knew that wasn’t true.

We were at our wits end. I told my husband I didn’t want to be a part of their lives anymore and said in desperation, “It’s either them or me.”

Luckily he chose me and in October 2016 he called his father and told him to stop calling.

When I think about it, I know I did the right thing by giving David an ultimatum. It was the push he needed to end this dysfunctional relationship that was tearing our family down.

You might think that Christmas and birthdays would be difficult, but these occasions actually make us grateful that they are not in our lives.

Amanda

I can’t imagine what life would be like if we still had contact with them. Something had to be done.

They still send birthday cards to my husband and daughter, but we throw them in the trash.

You would think that Christmas and birthdays would be difficult, but these occasions make us thankful that they are not in our lives. They always made an occasion stressful.

David is happier to be rid of it than I am, and our daughter doesn’t ask about it.

A year ago my father-in-law contacted me and said he had listened to a podcast about a man who left his family after joining a cult and asked if that happened to us.

This sums up how insane it is to be in a relationship with them. We are so lucky to be out of the madness.

DAVID SAYS: “I have never regretted making that decision, never. Sometimes it is difficult because I have lost my parents and my daughter’s grandparents, but they are not the loving people they want to show to the outside world.

“Behind closed doors they are monsters.”