My in-laws are ruining my husband's mental health. What to do?
My husband and I have been together for more than a decade.
Over the last 5 years, he’s been dealing with aging parents and very difficult siblings. It seems that the more his parents age( one requires 24h care at home), the more his mom and his siblings become unreasonable. Initially, I thought it was just a minor family disagreement, and I didn’t want to get involved. However, it seems that the more years go by, the more his family feud is affecting his overall health, including mental health, physical health and even sex drive.
I even thought his testosterone was declining. However, we went to South East Asia for a couple of months and found that his testosterone levels were completely normal. While being in South East Asia, he looked happy and even regained his libido. Unfortunately, we had to come back to the West and stayed with his parents who live close to the airport to recover from jet lag and attend a series of nearby appointments. Since we’ve been back to his family, his depression and anxiety are now back to the roof.
I’d like to specify that his family has always been cordial to me. However, they have been making very poor decisions and playing the guilt game on things that have nothing to do with him. I like to see families united and always found that it was immoral to ask a partner/spouse to distance themselves from relatives. However, he’s reached such a low point that it’s now getting more and more difficult not to get involved. I’m just not sure what to say or what to do without bringing more division. His dying father is about to celebrate his birthday and his family don’t hesitate to play dirty games with my husband even during celebrations. Understandably, he doesn’t want to miss what could potentially be his dad’s last birthday, but I’m dreading how this could affect him.
Have you ever been in a similar situation? How would/did you deal with this?