This is hard and no one is wrong here.

Re: This is hard and no one is wrong here.

• charlotte989875 member

  

  June 2024

  I really hope the husband and family have had done therapy after such a terrible loss. But it sounds like LW could use some now too. It might be hormones or anxiety but if hearing her name sends you spiraling you want to get some help.  They’re not wrong to talk about her, so you need to find a way to mange the feelingd this brings up for you. 

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• MyNameIsNot member

  

  June 2024

  This sounds like a skewed other side of the DIL who wanted the LW to take down all photos of her late DIL. 
  
  Anyway, talk to your husband and probably therapy. You can't erase the existence of your H's prior family and you have to embrace that it's normal and healthy to reminisce about people after the pass, even when it's painful. 

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• mrsconn23 member

  

  June 2024

  I liked Prudie's advice on this one for once:
  
  

  Dear Struggling,

  This is really hard, and I want to make sure I don’t give you advice that makes it harder by causing a divide between you and your in-laws, or giving them a reason to see you as insensitive to their loss. But I also don’t want you to be in emotional distress during your pregnancy! So I think the best approach has two parts.

  First, you need a short-term plan to decrease the number of upsetting comments you hear without giving them any reason to believe you want to erase the memory of your husband’s ex and children. This will mean putting a slight “It’s not you it’s me” spin on your request. I’m thinking something like this: “I’ve been so emotional while I’m pregnant. I don’t know if it’s the fact that we’re starting a family or the hormones but I just find myself crying uncontrollably when I think about Jim losing Megan and the girls. I think I have a deeper appreciation for what all of you went through and the depth of the tragedy as I imagine having my own baby.”

  Then give them a chance to talk about it, at that moment. Ask questions. Offer empathy. Later, have a similar conversation with your husband and assure him that you don’t want to erase his past but are struggling to manage the sadness around this, in your vulnerable and sensitive state. Ask him if he could ask his mother and sister to give you a heads up—a trigger warning of sorts—before they bring up his late wife and kids, rather than dropping their names into casual conversation. They might receive this better coming from him, and I’m hopeful that an awareness of how the topic affects you will make them hesitate before they bring it up as often.

  Second, you need a long-term plan to actually be okay with hearing these names, without having negative feelings about how your relationship came to be. I do think that when you decided to be in a relationship with a widower, part of the deal was that he (and his family) might want to talk about the people they lost—possibly forever! So obviously the healthiest way to be in this marriage is to reframe the way you think about how you and your husband got here in a way that isn’t upsetting. This is definitely therapy territory. With support, I can imagine you getting to a place where instead of thinking “This is a reminder that my happiness with my husband came at a terrible cost,” you might think something like “This is a reminder of how lucky my husband and I are to have each other, how fleeting life is, and how we really need to treasure every moment, even when our day-to-day life as parents feels tough.”

  
  

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• short+sassy member

  

  June 2024

  I agree.  I also like Prudie's advice on asking for some understanding about this while she is pregnant.  
  
  As well as reframing how she sees this tragedy.
  
  Although a different situation, I read an article about a woman whose young child needed a new liver.  Children's organs are in such short supply, it was going to be a long wait and they would probably have to wait until his own health was dire enough to get priority.  Really sad and awful, but that's how it is.  The day came when a liver was ready for him and he had a successful transplant surgery.  She was so thankful her son's life would be saved, but also felt guilty about her happiness because someone else's child had died for her son to have that chance.

  

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