Exhaustion

[anariel]

Hello! ☺️

I (32F), started dating my wife (38F) 6.5 years ago. She has a daughter (we will call her Anna) who was 13 at the time and is now 20.  My wife was a teen mom with an abusive partner, who she married bc that was what is expected.  She and our daughter’s father were together until Anna was about 2, when my wife was finally able to leave.   Anna’s dad had been in and out of her life.  He was abusive in many ways (physically, verbally, emotionally, SAed my wife) and would come take Anna for a month or two and then call and say “get the f$&@ing kid out of my house.”  We fought for sole custody (and my wife fought before I was in the picture) but it was never granted.  Between Anna’s dad and me, my wife had another partner—Tee, who was also abusive and manipulative, although not at the levels of Anna’s dad.  Tee mostly was psychologically manipulative, and just not super nice bc she never worked through her own trauma.  My wife did her best, but didn’t have a lot of support and worked a lot to support Anna, and so wasn’t home as much as she wanted to be and Anna was often with Tee.  Both Tee and Anna’s dad gave her drugs and alcohol very young.  Last March, Tee’s dad kidnapped his ex wife, and Anna’s half siblings, before committing suicide.  All this to say, this girl has a lot of trauma and my heart hurts for her.  I love her and want healing and safety and wellness for her.

But I’m exhausted.  Last fall my wife was diagnosed with autoimmune diseases and fibromyalgia and is still being tested for an unknown neurological problem that is impacting her memory and cognitive function.  I work, care for her, and try to keep our kid from causing too much damage. Anna has lied about us, and probably about other family members, but, it’s impossible to know.  She’s said things like that my wife tried to run her over with a car, that I hit her, that her grandfather who had literally locked himself in the house away from her attacked her. It’s hard to know what to believe.  She has so much trauma and some of what she says is plausible, but other things are like these—attacking someone through a locked door.  

Lately, Anna has been really angry with my  wife for her past trauma and has been really hurtful.


[for some reason half of this post won’t copy from my notes where I typed it…I’ll return to finish later]

Our objective is to better understand the struggles our child faces and to learn the skills to improve our relationship and provide a supportive environment and also improve on our own emotional responses, attitudes and effectiveness as a family leaders

[anariel]