# Feeling extremely overwhelmed living near family and in laws- HELP!



## overwhelmed1984

My husband and I have been married for over 6 years and have 3 kids. We have had our fair share of ups and downs but one thing that I feel that is taking a huge toll on me is our families. He has a large family of 7 siblings and I have 5 siblings and live near my dad and step mom. 

I am in school full time to become a teacher and my husband works long hours and every day I seems like family calls for one reason or another. Please don't get me wrong, I love our whole family, but for the past year my husband's sister has called weekly to ask if we/I can babysit her children. we have had to cut it off a few times because of the frequency of it and she will stop for a month and then is right back at it. However that is not all. 

Sometimes my husband's sisters call to cause drama and they thrive on he said she said issues and put us in the forefront. It causes my husband to stress out and it just makes me mad. His other sister has a drug problem and calls to ask for narcotics (recently after my husband had an emergency appendectomy) and her drug addiction has caused us many fights and near separations. She has tried to get him to hide things from me regarding her addictions because she knows I don't agree. 

It feels like his family calls quite often for favors and if we say we cannot meet the favors in some way than we are chastened. My family isn't so demanding with favors but they wonder why I never call, they think I don't like them if we don't text or talk daily. I am not a big phone talker and have told them this several times and I am very busy with school.

I am beginning to cringe whenever our phone rings. I will just turn it off for the whole day because I am honestly just exhausted by our families. My husband agrees and empathizes to a large degree but if we bring up to our families our feelings they act like we are moody, or his family thinks it is all me and I am just a psycho and my family thinks it is Mark keeping me from them and that he is controlling. It is none of that. 

We just want to live our lives normally and often times we both are a little reclusive. I don't understand what is wrong with that? We love to help family but they begin to take advantage. I have begged my husband to move and he disagrees and says our children will be heartbroken and feels like we are stable here. I fear our marriage will end because of our families being too involved if we don't take a huge step in some way.

It is not as easy as you think to tell our families to back off but this is something we have both created. Can anyone else relate? How do you cope with large and demanding families?


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## frusdil

You set boundaries. Good fences make good neighbours/relatives. If they play nice, they get invited into your inner world, if not they don't.

You get an answering machine, leave it on all the time and screen calls. Call back when you can.

That's what we do and it escalated briefly but my in laws don't call so much now because we "never answer the phone", lol.


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## Happyfamily

overwhelmed1984 said:


> Sometimes my husband's sisters call to cause drama and they thrive on he said she said issues and put us in the forefront.


Arg! Dontchya hate that! They seem to be good at roping you in. 



> It feels like his family calls quite often for favors and if we say we cannot meet the favors in some way than we are chastened.


This really irks me about pushy people. 



> We just want to live our lives normally and often times we both are a little reclusive. I don't understand what is wrong with that?


Nothing, but the only way to deal with that kind of person is not have them around. There's no other way. Are you going to train full grown adults to be different people? I don't think so! 





> I have begged my husband to move and he disagrees and says our children will be heartbroken and feels like we are stable here. I fear our marriage will end because of our families being too involved if we don't take a huge step in some way.


Sounds really serious. Regardless of what the solution ends up being, you have to negotiate in good faith to a mutually acceptable program. Because what happens when you don't is that people do arbitrary things, no compromise, and that can spiral out of control into much worse. Like namely divorce. 

So you sit him down and say look buster, you want sex? Unplug the phone tonight. This is the kind of negotiation that seems to work really well for me.


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## Hicks

I'm going to tell you something.
This problem is between you and your husband, and not between you and your families.

You and your husband have to come to agreement as to what the appropriate level of intereaction is with the families. 

Once you do that, you decide the level of emotional and time and whatever other investment YOU will make in the relationship.... And realize that will have no impact on THEIR actions....but you will have control over your emotions and actions.


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## turnera

Yeah...this isn't about them. It's about you two. Make an agreement and stick to it. Turn off the phone. Reduce your interaction.


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## Omego

Yes, it sounds like you two are not on the same page. This is a difficult situation. It would probably be better if you could move away, but if that is not option can you ask your H how HE thinks you should handle the situation? 

Can you also put your foot down about the sister who is addicted to drugs? Just say you understand that she is his sister, but you are his wife and he has to respect your feelings as well and that you do not want her in the house, as you are not a drug rehab center. Tell him to get her professional help.

As others have said, it's important that the two of you can agree, and truthfully, it sounds like he needs to support you a lot more. This should be your immediate goal.


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