Thanks for the support everybody.
I should probably say a word about my husband's relationship with his parents. He doesn't stand up to them as often as he should and that is, obviously, a problem. I always try to be sensitive to his feelings on this particular subject. I can't imagine how horrible it must have been to grow up in that house. I sympathize with him and I know he is trying, but it's tough. He may never get to a healthy point with his parents and that's okay. They are his Achilles' heel.
I should note that my husband is not the only one who let's N have his way most of the time. N is hands down the most difficult human being I have ever met. He pushes the whole time you are in his presence. With single-minded determination, he forces every single subject, every activity, all of it, to spotlight on him.
N acts exactly like a hyper, attention-hungry three year old. He is exhausting. The first few days of any visit, my husband and I both equally censure his behavior, but it's an unrelenting job. Let's just take for example one of his habits. Whenever he sits on my couch, he puts his disgusting feet on my grandmother's antique coffee table. I have told him 900 times not to do this. Everytime I say to take the feet off, he does, immediately, but not without first a smart alec remark. But then, what do you do when you come home and find him sitting there with his feet on the table again? Tell him again, right? And again and again...
He is just bound and determined to do whatever he wants, how he wants and whenever he wants. This willfulness is made worse by the fact that most of his ideas and decisions are completely idiotic.
You never get a moment of rest with him. The whole time is spent trying to control his behavior and it's just exhausting. When I asked him to turn the guitar down, I went out to do this because I had been resting all day. My husband, on the other hand, had just laid down. He had been taking care of me like a barefooted saint for the past several weeks, and I wanted to take care of him a little bit. He was so tired, so frustrated and hurting over our loss too. So I just told N to turn it down. Of course, I didn't know that this one simple polite request would be the thing that made him blow.
You never know. He is manipulative as hell and uses that threat of a nuclear meltdown to keep people from censuring him. Thus, every time, I or my husband tell him to pick his used band-aids up off the floor or not to tear the pool patio apart looking for the leak, or not to demean women - we feel our stomachs clench in preparation of a colossal hissy fit.
His behavior is just exhausting. He wears you down. After awhile, it's hard not to just agree to everything. And then comes the really joyful part, watching N gloat about his victory. After we've given up and we're both nervous wrecks, he'll start smearing our faces in his behavior. When I enter a room and look at his feet on the table he just looks back at me and waits for me to say something and if I don't, he goes back to watching TV or whatever with this smirk on his face. It's the same with the guitar, he'll pull it out and look right at you as he makes this grand gesture of strumming the first chord.
He thinks he's won the war, but he's losing the battle. With every visit, my husband grows more and more disgusted with him. I could not live with myself if I was the one who separated my husband from his parents permanently. I think I could do it, but my god, disowning someone - parents - that's so big. I respect and understand people who have done this with their N parents, and I wish my husband would do the same, but I can't be the one to force his hand on this.
I'm sorry these are so long - I seem to be spilling without end.
