DEAR ABBY: My in-laws have repeatedly attempted to destroy my marriage. My husband knows they trash-talk us to family, thinking we don’t know it, but he won’t put up any meaningful boundaries or check them whatsoever. I have lost all respect for him because he lies to me, telling me he has confronted them, when I know for a fact he hasn’t.
We separated over this issue, and he spent four years dragging his feet until I got sick of his stalling and began dating to get him to act. He wanted to reconcile, so I made the terms of getting back together clear: Confront his family about their toxic behavior, get therapy for his self-esteem issues and finish working on our house so we could sell it and move away from our neighbor, the heroin dealer who had been harassing us for years.
He finished the house, and after two years on and off the market, I ended up selling it. But the confrontation with his family never happened. I still catch them talking trash about us, and he has refused to go to therapy. I’ve been through therapy and anger management and have come a long way. But he’s firmly entrenched in his dysfunction and doesn’t see or care how it affects me.
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