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  • #183905
    marco
    Participant

    Hi, I’m a new member and after reading advice in some of the topics on this site I have decided to ask for some advice of my own. I’ll get straight to the issue as the title describes my family (actually my two Sisters), have a real issue with my wife.

    I have been married for 11 years and have 2 children. The relationship between my sisters, (who are both married with children) and my wife has always been civil but not overly friendly, they get along buts its luke-warm, not house on fire stuff.

    There have over the years, been a few blow-ups but things settle down, normally by me having to go and straighten things out with my sisters. The blow-ups always seem to come back to what my sisters perceive as behaviours they don’t like from my wife, maybe the way she spoke to them or how she may have been/acted in a certain situation.

    I feel a lot of the issues arise from the first 3 years of our marriage when my wife and I lived with my parents in my parents house. My sisters have got an impression that my wife was not as respectful as she could have been during that time towards my parents and to them when they would visit. One sister who lived nearby would visit every single day for a minimum of an hour sometimes twice a day. The other sister, who lived further away, visited every 3 months and typically stayed for 1-2 weeks. My wife did find this environment claustrophobic but put up with it for my sake. Both sisters never considered my parents house to be our home or respected our privacy whilst we were there and insisted it to be an open house with them having keys to the front door so they could come and go as they please.

    Anyway these issues would normally come and go as the visits would come and go and we would visit each others houses and families happily enough, the kids would all mingle and usually it was all good.

    We now live in our own house (past 7 years) a good distance away and visit my parents when we can, normally every 3 months as a family and I visit every 4-6 weeks on my own.

    Recently, during a visit to my parents house we stopped at my sisters house for the night where the 10 years of underlying issues between my wife and sisters blew up again. This time it was really ugly and a lot of slurs and old complaints were made in mine and my wife’s presence about my wife. My wife was quite shocked but stayed quiet and next day we left and returned to our own home.

    I informed my parents of what had happened and they were quite shocked and said they would find out why this happened. After a few days my parents informed me that both my sisters had now said that she did not want any future relationship with my wife and she was no longer permitted to visit them, but if I wanted to visit my sisters with my children that would be fine. They also said my sisters would no longer be visiting my house because of my wife.

    The bottom line is that my sisters want to cut my wife out of the family and maintain a relationship with myself. My parents at first went along with this idea.

    Now, I know my wife is not perfect and I don’t have her on a pedestal, she can have her moments and we have had our arguments but nothing beyond normal so I’m not the blinkered husband in this play thinking my wife has no faults, she does as we all do have her flaws and she can sometimes speak without thinking, buts its usually through naivety then malice.

    I will caveat that I always found my wife to be dutiful to my parents as much is as reasonable to expect from a daughter in law, both during and after we lived with them. In our marriage, my wife looks after me and the children really well. We have a happy marriage and family with no issues between ourselves.

    However, this call to exclude her from my family seems an extreme action and not one I can go along with. I have informed my parents I do not accept the conditions imposed. On my part, I will not stop anyone visiting me but I will not visit my sisters  and leave my wife at home it just does not seem a fair thing to do.

    So we have arrived at a stalemate. My sisters won’t visit me and I cannot consciously visit them under the conditions that exclude my wife from my family.

    My sisters are adamant my wife is a rotten apple and will not move in their stance to exclude her from their lives and now they are accusing me of breaking family relations because I won’t visit them.

    My wife has said she doesn’t mind if I visit my sisters, but I know it would be hurtful to her if I did, and in any case I can’t visit them with any happiness knowing how they are hating on my wife.

    I also feel its quite humiliating and disrespectful to me for them to effectively say, ‘you can come but leave your wife at home, and we won’t be coming to your house either’.

    Where do I go from here?

     

    #183929
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear marco:

    I think that you made the right choice to not visit your sisters without your wife. I believe that your loyalty should be first to your immediate family: your wife and your children. Your wife, from your sharing, reads like a quiet, maybe submissive person: she told you that she didn’t mind if you visit your sisters, and when the last blowup occurred, you wrote that your wife was quiet.

    Also, when your and your wife lived with your parents, you wrote that your sisters did not respect your privacy, and that was wrong of them.

    It may be that your wife is used as a scapegoat by your sisters, that they are unjustly directing their anger at her. I sure hope you remain by your wife’s side, make your stand clear and stand by it, to not visit anywhere your wife is not welcome. Also, insist that your wife is treated with respect. Do not accommodate your sisters in their efforts to … harm your immediate family.

    anita

    #183961
    marco
    Participant

    Anita, thank you for your reply.  Your advice is helpful in as far as it affirms that I am not unreasonable to have taken the position I have to protect my wife.

    I am however from an Italian culture and here in Italy the blood family is considered very important. I would like to find a way to get past this issue, the current situation is not tolerable for me or my parents who could do without the stress of this situation at their age.

    If my blood family is refusing to back down that leaves me in exile. Time may be a healer but as time goes on people are becoming more entrenched in their positions and it could be many years before healing takes place. The children who used to mix, no longer see each other and the pressure on me grows day by day.

    My sisters clearly have a deep projected hatred for my wife, the depth of which I find hard to understand, maybe it is unjust anger and/or jealousy, whatever it maybe, how to get past it escapes me. The cause of it is complex and certainly my sisters respective spouses don’t seem to have made any move to reach out towards a solution either, do they also hate my wife or is it me they hate and hope to punish for some act of injustice they perceive that I may have subjected on them?

    This act of exclusion of my wife is one of humiliation and ultimate disrespect and something I deplore so much to have been subjected to that I feel repulsed at the thought of seeking reconciliation with those that would deploy such an action. But for the sake of my parents and my own soul, reconciliation I must find.

    Agreeing to their terms would be giving in to injustice, not agreeing continues a situation that only magnifies as time goes on and it may go on for many years by which time any thoughts of reconciliation will not even be entertained and the years in which families should have shared experiences will be nothing but vacant spaces in photo albums.

    I ask again where do I go from here?

    #183969
    Ruby
    Participant

    Dear Marco,

    I’m sorry you are going through this difficult  situation. And I feel worse for your poor wife who has no say in this matter. Sounds like she has remained quiet in most occasions when your sisters attacked her or when they showed no respect to your and your wife’s privacy in your parents’ house. No woman should have to be subject to this kind of humiliation in her husband’s home by his family. I don’t know how much you have done to protect her honor when you were living at your parents’ house.  Maybe your sisters got away with too much injustice towards your wife. Ask yourself how much disrespect  you would be willing to take from your wife’s family? I think your wife has taken enough. Remember, you are the center of your wife’s life. Your sisters have their own lives. They should not interfere so much. You don’t cause problems in their lives. It is wrong of them to cause you and your wife so much pain. If they truly cared about you, they would go out of their way to accept your wife for who she is. Because that would make you happy. Sounds like your wife is going out of her way to allow you to maintain a relationship with your sisters even after they hurt her so much. And I’m sure she’s doing this because she loves you. Please stand by your wife and defend her honor. Put her needs before your own as she has done for you.  If your sisters have any respect for you, and are interested in keeping a relationship with you, let them know they will have to accept your family. Your family comes first.

    #183997
    VJ
    Participant

    Dear marco,

    It is very nice to see you as a family person wanting to have all relationships close and loving towards each other.
    At certain times things are beyond our control and this may always not be possible.

    Getting straight to the point there were things like sharing of keys and intrusion of your privacy… but that was THEN and this is NOW. Now you have a different house and as you said you are living a happy family life within yourselves…which is really a great thing and something that many people crave for.

    – you have informed your parents that you do not accept the conditions imposed
    – your sisters won’t visit you
    – you cannot visit them without your wife
    – your wife has said she doesn’t mind if you visit your sisters but you can’t visit them with any happiness knowing how they are hating your wife
    – the children who used to mix, no longer see each other and the pressure on you is growing day by day
    – your sisters are accusing you of breaking family relations because you won’t visit them

    “I would like to find a way to get past this issue
    …for the sake of my parents and my own soul, reconciliation I must find”

     

     

    – Your sister is not willing to make any amendments in their decision.
    – Your wife has already made an adjustment by accommodating to the situation.
    – Your parents cannot do anything about the situation as it is not directly in their hands.
    – Your sisters’ husbands are not actively looking into this matter.

    The only way of what you asked “to get past the issue”, the only way “to find reconciliation” is YOU.

    In any conflict, only a “win-win” situation for everyone can subside the strain in the situation.
    But for this, adjustments, change of belief systems, change of mindset need to be made.
    As seen above, all others are not willing to make this adjustment.
    So can you? Can you break the mental position of thinking that it not fair to visit your sister’s place. More below.

    Excerpt: The Power of Now ~Eckhart Tolle.

    “Maybe you are being taken advantage of, maybe the activity you are engaged in is tedious, maybe someone close to you is dishonest, irritating, or unconscious, but all this is irrelevant. Whether your thoughts and emotions about this situation are justified or not makes no difference. The fact is that you are resisting what is. You are making the present
    moment into an enemy. You are creating unhappiness, conflict between the inner and the outer. Your unhappiness is polluting not only your own inner being and those around you but also the collective human psyche of which you are an inseparable part. The pollution of the planet is only an outward reflection of an inner psychic pollution”

     

    “How can you handle this negativity?
    By dropping it. How do you drop a piece of hot coal that you are holding in your hand?
    How do you drop some heavy and useless baggage that you are carrying? By recognizing that you don’t want to suffer the pain or carry the burden anymore and then letting go of it.”

     

    Why not just visit your sisters to remain in touch. Without much negativity about anything. Keeping your inner space clear. Inner peace (or peace of mind) refers to a state of being mentally at peace, with enough knowledge and understanding of the situation inspite of its downsides and keeping oneself strong in the face of discord or stress.

    Drop your unhappiness that you cannot visit them. It is they who are hating your wife. It is their problem. So drop the burning coal and become internally free of the situation.
    You do this without much reactivity and without much resistance towards your sisters. You still do the interactions with them with peace, love and harmony.

    There may still be situations that may come to provoke you. Your sisters may find chances to intentionally talk about your wife. You be non-resistant. How does it really matter when someone says something wrong. If you say I am a mad person, how will it matter to me. I know I am not. But if I believe you then I truly am. If in future something becomes truly unbearable and intolerable, then that will be handled at that stage. That will be THEN, this is NOW. You be in the NOW.

    During any interactions – do not use any word to speak against your sister, against your wife or even against yourself. Simply use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love and remain in yourself.

    Have no negativity about any person, situation or event.

    By doing this you will have answers to both of them in the title of your thread- family as well as wife.

    While you keep doing this you will soon find that life circumstances will keep changing. In due course of time all will get busy in their own lives or in the challenges and routines of their own lives. Things do not remain the same. Impermanence is a law of life.

    The only bitterness in the relationship now remains between your sisters and your wife. But is this something new? This was always there. Wasn’t it? You simply made certain adjustments for everyone’s benefit and all things would be just the way they were. Regarding the ill feelings from your sisters towards your wife – let it remain as it is. Let it be handled by Life itself when/if it wants to. You continue to interact with your sisters and enjoy your happy loving family life with your wife and children.

    This really does not mean that you are not loving your wife. This in fact means that you love your wife very much and hence are not involving her in a situation where she will not be treated well.

    Of course have a genuine, loving talk with your wife as to why you are enforced to do this (for the goodness of the situation) and that you are really thankful and grateful to her for being supportive. Mention to her that your love towards her has increased even more because of this situation. Along with mentioning, also show that love.

     

    If you are cutting the relationship with your sisters you are going to estrange the relationship even more between several people – parents, sisters, wife, children, and many others involved. Who knows – think of the “hatredness” their children may have while they interact with your children when they are grown ups. Think of the quality of relationships between your children’s wives and their children’s wives, then between your children’s children and their children’s children and all of other family members involved. Then friends of family members also start to see them in the same darkness because of what they may have heard.

    This is how hatred keeps on multiplying in this world.

    See to it that you are not cutting the bonds of every single relationship because of someone else’s ill behaviour whereas you can still be accommodating and loving towards everyone, including your wife, inspite of all the difficulties in the relationships.

    Accept the imperfections of this strained relationship.

    “Acceptance of the unacceptable is the greatest source of grace in this world.” ~Eckhart Tolle

     

    Love & blessings,

    VJ

     

    #184035
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear marco:

    You are welcome. You wrote that in Italy “the blood family is considered very important”- notice: your children are very much your blood family and it is most important to them that you respect their mother. If you disrespect their mother, your wife will suffer and be a lesser mother to your children. As a result, your children (your very much blood family) will suffer.

    Keeping the above in my mind, I understand your concern regarding your parents’ well being and the fact that the children don’t mix (yours and your sisters’).

    You wrote: “the pressure on me grows day by day”- are you referring to your parents pressuring you to find a solution? If they do, are they pressuring your sisters as well to find a solution or is the pressure just on you? Share more, if you will, about your parents’ attitude through the years of conflict and currently regarding this conflict.

    I will wait for your answer to the above question and request for information, because it is crucial, I think, to the possibility of a solution.

    anita

    #184091
    marco
    Participant

    @VJ – Thank you so much for your lengthy and carefully constructed advice. You are indeed right that my ego is involved in this also and it is I that feel hurt and betrayed in this situation and it is right you thinking that if only I could get past my own feelings the situation could move forward. But here is the problem, in the past it has always been who has been the one to move things forward and each time afterwards the issues have become greater, finally arriving at where we are today. Why would things be any different in the future, the past is a great teacher.

    The only bitterness in the relationship now remains between your sisters and your wife.

    This is where I think you may be mistaken, I feel the bitterness towards my wife is just a symptom of deeper issues, their own insecurities and feelings of inferiority coming into play. I think they have bitterness towards me also and my wife is the easier target to cause me pain. They must understand there conditions and actions would cause me pain?

    At some point, have to say enough! this is not acceptable, these conditions are not acceptable and draw a line in the sand. It is difficult for me and I believe the easy thing to do would be to carry on as normal with my sisters and put my wife in the background but deep down I don’t feel this is right.

    I was there when slurs and insults were directed at my wife and saw the misplaced hatred with my own eyes, how can I go along with their conditions, which will only serve to reinforce their views that they are correct. This course will only breed resentment within my wife and become an issue in our marriage. I know you talk about the ‘now‘ but how do you consider the future could unfold in a positive way when you accept and follow an injustice. What if this leads to a separation between myself and my wife, are my sisters going to care for me? Will they be there for me in my old age? What will become of my children? Would exercising patience and letting life take its course be the right way to go?

    Interested to know your thoughts…

    ————————————————————————————————————–


    @Anita
    – My wife and I lived with my parents and the relationship between my mother and my sister is far stronger than the relationship between my wife and my mother. I do believe my mother over the years when we lived with my parents unwittingly supplied my sister with ammunition that is being used against my wife today. In our culture there are families that do not get along and they live to these conditions of spouses accepting they are not welcome in certain family members houses and that is the narrative my sisters are suggesting and one my mother initially supported.

    I  rejected these conditions because I don’t believe in following bad examples. We should aspire to follow good examples and not consider to be like those who live under such negative conditions.

    I believe my parents are reassuring my sisters to find a solution also but they are being rebuffed, my sisters accuse my parents of favouritism towards me and reject their advice and instead promote their conditions to my parents to be the way we should proceed. Each time, I explain to my parents this is not correct they understand the bigger picture of how living under these conditions could be harmful but then they again are pushed the narrative of how other people live like this and why can’t we?

    It is interesting you spotted the role of the parents. We lived with my parents and we were constantly put under pressure and made to feel like free-loaders and disrespectful whilst we lived under their roof, not just by my sisters but their spouses as well, who remarked about how we were not standing on our own two feet and saving money. Maybe there was envy?

    When we moved to our own house we were accused of abandoning my parents and the old stories of how they believed we behaved (in their eyes) with disrespect are constantly bought up and raked over whenever it suits their agenda.

    I believe my sisters would like me and wife to still be living with my parents and be able to continue their controlling behaviour over me and my wife. Now we are in our own house they don’t have that anymore. Its notable they refuse to now visit me in my own house as well.

    I feel more and more my wife is the innocent victim in all this and the real target of their hatred is me or more specifically my actions, which may be the simple action of getting married and in their eyes prioritising my wife and children over them by moving away and living peacefully in my own house.

    Interested to know your thoughts..

     

    • This reply was modified 6 years, 11 months ago by marco.
    #184107
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear marco:

    More of my thoughts about what you shared in your recent post:

    You wrote: “I was there when slurs and insults were directed at my wife”- I cannot begin to tell you how unacceptable this is, in my mind, for your sisters to abuse your wife with slurs and insults, no matter the culture, the country.

    You wrote: “What if this leads to a separation between myself and my wife, are my sisters going to care for me?” My answer: it is common for an abusive person to harm their victim and then take care of them, cause the person injury and then nurse them back to health. And so, even if your sisters will care for you when you are sick, it is wiser to not allow them to cause you the sickness to begin with. Better not get stabbed with a knife, than let a person stab you and then bandage the wound.

    You wrote: “What will become of my children?”- I am glad you asked. People most often neglect their children in favor of pleasing their parents and siblings, placing their children last. Your children’s best interest is a strong marriage between you and your wife. Their best interest is the well-being of their mother and their father. These are way, way… way more important and beneficial to them than playing with their cousins.

    You wrote: “my mother over the years… unwittingly supplied my sister with ammunition that is being used against my wife”- from your different sharing and my experience, it seems to me that it is more likely that your mother wittingly supplied your sister with that kind of ammunition, and that there have been and probably still are conversations between your mother and sister/s where all three … use that ammunition as bonding material, that is, using your wife as “the evil one” so to deflect from the real issues, the issues of the troubles in their own relationships with each other.

    You wrote: “I believe my parents are reassuring my sisters to find a solution also but they are rebuffed…”- I doubt it.

    You wrote that when you lived with your parents, your sisters made you feel like free loaders and when you moved out of there, you were accused of abandoning your parents-

    see, you can’t win with your sisters, no matter what you do. It is a losing battle. If you give in to their demands, you will lose with your sisters. They will not be satisfied.

    I would like to know more of your thoughts, following my input here.

    anita

     

    #184109
    Anonymous
    Guest

    * didn’t get submitted correctly….

    #184139
    marco
    Participant

    @anita – I don’t want to lead you on just my side of story so I am trying to present only facts and remain objective but your comments do mirror a lot what my wife also thinks.

    My wife is dutiful to me and has made me a better man and made a great family environment for our children where they flourish. My wife has a close circle of friends who respect her greatly, I respect her greatly, her own family respect her greatly it just seems to be my own blood family that has this hostility towards her.

    When we were living with my parents, I didn’t detect the hostility as I should have, I was a new father, husband and working trying to build a career. Men are not as perceptive to these things as women so it came as a shock to me the first time these issues blew up and the resentments showed themselves and maybe I didn’t do enough to protect my wife at the time, which I regret. I do recall raising my voice to both sisters on separate occasions when they were making complaints to me and my parents, the complaints seemed to be always returning to the behaviour of my wife and myself to my parents and how disrespectful we were to them or so they believed, something my mother did not seem to do much to dispel at the time, although my father did tell them to stop their behaviour.

    There is in our culture, a belief that the blood family comes first and the wife is secondary, the daughter in-law is not given the same value as the son in-law. That is not a view I take. I believe all people have their place and their rights and all are to be respected.

    This cultural aspect however plays me into a guilt trap. I feel tremendously guilty if I don’t maintain relationships with my blood family but at the same time I can’t agree to their conditions.  So I am in this dilemma. On the one hand the guilt of not visiting family on my own on the other the injustice towards my wife if I do so.

    On my part I have said to my parents, all family are welcome in my house as long as the comments are slurs are to be buried where they belong, in the past. However,  I can’t continue relations of visiting people under conditions which exclude my wife.

    It has been 8 months since I last visited my sister which was the time the slurs were made to my wife. The only regular contact I have now is with my mother whose latest advice was to go and visit my sisters and sort things out, but I know they are not going to change their position, they are adamant they want my wife excluded from the blood family. I think my sister after making those slurs when we were guests in her house is now too embarrassed and cowardly to apologise and it is easier for her to entrench her position and reinforce her belief my wife is ‘evil’ and she should be excluded from the family, the other sister with her opinionated spouse seems too willing to follow suit.

    The more I think about it, I don’t think the issue is with my wife, I think it is with me and I have more enemies within the family then I thought. Spouses who feel they have been slighted or are envious. It is interesting that one of my sisters spouses questioned my right to live ‘free’ and how he had to pay his own mortgage in his own house, maybe the whispering of envy in their ears added fuel to their already burning fires. I am not sure, and don’t want to go down the slippery road of suspicion and paranoia, wondering and trying to figure out everyones agenda’s.

    What can I do to find peace or  I am just being naive and it is simply not possible in this circumstance? Should I just let it go, let the years drift by, visit my parents, make peace with my guilt and focus on my own wife and children?

    #184161
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear marco:

    Yes, you should focus on your own wife and children. Absolutely, I have no doubt.

    If you accommodate your sisters’ cruelty, you will be guilty of a wrongdoing. Your guilt will be valid.

    If you continue to not visit your sister/s, you will continue to feel guilty, but this guilt will not be based on a wrongdoing. It will not be valid guilt. I know how it is to feel this kind of guilt, it feels real even though intellectually I know it is not valid. It is likely to continue to feel real, distressing, uncomfortable. One day maybe your guilt will catch on to reality and you will realize, on the emotional level, that you are not guilty.

    What do you accommodate: the valid guilt or the invalid guilt, is the question.

    Notes:

    * Your sisters complaining about your wife being disrespectful… while they use slurs.

    * The cultural attitude you described regarding a daughter in law explains why your wife has been a convenient target to express hostilities that far predate your wife appearing in their lives, hostilities that have nothing to do with your wife.

    * Regarding the value of blood: without respect there is no value to any relationship, blood or not. No value, none whatsoever.

    anita

     

    #184177
    marco
    Participant

    @anita, Thank you for all your advice it is very reassuring. God bless you.

    #184261
    VJ
    Participant

    Hi marco,

    Your comments in the latest response to me has taken the depth of the situation into a different dimension.

    I re-read your original post and found the only issue of bitterness towards your wife and that other things were fine including their relationship with you.

    I am sorry to bring the excerpts of the post again but that is only for the sake of the explanation.

    “my two Sisters, have a real issue with my wife”
    “My sisters have got an impression that my wife was not as respectful”
    “lot of slurs and old complaints were made about my wife”
    “10 years of underlying issues between my wife and sisters blew up again”
    “sisters had now said that she did not want any future relationship with my wife” and she was no longer permitted to visit them”
    “if I wanted to visit my sisters with my children that would be fine”
    “My sisters are adamant my wife is a rotten apple”
    “my sisters would no longer be visiting my house because of my wife”
    “my sisters want to cut my wife out of the family”

    But now it is seen that-
    “I think they have bitterness towards me also and my wife is the easier target to cause me pain “

    All of the questions at the end of your post are coming from the mind and are still nothing about your NOW. But the NOW I was referring to was to bring acceptance of the present moment which means to be in total internal alignment to the situation. This does not necessarily mean inaction. It was about – Accept and then act in accordance to what is required to the situation. Also, at times there is not much you can do about the situation externally, but requires only to be internally free. More on this below.

    “At some point, I have to say enough! this is not acceptable, these conditions are not acceptable and draw a line in the sand”

    But now that as you say you have already taken the required action several times and that you find your NOW unbearable and intolerable, I will be leaving with you a “3 choice formula” for this situation. This is not designed by me but coming from master Eckhart. This can be used not only in this but also in any other challenging situation in our daily lives.

    I can easily make you feel “relieved and contented” by giving you permission by telling you to immediately cut the ties with your sisters. But I am not going to do that since I too come from a country (India) where significance to family and all others connected to the family are given utmost importance. And also because life doesn’t work that way – ie; you have a painful situation – simply get out of that. Life will haunt you with the same situation if it has to. So in most cases it is better to be in internal acceptance or alignment of the situation, even if you are still in it or have come out of it. (Even if you have come out of it and are still having negativity, resentment about all those people involved then chances are you may come across another such situation or the same one may give more troubles. Hence the externals change after the internals and not the other way round)

    Since it is only YOU who is aware of all corners of the situation only you have to make this decision. But ultimately, whatever option you choose, it is going to be on the similar lines of what I have already suggested to you in the earlier post – Acceptance, non-negativity, non-resistance, non-judgmental, compassion, love, forgiveness, truth, harmony, non-reactivity, being in the HERE & NOW. How these can be applied to the situation and still effectively work towards the situation? – more on that below.

    ————————————————————————————————————–
    Wherever you are, be there totally.
    If you find “here and now” intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options:
    i. Change the situation:
    Speak up or do something that will bring about a change in the situation

    OR

    ii. Remove yourself from the situation

    OR

    iii. Accept it totally

    All else is madness

    If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now.
    Then accept the consequences. No excuses. No negativity. No psychic pollution. Keep your inner space clear. Do not pollute your beautiful, radiant inner Being nor the Earth with negativity. Do not give unhappiness in any form whatsoever a dwelling place inside you.

    If you take any action – leaving or changing your situation – drop the negativity first, if at all possible. Action arising out of insight into what is required is more effective than action arising out of negativity.
    Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at least you learn something, in which case it’s no longer a mistake. If you remain stuck, you learn nothing. Is fear preventing you from taking action? Acknowledge the fear, watch it, take your attention into it, be fully present with it. Doing so cuts the link between the fear and your thinking. Don’t let the fear rise up into your mind. Use the power of the Now. Fear cannot prevail against it.

    If there is truly nothing that you can do to change your here and now, and you can’t remove yourself from the situation, then accept your here and now totally by dropping all inner resistance. The false, unhappy self that loves feeling miserable, resentful, or sorry for itself can then no longer survive. This is called surrender. Surrender is not weakness. There is great strength in it. Only a surrendered person has spiritual power. Through surrender, you will be free internally of the situation. You may then find that the situation changes without any effort on your part. In any case, you are free.

    Or is there something that you “should” be doing but are not doing it? Get up and do it now. Alternatively, completely accept your inactivity, laziness, or passivity at this moment, if that is your choice. Go into it fully. Be as lazy or inactive as you can. If you go into it fully and consciously, you will soon come out of it. Or maybe you won’t. Either way, there is no inner conflict, no resistance, no negativity.

    If your overall situation is unsatisfactory or unpleasant, (mentally) separate out this instant and surrender to what is. That’s the flashlight cutting through the fog. Your state of consciousness then ceases to be controlled by external conditions. You are no longer coming from reaction and resistance. Then look at the specifics of the situation. Ask yourself, “Is there anything I can do to change the situation, improve it, or remove myself from it?” If so, you take appropriate action. Focus not on the 100 things that you will or may have to do at some future time but on the one thing that you can do now. This doesn’t mean you should not do any planning. It may well be that planning is the one thing you can do now. But make sure you don’t start to run “mental movies,” project yourself into the future, and so lose the Now. Any action you take may not bear fruit immediately. Until it does – do not resist what is. If there is no action you can take, and you cannot remove yourself from the situation either, then use the situation to make you go more deeply into surrender, more deeply into the Now, more deeply into Being. When you enter this timeless dimension of the present, change often comes about in strange ways without the need for a great deal of doing on your part. Life becomes helpful and cooperative. If inner factors such as fear, guilt, or inertia prevented you from
    taking action, they will dissolve in the light of your conscious presence.

    If you cannot surrender, take action immediately. Speak up or do something to bring about a change in the situation – or remove yourself from it. If you cannot take action, for example if you are in prison, then you have two choices left: resistance or surrender. Bondage or inner freedom from external conditions. Suffering or inner peace.

    —————————————————————————————–

    Based on your situation, I have excerpted the above contents that may exactly be relevant to you. Below are just a few pointers based on my understanding of the situation. So these are just examples. Do not take them in the literal sense and work it out as per your understanding and maturity of the situation.

    i. Change the situation: Speak up or do something that will bring about a change in the situation

    – you bring this to the table and speak to your sister’s husbands
    – or you directly speak with your sisters
    – or you speak to a common friend
    – or discuss the situation with a relationship counsellor, either online or offline)
    – if there are still see chances convince your parents to speak to your sisters
    – note that this option is not only about “speaking up” but also says “take action” or “do something” – so think out what that can be
    – or see even if there something to at least improve the situation

    OR

    ii. Remove yourself from the situation

    – this can involve not visiting them
    – or may be visiting them only on certain very important family functions or gathering
    – stay only in touch via phone, or via other interaction modes
    – you can remove yourself from this situation by moving out to another city by you having to look for another job where there will be no question of meeting one another. Again you can still remain in touch with all of them but in a non-resistive way (in which case you will accept their imperfections and apply option 3).
    In case, it may be possible for you to change your job, but perhaps the changing of the kids’ schools may not be easy. Again in that case make your job change the priority, apply acceptance (no. 3) that yes it is going to be difficult towards changing the kids schools, but will have to do it.
    Then people may stop you from relocating to another place, but you will have to think about it beforehand and even fake or make up a few things (like there are problems started in this job, there are no other jobs suitable for me in this city, etc.) just for the goodness of the situation by applying no 3.

    [As I said these can be applied by any one and in any other situation of our life, so this option also includes things like separation or divorce but is not applicable to your situation. This may be applicable to someone who is having a painful relationship with their partner and the only option now left is to part ways.]

    This may not always involve extreme removal like divorce but also applicable in situations where one has an argument with someone and walking away is the best option in which case that person is removing her/him self out of the situation.

    OR

    iii. Accept it totally
    – the last option applies when you are unable to go with options 1 and 2, when all of your resources are over and you absolutely have nothing else to do. But remember this is about accepting your here and now totally by dropping all inner resistance.

    ———————————————————————————————-

    At any time don’t rush to find an answer to the choices.
    Sit down, Contemplate, Meditate on each of the 3 points.

    Also do not stay adamant or stick to one of the options all throughout the life of the strained situation.
    For example; Right now you chose No. 1 (speak up to change the situation) Speak to your sister’s husbands – then their husbands come up with something different – you may not like it fully but is somewhat better and requires slight acceptance from you – then in that case you choose No 3. (Accepting it fully)

    Be very much noted that the “speak up” above is not in a negative sense of getting up and quarreling with whoever you speak to. It involves non-resistive, non-negative discussion.

    It involves surrendered action.

     

    Take care buddy.

    ~VJ

    #184271
    Anonymous
    Guest

    You are welcome, marco, and thank you for the good wishes.

    anita

    #185567
    VJ
    Participant

    Hi marco,

    How have you been doing.

    You asked me for my thoughts and I have provided you my inputs (two posts above).

    What is your opinion on that? Also, if you have any other option than the 3 above then please let me also know and if that sounds good to me that can be added to the 3 options suggested by spiritual master Eckhart Tolle in dealing with any difficult situation.

     

    It would be nice to hear from you that in some way or the other you have been able to, at least, strive towards the betterment of your situation.

     

    Warm Regards,

    VJ

     

     

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