This weekend we hosted Crankenstein’s mom, who dropped in while traveling to a religious event, and I was again reminded that the most confusing relationships I’ve ever had are those involving my in-laws. Though Crankenstein and I do our best to get along with them, I’ll never forget that they weren’t great parents to her. Discussing childhood trauma is a delicate undertaking these days, partly because everyone’s doing it. While it’s acknowledged far more openly today than in the past, which is good, it’s frequently done so in ways that are batshit crazy, which is not. Overuse and misuse of words or concepts like “abuse,” “narcissist,” “gaslighting,” “trauma” or “C-PTSD” has exploded online in recent years, which threatens to dilute the potency of those terms both socially and clinically. It’s a trend I find troubling because of its power to trivialize very specific, serious topics.
I see evidence of it most prominently on sites like Reddit that are popular with misanthropes and teenagers LARPing as adults. Armchair therapists spot abuse, toxicity and narcissism wherever they look and offer misguided advice to escalate, escalate, escalate. Mundane problem at school or in the workplace? File a complaint or call a lawyer. Disagreements with family or friends? Time to go no-contact! Oh wait, you’re under 18? Report your parents to CPS! Spouse wants something you don’t? Divorce ’em; marriage is heteronormative bullshit anyway. (On Reddit, few slurs cut deeper than ‘heteronormative.’) Better yet, open it up — such noble arrangements as polyamory could never attract gaslighting, coercive narcissists or participants with unresolved attachment and control issues.
Of all the unwise counsel I’ve encountered on social media, much of it rendered blithely but with stunning confidence, it’s the casual promotion of CPS reports, divorce or ceasing all contact with one’s family that is potentially the most damaging. The Internet is where ambiguity goes to die and where anyone can pretend to be something they aren’t — like knowledgeable or well-adjusted. Who are the supportive strangers encouraging you to blow up your life? Why are so many of them clueless about the limitations and failures of CPS and our foster system? If you skim their comment histories, some are all of 14. Others are alarmingly unstable. Sure, there are times when complaints, lawsuits, splits or going no-contact are wonderful ideas or necessary courses of action. Some people distance themselves from abusive relatives and remain satisfied with the decision. Others, like Crankenstein, find that it hurts almost as much as the abuse that precipitated their familial exiles.
When I told her that I was writing about this, and that I wasn’t sure how to convey that her parents were actually abusive, not Internet abusive, she joked “They were what ‘abusive’ meant 20 years ago.” Her dad was a violent alcoholic, her mom his enabler. At one point the abuse was so plainly evident as to attract outside attention, which put a young Crankenstein in the position of having to lie about it so she wasn’t removed from her parents’ home. It’s grimly funny, then, that she was (temporarily) cast out of that same house a few years later for being gay.
They also neglected her eating disorder, which began in childhood, to the point that a few congregants at their old church staged an intervention, fearful she would die. (Fundamentalist Christians typically believe in absolute parental authority. It is a measure of how frightening her anorexia had become that anyone questioned my in-laws’ handling of it.) During one of her many stints in residential eating disorder treatment, her dad was ejected from the facility during a family counseling session because of his violent temper. He couldn’t behave for an hour even when his kid’s health was at stake.
All of this is to say — and I’ve shared but a drop in the bucket — that many in Crankenstein’s shoes would’ve told their parents to fuck off a long time ago. She tried that approach and it didn’t work for her; losing her family through no fault of her own felt like another form of punishment. Her mom, she says, “isn’t irredeemable,” and I know what she means. Their dynamics are complicated and divorce isn’t an option for MIL due to her religious beliefs, but she often found quiet ways to subvert her husband’s least rational decisions. In time, she began standing up to him (and advocating for her daughter) more directly. But don’t read too much into that; she’s not a sympathetic figure. Her husband knew better than to hit her, but beating their child was fine.
On that first road trip we took to visit Crankenstein’s parents, I thought it would take every ounce of my self-control to be civil to her father. I knew he was only in her life because of the no-divorce nonsense: Crankenstein can’t have a relationship with her mom without having one with him. Even though it’s been difficult at times, she loves her mom enough to accept it. Once I met FIL and saw his temper — now softened with age — in action, I felt more sadness than anger. Crankenstein had reached that conclusion many years prior. Here was a man whose entire life and all his relationships had been total wastes. Nothing would ever mean anything to him; his foremost concern, at all times, was himself. It was pathetic.
Shortly after Crankenstein and I moved in together her mother, who periodically traveled for work, began a tradition of carving out extra days to visit us whenever possible. At first I expected it to be torturous, but on her own she’s a lighter, happier person. She is pleased by simple things, like relaxing in an uncluttered environment far from FIL’s hoarding and tantrums. When I bought a coffee-maker for her trips here (we don’t drink it), she was touched, which I found odd. “She probably assumes you hate her,” Crankenstein shrugged, not on the basis of our previous interactions but because I knew their family’s ugliest secrets.
Her feelings about her mom sometimes change depending on what she’s discussing in therapy. And every now and then MIL pulls a stunt — like her uncertainty about attending our wedding, or her trademark withholding of critical information (on one memorable occasion, we had no idea FIL had almost died and was in the ICU; that was a doozy) — that reminds us of her checkered past. But it’s comforting and even healing at times for Crankenstein to encounter this newer, better version of her mom. I’m glad they’re spending time together while they can, which isn’t something I could have imagined saying nine years ago.
Last night, after Crankenstein scampered off to bed, we stayed up and traded stories about her, the woman we both love who drew us into each other’s lives whether we wanted it or not.* When I saw my mother-in-law off this morning, she hugged me and said what she always says when she departs: “Thank you for loving my daughter and taking care of her.”
As usual, I refrained from replying “I wish you’d done a better job of both of those things.”
*Crankenstein, who is militantly gay, used to joke that if she was still single by a certain age she’d marry her best friend from med school, a straight guy. Her mom seemed to hold onto hope that would happen and Crankenstein teased that she resented me for ruining the dream. But I think the biggest adjustment her parents struggled with once we were in a committed relationship, besides their religious discomfort with her sexuality, was that she was no longer outnumbered. It was harder to trample her boundaries once she was partnered, which was uncomfortable for them at first, but they’ve mostly gotten over it.