Gabriel Mizrahi

And they're all convinced that his parents would never harm their grandkids or spank our child if we asked them not to.

Their rationale is that their own grandparents never spanked or harmed them, even though they spanked their own kids, meaning my husband's parents.

I have strong beliefs about my in-laws, don't we all?

But I can't seem to shake the idea that they may be narcissists.

My husband has seen my point of view on some of these issues, but like many people, he cannot or does not want to admit that his parents are narcissists.

I've called them narcissists in front of him out of anger and have sent him podcasts on the topic to see if the dots connect.

I've realized that this is not a successful approach and am now sticking to talking about their observable behaviors and how they make me feel.

Meanwhile, my husband was very impacted by my son's crying during the first couple of months and still becomes angry sometimes when he cries.

He used to shout, oh, he's fine, or raise his voice at him, but I've told him he needs to leave the room when he's distressed instead of taking it out on our son.

When this first started, I pleaded with him to go to therapy because I know his reaction has something to do with his upbringing.

My husband agreed to go, and I can tell he's taking each session seriously.

No, not at all.

It's a really good indication.

So she goes on, he's shown a lot of progress when our son is sick and crying, but he still has more work to do.

While he goes through this journey, I'm limiting my discussions about his parents with his family and working on finding spaces to share my struggles with people who will understand.

That's thoughtful.

It's been hard to realize that my husband is not my ally or advocate when it comes to his parents.

He also has work to do to unlearn the behaviors he learned from them at a young age.

I know it's not intentional, but he doesn't see how their actions and behaviors impact me and him, and it's incredibly hurtful.

Even though I've worked out my feelings about my husband's parents, I still have anxiety about all of this.