Reader’s Question

My husband is incarcerated because of drugs. His dad, my father-in-law, is a multi-millionaire. I love my husband and we have two children together, but his dad is always causing problems for us. He has alcohol and drug problems of his own. But he likes to hold money over my husband’s head because of his hatred for me. More than anything, he wants for me to be out of his son’s life forever. He tried to kick my door in when my husband was taken to jail and told me to get out of the house because my name wasn’t on the deed. While I was pregnant with our second child (which is due this month), he showed no concern for the kids and didn’t seem to care if they died. In the situation we are in, we need his dad to help us financially a little, even when my husband gets out of jail. We’ll need help turning on the utilities and getting my husband’s driver’s license back. But his dad has said that he won’t have anything to do with his son if he’s still with me. He’s always humiliating me and trying to ruin our marriage. He has told me he hated me and doesn’t even want to be in the same vehicle with me to visit my husband in jail.

How do I handle this situation? I don’t want my children raised in this kind of environment. I’m stressed out and have been put on Xanax to help. I have tried everything to seek my husband’s dad’s approval, but I fear I will never get it. I just want my children raised in a normal environment.

Our Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

A “normal” or healthy environment for your children would be one in which the parents behave responsibly and are able to provide material and emotional support for their children without outside assistance or interference. The bigger task for you is not so much how to secure the approval of your father-in-law and access his abundant financial resources but attending to the things in life and in your relationship with your husband that need repair. For your husband to have ended up incarcerated, significant problems had to have already existed, and most likely not all were strictly the result of drug addiction. So, for the sake of your future and your children’s welfare, take the focus off your father-in-law, secure a counselor, and zero in on the mountain of work both you and your husband face to put your lives back on track.