So I never thought I’d get to this point in my life but here I am. I feel like I’m drowning in troubles and emotions and I’m not sure what to do. For the last few years my husbands family has been a nightmare to the point we’ve cut them off. My husband claims he’s fine and not affected but I feel like I’m not okay; on one hand I’m glad they’re gone and I want to be so supportive of him but I don’t know how and on the other I would be a freaking wreck if we just stopped talking to my family and because of that I don’t know if I’m supporting him in the right ways? Like I just don’t know how to navigate this even though we’ve had 1,000 talks between the 2 of us and he says it’s okay. I don’t want to reconcile or anything with them (neither does he) but I feel like they’re always at the back of my mind and it’s always negative and I just want to be able to forgive them without feeling like I have to let them back in. I also see negative traits/things that they do pop up every now in my husband - obviously he grew up around them so if he didn’t come away tainted it would be a miracle but mostly when we argue and these little things pop up, these behaviors which are so toxic it terrifies me. My husband is a wonderful wonderful man and I love him dearly but just for a small example he will yell at me during an argument and then when I ask him not to yell he will look at me stunned (like actually shocked that he would ever do that) and tell me he didn’t or when I repeat something he’s said to me verbatim he won’t remember saying it or he says he would never say that to me (and honestly unless we’re arguing he never says hurtful things he’s normally very kind). Sometimes I feel like it’s borderline abuse and at the same time I feel like it’s unfortunately learned behavior. I hate to say you sound like your father but well… if the shoe fits. I just don’t know how to cope on my own both with the loss of his family and how to work together to get through this and make our life different and I’m just wondering - is this even something counseling could help me/us with?

I know I myself am so much like my parents and there are things they do/say that when they do it I don’t agree with and then I go and act the same way. When/if I hear it in myself or catch myself saying something a certain way it makes me cringe and I try to avoid doing that again so I know it’s not like I’m so different from him I honestly feel like he fights a certain way because that’s what he saw growing up and what I really really would like is for us to break that cycle and make sure we give our kids a different experience as well as figure out how to deal with the in-laws. Please be kind in your comments