I am having a hard time forgiving myself and moving on from the past. I got married in my early 20’s and liked to party. My husband also likes to drink and we had some nasty drunken fights (chasing around the house, throwing things, yelling, name calling). Well my husband’s cousin and cousin’s girlfriend unfortunately witnessed one because his cousin also kind of caused it (convinced my husband to leave my best friend’s wedding reception to hang out with him instead) and this led to a nasty nasty fight. This cousin and his gf are huge gossips and don’t let anything go, so they spread this to the whole family. This was 5 years ago and I’m still hearing about it.
For the year following, this cousin would try to convince my husband that I was a bad wife because I didn’t want him constantly playing video games. I would be working late and come home to a messy house and my husband online playing games with his cousin nonstop during his time off of work. That also led to some fights and I realized this cousin has recordings of me coming home and arguing with my husband about this because he heard it over his headset and saved the audio recording.
Fast forward and my husband and I stopped talking to this cousin and his gf much because they gossiped so much. The gf also made up rumors on top of it.
I was recently confronted about these fights from my husbands other cousin because they told him all about it. This other cousin was really trying to pry about my marital problems and then confessed he was attracted to me even though he is married and really close to my husband. What a mess.
Well the gossipy cousin stayed at our house last week to watch our dog and I decided to give him another chance for my husband (who was super close to him growing up). We get back to find he snooped through everything to the point he slept in our bed instead of the guest bed and changed the sheets for himself, went through our nightstands, found my spare car keys that I hid from him because I hid my journals in my trunk (not sure if he discovered those too). The house was also messy and I was super triggered. My husband was disappointed but I couldn’t let it go so this led to a yelling match. Ugh. And we’ve been doing so well not fighting lately and being happy.
Then I find out my husband was talking to the other cousin and hinting around that we got into another fight. This is the cousin who is attracted to me and I’ll have to see him this weekend…
Their involvement lately is really triggering old guilt and bringing me back to the worst mistakes I’ve made. I was doing so well making new habits and building confidence in myself, but these two cousins are really bringing me down