Happiness again, FIL again in Journal

I told DH the other day that I’m so happy that I almost feel guilty about it.
We had an interesting discussion about how most people hate and attack happiness. The most obvious and hyperbolic example is of course, my mother with her viciousness against anyone including me daring to exhibit any amount of contentedness. But DH has several in his life as well. Perhaps people and ways he hadn’t realized before. His brother seemingly made it his mission to sabotage DHs 15year long partnership with their dad and shoehorned his way into the business, took DHs place and gave him the leftovers. And the whole poisoning the well on relationship terms with their mom and dad. Why would he do that? BIL is a conceited, miserable git. He blew his potential to be happy with BM and by abusing his child. So, DH being happy and productive is like an attack on BIL. That’s the issue- unhappy people (read immoral people) hate happy people and have an impulse to try to destroy them. It makes sense from the principle view. Those with opposite values each want to succeed. If your competitor is succeeding, it means that you are failing.

I made out Xmas cards and asked DH if he wanted to include a note to FIL with his card. He said yes. I asked what he’d want to include; long, short, concise or a full encyclopedic description of his complaints? Probably short and to the point, DH said. So, what’s the #1 thing you want to say? I asked.
Address our reasoning in a clear way about our decision to limit contact, he said. I agreed that was a good choice. It made sense to bring up and address the biggest most important thing rather than a list of smaller things that are probably caused by the big thing anyways. The big thing being that FIL is untrustworthy and motivated by fundamental selfishness at the expense of DH.
FIL has a huge hole to dig himself out of. He needs to explain why he thinks it was acceptable to try to put DH and I against each other. He needs to explain how he can possibly reconcile his insistence that our childrens well being should be sacrificed to benefit his other grandchild. And, he needs to own up to and explain why he resors to name calling, intimidation, bullying tactics. That, and apologize and make restitution for those egregious attitudes and abuse, and prove that it won’t happen again. Then, maybe, he could begin the long, slow, hard slog of creating a positive relationship with DH.
At some point, though, we have to be realistic. It takes 7times as many positive interactions to overcome a negative. There simply isn’t enough time in the world for that. FIL can’t do any of those things. Not consistently. And that’s the point… It really isn’t necessary for FIL to admit fault for DH to realize that this relationship will never meet basic standards for decency.