Unwarranted family intervention.

I have been having some family problems. I have been in a long term relationship with a woman for 6 years and I have dealt with some problems in my relationship. For the first few years my girlfriend had some pretty bad trust issues. She has since gotten over them and we have had a somewhat rocky but overall good very good relationship. Recently my family had a full out intervention with me trying to convince me that I was in an abusive relationship. As you can imagine this was devastating to my girlfriend and I. In response to the intervention I took a 16 hour, two day seminar at the local university on trauma, domestic abuse, and PTSD.  There is a very likely chance that both my girlfriend and I both suffer from unresolved trauma and mild PTSD symptoms due to adolescent trauma (we both have some heavy baggage) but by no means did any of what I hear lead me to believe that I am in an abusive relationship. How can I relate to my family that they were wrong and that coming forward about all this has been devastating to both of us?  My entire family is highly educated which almost makes it worse because they think they are so

[Roger Gould, M.D.]

Intimate relationships are the private affair of the two people involved, and only they know the 'truth' about what is going on.  Your hanging in there may be what is good for you and your girlfriend, both of you helping each other work out past trauma's.  It may look abusive to your family who does not know the whole story. You should take your time in responding, knowing you do not have to defend yourself even though you might be eager to set the record straight. See if there is anything they have said that will be useful to your relationship, and then see how you want to tell them about the value of your relationship so they know a little bit more about your thinking and your values, but not defensively.

[dyblue]

they should mind their own business they are the abusive control reaks tell your amily do worry about their own personaly inventory.  You are an aduylt now tell them to save the interventions or someone who has a drug problem or something .  Have you tried antidepressants they saved my lie I had a severly handicapped child which put me into depression, now I've embraced my lie as care giver to my beautiul boy and see it as a inspiration.  I'm sorry your amily doesn't keep their mind on their own problems tell them to get lost .

[fearfactor]

I have gone through a similar situation.  My family is convinced my husband is abusive and he is NOT.  We both have a lot of emotional baggage too and we do have our problems, but he is not in any way abusive.  They tried to "intervene" and break us up even to the point of making false police calls saying he was domestically abusing me when he wasn't.  The police came to the door, saw all was fine and left.  I now don't see my family anymore, though we do still talk on occasion. It has been extremely hurtful.  I feel like my entire family has died and I'm left all alone, with just my husband and kids.  Families that try to overly control can hurt you so badly.  They should just accept the fact that you know whether you're in an abusive relationship or not and go on with life.  I hope you can get these problems resolved.