Obvious throwaway account. Also, this will be very long.

My girlfriend and I have been together for over 4 years. She has a clinical anxiety condition that has prevented her from leading a normal life. As a result, she needed to depend on her mom and sister.

Growing up, my gf didn't realize she had anxiety and this obviously led to a lot of misunderstanding and tension within her family when she would have an episode. Her mom and sister would constantly tell her that she needs to stop being lazy, we all have to do stuff we don't like, you're a burden on us (this one was mostly her sister for reasons I'll get to later), and the like.

Her mom remarried when she was 16 and her and her stepdad didn't get along, to say the least. He's a homophobe (she's bisexual), beat his son growing up, spoiled his daughter to the point of her becoming a very entitled individual, and puts down my gf's mom constantly. If he's ever confronted he gets extremely defensive.

This lead to a huge blow up between he and my gf, resulting in her mom making the 3 of them go to councling. Long story short, they told stepdad he'll need to make some compromises if he wants their relationship to work and he didn't really like that and has done nothing to improve himself or their relationship so my gf left to go live with her dad and sister because she knew she was causing a lot of tension in their marriage and didn't want to cause her mom more heartache.

Her sister then mostly took care of her. She fed her and let her stay with them, even into adulthood. All the while, her sister and dad would tell her how much of a burden she was and that she needed to be an adult now and so on. I entered the picture when she was 22.

We've been together 4 1/2 years now and we're living together and plan on getting married soon. She now understands growing up that her issue wasn't that she was lazy or unwilling, but that she had anxiety. She has been diagnosed by a professional and is taking medication. However, she still has 0 self esteem and a lot of her episodes tend to be about feeling like she's worthless and just a drain on me and society.

I didn't want to come between her and her family but I can't stand seeing her suffer like this. We still see her mom and sister regularly, and they still say those things sometimes. Recently I've been telling her that she was conditioned to feel the way she does because that's what her family would tell her. I've also told her that since her family has made no effort to try and understand her or her condition and apologize for their behavior in the past that they don't love her and never have. 

The reason I think that is that during my gf and stepdad's huge blow up he called her a loser and worthless trash. My gf's mom did confront him about this and force him to apologize. Well, I say apologize loosely because the phone call was him basically saying "Well we both said some things and said things we didn't mean and I think we both learned." and left it at that. Apparently that was good enough for my gf's mom because she dropped it thereafter and if my gf ever brings it up (typically during an episode) my gf's mom's response is usually "can't you just get over it, that was years ago.". Not to mention she had slapped my gf a couple times growing up, as did her grandmother, and they'd both say things like "Oh, you made me do this since you couldn't help making me so angry.". My gf's mom has apologized for the hitting but not for not holding the grandmother accountable or blaming my gf for her actions. We can't confront the grandmother directly now because she has alzheimer's and is pretty far gone.

As for her sister, she also slapped my gf a couple of times for basically the same reasons and has never apologized, even when confronted. If my gf ever tries to talk to her sister about her anxiety she shrugs it off because she doesn't really believe in mental illness and has low key told my gf she should stop taking her meds on a number of occasions.

She seems to be accepting what I'm saying, as the last time she blew up at her mom she mentioned the conditioning but kind of glossed over it to get back to her main issue at the time.

I would never tell her she can't see her family and I would never actively try to stop her but I don't think being around them is healthy for her mental state. I've also never expressed my thoughts to her family per my gf's request.

I feel like what I'm doing is for my gf's benefit but at the same time I feel like I'm doing what they did, trying to condition her to feel and think a certain way. 

tl;dr My gf's mom and sister treated her poorly in the past and not much has improved and I say that they don't love her because of their lack of trying to understand her and her condition or make amends for past mistakes

So, AITA?



