Aja06

This is my first post; I've been reading through the recent posts and haven't found exactly what I'm looking for but it seems so close. I'm a mid 30's mother of one, daughter of a recovering alcoholic (my dad has been sober now for 18 years!). My husband's mother is also a recovering alcoholic (2 2 months this go 'round).

So many issues... First, the issue is with my MIL; even in her sobriety, she continues to exhibit the behaviors she did while drinking. The good thing is that she doesn't exhibit them towards my husband and child... the bad thing is that she continues treating me the same way as she was doing before. Given the circumstances, that she's no longer drinking, is Al Anon still appropriate?

She's been drinking on and off since my husband was 10, and has been in his life for only a handful of the years since. She tries to make up for lost time by buying things all the time for us, although it always seems like she needs constant thanks (like everything comes with a price tag?). My biggest issue with this is that she has only worked 2 months in the past 2 years, her boyfriend (who I believe is enabling) pays for everything even though she refuses to live with him. I realize that his enabling behavior is his issue, but he works so hard for his money and has asked her multiple times to let him know how she budgets (he has bills, too!) and she refuses... I feel it's very unethical to accept gifts that I know HE can't afford to buy for his own children. Of course, he continues to supply her with money, so is it my place to say anything?

When we graduated from college in December she took the opportunity to break up with her boyfriend and surprised us by moving to our new town with us. She really thought my husband would be making big bucks and could take care of her (I think her boyfriend must give her around $1000/month) - there is no way we could support her, even if we wanted to; we just graduated, have student loans, saving up for a house, etc. She moved in with us for two months. Once she realized we weren't going to be able to afford to take care of her, she made up with her boyfriend. Her reasoning for moving across the country with us was "to help us out" - we did need more help in college; we were attending full time and often needed a bit of help for childcare (which, in retrospect, we may have overdone the gratitude, since we did have other arrangements) (We tried to be extra kind to her to show her that we trusted her). But we were a Navy family for 9 years and have been married for 14; I'm not working, and I can handle a household on my own.

She recently informed us that she would stay where ever we were for the rest of her life, because we are all she has.

She's selfish, cruel, and manipulative. She's admitted to me that she riles me up on purpose (for example, I was a pharmacy tech before I went back to college, and she'll tell me all about how she's taking 6 Tylenol at a time or some such... When I become alarmed for her safety and ask her not to do that, she'll grin and say she knew she'd get me. But the thing is, she REALLY WILL be taking those 6 Tylenol at a time). She's upset because when she moved in with us 3 days after we got into our new house, I wouldn't let her rearrange my cupboards, and when she'd try to give me advice on how to budget, I'd firmly let her know that I was satisfied with my budgeting skills. She finally blew up at me for not being respectful and not doing anything for her... This was the worst, because I really, really had compassion and respect for her up to that point, and assumed a lot of her behavior had been genuinely unconscious. She finally moved out, but continues to seek me out for "private conversation" where she either tries to garner sympathy against one of the many people who have ruined her life, or tries to goad me into a reaction). I finally, this past month, have stopped taking her calls and am avoiding all private conversations with her. I feel bad for my husband because I feel awful when she starts crying (really, crying), and I want to talk to him, but he feels stuck in the middle in a "she said/she said" trap. I end up going crazy because I've never learned to deal with this type of behavior; I've always had the option in the past of avoiding that person. My parents didn't have a healthy relationship, I tolerated it until I was 18 and moved out. My brother is a manipulator as well, and I have separated his behaviors from my love for him, and I let him know I love him while not condoning his actions and I keep an emotional distance from him. I think I've always just left a relationship like this rather than learn to deal with it, and now I don't have the option to leave. But I still don't know how to deal.

I don't think we try to enable her behaviors. She has a poor job history and poor work relationships; we haven't tried to pick up the pieces for her. We won't pay her bills. We give her daytime access to her grandchild, but no overnights. She has family where we all lived before graduating, who she has as occasional support (she tends to be able to be friends with only one family member at a time, and the rest are the enemy, but at least in the old town she had 5-6 family members to go between when she got mad at one of us. It's all on my husband and myself now). She asks my husband to fix things at her apartment all of the time, and fix things on her truck, even though he gets little time with us (and he does it, when he feels it's really necessary; otherwise he tells her how to fix things herself, or who to call to have it fixed). I feel like I'm fighting with her for my own husband. I also feel stuck that some of her bad traits, I have to some extent I feel my poor qualities are magnified when my husband has to deal with both us!

I'm very confused; my father was an on-again, off-again alcoholic for years, escalating into big fiascos when he'd decide to sober up for a few years. He was never manipulative to his children, though, ever. He did a lot of crap to my mother and to the family (like drinking the paycheck) but he had his last drink when I was a teenager and that's been that. It took 10 years but I trust him now, I really do. It took that long because before that, he'd do like MIL and stay sober awhile before taking it back up big time. Because his behavior differed so much from the behavior of my MIL; I thought hers was a personality issue and not anything to do with her alcoholism. The more I look into it, though, I really think it's a product of her disease. I told my husband I was going to have to go to counseling because I thought there was something wrong with me for not being able to cope - my husband gets irritated with her but he can cope. She's said in the recent past, too, that her behavior even bothers herself, she called herself a "dry drunk", which I thought was a derogatory term but I looked it up and it does sound like her behavior. She has been in court-mandated AA programs but doesn't feel comfortable in AA because she always feels like she's either better than the court-mandated attendees (of which she was one, in the not so recent past) or because she feels she's looked down upon by others. My husband has asked her to go to the AA in our new community so that she can meet people besides us, and get a social network. It can't be healthy, having no friends, and the one job she had here she quit because she felt she was going to be fired otherwise. She won't go and becomes resentful, saying she has no desire to drink anymore.

I'm tired; I hate answering the phone when she calls, I hate the manipulative behavior, I hate the selfish behavior, all of which is too numerous to list her but which has just worn down on me. She is so good to my husband and son but really seems to see me as an intruder. I hate even having her over for dinner (which I enjoyed, in our old town), because of the way she traps me when my husband leaves the room.

Is Al Anon the right place for me/us? Al Coa? Or a private counselor? I was able to maintain a positive, even fond relationship with my MIL when she lived an hour away. This is in spite of an incident about 9 years ago where she hitchhiked, homeless, to our military station. We took her in, not realizing we were enabling her behavior. She was very abusive to me at that time, too, even calling my work phone to yell at me, and tried to drive a wedge between my husband and I. We finally sought counseling, told her we loved her, kicked her out, and cried ourselves to sleep wondering if we did the right thing. She actively drinking then, that was about 3 bouts ago. We patched things up and I thought things were going okay again. Now my husband is unwilling/unable (and perhaps rightly so; I'm impressed that so many of his behaviors are anti-enabling, the same behaviors that I thought were so cruel to his mother) to tell her that her presence is upsetting our family. It's having her here, so far away from both of our support systems (family ties, friends) that is hard. We were a Navy family for 9 years and have been married for 14; we are used to living our own lives and her presence feels an intrusion. We can't exactly ask her to move back, even though I really think it would be healthier for her, as well as us, for her to do so. I don't know if I'm selfish, or what to do. She's really not as bad as she used to be but there are so many shadows of that behavior...

If you've made it this far, thank you, if nothing else, it has felt good to vent in a place where my husband can't be hurt.

Still Waters

Yes, Al-anon is quite appropriate. You are dealing with the effects of a family member, friend, or loved ones alcoholism - so you qualify

For me, one on one counseling was a lifesaver, so do keep that up if you're still going.

GiveLove

Counseling would definitely be a good thing too. Al-Anon is great for identifying and coping with the behaviors unique to alcoholics, but counseling has the added benefit of helping you to understand why you tolerate what you tolerate, and how to find the courage to change it.

For example, there was a time when I thought I "had" to answer the phone, "had" to have an obnoxious family member over for dinner, "had" to tolerate being abused. I was not clear enough (yet) to realize that I had the right to say, for example, "If you do that again, you will no longer be welcome in this house. Is that clear?"

My life as the child of alcoholics had made me think that I could not do these things....and so I allowed many damaging things to happen.

Counseling helped me see that I did indeed have choices, and that changing those choices would set me free. My family is horrifically dysfunctional, but I am at peace with them now because I have learned how to set concrete boundaries to keep them from destroying my serenity.

You have a whole future ahead of you and there is not one single reason why you should allow this toxic woman to ruin your peace of mind -- and eventually your marriage.

Individual counseling - and couples counseling if the two of you need to put your heads together for a solution - might be really priceless for you. You'll be amazed at how it feels just to clear the air and get rid of the confusion.

Take care of YOU

tromboneliness

That's the thing! We don't have to put up with that sh*t! When we were growing up, we had no choice -- but now, we do.

When the phone rings and you don't feel like answering it, ask yourself: "What, exactly, are the consequences if I don't answer the phone? Is a lightning bolt going to strike me down? Are villagers with torches going to burn my house down? Will I be on the evening news, exposed as the heartless ingrate that I am?"

When my Dad calls, I answer the phone, oh, probably between 1/3 and 1/2 the time. The rest of the time, I don't answer. Because the more often I answer, the more calls I get. If I seem "hard to reach," I don't get called as much.

We're adults here. We don't work for our parents anymore. We don't have to obey their every whim anymore. And we do not have to take them in. If they hadn't been such complete *******s when we were growing up, we wouldn't feel the need to pay them back now. But they were, so we do. They need to suck it up and deal with it. My Dad may be lonely and depressed since my Mom died. To some extent, I feel sorry for him -- and I certainly would feel the same way, in his situation. But the fact remains that he's an alcoholic, raging control freak -- always has been, still is. And I do not have to put up with that anymore.

There's a reason my wife and I don't have a guest room!

T

Aja06

I've been trying to invite her over ~3 times per week so she didn't have to eat alone (although we didn't ask her to move down here where she doesn't have anyone but us). I thought my husband was mean for not thinking to invite her, himself. I'm coming to realize that he's just naturally good at not putting up with her $#!t, which is probably why she doesn't pull it on him as often (he still gets the guilt trips from time to time but it rolls off of him a lot easier). I finally told DH that if he wants her over, I'll let him invite her and leave the issue alone otherwise. Like a great big weight has been lifted! She got mad at me yesterday, though, after she cornered me for a 3rd time to get my thanks for a gift she'd given our child (I didn't thank her; it's not my gift, but I did say multiple times, with a smile, how thoughtful, how kind, what a nice idea, etc.). The third time I made a reference to her boyfriend. I hadn't seen her card yet and assumed, as is often the case, that the gift was a joint gift from her and her boyfriend (she usually has no issue with this, I think she is sensitive right now after having missed out on so many job interviews that she isn't self supporting). She started crying, confronted me, then complained about me to my husband, who defended my actions (I won't say harmless, obviously she felt harmed, but I didn't think anything more of it than I would if someone assumed a gift from me was from my DH as well, since we obviously share finances).

So she's not speaking to us again. It's so much strain and stress on us, always walking on eggshells and never knowing what will be too much for her to handle emotionally. But she seems to know I avoid talking in deep confidence for that reason, so I don't offend her or bother her, so she draws me/us in just to confirm her beliefs that we aren't, for example, as supportive of her as she thinks we should be, then she gets upset. We can't lie, we can't compromise our beliefs and sense of right and wrong. So all we can do is keep things more detached, and she really doesn't want to let us do that. It's like she wants to prove to herself that we will hurt her if we get the chance, even though that's what we are trying to avoid.

Thanks for the reassurance that Al-Anon is appropriate for us. I hope I can get my husband to go, for me as much as anything; he deals so well with this stuff that I feel bad asking him to go but I fear I'm going down a negative path myself. I went from learning to be very fond of my MIL in the last few years, after the issues we had 9 years ago. I felt she'd taken responsibility for her actions of the past and was growing up. In the last 6 months, I've become very aware that a lot of her behaviors haven't changed (the worst was the realization that she really expected us to pay for her to have a separate household, and that she moved in on us when we were restarting our new careers and trying for another child. Try that with MIL in the room below crying nightly because she's unloved ) and it's making me resentful and positively hateful, to the point I'm becoming obsessed and am complaining to my family in the same way she does about her siblings (one of the biggest reasons I've lost so much respect for her, because her siblings are human but they do love her).

Thanks again. It's good to commiserate with others.

GingerM

Sounds like possibly a blessing Unfortunately, unless she is radically different than most manipulative people, as soon as she realizes that her tactic of 'not speaking to you' means she doesn't get to invade your emotional space, she'll come back.

The last time my dad threatened to not speak to me, my husband tartly replied "As if you could be so lucky." *sigh*

dothi

Generic SR definition of insanity: trying the same thing over again, and expecting different results.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aja06

It's like she wants to prove to herself that we will hurt her if we get the chance, even though that's what we are trying to avoid.

Stop avoiding it and stop walking on eggshells, because from the sounds of it it will always be too much for her to handle emotionally. You're asking for sane, respectful, considerate responses from someone who does not know how to do these things. You're asking an apple tree to grow oranges, and standing there scratching your head, waiting for the oranges to grow. This apple tree has already decided that it's growing nothing but apples, and that's all there is to it :uzi2:

Her behavior isn't your fault and it's definitely not your responsibility. You may find this quote helpful (borrowed from a post somewhere on this forum):

Quote:

This might be a little off the subject, but I find that when I feel guilty I start to worry. Worry that if I don't do as asked by everyone in my life ... will happen. Maybe feeling a little more powerful than I really am. A wise man asked me if I think that I am all powerful and all good outcomes are reliant on me? WOW, I never thought about it like that. That when I am feeling guilty about not doing it all for everyone, I am insulting everyone's intelligence by thinking they cannot handle their own life. Boy, I felt pretty nerotic after that. But I learned that if I start to believe that everyone can handle their own life themselves, (except for our caregivees) then the guilt and worry isn't as bad.