Wow. Anita! Thank you so, so much for sharing this. It’s a very humbling summary. Sometimes I forget where I’ve been. It’s crazy to see the pressure points of my past laid out like this. I feel as if I’m slowly learning from these lessons. I admit I’m still a work-in-progress.

I’m glad I decided to reach out to this community again, even though it has been a long, forgotten time. I’ve been thinking of this quote and how there have been people I have come across who build cages of fear, whether they mean to or not, and how I can learn from them — even if it’s just choosing a different path:

“The small man builds cages for every man he knows while the sage who has to duck his head when the moon is low keeps dropping keys all night long to the beautiful, rowdy prisoners.” – Hafiz

Still so much to reflect on.

• This reply was modified 4 years ago by Marie.

Thank you all again for your responses to my questions. It isn’t easy reaching out and thinking about these topics. It’s not easy putting up boundaries– especially for someone who’s been a people pleaser most of her life (me!) – but as I get older my independence and freedom are very important to me.

It becomes harder and harder to have patience to accommodate the personalities that cause so much hurt to those around them. Her daughters are so kind and considerate. Seeing her steamroll over the one she does talk to and gaslight her emotions and POV is… hard. I have never left an interaction with her not feeling drained. And the fallout with the kids is often intense– where they will dissect and vent about her behavior long after she is gone. (And look, here I am doing it too in this thread.)

We do send his mom flowers and chocolates on the appropriate days and take her out to dinner when we see her at times. It does give her joy. She loves any and all attention so gifts are a must. I try to compliment her often when we are together and keep the questions always on her. Mostly interactions with her are being silent as she talks at you. It’s not a true relationship. It’s all one-sided.

This is all why at a distance is definitely better for this relationship. Though I do agree that people who cause such pain should have some joy in their lives too. (As long as I am at a distance from her so I don’t have to watch her stamp out the joy of those around her.)

If she had her way I’m sure my fiance would be living next to her or with her in a job he hated in his hometown and we would see each other many times a week. That is never, ever happening. My fiance has also said he was miserable at home and would have chest pains/headaches/panic attacks.

And so… she will always be sad about the arrangement because it is not exactly to her liking. At least I suspect. She definitely makes it a point to tell my fiance — subtly or not-so-subtly — what a terrible, crime-ridden place me and him are living in any chance she can get. (Though she has never said this when I am present.)

He laughs it off. But I find the whole dynamic so disturbing… though I push it in the back of my mind most of the months and try not to think about it. Otherwise, you just go crazy.

There’s no rhyme or reason to it. No way to fix it. All you can do is let it lie and walk away.

I know she is a lonely soul who fears abandonment and that is a part of why she lashes out… which in turn causes people to turn away from her and repeat the vicious cycle over and over again of her holding them closer in a vice-like grip… which just makes them want to run farther away.

She never sees herself to blame for why they turn away from her. It is always that they are ungrateful. Garbage. Easily manipulated. Dumb. It’s depressing.

Despite this, I don’t wish her harm. I just want my freedom. And I want my fiance to be at peace.

It’s heartbreaking that she boasts of her emotional intelligence and yet cannot see the pain she causes her own kids.

She has always been perfectly cheery and charming to me as she cuts down her child on the next day or storms out when she isn’t getting enough praise.

Mark used the word ‘accommodate’ above. That word has really stuck with me. I have been far too accommodating with these types of personalities in the past.

Thanks for your replies. I appreciate it. It’s a stressful situation, which is why I am reaching out to total strangers as I feel like I’m between a rock and a hard place.

Peggy, I don’t mean to upset you, but she does all of these things, so why should I think that she would treat my fiance and myself differently in the future?

I do not believe that giving someone life and bringing them into existence allows you a free pass to run rampant over their emotions, verbally abuse them, and expect them to have total allegiance to you for the rest of their lives. What an awful arrangement. We can’t choose who are parents are. But this is what she has expected of her children since they were born. She has never seen them as individuals, but just offsprings of her being (her children’s words, not mine, although it is very clear from how she treats them that this is true).

I also find that this is the problem when trying to talk about what people who exhibit Narcissistic and Borderline personality disorder symptoms do and how it effects your own boundaries, as even bringing up what they do causes other people to think you are being dramatic. How does one handle their dramatic behavior without setting up dramatic boundaries? That’s not a rhetorical question. I really don’t know.

Although you are right in that it’s a little too early to threaten to start up the getaway car with my rogue baby-warriors. I won’t bring that up to him again.

I do try to consciously live in the moment every day, but it is clear how she treats her own children (and how they let her treat them) is not healthy. Every time I am with her I feel her desperation and loneliness to be loved, but then watch as she belittles, desmans, gaslights, steamrolls and insults her own children, literally calling them ‘cesspools’ when they do not do what she wants (even if it compromises someone else’s boundaries) or attempting to pit her daughters against each other as she feels jealous of their closeness.

In marriage, are you supposed to stand by your husband’s side and watch that unhealthy relationship roll out until… someone dies? Is that what you have done? (‘You’ being American society and what is expected of someone, and not you personally.) I never will put myself in a position where I give someone like his mom free reign over my existence.

Maybe I can eventually help him set clear boundaries with her. He is going to therapy now about that and other things and he seems more calm. But there is also a possibility that he allows this dynamic to play out until one of them dies or moves so far away they rarely see each other.

When you see someone consistently belittle, demean, gaslight and insult her own children even as she is playing with her grandchild, what else can be rationally thought but she will continue this behavior when you have children with this man you love? Why would you want to have someone like that intimately in your life, even if she did birth the man you love, if she causes so much pain and doesn’t even notice when the energy of her children fades when she is around?

Is that a rule of marriage — that you must be around a member of your husband’s family to watch these unhealthy dynamics play out every time they are together and most often when they connect?

I am fully aware my fiance has an unhealthy relationship with his mother. But he puts up with her behavior and her calling him ‘a garbage person’ when he doesn’t do what she wants, because she is his only living parent. However, that is the journey that he is on with her, and I have been to therapy about this, and I do not have to go on all the journeys that my husband wants to go on if it will effect my mental health and well-being.

And yet… having kids would change the game. As it always does. As I know I would want to stay together for them. I have seen so many friends and family stay together ‘for the children’ even though they were unhappy. I’m just trying to not make the same mistake. It’s not so easy to leave the person you love and feel so connected to. He knows me better than anyone else in the world. He loves the parts of me that I hated, and in turn, I began to love them too. He is a kind, supportive, smart, funny, compassionate man. And he’s handsome and communicative. I adore him. Which is why this is so hard. Because it pains me to see him be verbally belittled so often… and to hear her racist and xenophobic claims and how they fight about it.

She’ll never change. She’s too set in her ways. But she did raise beautiful, loving kids despite their claims that she tortured them verbally and mentally. I have been told his mother used her son as emotional support over the years to fill the ‘husband’ role when her husband died when he was young (they were already getting divorced at that point and she was pitting the kids against him – so says my fiance and his sisters). I can only imagine it was a lot of pressure for a kid. He feels that he cannot cut her off, and I would never, ever ask him to do that, as that is his mother.

But does that tragedy decades earlier excuse her behavior for the rest of her life and give her a free pass to walk all over her children? I’m asking you (or the abyss of the internet), because I find that so baffling. To listen to her children claim that she has made many deaths, births, tragedies, celebrations since they were born about her — and if she is not the center of attention then she lashes out and causes more drama?

How strange marriage is. Why allow someone like that — even if they are blood – do that to you?

I have watched that kind of personality hurt me and the people I love in the past. Blood or no blood. I’ve learned and grown stronger because of it by cutting them out or going low contact (if no contact is not possible). That seems to work best.
I will also say that I have kept these feelings to very close inner circle people (and now the abyss of the internet, but you don’t know who I am). If we do marry I will never have more than a superficial, distant relationship with her.

And we are definitely going to counseling in the meantime. Maybe I’ll just go the Oprah route and never marry and be with him. That’s what she did, right? We’ll see. Apologies for the novel of a post.

I’m clearly still figuring it out. I wouldn’t be on this forum if I wasn’t.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 4 months ago by Marie.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 4 months ago by Marie.

Thanks for the reply, Mark.

I have discussed this with him and he’s very open and understanding. He totally understands how she alienates people and is overbearing and has agreed that I need to go low-contact with her for my own mental health. She’s very triggering. He also understands that if these boundaries are crossed when we are married and have (hypothetical) children that I will leave him.

She isn’t a day to day energy-drain, but she does crop up when there is a holiday (and the weeks leading up to the holiday), when they fight about politics over the phone, when I see her call him a dozen times in a row, or when she has done or said something outrageous to his sisters. Thankfully, she is over five hours away by car and we don’t see her often right now. But his sisters have jokingly (not-so-jokingly) stated that he will be the one to care for her when she’s old and she has said the same as she views him as her golden child. (Even though she also treats him terribly when he doesn’t do what she wants. Again, it’s exhausting.) He is adamant that she’s going in a home though. (Which is sad! But also, tough — to treat the people you love like shit and expect them to bend over backwards so you can steamroll them, even in old age.)

I don’t know if I’m willing to stand by him for all this and watch her steamroll him with guilt and manipulation for decades. But the days when she’s not draining the life out of her children are really, really great, and I consider him my cosmic twin/companion and adore his sisters. I am also expecting — as I have seen this happen with her children and others — that once I disagree with her she will turn on me. So interactions with her are always ‘waiting for the other shoe to drop’. This is a philosophy my fiance is always concerned about, and after spending some time with her, I can see how that mentality came to be.

Bah. A tough situation.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 4 months ago by Marie.

It’s the worst! Ha, oh, a mini reunion. How awkward that would be! Perhaps I’ll let him know – like you said – that that would be crossing some sort of boundary and the break up is still too raw. There would definitely be no getting back together if any funny business did happen between them. I just think it’s weird how he’ll say I’m the one for him forever in one sentence and then say this in another. Why try to make the one you love jealous? It all seems very not healthy. I get it. He’s hurting too. But still. And as for my friend. Wow. I don’t even know. It’s just weird how she hasn’t said anything. Maybe they’re perfect for each other as they both don’t really talk about their feelings. =(

Bah.

Thank you so much for these responses. They really helped me at a time when I was kind of drowning.

(I know, it’s only been a few days, but I was scared to reach out to anyone about this because I was so in my head. There was even a point where I thought I should delete the post or make it private because it seemed like such an absurd question. A sign of weakness. What have you. And that goes for all the postings I made in the last few days.)

It’s definitely been hard trying to figure everything out with a recent break-up and wading through unwanted and wanted attention and growing pains/figuring stuff out, but I just wanted to let you know that your feedback has profoundly made a difference.

Again, much gratitude.

Thank you all for your help and guidance. They’re very helpful. Very empowering. Very hard.

I think I am co-dependent on him. Argh.

As for what he drinks, it really depends – mostly wine/beer and then ending the night with scotch or whiskey. Sometimes he’ll make drinks – like margaritas, Rob Roys. He’s very good at making drinks. He’s definitely the type of person that never wants the party to end and is jovial among others and wants people to keep going because he doesn’t have a stop button. His words. And it’s fun. Sure. But it’s also distracting for what I want to do with my life.

So…it’s a bummer. Yes. When I leave him I stand to lose a significant chunk of change. He hasn’t paid me back yet, and he just doesn’t have the money. He feels bad about it, but…yeah. I think if I stay for that sort of reason it’s just going to drive me insane.