My husband died, what to do with MIL?

[Awesome516]

Hi everyone. I've been reading these boards for a long time and have never seen this topic mentioned.  My husband died six years ago. He was an only child and his parents had a horrible relationship his entire life. Alcoholism, infidelity, abuse, divorces, remarriages, you name it, they did it.  My husband and I had several years of excellent therapy and made a wonderful life for ourselves and our children.  Our two kids are grown now, living across the country with children of their own. FIL died several years ago.

The issue is my mother in law.  There is no other family except me, and I'm 40 minutes away. She's 82, lives on her own, has a few friends, is in good health, though she has untreated high blood pressure. I've tried to discuss her wishes for her future, particularly if I'm out of town or if there's an emergency. She knows better than any doctor, and is much healthier, smarter and more beautiful than all her friends, and believes I'd always be there for her because she's always been so good to us....... so what is there to talk about?  Narcissism at its finest! This is nothing new, and I've known for years that I can't have a productive conversation with her. A while back I contacted a geriatric care manager who was wonderful. There are lots of options but if she's opposed, then what? I just want her safe if I'm away - Or home and decide I don't want to be too involved.
I'm nearly 63 myself, and though I miss my dear husband every day, I'm doing well and have a great life. I know what I'd do if my own health fails. What if I want to move closer to my kids? We dealt with ridiculous family drama for many years and frankly, I'm tired. She tells me I'm all she's got and knows she can depend on me. Even though she's in perfect shape, blah, blah, blah. I recognize the manipulation.  Yes I'm resentful. I feel like a heartless, selfish person, but I don't like her!  So far, I've armed myself with elder care information and I have basic knowledge of her finances. She's not my mother and I know I have no obligation whatsoever.  Thanks for listening to my rant.   Thoughts anyone?

[looloo]

Hi Awesome516,

You sound like a very caring and conscientious person, being available to your MIL as much as you have, doing as much research and prepping for the time when more help might be needed.  I'm glad you're also thinking about your OWN life and how to plan for whatever changes you might want or need to make for yourself.

I think the only thing to work on at this point is learning to accept that you can only do so much.  You won't be able to prevent the inevitable consequences of your MIL's choices.  Her reliance on you is irresponsible and as you said, manipulative—she's exploiting your desire to ensure she's always cared for, without any regard for you personally.  You're not a bad person for deciding what you're willing and NOT willing to do! 

[NotFooled]

With my OCPDMIL we have come to the point of just recommending and advising. DH has been handling some of her financial affairs but it is becoming limited as we move further  into LC.  It's a shame it has taken me to have serious health issues for us to get to the point to were we could distance ourselves.

If you want to be of help to her I would just give her advice and recommend options for her.  If she doesn't listen then there really isn't much you can do. 

[bloomie]

Awesome516 - Hi there. A lot you are thinking through right now. You could take a more direct approach and hand her a list resources for needs should you be out of town or choose to move closer to your family and she encounter an issue instead of asking her wishes. She is of sound mind and capable it seems. It is up to her to get her affairs in order or not as she chooses.

The way I look at this is your mil has every right to not prepare for an emergency or make her wishes clear and have a support system and reliable help in place, but your mil does not have every right to see you as her contingency plan for all of her changing needs. And at 82, with untreated arrogance and blood pressure, she is going to have changing needs sooner rather than later is my very good bet.

With my own aging uPD in laws their needs were great and no sooner would we get reliable help in place then they would go behind our backs and end the services that bridged the gaps. They were running us ragged and playing all kinds of games. Calls in the middle of the night, emergency room visits, falls, medication mix ups, driving them all over creation for testing and doc visits... you get the picture. They wanted to keep the status quo at our expense. Period.

So, we dropped the rope and said... Okay, do it your way on your own, but we are both still working full time, supporting our kids and grandkids, trying to carve out time for us during this season and cannot be your contingency plan. When you are ready to look at some lovely local AL's and are willing to pay for some needed help and services and move out of your ginormous home on acres that you cannot manage and refuse to keep anyone to care for, let us know. They lasted 2 months on their own. It was hard to watch happen, but necessary to humble them enough to begrudgingly cooperate. Moaning and complaining the whole time. 

My DH is still solely responsible and handles all of my mil's business and financial needs and yes, we are still on call for emergencies, but she is in a living situation that provides daily checkins, meals, activities, some transportation for minor shopping needs and is truly lovely. It is a huge relief, but it was a battle of wills getting to this place.

This is your one life and you get to choose how you spend this time. Your life and where and how you live does not have to be structured around your mil for you to still have compassion and concern for her and to be able to point her to resources. Her life surely isn't structured around you. Your concern for her is admirable and yet we have had to learn to put our lives and family of choice as a priority because my own uPD in laws would use us up without question and knit pick and complain and not be satisfied with anything done for them while doing so. Good luck with this.

[Awesome516]

I'm so grateful for these responses!  Just to be validated by those that understand is a lifesaver for me. The hardest part is feeling so alone with this- so thanks everyone. I'll try to pay it forward. Any more thoughts, keep them coming!

[Entj]

Awesome 516, I have no good advice, as I haven't been in a similar situation. Just wanted to chime in and say you're a lovely and caring person trying to help someone who has caused family drama. You have researched the options for your MIL, you're trying to have a conversation about the next step. Hard to imagine what more you could do! You cannot help someone that doesn't want to be helped though. Take care of yourself first  

[qcdlvl]

Nobody is obligated to do the impossible - and as long as your MIL is not declared legally incompetent, she can make all the bad decisions she likes and you can't stop her; it's likely impossible to get her to make good decisions. She's free to do no planning, reject the advice of professionals, etc. The upside is that that releases others, such as yourself, of responsibility. You didn't cause, and can't cure or control her bad decision-making; it's therefore not your repsonsibility to protect her from the natural consequences of it, and certainly not your responsibility to set yourself on fire to keep her warm.

[Iguanagos]

Awesome, you are to be commended for helping someone who has caused you and your late DH such frustration and grief. As others have said, you are not responsible for her. It doesn't matter that she thinks you are.

She's trying to set your expectation by telling you she knows you will always be there for her. But you can set her expectation too, by pulling away and not being there for her when she calls for every little thing. Reduce the frequency of your calls, and when she calls you, wait a while, longer than you have been taking in the past, to call her back. Basically, become "unreliable" in her mind.

It will frustrate her and maybe even anger her, but that's okay. I believe it's part of the process of making her realize she is responsible for herself. She'll probably try to reel you back in, and that's your opportunity to mention your own "litany of health issues" and how your children are "making plans for you to move back near them". We know that's not actually the case, but she doesn't need to know that. The goal is to shift her perception of you as somebody who is just handy and available to somebody who she cannot rely on.

Good luck! You're very wise to be getting ahead of this issue now, while she truly can make her own decisions and come up with some other alternative that is not you.

[openskyblue]

I have a very elderly nonPD mother who lives a short plane ride away. She has a care team, great neighbors and others who check on her, etc., but I'm on the phone more and more regarding her care and visiting a lot more. I can see a time when I may need to be in her town on a longer term basis and preparing for that.
It's a lot, but she's my mom and helping her feels good and right.

Eldercare is right up there with caring for a newborn in terms of time, energy, and worry outlay, IMHO. Why would you make that kind of investment In someone simply because they demand or expect it? It sounds like your MIL is skilled in finding the right guilt buttons to push to get you to get you to do as she wishes. Boy, do I understand that! My ex and his uNPD mother did the same to me. But you can remove those buttons and put down this load that really is not yours.

After 20 years of sacrificing my needs for my NPD exhusband's, I now regularly stop myself when I'm leaping to help someone or feeling guilted to do so. I pause and ask myself do I really want to do this? Does this feed me? Does this work for my schedule? If the answer is no, I step away. It's amazing how much I did at my own expense to try to deflect feeling guilt. It's much better to walk away from it before it gets its hooks into you.

[Awesome516]

You're all so logical and offer much needed insight!  I realize it's my choice as to how much I'm willing and able to do, but it's complicated with no longer have the buffer of my husband. It's been six years and still haven't found my footing. There's no other family besides my far-away kids. I was never close to her when my husband was alive, nor was he. Low contact as possible. My husband was her only child. I can't imagine the loss of my son so I'm sympathetic to her grief. She believes they were so close!  When I have to talk to her, it's always about old drama because I'm the "only one to talk to."  I tell her that I want to remember the great husband and son he was and refuse to go over the same old crap. Then I change the subject. It works for three minutes and starts again so I say I have to go. It's so tiresome.

Then there's the issue of my son's second baby due soon. Naturally she can't wait to visit though it's five hours in a plane. I thought of booking seats apart but she'd pester other passengers to move so she'd sit with me. How could a devoted daughter in law deprive the dear great grandmother of seeing her son's legacy?  I did it for the first baby, almost jumped out of the plane and it took a couple days to recover. We all have obligations, And mine will be met with keeping low contact but biting the bullet once in a while. Just venting. Keep the comments coming. Thanks all!

[GentleSoul]

I am sorry you have this burden to deal with. 

I find it amazing how entitled PD's seem to feel.  I encourage you to take care of yourself and your own needs.

[Rose1]

We have obligations to help family members be clothed, housed and fed and if possible not on the streets. We don't have obligations to keep fixing the results of poor decision-making, entertaining because of boredom, babying because of learned helplessness etc. So your mil is ok as far her needs. At the moment. When that's no longer the case then a diffevent set of decisions can be made depending on your circumstances and abilities at the time.

A friend of mine made sure his mil was in a good nursing home, her finances were looked after and he was happy with that decision and got on with his life, remarried, had new obligations etc. He wasn't obligated to also pander to his previous mil but he did feel obligated to ensure his children's grandmother was in a safe place. So that's what he did.
He was comfortable with the level of contact, he didn't put her in the place of his new wife and family and is probably one one the most balanced people I know. Because she was one of his obligations and not his only/primary obligation.
Your mil seems to want you to drop everything and make her your primary obligation because "she has no one else". Of course that's not true. If she wants to visit with a grandchild then surely she can make that arrangement herself. It's not your job to facilitate her relationships, travel or entertainment. It's much better for people, no matter what age, to be independent as much as possible and not dependent on someone else for their life. That's a want, not a need.
I find people with pds seem to want someone else to do everything for them and it's easy to get sucked into that pit of need but not very healthy for either party and can suck the life out of the "carer". Take care

[Iguanagos]

Hi Awesome,
Just a thought:  You could go visit the new grandbaby and just not tell her.  She's not automatically entitled to know all of your plans and everything you do.  You don't owe her that.  I'm guessing your children would be okay with this, basically not letting her know you visited?  Sometimes it's easier to just omit the discussion rather than telling her and then having to deal with all of her emotional fallout.

I like what openskyblue said about pausing and asking yourself first if a request feels right before agreeing.  That's good advice for all of us adult children of PD parents, because we often automatically elevate other people's needs above our own.

As a side note, when someone tells me, too early in a relationship, that "they feel so close to me", or "I'm their best friend", or something similar, my alarm bells go off.  Years ago, I would have been flattered, but I'm older and just a little wiser these days, and I back off if it doesn't feel right to me.  I thought of this when your PDmil said you're the only one she can talk to, and she knows you'll always be there for her.  She doesn't really know you, and your recoiling is exactly what should be happening.  It's your own internal wise soul saying that this isn't right for you.

[Awesome516]

Iguanagos, you're so right. I know exactly how MIL operates, I've known her for 39 years. It's just worse now that it's just the two of us and she's old.  Conversations, which I keep to a minimum, are all about her. Me and I are her favorite words. I'm medium chill (best coping skills I ever learned!) because she's so annoying and never hears what I say anyway. I've traveled several times and not told her. Recently, I did tell her I was going away, I called to tell her when I got home, and she said "you never told me you were going somewhere".  It's really kind of funny. My husband and I were always detached, and I couldn't feel any warmth for her if I tried. It's just that she's excited about her new great grandchild and assumes I'll take her. She refuses to fly that distance alone. I know, that's her choice and I'm not obligated. There are just certain times when I'm pulled into doing something kind and knowing I'll be stressed, or not taking the bait. Thank god for photos and FaceTime that both my kids will do once in a while. Of course it's never enough. I don't care about that, but there are a few times where I get those dreaded guilt trip feelings and get suckered in again.
I appreciate each and every one of your responses. Thank you all so much.

[openskyblue]

Then there's the issue of my son's second baby due soon. Naturally she can't wait to visit though it's five hours in a plane. I thought of booking seats apart but she'd pester other passengers to move so she'd sit with me. How could a devoted daughter in law deprive the dear great grandmother of seeing her son's legacy?  I did it for the first baby, almost jumped out of the plane and it took a couple days to recover. We all have obligations, And mine will be met with keeping low contact but biting the bullet once in a while. Just venting. Keep the comments coming. Thanks all!

Here I am again to advocate the pause. It refreshes!

I'm not getting why you feel it's your responsibility to take you MIL to meet your new grandchild. How sad to have your difficult MIL put a pall over what should be a time of joy --- and also an opportunity to help out your son and daughter in law with the new arrival. And  I'm imagining that your daughter in law would likely prefer not to have to deal with the added responsibility of coping with your MIL. Why would you deliver her to their doorstep? At the end of the day, you aren't responsible for your MILs relationships with other family members. That's on her.

Some PDs have a tendency to "deputize" someone in there inner circle to "do relationships" for them. It seems like your MIL might be doing this. She is probably not  capable of developing or maintaining a healthy give and take relationship with her grandson or grand daughter in law, so she's piggy backing onto the relationships that you have with them. Inviting herself along to a life event that she's not really part of seems a classic example of this.

[Awesome516]

I really need to have some fun with you all. 

First though, Openskyblue, you make a good point and remind me of the big picture. It's a pattern of behavior that rears it's ugly head occasionally, though I'm I have more insight than I did even a few years ago.  My childhood taught me that parents are the ultimate authority. My husband and I were raised with the old guilt and shame method. 

Usually I do well, but there are times....  On average I talk or text with her a few times a month, as briefly and generally as possible. Example the other day:  Me:  what nice weather we're having today!  Her: Yes, it's a nice day! Trump is right!  Climate change is a hoax!  And look what he's doing for the economy!  Those god damn democrats are communists and will ruin this country!   Suddenly the topic jumps to her severe back pain which started in 1966  is acting up, she's been in bed two days and the damn doctors wont do anything. She hates doctors. Even though my daughter and son in law are both physicians. But she needs to move furniture herself today because no one will help her. She had a big party last weekend and the floor is dirty. Her back will surely go out, and it will be back to bed for a week but she's sure some nice man will put her bag in the overhead bin on the plane when we see the baby, which is due in 10 weeks, though she insists it's 3 weeks.  (I haven't made reservations yet and plan the first visit alone, only when son and DIL want me). By the way, theres a new man that wants to take her out and the neighbor women are jealous. He's 75 and told her shes beautiful. But he's ugly so no way.  This is all in a 3 minute phone call.

ADHD with NPD, what a combination. For the record, this was my therapist's professional opinion. So my head explodes and I say someone's at the door and gotta go. Or I hang up mid-sentence and text later saying sorry, my phone died. Whatever works.

Back to the topic of taking her to see the new baby. The more I read everyone's responses, I'm taking it off the table and focusing on my and my son and daughter in laws joy.

Look what happens when I vent to people that understand.  I've got to make this into stand up comedy somehow. Anyone with me in turning the crazy things Ns say into a good show?

[Awesome516]

I noticed after I sent my last post that using the presidents name resulted in an automatic change to "Political Candidate". I was only relating my MIL's ever-changing topics of conversation. I hope I didn't start a problem. No political discussion intended!

[Iguanagos]

"Anyone with me in turning the crazy things Ns say into a good show?"



That sounds like fun!  I'm not sure if that would be a new thread in this section, or elsewhere on the forum.  So may want to check that out first. 
In the meantime, I'll leave you with this gem I read from someone on a thread here that many of us can relate to:

'Narcissistic Personality Disorder: one of the few conditions where the patient is left alone and everyone else is treated'



So glad you will be able to put your son and daughter in law, and their brand-new baby, first, and not let your MIL overtake that very special time.

[Awesome516]

I love that Iguanagos. So true!  I also think it would be a great opening line if i ever decide to share my vast collection of crazy-making conversations.  It never ceases to amaze me how some people create such chaos, thrive on it, destroy any chance for a happy life with their families, and are incapable of self-awareness for any improvement.  Thankfully there are people like all of you here that provide validation and encouragement.

[openskyblue]

Hah!  Yes, even the weather can sometimes be dangerous territory in the land of conversation topics. Your post gave me a chuckle. It sounds like you are doing a good job of mastering arm's length diplomacy for self-preservation. Bravo!

In term of the Political Candidate, yes, the (wonderful) team of site moderators edit carefully for that. It's standard policy to not name politicians by name here and to remove/edit politically focused posts. We have enough to keep us busy here, right?