Lies, affairs, adultry - it's making me physically ill

[Sneezy]

I'm posting too much lately, can't get mom out of my head.  Here is why - I'll try to keep it brief.  My mom (covert NPD) and dad were married for many years and had several kids.  Mom cheated on dad at least twice that I know of, but probably many more times.  My earliest memory is of a man coming over to the house while dad was at work.  Mom and dad eventually divorced and mom remarried.  She married one of the men she had had an affair with, let's call him Rob.  I was an adult living on my own by then.  I don't have any proof, but I am fairly certain Mom cheated on Rob several times during their marriage.  In particular, I'm pretty sure she had an affair with Rob's cousin, let's call him Steve.  Because Rob and Steve were very close until all of a sudden they weren't.  Had a huge falling out.  According to mom it was over a football game, but that excuse never rung true.

Rob died and Mom made plans to move near me.  Then Steve started coming around again and he and Mom started up their affair again.  I wasn't aware of this or I never would have moved her here.  By the way, Steve has been married for over 60 years to someone my mom calls a dear friend.  After Mom moved here, she was miserable and has been ever since.  I have access to her email to help her with doctor's appointments and forms, etc.  Imagine my surprise when I opened her email one day and found a string of explicit sexual messages between Mom and Steve.  I called Mom out on it, she cried and ranted that "I need somebody!!!"  That was her excuse for having an affair with a dear friend's husband.

After Mom figured out that I had access to her emails, the emails between her and Steve stopped.  Then, recently, she need me to fix her phone for her.  And of course I saw the long text messages.  She and Steve text non-stop all day every day.  Sometimes her phone rings and it announces "call from Steve" and she answers and giggles and talks in a hushed tone.  I can hear his voice on the call.  But she hangs up and claims it was a girlfriend.

1. How can someone so uber religious do this?  At the very least isn't she afraid that someday God will call on her to account for this?  Isn't there a freaking commandment somewhere that deals with adultery?
2. How dare she demand that I take her to church every Sunday?  How can she sit there, right next to me, and pray like the most pious little old lady when her phone is full of cheating messages?
3. What kind of person has an affair with a friend's husband?
4. Does she think I'm stupid?
5. How can she lie and tell me that "I don't know how to text, you'll have to call me" when she is texting non-stop to Steve?  She's even pretty darn good at using little heart emojis, all while insisting that I have to call her because she just can't figure out how to text.
6. Why am I shaking just to think of all this?  Why does it affect me so much?  Why do I keep pretending when I'm with her that everything is normal when I know she is a liar and a cheater?
7. She's in her 80s!!!  Does this kind of crap still happen to people in the 80s?  I guess it does, but I have to admit I am stunned. 
8. The next time she needs help with her phone, would it be wrong of me to block Steve?  (Just kidding, but it's fun to think of doing that).

[Andeza]

She's personality disordered, so in her mind one of two extremes may exist. 1. The rules don't apply to her, they're only for "other" people. Imagine it said with her best sneer... Or 2. She lives in constant guilt and likes it that way because of the disorder.

It's messed up for sure, no way to sugar coat it. So to answer your questions, which I think are mostly rhetorical? but do deserve attention:

1. The rules don't apply to her.
2. Going to church is just a show so she looks like the pious little old lady to everybody else, because she cares what they think more than she cares what God thinks.
3. A not nice person with a lot of problems.
4. No, she just doesn't realize that you DO think for yourself at all. Remember you're an extension of her after all. *insert eyeroll too big for emojis here*
5. Because she wants to unload all her crap on you by way of phone call rather than dish it out in text. That way she feeds off your response and emotions more.
6. Because you deserved a normal life and a normal parent and you still really want that. It's not wrong to want it. It just sucks that she's not that person.
7. Yes, this happens with 80 year olds. The incidence rate of STI's in nursing homes is jaw-dropping by the way.
8. Next time she needs help with her phone, I'd tell her to talk to her provider for service. Leave you out of it. It's not fair to put you in the middle and in some twisted way, she may be hoping you find these things so she can wail and cry and martyr up some more.

You have every right to be upset, Sneezy.

[Hepatica]

Holy moly. It sounds to me that your mom really loves the feeling PD people get called "dupers delight." She really gets a kick out of cheating and fooling people, including you. I understand why you are so upset by this. Who wants to be lied to and treated like a fool.

As for being a church goer, I think that is also part of the dupers delight. She is fooling everyone there that she is this morally upright lady and it is probably a hunting ground for her, to get supply - still. It's so crazy that she is still doing this in her 80's. She's for sure not going to change.

If you can't live it, it seems like you are the one who will have to change, which is: refusing to fall for her lie that she doesn't know how to text. Refuse to be on the receiving end of her addiction to cheating and fooling people.

[Sneezy]

Oh my gosh, so many lightbulbs going off for me.  Hepatica - Dupers Delight!  Of course.  She has spent her life fooling people.  Straight A student, sorority president, Sunday School teacher, Girl Scout leader, etc.  She has presented a picture to the world that she is the model daughter, wife, mother, and grandmother, but of course the whole time she has been fooling people by sleeping with their husbands.  And she gets a kick out of fooling us. 

Andeza - As soon as I read your post, I knew it was option 2, the guilt.  The guilt is just as necessary for her as the deception that causes the guilt.  It's like an equation - deception plus guilt equals "x".  What is "x"?  It's what she needs to survive.  I can't name it, I can't understand it, but it's there.  The alternating deceit and guilt is like air to her and she needs it and it overwhelms everything else.  Of course she wants me to see the emails and texts and hear the phone calls, because she gets a thrill out of it and when I get angry and call her out the guilt is just icing on the cake.

What caused her to be like this?  That is the million dollar question.  According to a therapist I talked to, mom is driven by anxiety, which may just be the way she was born.  I also think that she is very smart, calculating, cunning, and shrewd.  And she was born into a time and place where girls weren't supposed to be any of those things.  All that ability to read people and calculate and deceive and plan and coerce had to go somewhere.  DH says mom would have been a politician if she'd been born a man.  Not sure about that, but she definitely has some traits that were discouraged in woman in the fifties and that must have something to do with all this.

I can't change this.  But what I have to do is figure out how not to care.  Not just act like I don't care, I truly have to not care.  I'm not ready for NC, but I will keep working on medium chill.  Which means letting go of the idea that she and I will every have a "normal" relationship.

Next question - how do you know these things?  I have read several books about PDs.  And many articles about people who compartmentalize and cheat on their spouses.  It's fascinating to me and I would like to understand it better, but how do I do that?  Or maybe I should just let it go and not try to figure it all out.

[Hepatica]

There's another site called Psychopath Free that has a lot of examples of psychopathy - and people who lack conscience. I learned a lot about narcissism and psychopathy reading on that site. Generally malignant NPD's and psychopaths are very cunning, shrewd and manipulative and the have a whole range as to how far they will go. It's like a spectrum, but the bottom line is, they don't truly "care" about others. It is only about what other people can do for them - and that includes the kicks and highs they get from dupers delight and manipulation, quite often they use sexuality to manipulate people. If you google check list for psychopaths you will see the list of characteristics. The more checked off the list, the more dangerous the psychopath can be.