Nearing The End

[Granny May]

Hello Everyone,

I'm 66 years old - discovered very suddenly in my early 20s that the family problem was not my dad (though he was always an emotionless black hole), but my mother.  I was so angry - but I kept all that to myself.  I was raised to be walked all over, run down, shamed, blamed and guilted.  I had to keep my mouth firmly shut and was not allowed to look sad, angry, or even 'too' happy.  After about another 20 years I discovered the term Narcissist and it explained my whole life so fully, and I've spent countless hours researching all about it.  I eventually managed to get rid of the feelings of guilt - to a large degree anyway, and have done a great deal of sorting through my thoughts and feelings.

Eventually, and very recently, mother had stomped all over a couple of boundaries that I'd finally dared set, and she rang up one day and I took a massive breath and outlined her behaviour to her.  To keep it brief, she'd told us she wanted a letter delivered and asked my husband to get it.  She said she'd got flu so we asked her to leave the letter outside her front door.  She then asked if we wanted some ham that she didn't feel up to eating and we said no (because she'd be handing over flu germs).  When hubby went round there she opened the door and handed him the ham anyway.  Typical her.  Take zero notice of anything we want.

Then on Father's Day she rang to ask us to collect something from a friend.  Friend has a car, why couldn't she take it?  I told her it's Father's Day and we'll do the task later.  Within the hour she was round at our front door getting hubby to go **right now** to do her bidding.  I was furious!  It had taken me 66 years to lay a couple of boundaries and she stomped all over them.  That was 5 weeks ago and she's now decided to try to work on my husband, telling him that she's so confused and doesn't understand and doesn't think she did anything wrong.  She's trying to convince him that I was out of order and she's the innocent victim.  All par for the course and no surprise at all, but it doesn't mean I'm not angry about it.  Now I've laid some boundaries I'm going to have to keep my courage and do it again, repeatedly for the rest of her miserable life.  She is, without doubt the most helpless person I've ever had the misfortune to know.  She deliberately leaves everything too late so that she 'has to' ask for help at the last moment and her needs are urgent.  Convincing my overly kind husband to leave her to be the one to suffer is more easily said than done.  Though, after 47 years of marriage, he is at last seeing her false helplessness for what it is.  He still can't see the abusive side of her, because she's so covert about it and portrays being the absolute sweetest person on the planet.  He swallowed it hook, line and sinker for over 45 years, but is finally having some doubts.  He's a wonderful husband in every other way except for his apparent need to help out this manipulative liar of a mother.

[Spring Butterfly]

Welcome to the forum and community. The behavior you describe is very familiar to me. Mine are also insistent and persistent, they demand compliance. I refuse. They don't like it but they understand they cannot make me take anything from them even if they wrap it in a gift bag which they have done with used items they want to clean out of their house but don't want to put in the trash. No I don't want the half used dried up hand cream.

Here's the thing I learned about boundaries. It may or may not help since your husband, as you say, doesn't see what's going on.

Stating your wishes is half a boundary. Real boundaries are always 100% within your control. You said no to the ham, you stated your wishes. The second half would have been when she handed over the ham to repeat the "no" response. This can be done kindly and gently. A simple "we'd rather not take it and thanks for thinking of us" would have been reasonable.

It may set off a wave of FOG Hoovers designed to conjure up feelings of Fear Obligation Guilt. In reality others do NOT have the power over us to MAKE us do anything. We decide, we move our hands and accept the ham, we get in our car and drive wherever, etc.

FOG is induced via Hoovers only if we don't know and see. Once we see we can choose to take control once again.

Check these topics:
https://outofthefog.website/top-100-trait-blog/2015/11/4/hoovering
https://outofthefog.website/what-to-do-2/2015/12/3/medium-chill

In this post I added a bunch of links to examples of boundaries
https://www.outofthefog.net/forum/index.php?topic=24.msg437998#msg437998

If your husband is on the cusp of seeing that's great. Either way you both get to make your own choices as adults and it doesn't matter what she wants you to do. If she were not your mother would you or your husband feel the same way about being obligated or guilted into taking a germ infested ham or anything else you don't want. If you chose to do so for whatever reason, would it go into the trash before it entered your home?

[Granny May]

@Spring Butterfly thank you very much.  Yes, you obviously do see very clearly the game that my mother is playing.  My husband went round there without me, otherwise I think I would have said No right then and there.  It takes so much courage to speak after so many years of silent fuming but as you said, it has to be done.

I love the way you said that saying No is only half of a boundary.  More true than I was realising, so I'll work on that.  It's a total pain having to use all your courage to deal with people who are so determined to be ridiculous in every way, but I guess that's life for too many of us.

Thank you very much for those links, I will enjoy reading those now.