My aging NPD mother now lives 5 minutes away

[waterfalls]

It's been a while since I last posted. Just needed to share with a group of people who can relate and understand.

14 years ago, I moved from the US East Coast to the West Coast to put some distance between myself and my NPD mother and have my own life.

My mother, who's now 70 and after 4 back surgeries, bought a house with my 81-year old father less than 5 minutes away from where I live with my husband because they're aging and need help. I'm the only child, my parents aren't very social, and they have only me and my husband to help them.

Every weekend since April, my husband and I have cleaned, painted rooms, tore out carpet, and installed a hardwood floor in their single-level house near us. We arranged for their move--shipping their cars across the US, making flight arrangements with wheelchair assistance, flying to the East Coast to help them pack and deal with movers, flying back with them, you name it.

After getting them over to the West Coast in August, every weekend we've been unpacking them, setting up their house, hanging pictures, installing curtain rods, whatever needed to be done. I've even taken them to the DMV to help them change their driver's licenses and change their car registration; I've also arranged appointments with various doctors months ago to make sure their medical care went uninterrupted and they got what they needed.

Not surprisingly, nothing is good enough for my mother. She always finds something to complain about and is so negative. I and my husband haven't done enough; there are always more things that she wants or needs.

I knew what was in store for me with her moving nearby. I expected this. Now that the big work is done and all she has to do now is arrange things the way she wants in her house, I and my husband are going to back off. We're going to be there and help when needed, but we're not going to run over every time she can't figure out the remote for the TV.

My aunt (my mother's sister) is an enabler. It gets to me that she tells me not to bash my mom to my husband. I told her I'm not bashing my mother; after over 10 years of marriage, my husband is seeing for himself what my mother is really like.

I'm at peace with myself that I've done all that I could; I can't do more.

Thank you for reading. I just needed to share what I'm going through with others who (unfortunately) know what it's like to be in my shoes.

[bloomie]

waterfalls - welcome back! Think about the reality of your parents' life if you and your DH were unavailable, unable, unwilling to do all of these things for them. You have gone above and beyond what many would do. They are settled.

You most likely will never get the gratitude and appreciation you deserve from people for whom nothing is ever enough or good enough. I am very sorry this may be the case.

What is important for me to say to you is thank you for being the kind of person who gives without an agenda and offers kindness to your parents. The world is a better place because you and your DH are in it.

I knew what was in store for me with her moving nearby. I expected this. Now that the big work is done and all she has to do now is arrange things the way she wants in her house, I and my husband are going to back off. We're going to be there and help when needed, but we're not going to run over every time she can't figure out the remote for the TV.

Now the real boundary work begins. We are here to support you as you find the balance and remember what you did and did not agree to in all of this. I find, with my own elders, that they assume my agreement that I would do whatever it is they want or determine is mine to do.

So, in the coming days... a question that has been helpful for me to ask myself is: What is mine to do?

Sending you wisdom and strength in the coming days!!

[waterfalls]

Thank you, bloomie, for your kind words and support--it means a lot and I really needed to hear what you said.

Now the real boundary work begins.

That's a key point, especially with an NPD parent. Looking back at myself in my 20s, I sure didn't have boundaries with my mother, and I made a lot of mistakes. Before my parents moved near me, I talked with DH about the mistakes I made 30 years ago. I told him I didn't want to make those mistakes again and that I would be mindful around my mother once she would be here. I also made him promise to tell me if he saw me going off course and to not be afraid to tell me, that I sincerely want him to be open with me because I cherish him and our marriage.

So, in the coming days... a question that has been helpful for me to ask myself is: What is mine to do?

Thank you for that question--it's a good one and I will remember to ask that of myself.

I read Things I Wish I Told My Mother by Susan Patterson and Susan DiLallo. The relationship between the mother and daughter in the book reminded me a lot of the one I have with my mother. The ending of the book stayed with me, talking about how people may not give of themselves what you want, but what they have to give. I may not give my mother what she wants, but I'm giving her what I have to give.

Thank you again, bloomie, and wishing you well.

[treesgrowslowly]

Hi Waterfalls and welcome back!

I second everything Bloomie wrote.

Our mothers can want what they want, but we have to have boundaries with them.

I'm glad that book helped you out!

What is the main boundary you think will be hard for you in terms of you and your mom these days?

Trees

[waterfalls]

Thank you, treesgrowslowly. The main boundary that will be hard for me? Backing off going to my parents to check on them and help them with little things, especially on the weekends.

My mother is from Europe, where family space is much closer, especially when you live in the same town. I know I'm going to have to make some balance--give my parents what they need, but also not neglect what I and my DH need in terms of time and healthy space. And I know I have to not feel guilty about doing things for myself in my own house. Boundaries were easier when they were a plane trip away; I have to re-set and re-learn them now that my parents are in the same town.

I see such a difference between my parents (especially my mother) and DH's parents, who are US-born and in their mid-70s. Despite their health issues, they stay positive/glass half full and try to remain as active and social as they can. They have friends, they get out, they have projects/hobbies around the house...they live their lives.

In contrast, my parents are homebodies, negative/glass half empty, not social, don't get out much (except for groceries and doctors), don't really have hobbies (except reading and cooking for my mother; watching the news around the clock for my father), and aren't handy even with little things around the house (like hanging a picture or using the internet safely).

My DH summed our parents up well--his are the "can do" while mine are the "can't do." However, I realize I can't and shouldn't attend to their every need or whim. Big, important things are one thing; little, unimportant things are another. I need to stick to my boundaries.

[moglow]

My DH summed our parents up well--his are the "can do" while mine are the "can't do."

I've not heard it put that way exactly, but it sure speaks a mouthful. I see my own mother in there, the expectation that of course you will "take care of them" instead of making any aging in place provisions on their own. Granted there may be very real health and physical limitations, but to simply sit back and make demands of another? To not be bothered to look for outside help, but expect that you will take care of everything? Me, I decide to make a major move, I'm going to take care of as much of the details and ask as little of family as possible. I'm not about to sit back and wait for "someone" to do it - thankfully I'm just not that dependent!

I wonder how they'd have managed had you said "I'm sorry we're not available this/that weekend" or offered to hire someone to do the painting/flooring/packing/moving for them. Yes, you took the lesser of two evil and went along, but at what cost? What might you and the husb have done otherwise had you not been that wound up in their stuff?

Going forward, try to remember you neither need permission nor forgiveness for making your own plans and living your own life, up to and including not being their 24/7 help desk. You simply can't do everything - and you don't have to.

[waterfalls]

Thank you, moglow, for your input--I appreciate it. Well, DH and I will be having a long weekend away from home in the near future, so my parents will have to manage without us. We need to take a break from them and from all the work we've been doing for them; we're also using this trip as a springboard to back off and create some healthy space/boundaries.

DH and I got them started and settled in their new home. They were living 2,600 miles away, so it would have been difficult for them to get things ready not being around locally; now that they've moved over and are in their new house, the time has come for my mother to get someone to clean her house and someone to mow their lawn. We know people to connect them with, but they need to have someone else do things like that for them. We're moving forward and reclaiming our space.

I will help both my parents when they need help, but I will let them take care of things for themselves that they can handle. If my mother's not pleased with that, then so be it.

try to remember you neither need permission nor forgiveness for making your own plans and living your own life, up to and including not being their 24/7 help desk. You simply can't do everything - and you don't have to.

Thank you for reinforcing that; I will try to remember that now and later. Best wishes to you!

[treesgrowslowly]

waterfalls,

I hear you. Feeling guilty at times is understandable. 

When you wrote about your mother being from Europe where people are more involved in each other's lives week to week, it reminded me of the movie "Moonstruck". Three generations live together and at times, the parents expect a lot from their adult daughter (played by Cher). She's expected to always stay connected to them, while also having her own life - but if she tries to have too much of her own life, her parents remind her that she's obligated to them. Her parents have that older model of family where they expect their adult children to be in their lives daily. 

You are so right - there needs to be a balance between how much you take care of them vs. how much you take care of yourself and your own marriage.

Trees

[waterfalls]

Thank you, treesgrowslowly. You nailed it. You pretty much summed up how my family functions (with an NPD mother and her slightly NPD sister at the center). "Moonstruck" and "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" is what I live (although I'm not Italian or Greek  ).

I'm grateful for you and the others on the forum. It's nice to know that there are people out there who understand and that I'm not crazy.

Sometimes I feel gaslighted (something I'm sure others here can relate to). As an NPD, my mom can be so ultra sweet, nice, and generous, which sometimes makes me wonder if I'm imagining things and whether I am the one with the problem. But then, she can turn on a dime and also be very self-centered, demanding, criticizing, negative, and downright ugly.

As I learned through 7 years of therapy, my mom is the scorpion in the parable of the scorpion and the frog. No matter how nice the scorpion is, she will still sting the frog because it's in her nature. As much as I hate it, I always have to be mindful of that.

[bloomie]

Wow! Waterfalls... both your DH's summation of the worldview of each set of parents and your reminding of the parable of the scorpion is powerful to read. Thank you for sharing these things.

Something that I have learned that has helped me a lot is that respectful, empowering love is allowing people to do as much as they can for themselves for as long as they can. At either end of the lifecycle and every stage in between.

[waterfalls]

You're so right, bloomie, about empowering love. It should be supportive. A love that makes someone dependent on another is not healthy or right.

It's ironic that my mother has said in the past that she wanted me to be an independent person, and I've tried to become that; as for her, she's been dependent on me for so many things throughout my adult life.

[treesgrowslowly]

Hi waterfalls,

I'm working on this too. It is probably a lifelong pursuit as the daughter of a narcissistic mother.

I'm doing a lot of reading and reflecting on HOW the trauma is passed to the daughter. I think about my mother and how she expected me to pay for it. Meaning, she fully expected that this is what family is - each woman passes on some trauma to the next generation of women. Where did she learn this definition of family? One would only get that idea if it was taught to her at some point. Someone else made her pay for it, so now she needed her daughter to be the next one to pay the price for existing.

My mother will never heal from her traumas. I know that. The PD makes it impossible. All I can do is address the attempt that was made on me, to make me the next generation to go through life dissociated, unhappy and burdened (as she was and her mother and her mother and her mother). All the way back through the family tree there are neglected women and narcissistic traits. It was my job to be in the FOG because our family was full of FOG.

The women in my family felt obligated to damage their relationships with each other. None of them had any insight into what they were doing to each other. They had no idea that they were following in the footsteps of intergenerational neglect. What they modelled was that being a woman means projecting your anger onto other women.

A lot of women were taught that a 'good' woman is a woman who stays dependent and emotionally underdeveloped. That has been a huge problem for us because we can't get Out of the FOG while also staying in that dependent state they maybe have stayed in themselves!

A lot of women in my family had good days, had moments of kindness or clarity. They could act generous at times. They could act sweet. And as you wrote, they can turn on a dime. Because right below the surface is an anger / resentment and neglect that they have not addressed inside their own bodies. This is how daughters end up confused as to how to have a decent relationship with our own mothers. Right below the sweet persona is a lot of anger - that they take out on their daughters.

Trees

[Leonor]

Hello Waterfalls!

Your post very much resonates with me as the GC only daughter of a histrionic overt narcissist and the DIL of a covert aging narcissist who lives three blocks down from my house ... and we live in southern Europe. I so get it, and I'm sorry you're going through this.

If I may, I'd like to share some of what I've learned that helped me save my sanity and marriage over the past 20 years, just to tuck into your pocket and maybe think about from time to time:

1. The mother-daughter bond is the strongest, most complex, physiological relationship in all humanity, regardless of the individual people in it! So please don't punish yourself for feeling how you feel about your mom at any given moment: whether it's anger, or grief, or annoyance, or love, or guilt, or devotion, or all of the above, or none of the above. You are a living, feeling, loving being, and you were born into this relationship with this particular mom. Regardless of how she behaves, you are normal for feeling how you do about it and about her.

2. Culture is not just external pressure. We talk about culture and cultural practices or expectations as if it was just what other people say we should do ... but that's not exactly true. Culture is like atmosphere, we breathe it in and absorb it into our pores and it shapes our psyche and emotions and even physicality. It gives us a sense of orientation and belonging, tells us when to celebrate and when to mourn and when to have a snack. It's a medium, like air or water. I'm sure you've had that moment of, "Wait, why do you all do it that way ?" and your dh has no idea what you're talking about. So please be gentle with yourself around issues that come up around differences with DH that are born of your native cultures.

3. Womanhood. Omg, don't even get me started on the complexity and depth of feeling and culture and physiology around just being a human woman.

And if you are from a southern European culture, well, you probably can toss religion in that soup, too, and the role that women and mothers hold in the cosmic imagination.

Okay, that's a bunch of words to say basically that it's a lot, and a lot more complex than my personal experience as an American woman, where we have some of that but it's also mixed in with American cultural ideas like individuation and personal independence and frontier womanhood and leaning in, blah blah blah. I would imagine that the possibility of your own emotional space and freedom is what attracted you to a place and person outside your mother's culture in the first place.

As a relevant example, in America I am expected to care for my aging parents by arranging for their care in a nice facility, visiting often, and ensuring they have their financial and legal affairs in order. I'm not saying that's easy- as so many of our dear friends here can tell you. But in Europe (and in other cultures, too), there are no facilities. There are no arrangements to be made, because everyone lives all smushed up together.

Does this mean you're doomed to personally care for a disordered, damaging and toxic person, or to suffer excruciating guilt the rest of your days if you don't? No!

You can have a healthy, strong sense of your unique self, a loving, supportive and committed marriage, and a relationship with your mother that feels comfortable for you. You can have it right now, today, without doing or saying anything to your mom ever about it. You can close your browser window and poof! live your best life.

Okay, how?

1. Embrace yourself. Embrace your messy, confused, beautiful, capable, confident, cranky, friendly, you-est self. Listen to her. Support her. Understand her. Forgive her. Champion her. Defend her when she feels torn, or guilty, or confused, or frustrated. Sit with her. Listen to her. Let her be with you and talk. Have patience with her. Believe in her. Be ok with how she is on every moment that she is.

2. Embrace your husband. How he is, as he is. He has his own mother-ship, his own man-hood, his own cultural medium he's operating in. Sit with him and listen to him. Support him. Have patience with him. Believe in him. And pay attention to what he says about you and your mom - he has a very interesting perspective. Especially when it stings - he may not be "right," per se, but he's showing you a pain point of yours that may need some healing.

3. Whenever you two find yourselves in a battle royale over how to deal with your parents - his or yours or both - step back and breathe. You're  not fighting each other as much as your parents are fighting you through each other. For example, when spouses argue over where to spend Christmas, they're not arguing with each other. Her parents are arguing with their daughter through her husband, while his parents are arguing with their son through his wife. Take the parents out of the picture, and most spouses will want to go skiing in Gstaad. Unless they have kids, in which case they won't want to go anywhere.

4. So where does that leave poor old mom? If you are truly accepting and loving towards yourself, and embracing and supportive of your DH, and aware of when your differences over your parents stem from your biological, cultural, and religious dynamics and not from true rifts between you and him, the answers will be so much clearer. You won't be white knuckling through going on a long weekend away from your mom, or gritting your teeth during a visit, or squabbling over how much time spent with who and when. It takes time and practice, but one day they will ring up with some silly problem and you will say, "Okay, we'll drop by in a bit and sort it for you" or "I'm sorry you feel that way, but I can't do that for you" and not be overwhelmed with a tidal wave of anxiety or guilt or frustration.

The beautiful thing I've found is - after many decades and sleepless nights and toxic arguments and broken heart talks because we had no idea how to handle our abusive, nasty and manipulative parents - that healthy people create their own culture. It's a culture where you can feel perfectly at home, because it's you. And to share that with a fellow soul on this planet is enough for a whole world of cultures.

Start with you. Sit with you, and hug you, and let yourself have all the feelings. And trust that you are enough for you - strong enough, patient enough, clear-eyed and brave enough, to have exactly what you want.

[waterfalls]

Trees and Leonor--thank you both so much for taking the time to write. I'm very grateful and I appreciate it.

Trees--through years of therapy, I've come to better understand my mother and why she probably acts the way the does. My mother grew up in a Communist Eastern European country where you couldn't trust anyone outside of your family (at least, not easily). She was the oldest of 3 and was often forced to take care of her younger siblings since both of her parents worked; she was also given other responsibilities that she should not have had as a young child. Her mother, my grandmother, was difficult and a bit NPD herself. At the age of 18, my mother married my American father and moved to the US to get away from her mother. Interestingly, my mother often says she hopes she's not as bad as her mother (her sister, my aunt, has told me privately that my mother is worse; having known my grandmother, I agree). When my mother came to the US, she butted heads constantly with her MIL, who (guess what?) was very NPD and lived in a house right in front of my parents' house.

So I do understand and get my mother. I understand what shaped her. I understand that underneath the tough-seeming, difficult facade is a scared, insecure child who wasn't given the nurturing she needed. She was forced to take on responsibilities she shouldn't have had to take. And getting away from her NPD mother and ending up with a difficult NPD MIL didn't help her develop further in a positive direction. I get it. And despite how my mother is, I've learned to accept her and love her as she is. I'm not saying I always like the way she is (there's a difference between like and love). I accept her and know she can't be changed. She is who she is.

Leonor--O. M. G. Wow--you said it all. My mother/family may be further north and from Eastern Europe, but everything you said applies. Not having nursing facilities in my mother's country and the family caring for the elderly themselves. Everyone, all generations being smooshed up together. Mothers being revered no matter what. The role of womanhood. The impact of religion (I'm no longer religious; my mother still is). Cultural expectations, having all of that absorbed into your pores. Etc., etc., etc.,...yes, all of it I'm living and experiencing as you have been (I'm so sorry to hear about what you've been going through and am glad you've learned how to deal with things).

Thankfully, I've had time to be together with my husband for 12 years, 10 of them as a married couple. He is a wonderful, understanding, supportive, and loving man; I'm very fortunate and grateful to have him. We've had the chance to establish a solid relationship and marriage. With my parents now being closer rather than across the US, we are learning and working on how to find that balance between helping my parents (and his, since they also live nearby, but aren't needy and nothing like mine) and having our healthy space.

I value your advice on how to live your best life, and I will save that. Through therapy and over time, I've learned to do more listening these days. I've also learned from experience with my grandmother (my mother's mom) who had Alzheimer's at the end; don't antagonize, be gentle but firm, let her talk, and listen to her (but that doesn't mean to allow her to rule you). In some ways, I feel like I'm doing some parenting of my parents these days, helping out and taking care of things for them.

Yes, it is important to be accepting of yourself as well; also to be communicating in a marriage and be supportive of each other. And yes, you are so right--healthy people need to create their own culture. It's a work in progress, but we are working on it. Thank you so much again for sharing and your advice.