My boyfriend is enmeshed with his 84 year old mother. Has anyone else experienced this?
Stay or Go?
My boyfriend and I are in our early 50s and have adult children. We should be enjoying the fact that we are both high level professionals at the top of our careers,…but we can't because his mother is the center of his life. This is fairly recent. Ten years ago, his father's dying words were, "take care of your mother." However, his father and mother had been divorced for two decades and she had remarried and divorced - four times! - in the interim, because her Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Bi-Polar Mood Disorder make her IMPOSSIBLE to deal with, let alone live with.
I didn't know this when we met. We had a whirlwind romance for the first six months where his mother lived in FL and we lived in NJ. We decided to move in together and get a place where his mother could live too. We bought a house and spent $45k making a gorgeous MIL suite. Then the next six months were a living h*ll. She would wait at the door for us to walk in from work, and be at us until she went to bed. We were not allowed to leave the house without her, and she demanded to be taken to some kind of store even if her in-home caregiver took her places that day. Sometimes we had to barricade ourselves in our bedroom (she would beat at the door). The two of them fought every day. She kept threatening to throw herself down the stairs and say we had done it. She said if we locked the door between her apartment and our home, she would claim elder abuse and accuse us of stealing her SSI and medication. She demanded to be moved back to FL.
That was a year ago, and from the day she left, she started begging to come back. I discovered a month ago that he was plotting to move his mother back in with us without telling me. We have been fighting bitterly over this. The attachment is not because she has always been his beloved mother. Quite the contrary! At one point, she put him in foster care with his sisters because her new man didn’t want kids. At 17, she signed him into the Army, he says, to “get rid” of him. She had been absent most of his adult life and when she did emerge, she would wreak havoc and then disappear again. He has two sisters that do not speak to her because they believe she is toxic. They are correct. He wants his sisters and I to keep giving his mom chances, but consider she has a 50+ year history of “chances” followed by awful behavior. She won’t suddenly change because she can’t; mental illness is as real as cancer, and a person with cancer can’t just decide to stop having cancer.
He has agreed to a compromise of moving her to an Assisted Living facility near us, but I worry that she will still end up being the central focus of his life and/or she will eventually convince him to let her try to live with us again (her apartment is sitting vacant, so it would be easy for her to just show up). I also worry because facilities here in NJ are more than double the cost of FL. We would have to pay thousands a month out of our pockets. Folks, trust me, every dollar would be well spent, but I wonder how long we could afford it. Months? Certainly. A year or two? Probably. Beyond that…yikes! What if one of us loses our job (or wants to retire) or has a medical emergency? What about *my* mother?
First and foremost, I love him. I’m not a perfect person either and I want to support him. But there is another side to this. Yes, he is controlled by FOG (Fear, Obligation, and Guilt) from her. However, he is a very willing participant. She calls 5-6 times a day and he almost always picks up, even in the middle of a nice dinner out. If she doesn’t call for a few hours, he gets worried and calls her. I recently discovered the term “Emotional Incest,” and it fits. He refuses to set boundaries, and I think it is because he enjoys her dependence. He feels needed. Our relationship won’t progress because he already has a “wife.”
I feel like given the situation, most people would move on instead of continuing to go through this. What would you do? It sounds to me like most normal people wouldn’t volunteer to be involved in this kind of mess, even for love.
You have good insight into your own problem here. Good luck with that.
Move immediately into the Mil suite yourself, get a lock on your side of the door.
Start negotiations for him to buy your half of the home out. Stop sharing the mortgage, so he understands right away it's all on him now. He made his choice, and it was mother. Make sure he knows not to move her in until he buys you out. You may later decide you like the Mil suite and stay, paying so little rent.
For your future reference, a whirlwind romance is a red flag.
Too bad she's so toxic. People who are bipolar & don't take their meds as prescribed are very very difficult to cope with but can be managed well with meds. But insisting you spend every waking hour at her beck and call after you've put in a long day at work is quite selfish on her part.
I am sorry but go. The above poster who suggested moving into the MIL apartment until you either get bought out or choose to leave on your own. Her being near you in AL won't last long either- she'll find a way back to your home and probably uses finances as the issue.
So hard to hear, I know. But you must seriously decide if you want to play second fiddle to a woman who only cares about herself and has no problem taking anyone down with her and leaving nothing but scorched earth behind. She doesn't love him either if she is willing to have him lose someone that could turn out to be his perfect life partner.
Nope....go.
Nothing will make her happy AL will be a nightmare as she bullies and cries to come home to your house because it is *home* and she couldn't be happy anywhere else.
Rent out the apartment before BF moves her back from Florida. If you want to stick it out you can give her six months in AL then up sticks. Make sure you get your money out of the house. Don't contribute any more to his Mom's care. I see why he is doing it . He feels at long last his mother actually loves him and wants to make up for all he missed growing up.
Surprise, she doesn't she is just jealous because he has found someone that truly does love him.
Decide if you want to really spend the rest of his mother's life which could be another 20 years in this toxic mess.
A man in his early 50s is probably not going to change for you. He will be enmeshed in this "emotional incest" until his mother dies.
Get out and GET FREE of this madness.
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Can you use the knowledge gained in your careers to find a solution?
Love is love, I get that - but my advice on this situation is: run. Run far, run fast. This situation is never going to change - not with assisted living, not with counseling. Counseling may help, but until she is out of his life permanently, he will always feel that siren call to run back to help her. If he is making arrangements behind your back to move her back into the house, then this is never, ever going to change. He will always feel like he has to do something to help or "fix" her.
He is seeking the approval and love from her that he never had in his earlier years, because she kept dumping him somewhere (foster home, military, etc). She is seeking the love and support of a man that will tolerate her mental illness and abuse - because as shown by her track record of multiple marriages/divorces - no other man will. So she's taking whatever she can from her son, and he feels obligated to kowtow to her because she's his mother and he never got the appropriate mother-son relationship when he was younger. This is an incredibly toxic relationship, and you don't have to be part of it. You can make the choice to do better for yourself. You *deserve* better than this.
Sell the house...force it if you have to and move on.
This is going to get a lot worse, and your boyfriend is both passive/aggressive and co-dependant. RUN
It's very easy for people to say write him off and move on but how much time have you invested into this relationship? Have you ever said it's me or your mother and that's it?
My story is different than yours but I have never liked my husband's family and have little or no relationship with them. I've made it clear to my husband that if at any time in the future he says any one of his parents are going to move in with us, that I will move out and get my own place. He knows I'm serious. I know it will never happen.
I think if you give someone an ultimatum you have to stand by it rigidly cause the first time you ease off of it, they will know you're not serious and you've lost your credibility. So make an ultimatum and make sure that you have an escape plan if it doesn't pan out and from what you've told us it sounds like that will be the case.
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