Don't know what to do with Husband's Stepmother and Father. Could use some advice!

[jazzy0710]

Hello there,

Many of you will remember the various posts that I made about my Husband’s Father and Stepmother.

Things are quite different now, and we are more lost than we ever were as to what to do.

I didn’t talk to my husband’s stepmom for a year and a half. A lot of it was her fault, but I did everything I could to try and reconcile with her and she shut me out so I gave up, knowing it had to be on her terms.

On September 30th my husband and I moved into our new house.A few days later she began talking to me on facebook. I didn’t question it and went along with it. A few days later she took my husband and I out so we could get some curtains. We took her for lunch at Swiss Chalet. A few days later she apologized to me on facebook. I told her I forgave her, she told me she loved me, and that was that.

She has been known to have problems in all her relationships, my FIL, my husband, my SIL, her family, my FIL’s family, and especially her own 2 adult children from her previous marriage who both, especially her son, treat her like garbage.

When my FIL and her got married in April 2011, my husband made the decision to not call her Mom. He didn’t call my FIL’s 2nd wife Mom either. My MIL is still alive and she and my husband are close. This really upset my husband’s stepmom, especially since she was dumb enough to go and tattoo his name and his sister’s name on her chest.

On October 16th I discovered I was pregnant with our first child, due June.21st. We decided to keep it a secret and surprise our parents at Christmas time. We also decided to honor my husband’s stepmother by giving her the opportunity to be a grandparent to our child.

The day before Christmas Eve my SIL had a doctor’s appointment. Their stepmother was supposed to take her but she apparently had to go pick up her own daughter at the airport. My husband and I go to pick her up and we notice that their stepmother’s SUV was still in the driveway, all covered in snow. My husband asks his sister, what’s going on and she replies back that their stepmom supposedly didn’t feel well.

My husband couldn’t figure out why his father lied to him and didn’t just tell him the truth. My FIL has been known to lie quite often, especially about being engaged and married.

We went to their house on Christmas Eve and my husband took his father in the kitchen to talk to him about lying. Although they kept their voices down, the kitchen is beside the bedroom so I think she may have heard. I don’t know. She was hiding in the room because she had apparently been sick and had thrown up earlier that day and had also got into some sort of fight with her daughter who had apparently threatened to not come visit the next day.

My husband and I and my FIL and SIL and a family friend were sitting in the living room and she kept texting his phone asking him to bring her food and stuff. He tried to get her to come out and take her gift and she wouldn’t. He went back and knocked on the door and she screamed at him to go away and leave her alone. My husband went and knocked on the door and asked her if she would at least open the door and take her gift. She turned up the volume on the TV. My FIL texted her and told her we were expecting and to just come out for a minute. I texted her too and she replied back very rudely saying she was happy for us but she wasn’t the grandparent and it had nothing to do with her and that her children were waiting until they had their own house ( we live in a military house) and money in the bank because it’s beyond expensive to raise kids. My husband and I aren’t exactly well to do, but we manage and live comfortably and can support ourselves very well and never ever borrow money from anyone.

The next day, Christmas Day, I was sitting down having Christmas dinner with my family at my Uncle’s house. My husband’s stepmom starting sending me rude text messages once again. She had said that I left a box there with a bib in it and put I am not the grandmother in caps lock. She said it was there for me to pick up and to give it to the real grandmother.This was by far the most mad that I had ever seen my husband. We excused ourselves and went down to the basement where he called his father. He told him that she was sending us rude messages and that it was to stop and to stop now. He said it meant a lot to him to have her be a grandma as well and that he would talk to her.

My husband and I have tried talking to his father numerous times about her behavior. He agrees with us in some aspects and sees where we are coming from but he always always makes excuses for her; her dad abused her, her mom died, her ex husband controlled her, her kids are mean to her, etc etc.

The next day my husband and I and his sister went on a road trip to go visit their mother who lives 4 hours away. We didn’t realize how stressed out my SIL is living in that house with them. She said that the woman continuously nags her about everything, including taking too long to bath and tells her she’s weird. Her Father has started to nag too. She also vented to us about how much arguing was going on between the 2 of them and that the stepmom always starts it and that it’s over the stupidest things. She is hoping to find her own place by the end of March.

The day after that my husband’s stepmom sent me a message on facebook asking me how the drive over was. I guess I didn’t reply to her soon enough(I was at work!) and she put on her status that she was tired of how rude people are and how they think their poo doesn’t stink and that she tried and that she’s all done.

I so badly want to delete her from facebook because she doesn’t talk to me now and I am tired of her bull and drama and I don’t need the stress when I’m pregnant. She also posts some very morbid things about death, accidents, etc. However, I know that if I do my FIL will call and bicker at us for hurting her feelings.

 

[jazzy0710]

CONTINUATION OF FIRST POST:

My husband and I and my SIL are beginning to believe that she has Borderline Personality Disorder. My husband and I aren’t even really sure if we even want her around our child now because she’s so unstable. We don’t even want to be around her and we don’t even go to their house anymore. However, she is still my FIL’s wife. I’m just tired of her driving a wedge in between us. It feels like she is trying to drive the 3 of us away so that she can have my FIL completely to herself. For 51 years old, she’s very immature. My FIL is 55, I don’t know what’s going on in his head. My husband is 31 and my SIL and I are both 27, and we’re fed up and had enough. We just don’t know what to do. Idon’t think my FIL plans to leave her because if he does, that means he will have failed at a 3rd marriage and I think he’s afraid of her taking everything and destroying his credit but really, she already has.

 

[EasterJoy]

You could just consider whether you might tell her that just because your husband doesn’t feel comfortable calling her “Mom” does not imply that you won’t let your children call her some version of “Grandma”. People have one mother, but normally have at least two grandmothers. If your husband’s mother is Grandma, that doesn’t mean your husband’s stepmother couldn’t be Nana Sally or Granny Sally or something like that. You already have to have names for the paternal grandmother that differentiates her from the maternal grandmother, so there isn’t one “real” name for a grandmother at stake here, as there is with a simple “Mom”.

People with divorced parents do that all of the time; the children do not get confused by it. Think about that, maybe it will calm her upset.

 

[jazzy0710]

You could just consider whether you might tell her that just because your husband doesn’t feel comfortable calling her “Mom” does not imply that you won’t let your children call her some version of “Grandma”. People have one mother, but normally have at least two grandmothers. If your husband’s mother is Grandma, that doesn’t mean your husband’s stepmother couldn’t be Nana Sally or Granny Sally or something like that. You already have to have names for the paternal grandmother that differentiates her from the maternal grandmother, so there isn’t one “real” name for a grandmother at stake here, as there is with a simple “Mom”.

People with divorced parents do that all of the time; the children do not get confused by it. Think about that, maybe it will calm her upset.

I completely agree with you and have no problem letting my child call her nanna or whatever but because of her instability I don’t know about having her around plus she made such a fuss about how it has nothing to do with her and put emphasis on the fact that she is not a grandparent. I just don’t understand why she’s treating us this way when we have showed her nothing but love and compassion.

 

[EasterJoy]

CONTINUATION OF FIRST POST:

My husband and I and my SIL are beginning to believe that she has Borderline Personality Disorder. My husband and I aren’t even really sure if we even want her around our child now because she’s so unstable. We don’t even want to be around her and we don’t even go to their house anymore. However, she is still my FIL’s wife. I’m just tired of her driving a wedge in between us. It feels like she is trying to drive the 3 of us away so that she can have my FIL completely to herself. For 51 years old, she’s very immature. My FIL is 55, I don’t know what’s going on in his head. My husband is 31 and my SIL and I are both 27, and we’re fed up and had enough. We just don’t know what to do. I don’t think my FIL plans to leave her because if he does, that means he will have failed at a 3rd marriage and I think he’s afraid of her taking everything and destroying his credit but really, she already has.

Let him worry about his credit. Your worry is whether you let your children witness adults who are tolerated when they act in uncivilized ways around the children. What things will you look past graciously as an example of rising above a bit of bad behavior from others, and what things will you teach your children must not be tolerated from anyone? If you confine yourself to the questions that concern you and leave the ones that concern someone else alone, you’ll be a) much happier and b) on much better ground to inform those who try to concern themselves with questions that are yours and not theirs that they need to mind their own business and buzz off. These are good things to keep in mind with adult family members!!! Teaching your children about boundaries is as much about teaching them when they need to mind their own business as it is teaching them when they need to draw their own line and enforce it. It will pay dividends to be consistent about your standards from the start. (Do not forget: the day is not that far off when you will be the adult parent and your child will be the adult child trying to stick a nose into your affairs!!)

There is also room here to have a talk with both parents–same rules for biological grandparents as for non-biological, and same rules on paternal and maternal sides of the family–concerning what behaviors will be tolerated around the children, what won’t, and what means you plan to use for enforcing boundaries. Again, if you make it clear that you will have the same rules for everyone and don’t make different rules for the stepparents, then you will not have given good reason for hurt feelings. If someone decides to go ballistic, anyway, that is on his or her head. You’ll have done what you can, and can enforce your boundaries with a clear conscience.

 

[EasterJoy]

I completely agree with you and have no problem letting my child call her nanna or whatever but because of her instability I don’t know about having her around plus she made such a fuss about how it has nothing to do with her and put emphasis on the fact that she is not a grandparent. I just don’t understand why she’s treating us this way when we have showed her nothing but love and compassion.

Don’t try to diagnose her. It is a losing proposition. If she’s unhinged, after all, it doesn’t matter whether it is her “fault” or not. Look for a) what works for her and what doesn’t and b) decide what you’ll take and what you won’t. Don’t judge her, IOW. Judge her behavior. I don’t mean you can’t try to look for any patterns that might help you predict what reactions you might get for her or that you won’t have plans in place for different possible reactions. Far from it! I mean that it doesn’t matter if she’s acting badly because she’s alcoholic, because she has a borderline personality, or if she is a vanilla case of giving into sin. Let that be her business. Your business is to figure out when you can predict her and when you can’t, what behavior you’re going to expect from yourself no matter what she does, that kind of thing.

Your ways of showing love and compassion are laudable. They matter to God. They don’t guarantee any particular return from her. Well, that means it will be up to God to reward you, since you’ve done good for the sake of doing good and gotten no thanks for it from humankind. If you did it in a tit-for-tat way, to get good behavior out of her, just realize that this strategy does not have a great history of success. When you do it in the future, expect mixed results: some thanks from her, some thanks only from God.

It is OK to keep your sister’s experiences in mind, but don’t put too much weight on second-hand information. The things you have witnessed with your own eyes matter more, because you don’t have to wonder what facts are being left out (perhaps unwittingly) by your sister.

 

[Auntie_A]

Dear OP:

While reading your first post, I thought: “I bet the stepmother has Borderline Personality Disorder”…then your second post mentioned it.

Hmmmmm…why would I guess that? From dealing with a family member who alternately loves me, pulls me in, then fights with me and pushes me away and blames me as the source of her unhappiness?

Listen to what I have gathered from my own experience with BPD, bi-polars, addicts, miserable, abused, and mean people is this: They have a problem. If I rush in to help, heal, address, respond, defend, complain, define, or TRY to do anything, I risk the big chance of now becoming a part of their problem.

They have internal problems that they cannot touch and they want to externalize them in order to validate the bad feelings…And there you stand with happiness, sadness, gifts, needs, ups and downs, health and hurts, and she can grab on to any of those things and trash them in a second because her psyche is so damaged. Imagine what the child of such a person goes through.

If someone has .a problem with dizziness we do not go spinning around them. With mentally ill people we need to change our tactics for them and for us. Her behavior may make her appear wrong and abusive but we really don’t know what it is like inside of her mind and skin to make her act in such an awful way.

You and your husband would do well to attend a support group for people who are family and friends of those with BPD or mental illness in general. Just to learn healthy boundaries and avoid this recurring problem with her and others.

And believe me, she will not be the only person with BPD you will ever meet.

Sometimes I like to think of myself as a gardener lately and I am pruning away any of my old branches and thorns that might scrape someone as they come near. Normally my branches are fine but if certain people are going to be around, I need to keep myself clipped and pruned. A little stifling but less drama in the long run.

Any work you do in this area will make you a better person, a better parent, especially a better parent of teenagers, one day.

Good luck and congratulations.

 

[jazzy0710]

Dear one I am so sorry for what you are going through with your in-laws, I have lived through that kind of stress first hand and it is a heavy cross to bear. Please be assured of my continued prayers for your situation.

I quoted part of your post above because it really struck me, in fact I read it several times because I had to make sure I was reading it correctly. With all Christian Charity dear one, I feel the need to offer you a little correction. When you are at a family Christmas dinner celebration, that is your time to celebrate and enjoy! When you are the guest at someone’s home for Christmas dinner you should not be looking at your text messages, getting upset then excusing yourself along with your husband to go to their basement so you can call your father-in-law. I am sorry Jazzy0710 but that is not very polite behavior and you are just feeding into this madness. If you had been a guest in my home on Christmas day and behaved that way, my feelings would have a bit been hurt actually. There is no reason that you would have to check text messages (that I know of) during a family Christmas dinner unless it was an emergency and someone was in the hospital. To get up from the table to respond to your mother-in-law’s childishness in the middle of Christmas dinner was not necessary. I am not trying to chastise you because I think you have bad manners because you seem like a very sweet person, only that your obsession with your mother-in-law seems to be making you act a little crazy yourself which is not good and I wanted to point that out.

Maybe your Uncle’s family didn’t mind necessarily, but I would guess that any family would rather focus on positive things on Christmas day! Sing Christmas carols, share funny stories, tell jokes, anything to bring joy to the day is better than drama. Instead of joy you and your husband brought drama to this Christmas dinner because you were so upset you could not let it go. You have to be able to let this go, Jesus will help you, Jesus wants to help you.

Your mother-in-law will possibly always be this way. You must find a way to find peace DESPITE her madness. You must find a way to find peace even though she acts strange, sends mean text messages, hangs up the phone, says rude things, or any of the other countless things that she does. You have to turn to Jesus Christ and find the strength not to respond to her craziness because it will get you nowhere and will solve nothing but you probably already knew that. Do not wait for her “good” behavior to bring you peace, find peace despite her bad behavior. Know that no matter how she acts that you will be at peace. She will go through periods where she loves you, then she hates you. She calls you, then she doesn’t. Seek the peace that you desire and the peace that you so desperately need and deserve, you will find this peace not by trying to analyze her and what she does and trying to figure her out. Instead focus that energy on Christ and analyze him and try and figure him out. Let her go…

Hope this helps a little, God bless you and please be assured of my prayers for you and your sweet little one.

Thank you Monicad. I greatly apprechiate your feedback. I just realized that I didn’t clarify something. I know I put that we were at the table, but now that I think of it we weren’t at he table right yet. We were still in the buffet line putting food on our plates. We then put the plates on the table and apologized to my uncle and told him we had to go make an important call and would be right back. Took less than 5 minutes. I will do my very best to pray for peace even when her behavior is bad. Thank you again for your feedback.

 

[jazzy0710]

Dear OP:

While reading your first post, I thought: “I bet the stepmother has Borderline Personality Disorder”…then your second post mentioned it.

Hmmmmm…why would I guess that? From dealing with a family member who alternately loves me, pulls me in, then fights with me and pushes me away and blames me as the source of her unhappiness?

Listen to what I have gathered from my own experience with BPD, bi-polars, addicts, miserable, abused, and mean people is this: They have a problem. If I rush in to help, heal, address, respond, defend, complain, define, or TRY to do anything, I risk the big chance of now becoming a part of their problem.

They have internal problems that they cannot touch and they want to externalize them in order to validate the bad feelings…And there you stand with happiness, sadness, gifts, needs, ups and downs, health and hurts, and she can grab on to any of those things and trash them in a second because her psyche is so damaged. Imagine what the child of such a person goes through.

If someone has .a problem with dizziness we do not go spinning around them. With mentally ill people we need to change our tactics for them and for us. Her behavior may make her appear wrong and abusive but we really don’t know what it is like inside of her mind and skin to make her act in such an awful way.

You and your husband would do well to attend a support group for people who are family and friends of those with BPD or mental illness in general. Just to learn healthy boundaries and avoid this recurring problem with her and others.

And believe me, she will not be the only person with BPD you will ever meet.

Sometimes I like to think of myself as a gardener lately and I am pruning away any of my old branches and thorns that might scrape someone as they come near. Normally my branches are fine but if certain people are going to be around, I need to keep myself clipped and pruned. A little stifling but less drama in the long run.

Any work you do in this area will make you a better person, a better parent, especially a better parent of teenagers, one day.

Good luck and congratulations.

Thank you so much for your response. It meant a lot. I will definitely look into a support group of some sort for us.

 

[nevaehniko]

It sounds to me like she has a disorder of some sort. Being emotional unstable, I would suggest never leaving your child with her alone in the future. It sounds like your husband’s father loves this woman and through his compassion for her miserable past, he is blinded by the actual problem at hand.

My mother is scitzophrenic and always treated my husband horribly. She would talk sweetly to his face and then tell horrible stories to others about him, saying he hit her, cussed at her, etc. I was always present with him around her so that he had a witness. I can understand the complications, drama, and heartache that this causes.

I pray that something will work out for you.

 

[HopenHappiness]

Hi,

People gave you some good ideas, but didn’t see anything about addressing the FB. I always joke about FB making a button just for me. They have a wonderful thing you can do to keep your Stepmom post out of your sight, but not defriend her. It is called Hide all, on one of her post on the right hand upper corner you will find an arrow, over all that and it will give you an option to hide all post for that person.

And when you click on that, their post no longer show on your news feed. So a lot of stress is removed. And if they say something you can honestly say you didn’t see the post. Now if you should or need to see something she posted you just visit her page directly and can read whatever you need. This also goes for those who hate getting game request. When one comes in just click and you will no longer get request from that game.

FB is nice to keep in contact and share with family far and near. But it can control peoples life. I know one person who lost friends, a job, and two places to live all because of FB Drama, and the sad part is she hasn’t learned anything yet.

One thing I enjoy doing is posting quotes from words of wisdom. They have some great quotes about life and God that ring so true. That usually gets the neg people away from my FB page also.

 

[maryjk]

You mentioned being puzzled why she treated you this way, please do yourself a favor and stop trying to figure it out you will go crazy. You cannot apply logic to a person who is illogical.

Something my mother always reminded me was that I didn’t have to accept unacceptable behavior.

On that note, my MIL and I have not spoken in about 5 years. She sends emails to my mailbox. Her address is filtered to my trash bin.

The phone number she has belongs to my husband. It is for his cell phone. She doesn’t have a way to get in touch with me directly.

My husband doesn’t really want anything to do with her either. But will speak with his father when he calls. My husband hasn’t spoke with his mother for the same five years.

This all happened after years of unacceptable behavior. She was driving me crazy with her demands. And my husband refused to allow it to continue. We cut our involvement with her, down to just holidays and one weekend a month.

Then somehow we upset her. She stopped talking to us. We decided that cutting off all contact worked. When my FIL talked about “working things out,” we told him that not having contact with her worked for us.

 

[jazzy0710]

It sounds to me like she has a disorder of some sort. Being emotional unstable, I would suggest never leaving your child with her alone in the future. It sounds like your husband’s father loves this woman and through his compassion for her miserable past, he is blinded by the actual problem at hand.

.

Completely agreed…

 

[jazzy0710]

Thank you so much for clarifying, however my advice still stands. Calling your mother-in-law about a bib that you forgot at her house is not an important matter. That is what I was trying to emphasize to you, you should not have put down your plates at the Christmas Buffet table and gone downstairs to call her.

I speak from some experience having had a family member like this. You cannot let this person rob you of your peace and that is what happened. You were at a Christmas dinner enjoying time with family and YOU allowed your mother-in-law to rob you of your peace. You have to choose to put your phone away, not look at the messages, decide not to respond, take a deep breath, pray, offer it up, ask Jesus to help you, or whatever you need to do but you have to not play into her drama because you will not ever “win” in this situation because there is no winner here.

You mentioned being puzzled why she treated you this way, please do yourself a favor and stop trying to figure it out you will go crazy. You cannot apply logic to a person who is illogical.

Talk with your husband and come up with a concrete game plan, this is what my husband and I did and it helped a lot. We stuck with our plan and stopped guessing and wondering what to do. For instance you may decide: if she sends nasty text messages delete them and ignore them. If she calls and leaves nasty messages delete them and ignore them. Ignore her posts on Facebook. Decide that you will call her once every two weeks or once a month (whatever you decide) to say" hello how are you" and leave it at that. Decide that you will send her Birthday and Christmas cards and that is it. Decide that you will visit her only on Thanksgiving or whatever holiday you decide and that’s it. Come up with something you think you can handle, pray to God for guidance. Your husband can decide too about contact with his father and how that all fits in. I will continue to pray for you I know how stressful this can be, God bless you dear one.

Thank you again Monicad We didn’t actually call her though. We called my husband’s father to ask him what was going on.

 

[jazzy0710]

Hi,

People gave you some good ideas, but didn’t see anything about addressing the FB. I always joke about FB making a button just for me. They have a wonderful thing you can do to keep your Stepmom post out of your sight, but not defriend her. It is called Hide all, on one of her post on the right hand upper corner you will find an arrow, over all that and it will give you an option to hide all post for that person.

And when you click on that, their post no longer show on your news feed. So a lot of stress is removed. And if they say something you can honestly say you didn’t see the post. Now if you should or need to see something she posted you just visit her page directly and can read whatever you need. This also goes for those who hate getting game request. When one comes in just click and you will no longer get request from that game.

FB is nice to keep in contact and share with family far and near. But it can control peoples life. I know one person who lost friends, a job, and two places to live all because of FB Drama, and the sad part is she hasn’t learned anything yet.

One thing I enjoy doing is posting quotes from words of wisdom. They have some great quotes about life and God that ring so true. That usually gets the neg people away from my FB page also.

Thank you so much. I will definitely look into that.

 

[jazzy0710]

: We decided that cutting off all contact worked. When my FIL talked about “working things out,” we told him that not having contact with her worked for us.

That’s what are very last resort is going to be.