I know I did the right thing, but I feel so bad about it

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HopenHappiness

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Long story short, my niece (21) moved in 6 months ago. She thinks she has the most wonderful BF in the world, who is a liar, BS artist, and just likes to stir the pot on FB(we are not friends with him, but he tags her in the post, and we have removed her from the newsfeed, but that just brings other family and friends asking what is going on).The only things we have asked of her is to go to school (college), be in by curfew, clean up after herself, and tell the truth and respect us.

It all came to a head tonight, we had a talk with her yesterday about we don’t feel she is happy, and she is more then welcome to leave. She promised this, that and the other thing, so I told her that I am just about at the end of my rope and consider this a warning.

So tonight her BF who post things on FB to try to taunt people because he won’t meet them face to face. Started his usual stuff because of an incident on Sat where she was drinking, and the police and fire department were called because of the fire they had going was so big they thought the house was on fire. We have also mailed him letters to his house asking to meet with him, he declines. I should also mention that she has lied to use several times in the past 6 weeks, with each week getting worse.

So after tonight’s FB post hubby and I look at each other and finally said enough. While we love her dearly, and know this guy is jerk, we just can put up with the behavior any more, just to stressful for us. So when she came home tonight, I politely asked her to see her house key, she gave me a strange look. I then gave her back the empty ring and said call your BF he wins, he is now 100 % responsible for you. You will be out at 10:00 am when I have to leave for the Drs. Told her that we loved her dearly, but can no longer take the disrespect, and mistrust. That she will always be welcomed in our home when we are there, but just can’t live with her anymore.

I then can’t believe that she tried to say that she didn’t do things. I then informed her that is just another affirmation of her lying because I printed off the post before you deleted them. I then informed her Mother what I did via text, and her grandmother show she is visiting for the next couple of days. I did tell her that she could keep her stuff in storage until she found a place, and that since BF family loves you so much, and they live in a 4 br house that they should have no problem taking her in, and you and BF can live happily ever after.

Like I said I know I did the right thing, but I feel bad, because before this BF she was no problem and was a joy to be around. Sometimes it stinks being an adult… On one note, I prayed and prayed on this and the only thing that coming into my mind is you don’t need to put up with this, she is a grown adult and needs to learn about life.

Thanks for the Listen,
Hope-n-Happiness for all 🙂

She came to our house after she go kicked out of her mother’s house for mouthing off, though the mother has wanted her back for a while, because she always borrows money from her.
 
I’m so sorry. It IS hard to be the grownup and do the right thing. I pray that your niece will come to her senses sooner than later and thank you one day for showing her some limits…no one else seems to do so.
 
You did the right thing. It is much gentler that she learns this life lesson from a loving family member, than from the police or courts system!

Hopefully she will learn from this experience.
 
What they said. It should get better after a while. You did the right thing. She has to learn sometime.
 
This must stink for you. I have two adult nieces (20’s) whom I love very much but they haven’t made the best decisions regarding marriage. One niece worked for me for 5 yrs and her volatile, personal life always trickled into our home for my 14, 10, and 9 yr old children to see. I used it as a teaching tool in how not to choose a marriage partner. 🤷 Besides that, she was fun and lovely to have here. This last go round, she left him and I did not let her with her children stay with me…it was super hard & I felt very guilty but I know I did the right thing. I helped her in other ways such as buying diapers and helping with some gas money. At least, your niece is not married to him and still has a chance to find the right man God has for her. Hang in there, pray for her, emotionally support her but…you absolutely did the right thing. Prayers for you.
 
So, this is at least the second time she’s been kicked out of a place. Don’t feel badly, then. Seems she has difficulty learning from her mistakes. Let her experience the consequences.

I know it’s hard, but if you don’t do this, you will have more problems in your own family. You need to set some limits. Somebody does.

Further, we go entirely too much by feelings in this culture. People use feelings to determine pretty much everything. People will say they are “in love” and go with some awful people. They can marry and then fall “out of love”, divorce, fall back “in love”, this time with a married person! So, feelings are good as a guide, but they only go so far.

I have a problem with a priest here who seems to be a bit into New Age, tells us that we’ll know when we’re doing God’s will, because we’ll be happy! I disagree! I thought about Jesús and how he prayed in Gethsemani, asking 3 times, in tears, to have this cup taken away.

I also don’t think Our Lady enjoyed suffering what she did. I’m sure it broke her heart to watch her son in such a state. She did it, but that doesn’t always mean God’s will is going to be enjoyable.

I’ve seen in my own life how I thought I was “happy” in sin, and unhappy, sometimes, not. So much for feelings.

We need to use other criteria for our actions. It’s not fun correcting a child, say. It’s more fun not to. It’s not fun taking a child to a doctor or for injections, insisting a child needs to go to school when he doesn’t want to.

This reminds me a little of when I had an alcoholic friend, and I was enabling her. I talked to AA (although Alanon would have really been the place to go to there). AA told me to stop enabling her, to let her experience some consequences. They gave me step-by-step advice on how to deal with everything. It wasn’t fun, but again, it was necessary.

In social work, we learned about guilt. Guilt only works if you let it. Keep it clear in your mind that you are not the problem here. Stop feeling guilty. You’ve done her a favor, and this is actually another one. She NEEDS to learn this lesson!
 
The thing I hate most about this situation is it feels like BF engineered this whole sequence of events and now he’s “won”. I have a lot of concern that it’s going to turn out to be an abusive situation. Note how effective he’s been at detaching her from her family.

You didn’t have a lot of good choices, though, although I think it would have been good to point out to her that she has the option of living by herself or with roommates. Really–she’s 21. She doesn’t need to live with mom or auntie or BF family.
 
Bad people always try to guilt good people into acquiescing, and accepting immoral behavior. Don’t buy her garbage for one more minute. God bless. Don’t be her enabler. :o Rob
 
Hi All,

Thanks for the replies, I appreciate them. When she first got kicked out of her house I tried to get her to get her own place, or if she didn’t want to live alone there was a great roommate situation. But she is in love with her boyfriend who is nothing but trouble.

During her time here I have found him verbally abusive and have told her my feelings and such, and she just didn’t get it.

Yesterday both her father (who is an alcoholic and smokes pot) and boyfriend posted some very nasty post on FB in which they tagged her, so they showed up in my news feed. I don’t play that game and all it did was make the 3 of them look bad as people know hubby and I are fair and honest people who will help anyone who is in need. And since then I have removed her from my news feed, but won’t defriend her because I care about her and think she will realize her mistake, and if she reaches out I want to be able to direct her to a place she could seek shelter or help.

What gets me is that she got what she wants to move in with the BF (even if it is with his mom and dad), so she should be happy. And even in the reply to one of the BF’s post she was nasty about her whole family and that set off a whirlwind of things from others. And basically burned all bridges with any family members or old friends.

One thing we have decided that we do not want her or him near our house, so we have packed up the rest of her stuff, and will meet them at the storage unit so she can get her other stuff that is in storage.

Besides her hurting us, the hardest thing is explaining to people is to let it go. That Karma will take care of everything, that by hanging on just makes it worse for yourself. I felt like yesterday all I was saying to everyone is Just let it go, life is to short and Karma will show up sooner or later.

Once again thanks listening and the help 🙂
 
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