The Caregiver & Dysfunctional Families: How are you doing?

SharynMMarie,

One more thing and this is for you and your husband who sounds like he was partnered by his mom. The title of the book,

When He's Married to Mom: How to Help Mother-Enmeshed Men Open Their Hearts to True Love and Commitment

It may be too late but who knows. There is also a more explanatory book about how those partnerships develop.

Silently Seduced: When Parents Make Their Children Partners

It's likely how raw I still feel over it, but to call this between a child and a parent enmeshment is lame and not really honest. It is covert incest often called emotional incest.

SharynMMarie,

Thanks! Unlike sis, I only slept 3 hours last night whereas she slept the whole night for the first time in about a week. I called her today to check on her and was glad to learn that she had slept well. Although, I did take my before I eat pills today, I somehow managed to miss the rest until tonight. I hate day like today and my med reminder app on my phone reports that I'm only talking about 61% of my meds each week.

I decided that while we were on the phone that I would tell sis a new label for where we are now since we left being inlaws long ago and most recently have left being siblings. I told her that in my opinion she had earned this title from our lived experience of sticking by each other through thick and thin and hoped that I had earned it as well. When I said that we are each others ride or die persons, she said that she had never heard of that term before. I said this is a country word for two people who through lived experience have come to know how much they can trust each other because of how close they stick together through thick or thin. She said that she liked that phrase. This is a complimentary phrase that is earned not given. She has earned it. As far as I'm concerned there are no more levels.

I'm glad that your daughter and you had that honest conversation. I'm puzzled about counseling for I'm on Medicare also. My therapist takes it plus the supplement that I have which helps. Keep looking for one. Do encourage your daughter to get some counseling for herself.

While I tried my best to be discrete, I did in places leave myself wide open for whatever. I am glad no one decided to take some cheap shots.

When I left for college after my senior year of HS, I got very serious with my mother and very much right in her face and said, look you are married now and have been for the last 7 years, let me go. That's the nearest I ever came to saying what needed to be said but later I learned the words for it.

Some may not want to believe this, but my various therapists have told me that such is more common than people think.

Yoda, much of what you wrote struck a cord with me within my own dysfunctional marriage and origins. It is heart breaking when you can’t have the close relationship with your spouse that you want. I know I’ve been very difficult towards my husband, yes I have become as stubborn as he is. I became wore out from always giving into him and his mother. We live together, but live separate.

I am very happy you have your sis to talk with. My daughter told me I made her my emotional support person. It broke my heart to hear it but it was true. I tried to get counseling in the last year, however Medicare is not accepted. I did find a place where I would be counseled by an intern. That did not work out as after I poured my heart out to her, she graduated sooner than expected. I didn’t want to start over again.

i always enjoy communicating with you as things are brought up for me that I have deal with. Stay the course

Sharyn - glad the hear the boys are doing well, Time passes quickly. I remember their preschool days. So glad they are doing well and that you have such a good relationship with them. They bring some fun into your life. We all need that! Sounds like your pets are doing well too. Take care

Part 1.
 
To answer the inquiry about my spouse, I must answer in three parts.
This is a painful report to share. First of all, my spouse was diagnosed with
borderline personality disorder several years before we met, but never told. Our premarital counselor told me privately, that he could tell that she wares several masks. I had no idea what he was saying but I learned later on. From the start, her mom was a huge problem. She only liked passive, dependent men like her husband who she had convinced had promised to obey her in his wedding vows. Never once did my spouse object to her mother how she was treating me totally unlike her identical twin sister who I learned had stood up boldly to her when she attacked the man she married. Through talking with my therapist, thinking about
things over the years plus talking with a trusted retired friend plus my SIL, I
began t see clearly what I have been avoiding which the boys wanted me to come to terms with. They don’t know the whys like I do, but they see the results and what I have been through and what they went through.
My SIL was raised primarily by her dad. Unlike my spouse, SIL refused two things her mom desired. 1. To make her a substitute emotional partner like she was already doing with my spouse. 2. To tell her as she did with my spouse all
about her sex life with her husband from which she would talk about how bad men are trying to turn her away from men. Only last year, did my spouse tell me
that her mom made her a substitute partner. As this and other things were gone
over, I began to understand how being her mom’s substitute partner placed her
whole life in bondage, why several things from the past now made complete
sense. Her SIL was still shocked at how their mom behaved before our wedding.
For example, that morning, she told my to be spouse to go to hell. Why? Because
to marry someone, particularly someone like me who would stand up to her, meant her substitute spouse was leaving her. I have never felt deeply connected with my spouse like most married people do after 36 years. Her mom always came first. We could never have our own Christmas, Easter or anything else without her mom either being with us or we being up there. When our first child was born, her mom told her that he was her baby and she was going to take him home to raise. Before my spouse had even given birth to him, she told her that if he looked like me, she would reject him. This toxic woman insisted on going on all of our family vacations until I put my foot down and said enough. Since, 1998,
my spouse has had therapy, individual and group. She went back to her former
therapist who told her she was borderline. Years later, she witnessed her mom
abusing our boys just like she had her and her twin. I thought that was the
breaking point as did her therapist, but no. A few years later she said in a
group meeting for married people that she knew she had emotionally and verbally abused me and our sons. I knew that was true and had been trying to be their therapist, but in time I got them and myself to a real therapist. Also, one
night, she just said out of the blue, I am sorry for what I put you and the
boys through so I could stay in the will and inherit all that money which had
already been planned for as a trust fund to never be inherited by me or our
sons if she died before me. That was not an apology, that was an explanation.
There have been uncalled for problems between the two sisters in which my
spouse was abusing her sister verbally and emotionally during which I didn’t
stand there and watch. My SIL has done the reverse for me which has increased
over the last year or so. She has also told me things since July 4 that were
new. Various events related to her fighting cancer in 2000 & surviving plus my
showing her some mental health information which helped her to understand her
life and why her mom was trying to destroy her marriage. We became a team instead staying apart & dying mentally!

Part II

I’m trying to make this as compact as possible so that I can conclude with a list of concluding points. This very recent event which I informed my spouse’s therapist and psych about her wild spending of $14,000 in 6 weeks using three different credit cards buying mainly all of these dolls, their clothes Which she is going to pay for out of her trust fund money. Her stated plan is to give many of these away to children to have for Christmas and the rest sell online. This was all done not as a bipolar manic experience but getting carried away with the feeling of shopping. As I’ve told everyone, beyond being concerned about this being bipolar which she does have also, I am more concerned about finances as we have chosen a city and are about ready to go look at some CCRCs Continual Care Retirement Center.
This
purchase stuff cut off our living three room in our house, made the entrance
way and hall a challenge to walk through and worsened how crowded with her
stuff the garage is. And I am a fall risk. When my SIL saw this about 4 weeks
ago, she said, my sibling has gone too far this time, I don’t know what to
about this. My spouse stayed glued to her laptop shopping basically the whole
time with made her sister wonder why did she even come. Just like me, she cu
her shin on this mess and like me it damaged her bad leg. In an attempt to be
humorous as I handed the Neosporin to her, I said, welcome to my world sis.
Later
when my SIL got home, we talked on the phone. One of the first things she told
me was that she left depressed over how things are her and heartbroken that I
had to deal with it. A couple of weeks later, she informed me that she could no
longer deal with her sister’s mental and was going to just let the
professionals treat her We talked about this some more because that earlier
time was basically me listening to my SIL’s combined pain, exhaustion and anger
which I reflected back to her that she had every right to feel like she did and
to me if I had to come up with an analogy for it, I would say she was as open,
raw, and hurting like a molten pot of steel which is very hot, purified, and
hot if you mistakenly touch it plus you can feel the intense heat from it
before it is poured into various molds. She like that word picture. A bit
later, we had a discussion about leaving her sibling in the hands of the
professionals meant. Her response was, I’m going clinical with her,
particularly when she goes off, I’m no longer going to correct her, try to help
her, none of that plus I am so sorry that you basically have such a
dysfunctional spouse who has used you like you were the dad she never
had. 
 
All together I understand several things and sorry but I likely left out the context for some of them.
1.     Why she never stood up to her mom for us which I did complain to her about.
2.     Why her mom told her to go to hell the morning of our marriage.
3.     Why her mom was so angry that my spouse took her name off of her checking account.
4.     Why she thinks, as she told me about 2 years ago, that she thinks her mom was a closet lesbian.
5.     Why as a therapist who she didn’t go back to once told her, you will never be able to deal with your two year old until you deal with your mom.
6.     Why after all these years of therapy and even that crisis over our boys being abused by her mom was not a true breaking point.
7.     Why she has said things in the past, oh, I know how to do normal.
8.     Why for years, it felt like I was married to more than one person who truly had her heart although abused by her, who was another woman, who was her mom.
9.     Why she has wanted her twin to sleep in the same bed together when visiting like they did growing up in the same bed through high school and college. Her twin’s response was an emphatic no and I got an earful in private.
10. Why she was in a lesbian relationship before we started dating.
 

Yoda, thanks for the story, you have been through a lot.

But I'm sure because of everything you have been through, you have helped more people than you know.

Part III
11. Why she attempted to hoover our sons in like her mom plus went on to tell me which one's looks reminded her of the younger me and that he had seen her nude.
12. Why she sort of like her mom told her favorite son who reminded her of me told him as a young teen all of these mean things about girls as if like her mom she wanted him, at least emotionally, all for herself but not be interested in the girls his age. When I got wind of that and evidently he told his therapist, that was the end of it. He now talks about while his mom is enjoyable to talk with about various subjects that they will never be able to have an adult to adult relationship.
13. Why once in the mental ward when asked about her being a mother, she immediately spoke about her mom and how she was raised to take care of her. The professionals had to guide her to talk about her sons.
14. Why I felt back then and still do to some degree like a single parent although married.
15. Why this feeling that I use to have which I thought was how one felt as a married person was actually how a codependent person feel, but I was out of that after seeing all of this as it really is what my SIL had basically known all along with my sons have seen what was going on and its impact on me from the outside.
16. Why possibly I have never really met her emotional needs due to her mom & their relationship which means likely than only a woman could meet those needs.
17. Why I feel like this whole marriage is a lie for my spouse has been involved in emotional adultery with her mom which makes it at the minimum emotional incest.
18. Why I married someone so much like my mom.
19. Why despite everything to the contrary that I’ve done on my on and in therapy, I haven’t gotten past every bit of my mother also trying to raise me on a pink pillow both because she really wanted a girl not a boy & that she didn’t want me to turn out like my dad who while he was never a touchy feely type person an engineer, he did show people love by the things he did & because of that was loved by many people.
20. Why I developed some of the coping mechanism that I did in order to survive. I’m in two support groups where I can talk about all of this & no one has judged me, but has encouraged me to find what is beneath it that I’m trying accomplish. I have found how trye what I heard someone say, As you heal, you come to despise what you valued so much. I don’t have the time or space to unpack that, but it is true. Some things have felt like they fell off of me like chains to the floor. I no longer have any desire to so that anymore. I’m not perfect, but I have come a long ways.
 This may sound mean to some and I’m sure it could be said in more professional language, but right now I’m raw like my SIL. Plus, I have decided to go clinical with my spouse also when she goes off into a borderline moment. Someone said that she was blessed to have me. No, I responded, it was my destiny for my mom trained me for this in how she raised me as a substitute spouse who she was not only in control of but also dependent upon which I did in time see through that telling me that I was mom’s little man and man of the house, plus excusing things because we had a special mom son relationship like other boys. I saw through all of that by the end of high school, but it took help and a lot of effort on my part to get out of that, but still later on my spouse could tell how dependent on me she wanted to be, but I was like no, we don’t play that game anymore.  
Maybe my SIL can point to the exact or close to the exact time when we left being just inlaws to being siblings, but that was a stage. Now, since this crisis blew up, we have had very open sharing of emtions and memories & ideas. We have left being siblings. We are each others platonic live or die for person. My spouse futurecasts that we will marry if she dies first. We will not cross our boundaries in that direction. Thanks for reading all three parts of this.

SharynMMarie, Knowing what you said helps my research.

BTW, my therapist likes my conclusion that sis and I should just stay the course that we are working on, keep our boundaries and just learn to live with how awkward it feels at times. I mean really people, neither of us have been where are are now.

Thing of it is we are both intuitive, so we can't lie about our emotions for we read each other like a book. Nor can we lie to each other given our level of education and how out minds work, we would pick up on either holding back or not being forthright in a second. This is wonderful to be able to communicate with someone so completely adult to adult without any of that mental health ickiness nor the ickiness of romance. We laugh whenever some tells us or one of us separately that if my wife dies 1st, we will marry. We are too much alike to be married but we make great friends.

Whenever, I find myself tripping over myself or someone else or both of us emotionally and intellectually at the same time, I know it is time for me to write.

I put together a poetic play one phrases using the titles of the old soap operas which I've shared with sis and explained this is my poetic view of where we are and the good loving friendship that I believe we will continue to have. 

"It's truly a brand new world and the dawning of a new day as the world turns along with the old and restless searching for the guiding light before the coming of the Edge of Night or visiting General Hospital and seeing The Doctors as each faces the health challenges of their personal Secret Storm plus the hardships of the Ways of the World which often leads us to look for Another World. Yet, while in the Days of our lives, Dark Shadows do come, so will the Moment of Truth to remind us that  Love Is a Many Splendored Thing,

Honestly, I do find myself at times anxious, confused or both, but never have I lost the confidence that we individually and together will make it through it all as Andrae Crouch wrote in his song with those words as his title, "Through it all."

When we talked about this over the phone it turns out that this is one of her favorite songs as is Evie's song, "Give them all" which she found herself playfully singing and at the same time crying on the way home from hearing the doctor saying, it is final now, you two are just not going to be able to have any children.

All in all, we left the inlaw stage 20 some years ago when she was fighting cancer and I was helping her understand the mental health issues in the family including why her mother wanted to destroy her marriage.

We are moving beyond the sibling stage to a new one which for the lack of any other words, I'll use a country phrase that hopefully is clear. If you now someone from West Virginia, Eastern TN, Eastern KY or some other still "really country" place in the South, ask them to explain it you plus tell them this is what two friends who are relatives have become for each other and you would like to understand this term a bit more. They can say what it means better than I can, plus they will likely give you the long definition which one will not find on google.

Now, honestly, I think this is why it is now frightening although good. We have become each other's ride-or-die persons. That phrase can be true of a married couple, friends, or even another relative as in my case. Some may prefer the term "soul mate" but no that's too emotionally based. Some may prefer BFF or BMF, but no that just doesn't quite measure up. Ask a current country person about it.

At our age and with our given health challenges, we have our boundaries, but neither of us has the energy to do more than to work on getting this CCRC project together to benefit all three of us. At times, it's almost like a Vulcan mind mold when we come up with basically the same insight at the same time about what we are discussing.

It is truly a brand new world as we elderly but restless search for the guiding light. . .

Yoda, I did get your pm but I can’t respond back. Your profile only shows how many messages you have had, # of post …just your stats.

Hi Yoda, interesting that I can’t leave a private message. I’m glad you and your sis in law can communicate so well and your friendship is so strong. Let us know how you and your wife are doing. Lots going on in your life. Take care of yourself Yoda.

Hi Golden, the boys are great, had their 10th birthday the end of August. Ten years old, I can’t believe it. I enjoy every minute with them as they are great kids. They are really into VR (virtual reality) with their friends now. It gets more creative to get them to spent time with me and away from VR. I usually take them once a month to lunch or a Sunday breakfast buffet during the school year. Summer we do more activities like water balloon fights, going to a movie or a park.

I hope you doing well, not dealing with as much cold weather as you were before.

I had my share of caregiving family over thirty-six years ago. I still have my moments of crying even today almost forty years later.

here’s a totally different approach for how to deal with toxic/narcs/sociopaths…

from an article:

I smile.
and then I get very happy. I intensely focus on this person and then I smile even more, very likely I laugh heartily and ask them to go on. I feel warm inside and healthy, as if I’ve just been made whole.

I continue like this as I soak up the hate, the juiciness of knowing that every single moment I am draining this person of their very essence.
I.love.haters.
I love hatred, love it, love, love, love it. Please hate me. Oh please, please, please.

I find most people are extremely weak, it's pathetic. Oh she/he doesn’t like me!!!
REVEL IN THAT SH***T!!!
sadly, no one hates me. Or at least they are unwilling to let me know. I eat hate for breakfast and then say MOAR!
Yummy.

Bundle " True That!!!"

Another thing that Yoda was explaining that I found very interesting, was there are narssasist and there are flees.

Flees are not true narssasist, but picked up narcissistic behaviors, from being around narcissistic.

I feel like my sister probably has flees, but that doesn't mean I want to be around flees either, but it does make me understand her a bit more.

more good advice against toxic people:

“Simply don't believe anything they tell you about yourself. If you believe what they tell you about who you are, how you should live your life, dictate things for you: you will always be their prisoner.”

—
“If people see you being a happy or successful person believe me they will try to ruin it for you.”

—
“And believe me your family can be your greatest enemy. Sometimes even people you don’t know will treat you better than them.”

—
“They are desperate for power. Don't give power to them.”

"Fools take a knife and stab people in the back.
The wise take a knife, cut the cord, and set themselves free from the fools."

today’s advice against toxic people:

“Let them expose themselves and run.”

Hi Sharyn,

The last private message that you were able to send me that got through was several months ago. I will inquire as to why that is.

I did have my sleep study and the narcolepsy side of the test was positive. The sleep study doctor ran out of ideas. He suggested a neurologist who I had already found given what the online Facebook support group encouraged me to do. He has a problem believing that someone 67 can be diagnosed with narcolepsy, but he treated me as if I do. I found a narcolepsy-specialized naurologist at Duke, but could not see him until June.

Somehow, the challenge to find a CCRC for all three of us to move to fell mainly to me and my SIL who I now call sis because that is due to the siblings that we have become. We at least have agreed on a city. One afternoon while sis and I were talking about the hospital in the city we picked, we almost simultaneously expressed looking there for a specialist. I have a number that keeps the national list of those specialized. 4 of them are at that hospital. One did a fellowship with my present neurologist who is ready to refer me because I need as he says a super neurologist.

Sis & I find ourselves having to clinical with my wife given her resent spending sprey of thousands of $ in 6 weeks. Her psych and therapist are addressing this & have communicated to me what to do right now. The last time sis was here she left depressed over our situation and heartbroken over what I have to deal with.

Years ago, sis & I became like the mental health Jedi for this side of the family. It was a matter of working together & live or stay apart & die, mentally not literally.

Now the push to find a CCRC is pressing. Oh, I'm sorry, a CCRC is a Continuing Care Retirement Center where one begins at independent living & then moves on as once has a need.

Our investment/finance man said we are in good shape for this. I know my sis is. This summer, sis gave me a major gift for my future that is to go to our boys if I die before them.

All of this and having to work together as a team again have meant that our platonic relationship has grown quite deep.

We have our boundaries which we repeat to each other often and we each agree that we never sought to be this close. But, here we are. It is so new, that is both very good and very frightening. Everything else but discussing us is easily done as wide open adult to adult. We only have these conversations face-to-face. Wow, do we have the freedom to communicate with each other without any stickiness. It gets intense at times, but our freedom that allows it to get intense is great! We sometimes passionately disagree and explain why, but we listen to each other and reach an agreed-upon conclusion. Sometimes, we are so straightforward with each other that if anyone walked in on us they would likely assume that our friendship was over, but nope, we are fine.

We don't attempt these "summit meetings" as I call them by email or on the phone. The last such meeting we had was at a retreat walking back to the cottage across a very long open field with a very strong wind. The strong wind provided us the privacy we needed so we talked.

However, when we try to discuss just us, we awkwardly stumble over ourselves and each other emotionally and intellectually. l am going to talk with my therapist about this today,

Anyhow, I think that what we are working on is so important and our ability to do so is so adult to adult, that we can just live with the awkwardness that we feel and let ourselves be guided by our boundaries while all of that stuff, I think will settle down. I am going to see what my therapist says today. I am of this view because of our almost 70s age and our health challenges likely mean this will be our final big effort to the benefit of all. We have known each other for about 40 years and starting with her fight against cancer in 2000, we became a team. I don't know if you have heard the term, ride or die person, but that's us.

Hi Sharyn Good to see you posting. Yoda is not here much these days. I am sorry that your hub is not well, but glad he got the hospital care he needed. Sounds like his diabetes was really out of control along with, maybe b/c of the covid. Glad he doesn't have pneumonia. Hope his cognitive test goes well.

It's great that you didn't get very sick with covid. How are those grandbabies? Look after yourself and keep us updated.

“Accept the dysfunctional/toxic person in your life as they are and leave it.

Spend the rest of your life focusing on you, not them – your healing, your strength, your joy.”

“Do not expect anyone else, least of all a dysfunctional/toxic person, to fulfill your needs.”

"It's funny how sometimes
the people you'd take a bullet for
are the ones behind the trigger."

quote for today on toxic people:

"If you stop telling lies about me,
I'll stop telling the truth about you."

Shery, I think covid is very hard on a diabetics body, and regulating blood sugar when sick is tricky. So sorry, hopefully the brain fog gets better.

Hi Sharyn

So sorry to hear about your Covid ordeal. I hope you and your husband have a complete recovery.

Notrydoyoda last posted around the end of September.

Hopefully he will see your post soon.

Has notrydoyoda posted recently. I tried to send him a private message but was not able. Maybe the site has changed things again.

Hi everyone,

I haven’t posted in a few months. A lot has been going on, mostly we both became sick with Covid. First my husband, he was coughing a lot on a Saturday, then the next day he slept on the couch. I tried to get him up but he refused. Because he had gone to Oregon on Saturday to get gummies, I assumed he was stoned but I kept trying to get him to go to bed. Monday came, no improvement. I discovered he had been urinating on the couch since Sunday. I called 911. EMT’s came out, my hubs oxygen sats were in the low 80’s,heart rate was up and down. They told me he had to go to the hospital. After getting our dog and cats settled, my daughter and I went to the hospital. We were told he tested positive for Covid, chest x-ray was negative for pneumonia. Glucose was as high as 400. My hubs had not eaten since Saturday nor had he taken his diabetes meds since Saturday he spent 10 days in the hospital and I tested positive 3 days after hubs was admitted. My case was very mild possibly because I keep up on vaccines and the last vaccine hubs got was March 2023. I don’t know if this has any reason why hubs got so sick.

Hubs still has Covid brain fog, he will be fine for a couple days, then he sleeps a lot and his brain is foggy. He has to have a cognitive test in a month. Even before he became sick with Covid, I noticed some small cognitive concerns with him. I shrugged it off as being retired… we can forget what day of the week it is since we aren’t living on a calendar schedule anymore.

have a good October and find joy in small things.

🥰 today’s words of wisdom:

The next time someone is verbally abusive/toxic to you, ask them:

if they need to take a break so they can get a snack and calm down. 

Blick, I agree with others her, my mom is a horrible micro manager.

When my father died , my sister was doing the deep cleaning, I was doing the errands, appointments, and the everyday thing, like garbage.

My sister, disappeared ( now completely understandable) mom thought I was going to do the deeper cleaning. I told her straight up I'll clean what ever you want if you want to go watch Hallmark, and I'll happily "have at it" she did not like that one tiny bit! And that solved that issue, she never asked again.

But that didn't change her other manipulative control ways. Just the one issue. I thought I was setting boundaries and I was but they just find other ways to manage you. So watch out for the sneaky covert games

blickbob,

Move the office supplies out of the room .
When Mom balks , too bad . Look at it as an exercise for you , to stand up to her .

You can leave her some writing paper if she uses it . But don’t bring her envelopes . You take whatever she writes that she wants mailed out of the room and you take care of the envelope without her input .

Ignore her ranting .