I just got blasted by my sister and told I should visit my mother more often but she is the one who never visits or helps.
Aaaargh!!!!! Need to vent. I just got blasted by my sister and told I should visit my mother more often and help her more.We both are at a distance but I am the one who visits and helps. Even when my sister does visit she does not help but has a "holiday". I have moved mother twice in the past year and still have a room full of her belongings to sort through from the first move. I, at 73, have my own health problems to look after. I do the best I can for mother, but she is Borderline and I have to set very firm boundaries for my own health. She has a lovely 2 bedroom apartment in a seniors complex, the staff is working on providing her with her some of her food needs as she says she cannot eat in the dining room, she has an ex nurse who shops for her and helps her in other ways, a couple who pick her up and take to to and from church and at 98 is still quite mobile and bright, and yet complains all the time and is unhappy - not that that is anything new. Time for a break from it all!!! Thanks to those who read this - just needed to get the frustration out.
Joan
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Joan, I'll send you my writing that I mentioned by e-mail if you are interested. I tell ya, gaining insights about one's family of origin is like pealing an onion, one layer after another with more and more tears. Speaking of tears, I don't know if you have seen the movie "The Blind Side" or know about it, but I cried the whole movie and if I'm in a place like Blockbuster and they have it playing, I have to leave because I start crying again. Also, the movie "Running with Sicors," my wife was curious and rented, but I found the movie physically and emotionally revolting plus my Lab did not seem to like the movie either, so we both got out of the house. The mom in the first movie I mentioned adopted the young boy and was the mother I never had. The mom in the second movie was way too much like my mother who even in her second marriage still used me as her substitute spouse for my step-dad was nothing more than an escape ticket from her emotionally distant mother and my senile great aunt where I was supposedly the 'little man of the house', but when we left somewhere around age 11 she assured me that I would always be 'mommy's little man' Dang, she still at times verbally strikes out at me like I belong to her and my main job is to make her happy and fix whatever is wrong and if I don't then it's all my fault. I recognize that and don't buy into it, but that's what I was trained into for years. It was not until I moved completely away after finishing college that I even began to get some freedom and no wonder it took me until after age 30 to get married. While I knew what she was doing was wrong, she was the one in control and so when I complained to her around age 13 to let go of me because she was married now, she did not respond immediately, but waited until we were back in that huge, two story, old southern style, house in her hometown to let me know that I belonged to her and to not complain anymore. Some of us are cursed with puberty at 10. Dammmm!!!!!!
Don't be making apologies for that!
For the most I have been able to put my sister and brother and thier hateful, thieving nonsense behind me, still can't afford the lawyer yet, but when I can i hope to be able to let that go too and just let it all play out as it will.
emjo, I think my SIL became my FIL "covert" spouse, but I think more in the sense that they worked as a team to keep the family together than in the sense that she really became his emotional partner.
The other type of being the 'covert spouse' is described in the book "Silently Seduced: When Parents Make their Children Partners" This book served as a tipping point in my own journey. I went straight to the chapter about moms and sons. Wow, someone has written about my life.
While this book is small and one would think probably similar to the larger book "The Emotional Incest Syndrome: What to do When a Parent's Love Rules Your Life", it was a gold mine for me and maybe because it was written by a man with a chapter for men was what made the difference.
Reading part of that book was like a bombshell which set off an explosion of memories, i.e. events, feelings, thoughts, as well as things my mother said to me which went beyond the book. I shared with Ted a poem that I wrote about being a substitute spouse. At first I thought it was a song because I used a modified title from the song "Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys" to Mamas don't raise up your boys to be substitute spouses" However, fitting it into the rhyme of the song takes a lot from it, It was a powerful experience when my therapist read it out loud to me in his office. It is easier to compartmentalize something painful into a song than it is to face the full emotional baggage of reading that written work with the feelings that are behind each sentence and the painful damage of that experience is one dam life long sentence. Mom's side of the family might be good Presbyterian people, but there is a generational problem there for evidently my uncle became a substitute spouse for my grandmother in place of her alcoholic husband which made his younger sisters very jealous and never like him. I hate it when my wife and I are having some intimate time together and into my head flies some memories of my mother. I know that I'm not alone for I've run into other men who stories are the same. A very good friend of mine experienced such flashbacks when he brought his demented mother to live with his family. He has flashbacks about his childhood experience with his mom and her sister plus Vietnam. Wow, have I gotten off topic this am and vented all about me. Sorry.
We are all going to have our low times, but I can only hope that each of your insights and strengths are as comforting and uplifting for yourselves as they have been for me.
I'm going to use that one. Thanks.
Try to remember 4 things.
1. You did not cause your mother or your sister to have BPD.
2. You can't control their BPD.
3. You can't fix their BPD.
4. The only thing you really can do is choose a healthy path for yourself and stay there regardless if your mom or sister chose or do not choose a healthy path for themselves.
"What other people think about me is none of my business."
Take care
Joan
Thanks again for the boost.
Joan
Sounds to me like your Mom is getting more than enough help. As for your sister, all I can say is try to work out a schedule where both of you can share the visits -- and the responsibility. She's just trying to flip the script on you and make you feel guilty about her not doing enough. As they say at the residential treatment facility where I work: she's "dopefiending."
At 73, I don't blame you for enforcing the boundaries consistently. It keeps you from getting sick ... and getting "played" by the people whom you thought would meet you halfway.
Take care of yourself lovely lady, and keep us posted.
-- ED