Not sure if this is the right sub for this but it seemed right. I also apologize for the wall of text.
I'm in a very strained and stressful position with my mother. I will attempt to keep this as factual and non-biased as possible as well as short as possible.
There has always been internal strife between my mother and my wife. My mother accused her of cheating on me and getting pregnant to trap me, despite there being no evidence to suggest otherwise. My mother has always been very passive aggressive towards my wife, insinuating things and making comments that push my wife's buttons. When I've spoken to my mother about these incidents, she blows it off as my wife being too sensitive and looking for trouble when there isn't any or she gets defensive and turns to a "everybody hates me" type attitude.
She still keeps close ties with my ex, who was not kind to me. My ex pushed herself on me when I had come home drunk one night and she, unbeknownst to me, had not been taking birth control for about 2 months. She became pregnant, when I had made it very clear I did not want a child. This led to the demise of our relationship. My daughter, as so often kids are, was caught in the middle. My mother more or less raised her for the first year and a half of her life while my ex and I rarely spoke and hand offs of our daughter were carried out mostly through grandparents. I was not a bum at this time, however. I was working 2 full time jobs to support myself and often did not get home from work until late at night. My ex left me in a very difficult financial situation, as well as difficult emotional and mental state. I moved in with my mother for about a year while I got myself together. During this time, I met my wife and we began dating and eventually moved in together and I started taking a more active role in my daughter's life, as did my ex. Despite repeated conversations, screaming, yelling, crying, etc, my mother insists that she keep ties with my ex so she can keep up with what's going on in my daughter's life.
When my wife became pregnant, my mother accused her of carrying another man's child, despite there being no evidence to support this other than my wife's best friend is male. I have known this since before her and I were together and had no real issue with it. While I finally told my mother off about this and told her she needed to drop it, she has never treated my kids the same. My older one was always the one who was babied, and received the extra attention, even if my younger child was standing right there wanting the same attention. My older child picks up on this and will home in on it, acting more immature to get the attention from my mother. This has only increased with my son being born. My older child continues to get lavish attention, while the other two do not. It was improved some when my mother obviously spent way more on my older child one year for Christmas than she did the others. I told her that was not ok and that while the dollar amounts do not matter, the kids need to each receive comparable sets of gifts from her. She agreed and things have been mostly fine in that regard since. My son gets a bit more attention from her because he's the younger of the 3, the only boy, and rather in your face if you're not paying attention to him when he wants it. My younger daughter has never been this way and if someone isn't giving her the attention she wants, she eventually grows tired of competing for it and will go off and do something alone. Despite many, many, MANY attempts to get my mother to see that she does this, and that it hurts my younger daughter's feelings, she insists she does not. It has been the source of a great deal of anger and upset between my mother, my wife, and myself. It's led to many fights between my wife and I, as well as my mother and I.
Additionally, my mother has been very passive aggressive on social media about different things. She'll comment on pictures or posts that my ex puts up on social media, but won't say anything on my wife's posts, even if it's of the kids. At most she'll leave a "that's cute" on a picture. Anytime one of my ex's kids are sick, or my oldest daughter is sick, my mom is all over it, giving that "motherly advice". It is not reciprocated when my wife posts the same things about her or our other 2 children. While it's just social media and it shouldn't bother us that much (I feel, anyway), it has been the source of some hurt feelings, anger, and arguments.
My mother moved out of state 4 years ago with my grandmother to live with my aunt. My mom was in management for a retail chain and was making very good money so it was relatively easy for her to make the move. We reached an agreement where my wife and I would move into my grandmother's house and we would pay her rent as tenants. No formal lease agreement was drawn up, however (mistake, I know). My mother agreed to pay for any large costs that needed to be dealt with, and would at least pay part of any value increasing improvements we wanted. We were promised new windows (the house is 60 years old and still had the original single pane windows in over half of the house), a new roof, the stuff to remodel the original bathroom, a new furnace, and repairs made to the front porch. Within 6 months of us moving in, my mom had a falling out with her boss and quit her $70,000+/year job. She had about $10,000 in savings. This was eaten up quickly as my aunt is terrible with finances and took my mom for about $4000. The rest of the money was spent on caring for my grandmother and my mother's own expenses. My mother eventually did find a new job, but is only making about $9/hr for roughly 34-36 hours a week. This wasn't until she had sold almost everything she owned, as well as draining her savings completely dry. My mom lost insurance policies that she had paid on over over 30 years.
Needless to say, we did not receive any of the needed upgrades to the house. The windows were never replaced, the bathroom that was due to be remodeled has not been actively used in 3 years due to the sink leaking and the toilet not flushing correctly. The furnace went out in the first winter we were there. My mother did not want to fix it and bought a large space heater instead. This helped but it still made for some very cold nights in half the house. The other half of the house has electric baseboard heaters and new windows so it was never a problem keeping it warm in there. The water heater was next to go out. My mother did manage to scrape together enough money to fix that, as my wife and I were on a single income with 3 children and had no money to spare. Last fall, we began to have a serious sewer issue where the sewage was backing up into our front yard. It was going to cost over $4000 to repair. My mother was unwilling to even attempt to fix it, despite unsanitary conditions in the front yard and spilling out into the sidewalk in front of our house. People stopped walking in front of our house, they would walk out into the street from our driveway and then back into the sidewalk from our neighbor's driveway. The smell was awful. Cutting grass was a nightmare. My kids couldn't play outside all summer because the mess was everywhere. How we ended up not getting a board of health complain filed, I'll never know. Even after my mother saw how bad it was for herself, she threw her hands up and refused to even attempt to qualify for any loans to fix it. She was convinced that she wouldn't qualify and refused to try.
My mother came back into the state nearly unannounced in June of this year to gather stuff up that my grandmother had in storage. She wanted me to take 3 days off work, when it was a time that I just could not do so due to work commitments and that she had only given me 3 days notice to do so. I told her no and she informed me that she would come to our house and just take what she wanted, no need for anyone to be home. I put my foot down and told her that was not acceptable. She did it anyway. When I got home, she had already come by and taken a full set of lawn furniture and other items off of our back porch. Now, we did not purchase any of this. When we took residency of the home, she told us that anything we wanted was ours. She wanted none of it except for some stuff in the attic. I called her out on this and she basically told me tough, she was taking it and there was nothing I could do. I dropped the subject and helped her get stuff down out of the attic, as it was just not worth the fight to me. Suddenly, my oldest daughter shows up. My aunt had went and picked her up from my ex, without me knowledge so that my mom and my aunt could spend time with her and hoping we wouldn't find out. My mother had called me earlier in the day and wanted to know if they could park the moving truck in our driveway while they went shopping until I got home. I had no problem with this, but my mother in law was with my two younger children. My mother in law and my mother do no speak at all so I told my MIL she should probably go before my mom gets there. She didn't get out in time and my other two kids saw her and cried when they didn't get to stay with her. My mother made no effort to try and get extra time with them and attempted to play it off like she didn't know my oldest daughter was going to be around. Further adding to this situation, she kept my oldest daughter over night at my uncle's house without my knowledge or consent or attempting to spend the same time with my other children. While my oldest daughter was there and in the room, my mother told everyone there how dirty, smelly, and nasty our house was. Our house smells like we have pets, because we do. It was not dirty at all however, it was actually the cleanest it had been in months in preparation for my mother to be there. I found out about this from my oldest daughter several days later. My mom initially tried to deny this, but eventually caved and said she did say it. I flipped out on her and we had one of the worst fights ever.
My wife and I made the decision to move. That being in this house was too much for us to handle and we needed to find somewhere that suited us better. We made the move about 2 months ago. I had warned my mother of this for months that we were going to be looking and when we found something, we would move quickly. She said she had no problem with this and to take whatever we wanted from the house, she was just going to let it get foreclosed upon. 2 days before signing our lease, I told her we had found a new place and what we would be taking. The new house did not have a refrigerator or a stove and we would need to take the ones from the house. She told me that we could have the stove (it was ours anyway, nothing she could've done about it), but we could not have the fridge. The mother of all fights ensued. I have not spoken to my mother since save for one very long text message that basically said I would let her know when we were 100% moved out of the house, that things were said that should not have been said, feelings were hurt, and that I did not want to fight with her anymore as she's getting older and I don't want the last years of her life to be spent in turmoil and living with regret for the rest of mine. That was the last time I've had contact with her since July.
My problem here is that I'm unsure of where to go. My wife wants nothing to do with her and wants our kids to have nothing to do with her. My wife feels she is two-faced and very toxic and she doesn't want the kids exposed to her passive aggressiveness and petty remarks, not to mention the lack of attention toward my younger two children. We have agreed that for my wife to get to a point where she feels more comfortable with her interacting with the kids that my mother will need to make a huge effort to call and talk to them regularly. I felt this was fair. However, my mother has not done so. My wife has also said that she understands that she's my mom and that if I want a relationship with her, she will not attempt to block that in anyway. My problem is I feel very strange about speaking to my mother when I know my kids will not be a topic of conversation, or even spoken to. I feel terrible that communication between my mother and myself has hit this low of a point, but she also does not take criticism well and I know any attempt to get her to see my point of view, and my wife's point of view, will be met with hostility and "everybody hates me" attitudes.
I've attempted to be as concise as possible here but if anything doesn't make sense, I'll gladly clarify.
Submitted October 12, 2015 at 11:27PM by Yawassot15 http://ift.tt/1jkFGI2 Advice
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