Dealing with narcissistic MIL?
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Anonymous
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It’s getting out of control and has come to a boiling point. I’m not sure where I should stand, or how to deal with her.
I should preface by saying that my husband is on to her behavior, but sort of in denial, or conflicted. It’s his mom and he wants her to be normal. But, he has my back and defends me 100%. Last night, DH gets a call from his brother saying he just talked to their mom and she’s in a really bad place. So DH calls her and she basically tells him she’s so depressed and upset with ME. (I am a SAHM right now so I do the bulk of facilitating visits and taking our kids over to see the ILs.) What follows is about 20 minutes of her blaming me for her depression, spewing jealousy about my parents (even though she gets equal, if not the lions share of visits), memory lapses (denying visits we’ve made to her, forgetting/denying two vacations/getaways we took with her), bringing up a disagreement we had about 5 years ago (saying it still makes her cry), and other things I just can’t remember right now. I thought long and hard about it last night. I’m going to play “grey rock”. DH will be in charge of all planning; I refuse to be blamed again. But with Easter coming up, how do I handle this? I don’t even feel like going, but I don’t want to seem dramatic. Do I go and keep my distance, pretend it never happened? Do I stay home and send DH and DC? Should he stay home? How should I handle DH, who knows she has issues, but who still loves his mom (underatandably!) Any and all tips for dealing with a narcissist? |
Anonymous
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My MIL is like this. I say you go and as soon as she starts anything you don't feel good-get up and leave.
I limited all the talking with mine. Sometimes she is trying to start texting I answer short:"yes","lol" etc. At dinners I started to talk less and chew more. |
Anonymous
| Why personalize if you know she's narcissistic? |
Anonymous
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Ugh! My sympathies. My MIL is also a narcissist and it's terrible. Whatever you decide, consider whether you want to broach your new strategy with your DH first. Will he back you up if you stop facilitating visits to IL? I totally get the impulse to back away because that's what I would want to do too.
My MIL doesn't live close by (thx god), but when we do visit, I do the same thing as the other posts - I am present but don't talk much with her nor do I like to volunteer information. Instead I focus on the kids and kind of tune her out. If she starts bitching or being unreasonable I just get up and leave the room. I'm sorry, she sounds like a piece of work. It's tough to navigate when DH still loves mom unconditionally (as does mine), but hopefully there's a way for you to step back a bit. Maybe DH needs to plan more of the visits with his IL, not you. |
Anonymous
I brought this up to him and he wasn’t very receptive, but it was all still so raw. I simply refuse to fascilitate these visits anymore, at least for the time being, especially knowing she is now playing the victim and pretend they didn’t even happen. |
Anonymous
OP I am the poster with same kind of MIL. You have to remember that it is his mother. She is the reason he is here and she raises him well enough for you to love him. You don't have to love MIL however I think you should make at least a little effort not to make this situation too dramatic. I treat mine like a not very smart person. She says unbelievable nasty stuff and doesn't even understand that it's not normal. Like few weeks ago our friend was fired and she said :"oh good I never liked him". When we both rolled our eyes in surprise, she said :"oh!" |
Anonymous
| I also have a narcissistic MIL. She is really awful. For us she doesn't even like our children, b/c this detracts from the focus on her. DH has an easier time seeing how she badly treats the kids then him- so I have used this as a basis not to visit/ have contact. I have said that until she is able to come to us and behave for more than 3 days, I will not be visiting with the kids- DH can go by himself if he wants. He has no desire to do so. |
Anonymous
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I'm so sorry that you find yourself in this difficult place with your family relationships. Narcissists can cause a great deal of pain for their families. It's truly an awful thing. I'm not an expert by any means, just a person who has also tried to negotiate these difficult relationships in a way that feels healthy and fair for me. I'll try to explain my understanding of the "by the book" way to cope.
Your MiL, like all narcissists, is using other people to feel better. The histrionic displays to her sons help to focus attention on her. Externalizing blame on you means that she does not have to consider the conditions she has created in her own life that contribute to her feeling upset. If you all choose to play along, you may be able to temporarily calm the waters. (Sometimes it's very, very temporary before the next explosive bit of anger comes.) However, none of the three of you caused her pain, can cure it, or can control it. At best, your interactions with her are a temporary balm. The cost of soothing MiL is allowing her to direct emotional abuse at you -- even if it's indirectly through conversations with your husband. (By the way, you may want to set a boundary and ask that your husband not relay the content of his communications with his mother to you. It allows his mom to achieve her end goal, manipulation and control by upsetting you.) It is completely rational to say "I quit" in response to being on the receiving end of abuse. Healthy relationships are a two-way street. Without the obligation and guilt of a family connection, you would never maintain a connection with someone else who called your husband to lay blame on you for things that happened five years ago. "Larla called to say that she hasn't forgotten how you made her cry that one time. Also you seem to favor your other friends over her. Would you like to go to dinner with her on Friday night? Maybe a movie afterwards?" You wouldn't think twice about turning down that invitation. Similarly, you can let yourself off the hook for Easter. You never have to volunteer for abuse. And you have experienced enough to know that it is abuse. But be aware that people who behave poorly don't like new boundaries, so they tend to lash out when they are put in place. MiL may try to send the message that she has been generous, kind, or even a martyr in the past, which should cancel out the negative interactions. You know that these small kindnesses do not excuse or cancel out the abuses. It sounds like you understand well that you cannot control your husband's reaction to his mom. If you haven't already, learn about the abusive cycle. It can explain why some people are not ready to abandon their abusers, parents included. I have heard it said that cult deprogramming might be a better approach than therapy to help some people break off relationships with their abusers. Given this understanding, I think you already know that you have to let DH make his own choice about attending Easter dinner. DC is a trickier question. Personally, I've seen how personality disorders affect families through generations, and my bias is toward whisking children away from exposure as soon as possible. Even when the child isn't targeted by the abuser, I think there are too many twisted lessons learned by observing the tension between the abuser and her victims. Other people feel differently for other reasons. If it helps, here is a guide with age-appropriate ways to talk to children about personality disordered people in their family: http://outofthefog.website/what-to-do-2/2015/12/5/talking-to-kids. When you dig into it, there are a lot of good resources for dealing with N's. Have you tried Disarming the Narcissist? Also highly recommended is Becoming the Narcissist’s Nightmare. Both books have strategies you can use to protect yourself. You may also want to learn about the covert passive-aggressive narcissist, which is the category that many high-functioning parents who weren't physically abusive fall into. There are many YouTube videos on the topic, including this great one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAybjXhcVc0. |
Anonymous
| ^ Thank you so so much. This is all SO helpful. Listening to that video now. Sadly, it’s so relatable, however very informative. |
Anonymous
| I am not sure what "going for Easter" means to you. Is it 3 nights or simple a ham dinner? |
Anonymous
It’s a family dinner, a little more than an hour away. We stay for the whole day, typically. |
Anonymous
You know you don't have to stay for a whole day. |
Anonymous
How do you go to a family function where one of the people there just days before spewed falsities about you and basically told you you were the root of all that is bad in their life? |
Anonymous
Just like that. Treat her like she is ill. It might be an early stage of dementia. |
Anonymous
Remember: you are a woman. You have to put up with it. Women are always in the wrong. Amirite posters? My advice, since I don't hate women, would be to not go. |