living with the turtle

[cat04]

First, the do not disturb thing, worked wonders in this house. I just tell S going to meditate, read, whatever, and that is it for the night unless emergency (I defined emergency--fire, phone from family, breakin, etc...) And it seems to work. Until I tell him that, he is in and out if I try to come lay down early.

You are totally right about the the concepts of forgivness and reconciliation. No clue. No real idea how to process the feelings without being angry. But as we don't respond to the anger in the ways we used to (yes I would argue back as well) they have to find other ways, or move on to someone else who will interact with them in that way. The only options really.

My H's R with MIL is odd in many ways. She is extremly manipulative. She is an alcoholic, she suffers from her own depression, possible mania, and severe paranoia. Insecurity, overcompensation when sober, and guilt. She has a unique way of dealing with each person in her life. She learns what works with each individual and then does her best to use it to her advantage. So the ways she deals with each of her sons is different. One of them is her drinking buddy, he is the "good" son, who always needs his mommy to save him. But when he doesn't do what she wants, she ignores. My H, they have power struggles often. But my H still lets her manipulate him. She plays on his sympathy of her being alone, her having no one, her being incapable to do certain things. He gets very angry with her when she is drinking, so more often than not, they do not speak on the phone. He listens to her paranoid thoughts (like my neighbor cutting up his family and putting them in his trunk when she saw him taking out the trash), but does his best to ignore them. Because he does/did see a lot of it for what it was. But there have been times in her life, when she has stopped drinking, that she was more normal. Then he was willing to interact with her, but I think he resented having to take care of her in many ways. She always tried to get H to do things for her, to save her. H is the oldest, and he was expected to fill in the adult role most of his life. I can remember when BIL came home wasted one night (he was 13, we were 17). MIL could not deal with it. So H and I had to. BIL started to run away, use drugs, break into homes as a teen. MIL did nothing. Of course, it bothered her, but she didn't know what to do, how to get him help, how to punish (restriction, etc...) and H had moved out by then because he couldn't take it anymore. When he would not help to tell her what to do (because she never listened to him anyway), she sent BIL to live with his sick, elderly grandparents in another state.

So my H sort of has a save his mommy complex and when he can't, he gets upset, but it is wierd because I think on some level, he knows that he is better off keeping distance with her. He wants a mother, which he has never really had. H thought he wanted a normal family, but it makes him very uncomfortable to be honest. What is normal for most of us, doesn't seem normal to him. I don't know if this makes any sense, but... My H is used to dysfunction. Very used to it. It is his comfort zone. But he knows enough to know it is not what he wanted to give his S. At least he did. Now I'm just not so sure. I don't know if he will ever be able to maintain healthy R for any real length of time. Only time will tell I guess.