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Not sure how to help MIL
My MIL is mentally unstable and my husband and I don't know what to do. We are in the military and for the past several years we have been aware of her mental state. She seems to be paranoid and thinks her husband and her step son are going to kill her. She says they are spying on her and have taken out a life insurance on her. She claims people are following her everywhere she goes. The first time she started acting like this she left her husband and went to stay at a Women's homeless shelter. She called us and asked us for money and we gave her some. Her husband finally convinced her to come back home. I'm not sure why she did since she has called the cops on him and wants a divorce.
She has only been married to him for about 2 years. Before that she lived with us. She actually left her her home state to come live with us and thought that she could just follow us wherever the military sent us. She was wrong. The military will only move my husband and his dependents (my son and I). I warned her that she wouldn't be able to move around with us and I told her it was not a good idea to move. She did it anyways. Well, things hit the fan when she lived with us and I ended up asking her to leave. She moved out and found a job. However, she jumps from one job to the next, moves from one place to another. When we lived near her she expected him to move her stuff, which he did. I pointed out to him that I understood that she is his mom but that he had a son that would like to spend time with him after a deployment. I didn't think it was fair to us that he had to cater to his mom during his leave or weekends. Even then before she started becoming paranoid I knew something wasn't quite right.
A few years later we moved to a different state and she stayed put. She met someone online a married a few months later. Like I stated above she started gettting paronoid and accuisng him of many things. She left asked us for help we gave her money and then she went back to him. We continued to hear stories that she was still paronoid but over time things seemed to settle down. Fast forward to now, we live overseas and my husband is deployed. My husband's step mother contacted me and informed me that his mother is paranoid again and calling them non stop. My MIL mentioned to her that she wants to come to live with us because it's the only way she'll be safe. When I talked to my husband we both agreed that it's not possible for her to move here and that we both want to stay out of it. There's nothing we can do. I told my husband that I understand that it's his mom but that she can't come running to us each time she makes a poor decision. I don't know if she's going to leave her husband again and ask us for money. We know something is not right with her mentally but on the other hand she refuses to get help. She can be paranoid one minute yet when her husband has tried to get her admitted she suddenly is normal. So we can't prove to anyone how paranoid she is. My question is is it our responsibility to save MIL each and every time she decides to leave? Do we help her or do we put our foot down and let her know that if she decides to leave her husband it's on her and we will not help? And when she's paranoid I don't know if we should just nod our head and pretend to believe her (which is what everyone does) or do we try to bring her back to reality and explain to her that we understand she feels a certain way about her husband but that her accusations simply aren't true? I don't know how to help a person who is paranoid. I don't know if we should let her hit rock bottom and suffer the consequences to her actions or if we should try to get her admitted. Her coming to live with us overseas is not an option and if we were stateside I wouldn't want her to live with us. I have an 8 year old son and I don't want him to see us bickering or witness her erratic behavior. When she gets angry at me she gives me the silent treatment and talks behind my back to whoever will listen. The last time she lived with us she was writing notes about me in a notebook, accusing me of my husband's problems, and telling me I wasn't a good mother or wife. Basically, she was unhappy living with us even though she's the one who wanted to move in. So, I know for a fact it would not work out if she came to live with us again.
Also, my MIL isn't the one to settle in and just cook, clean, and spend time with her grandkids. She has dreams of going to college and becoming a nurse. She works because she has debt. Yet, she adds onto her debt when she quits working and then decides to take out loans to pay for school. Something always comes up and she can't finish a class, quits and then a few months later she's paying to go to college again. She always blames others for not being able to finish college. She has been working towards a degree since my husband was little and she is going on 60. When she came to live with us I thought she'd enjoy helping us out and spending time with her grandson but it turned out that she expected us to help her fulfill her dreams. We put our son in daycare and never asked her to care for him and let her live her life and still she wasn't happy.
If it was your MIL what would you do? Would you help? How would you go about telling your husband how you felt? Would you expect him to give her money each time she left her husband? Any advise?
Re: Not sure how to help MIL
This is a mess. I'm sorry you are dealing with this.
You have to tell your H what you honestly feel about what his mother is doing and your stance on giving her money and housing. I do recommend no emotion, making a list and being VERY calm while having this discussion. If anything you could go to a family therapist or counselor to help you two deal with all this.
I would have her coming to live with your family my hill to die on. In other words this is the big issue that she wants and I would fight over. No way should you have to put up with living with her again or should your child. The rest of it you may have to give into. With the money could you set an amount per year that works in your budget for her? Once she hits that amount the bank is closed.
Ignore family and friends who call about her. They want you to deal with her and you aren't in the States. Next time point that out and gush over HOW SWEET YOU ARE FOR TAKING ON MIL & HER PROBLEMS. They will soon stop calling.
Until you really know where your H stands it doesn't really matter what anyone else would do. You really need to sit him down and talk it out. His mother or not, your child comes first and that has to be discussed. Good Luck
Her H needs to take her to a hospital and have her evaluated.
She sounds like she is definitely mentally ill, maybe bipolar. I think she should be sent to a psychiatric hospital, but I don't know if you can do something like that against her will. STOP helping her financially! This is enabling her, too.
First of all, there is no being put in the middle. When he married you, he vowed to let no one come between you both and to put you above all others. All others includes his mother. What you are asking is to uphold his vows and put the family he created first. She doesn't need to live close to you, she doesn't need money, she needs professional help. By continuing to give her money, you are just enabling her and keeping her from "hitting rock bottom."" So in the long run, he is hurting her not helping her.
I agree with PP of letting your husband know this is a hill you are willing to die on. She has to know her son isn't her knight in shining armor and isn't going to come in and rescue her. You both have higher priorities than helping his mom. How would you feel telling your children that they have no college fund because you both had to help grandma pay her bills for years when she refused to hold a job ?
FWIW, we were in sort of a similar position. Not anything on the scale of what you are experiencing, I just have a MIL who never really had to make hard decisions. She is used to playing damsel in distress and having people come to her rescue. She really has nothing saved for retirement and I think she just assumed that her children will take care of her. MY husband nipped that in the bud right away. He let her know that he has his own family to take care of and he would be damned if he couldn't retire or deprive his children of vacations or a college fun all because she refused to live within her means. Oh my, she was upset when he told her that. She accused him of letting her live on the street, but my husband didn't waver. We offered to help her with a financial counselor or pay for a Dave Ramsey Financial Peace seminar, but we refuse to finance her lifestyle ( especially since we suspect she has a shopping addiction).
I'm sorry you are going through this as you and your husband are in our military, for which I thank you! (My husband retired after 22 years in the Air Force).
This is a mental health and legal problem. Contact an attorney in the state in which she lives and inquire into how to handle the situation. There are laws for commitment of people who are not mentally stable and may be a hazard to others. If she has serious mental illness, with the paranoia you describe, she may strike against her husband first. Involve her husband in this discussion. He has to take the lead on this, in spite of the fact he may not want to.
Other than that, I have no advice. You should do as already recommended and inform your husband (when he returns), how you believe you should both proceed.
If it were me, I'd also change my phone numbers.
Good luck.