Post by indigo on Mar 31, 2014 10:16:19 GMT -8
I have been with my partner for less than a year. From the beginning, I already noticed that he was always talking about his mom and how he spends a lot of time with her because he wanted to "cheer her up" or "get her out of the house". I thought it was very odd considering that his mother is in good health. The problem is that she's divorced and is completely reliant on him for emotional support. She would call him and text him constantly for the smallest things like asking what her password was for her online accounts. When he moved in with me, he felt guilty because he knew she would feel bad. At the time we got together, he was living with her at her place.
Things got worse as our relationship became more involved. She expected him to visit him at least every other day and would get upset when he didn't. Normally, I wouldn't mind visiting, but as she is extremely narcissistic, every time we spend with her has to be a conversation about her. How beautiful she is, how so many men are just waiting in line to marry her, how when they travel people keep mistaking my partner for her boyfriend. Spending time with her is a very unpleasant experience and seeing how my partner is with her makes it even worse.
For his birthday, we went out of town which made him feel guilty which she totally milked. This despite the fact that we had dinner with her before we left. During the birthday toast, instead of giving a toast to him, she lifts her glass and says "to the woman who bore you!" That is the kind of person she is. The entire dinner was a conversation about her 2 - month trip with my partner and anecdotes of how everyone kept thinking they were a couple. It made me sick.
The final straw came when we went out of the country for Christmas and New Year. It was our first Christmas together as a couple and I wanted to go somewhere special and spend it with him. She gave him a hard time about that and accused me of taking him away from his family. The thing was, she doesn't even live in the same country as us, but just decided to come over for Christmas and New Year just because she has a house in the city we live in and expected us to just accommodate her because she was in town. It wasn't as if she had made plans with us to spend the holidays with us.
After we still continued with our holiday plans, she sent him a nasty email where she basically said I wasn't good for him and that I wasn't making an effort to be part of their family. She reiterated this again in text messages. I was furious. I had always been pleasant to her, even invited her over for dinner where I cooked for her. I've even let her use my car when she needed to. But she still thought I wasn't making an effort just because I expected my partner to make me his priority and to set boundaries with her.
Thankfully, she left the country after this and we have had to deal with her less. However, just recently, she again sent him a message saying that if something happened to her that night, it will be because of how miserable her current boyfriend was making her. This sent my partner into a panic. I told him that he is NOT responsible for her happiness, but he got very upset with me saying that if something DID happen to her, it would be my fault because he had not been able to make her happy the past few months. This statement had me reeling. I didn't know what to say. He tried calling her, but she wouldn't answer the phone. Most likely to add to the dramatic effect. He then resorted to calling his mother's boyfriend. I had always thought that there was something not right about their relationship. It wasn't until I found an online article about emotional incest that I was able to finally put a name to what it was.
Unfortunately, he does not perceive anything wrong in his relationship with his mother. He insists that he and his dad are the only ones who truly understand her, but since she is divorced from his dad, he needs to be the person to make sure she doesn't do anything bad to herself. This despite the fact that he has 3 other siblings who, if ever, should also be sharing the burden of caring for her well being. But since he is the only person she confides in, he feels that the burden rests solely on him.
We're at the stage where we are about to become more serious, but I don't know how if he can't even admit that his mother's dependency on him is not normal. I don't think it's healthy for our relationship at all. I wonder if anyone else has been in the same situation as me and how they were able to deal with it?
Things got worse as our relationship became more involved. She expected him to visit him at least every other day and would get upset when he didn't. Normally, I wouldn't mind visiting, but as she is extremely narcissistic, every time we spend with her has to be a conversation about her. How beautiful she is, how so many men are just waiting in line to marry her, how when they travel people keep mistaking my partner for her boyfriend. Spending time with her is a very unpleasant experience and seeing how my partner is with her makes it even worse.
For his birthday, we went out of town which made him feel guilty which she totally milked. This despite the fact that we had dinner with her before we left. During the birthday toast, instead of giving a toast to him, she lifts her glass and says "to the woman who bore you!" That is the kind of person she is. The entire dinner was a conversation about her 2 - month trip with my partner and anecdotes of how everyone kept thinking they were a couple. It made me sick.
The final straw came when we went out of the country for Christmas and New Year. It was our first Christmas together as a couple and I wanted to go somewhere special and spend it with him. She gave him a hard time about that and accused me of taking him away from his family. The thing was, she doesn't even live in the same country as us, but just decided to come over for Christmas and New Year just because she has a house in the city we live in and expected us to just accommodate her because she was in town. It wasn't as if she had made plans with us to spend the holidays with us.
After we still continued with our holiday plans, she sent him a nasty email where she basically said I wasn't good for him and that I wasn't making an effort to be part of their family. She reiterated this again in text messages. I was furious. I had always been pleasant to her, even invited her over for dinner where I cooked for her. I've even let her use my car when she needed to. But she still thought I wasn't making an effort just because I expected my partner to make me his priority and to set boundaries with her.
Thankfully, she left the country after this and we have had to deal with her less. However, just recently, she again sent him a message saying that if something happened to her that night, it will be because of how miserable her current boyfriend was making her. This sent my partner into a panic. I told him that he is NOT responsible for her happiness, but he got very upset with me saying that if something DID happen to her, it would be my fault because he had not been able to make her happy the past few months. This statement had me reeling. I didn't know what to say. He tried calling her, but she wouldn't answer the phone. Most likely to add to the dramatic effect. He then resorted to calling his mother's boyfriend. I had always thought that there was something not right about their relationship. It wasn't until I found an online article about emotional incest that I was able to finally put a name to what it was.
Unfortunately, he does not perceive anything wrong in his relationship with his mother. He insists that he and his dad are the only ones who truly understand her, but since she is divorced from his dad, he needs to be the person to make sure she doesn't do anything bad to herself. This despite the fact that he has 3 other siblings who, if ever, should also be sharing the burden of caring for her well being. But since he is the only person she confides in, he feels that the burden rests solely on him.
We're at the stage where we are about to become more serious, but I don't know how if he can't even admit that his mother's dependency on him is not normal. I don't think it's healthy for our relationship at all. I wonder if anyone else has been in the same situation as me and how they were able to deal with it?
