Family Issues Support Group
Family issues is a huge range that go from minor conflict to major misbehaviour and even abuse on the part of individual members of the family occur. Whether you feel you are in a dysfunctional family or you're dealing with a very specific issue, this is the place to talk about it and find others who might be going through the same thing.
Hello, I am new to this whole support group thing in general, but after suffering for a few months I needed someone to talk to that wouldn't be directly involved in all this. Talking to my husband gets him very stressed and he's already suffering from medical problems and such.
So from the begginning, my husband and I were married for a few years now but because of some complications (meeting online and being in different countries) we only started living together in February of last year. So you could say we were like newly weds. He is in the military so we got stationed far away from his home state where his mother and siblings lived. August of last year my mother-in-law went through a bad breakup with her fiance at the time and cried and cried to my husband. Her and her fiance were living together at the time with her children (from a different marriage) and he cheated on her, told her they were through, and asked her to move out.
Her being dependent on him for everything had no where else to go and asked us for help. My husband and I discussed it and offered her 2 choices, to look for a place there and we could help out with the moving costs a bit (being newly weds our finances weren't the best) or they could come move in with us. She decided it would be best for her and her kids to move over here with us as she needed the emotional support.
Now first off, the military would move things over for us free since that was where he used to live, but there was a weight limit of 8 tonnes. My husband and I both knew how much of a hoarder she was so we warned her to only pack what she needed and sell the rest. Though to our surprise, she took EVERYTHING, they calculated 18 tonnes (which I think they were lying about it was more close to 10-12 tonnes, but military never questions the companies) which we did not sign off on (they were suppose to notify us how much it weighed before they brought everything over here) but i have a feeling my mother-in-law may have given them the OK (which they were not suppose to do). That left us in a large debt to the military, about 7 thousand.
We discussed this with her and she said she had no idea what happened and blamed the movers. So now we had to deal with the debt ourselves. They moved in with us in October.
Now before they moved out here, my husbands little brother asked his mother if he could bring a friend to move in with us and told her that my husband already said yes (which he didn't), so she said sure. My husband and I were busy at the time looking for a bigger place since our currect place was only 2 bedroom and my mother-in-law had 2 children age of 10 and 1 child age of 19. We found a place with 5 bedrooms and 2 bonus rooms for a very very good price, but of course since my husband only gets paid enough to support his own dependents we had told her that we needed to get a loan. We went around looking for a loan and got approved of a $4000 loan which we were okay with. We got the loan got the place and let my mother-in-law know that we would really ideally only be able to support their jobless selves for maybe 3 months paying for everything. Boy were we wrong.
My husband now had a total of 7 people he had to support on his salary, which was very hard for him. At the end of the 2nd month we got the utility bill (the first month would be the bill from the previous month which they weren't there for) and boy we were surprised to see a $600 bill (our bill normally being on average $50 with just us 2). We let them know that they need to be careful of their utility usage because we couldn't afford it, and so my mother-in-law tried to blame it on her sons friend. Another month passes, and this time the bill is about $700 so we let her know we just cant keep doing this she needs to start helping out more (she gets child support for her kids but still hasn't found a job yet). She agrees and gives us $200 a month, which barely covers anything, and does everything she can to find jobs for her 19yr son and his friend. Meanwhile to make ends meet My husband and I are using our credit cards (I had really good credit before this and my credit limit was very high because of this) so we were able to keep afloat.
5 months pass and her son and his friend get a job and are now contributing $200 each as well. So that was a total of $600, in the 5 months though rent was cossting $1600 and utilities $700 and not to mention internet/cable/phone $120 upgraded to $170 (which my mother-in-law used 700GB worth of bandwidth in 2 weeks so we had to upgrade to unlimited bandwidth, she also said she would pay for the cable and phone since my husband and i said we didnt need those, but she didnt) My husband also needed gas to get to work and we needed food which would be around another $600-700 with insurance costs.
We ended up having to ask my brother in law's friend to move out and go back to live with his mother. And my mother-in-law was still unemployed. I ended up in $9000 of credit card debt my husband $2500 (he didnt build his credit much until we started living together) And urged her to get a job, the whole time her excuse was she was studying for her real estate license which she could do with a job. My husband and I have fought about his mother countless times and in some cause i get so depressed I just don't want to live anymore, I couldn't do that to him so I continuing fighting my emotions.
9 months later, she finally gets a job and we breathe a sigh of relief. We expected her to start contributing more, and my husband has been constantly telling her how much we need help so she agrees to start paying for all the utilities. 2 months later I find out that she is defering the payments for the utilities and still only paying $200 each ($400 a month) and utilities being under my husbands name, making his credit look bad. We have already talked to her about starting to pay for half of everything like she agreed to in the first place, but it doesn't look like it's going to happen.
My husband and I have already talked about moving out and away from them, but we couldn't do that to the little 10yr olds. Their Dad is not the same one as my husband's (his father died when he was little) and we do not want them to have to move in with their Dad. He was a very mentally abusive man, especially to my husband.
Now we are in a situation where he could loose his mother's relationship or we could continue spiraling down into more debt. We have already told her that we are willing to move if nothing changes.
This is my husband's only parent left, and two of his half siblings are only 10yr. We were even planning to have kids before all this happened, now it pains me for her to even mention babies to ANYONE, even the pregnant store clerk. My husband and I have decided not to have children until our situation gets better.
Should we move?
-
Good Thursday to you!I've been watching a really long trial on Youtube these last couple of nights and will finish tomorrowHopefully I'll be in the land of nod soon and I hope my peeps are having sweet dreams followed by a great daySending hugs...xo
-
Hey all, i know its been quite awhile since i posted on here. Its been a summer all right. Its been something else........... You know how they say not to open the can of worms? Well a few months ago i decided to find out what my due date would have been for my first baby, the one conceived by r***. My baby would have been due on March 4th of 2006. They would be 20 years old. I was R**** on June...
You are a newlywed couple .... Go and live your lives... You are not responsible for your husbands' mother.... I think moving her in with you was a really bad idea..... Let her stand on her own 2 feet!.... Big sqiuishy hug.....xo
I feel for your MIL, but she'll drown you if she can. Save yourselves and you'll be better able to help others.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codependency
Enabling bad behaviour
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling
Well, you certainly have a right to follow the principles of your heart. And it's always easy to do something as we gain power to do so by how others are in agreement to what we want to do. However, in this situation, poor decisions were made all around, by your husband, you & your mother-in-law. I'll give you this example: If there happened to be a door left ajar and a skunk crawled into your home space, infesting it with a strong odor, then, most likely, you would need to consider a plan of directing a search to find the offensive animal and guide it directly away from your home. Next would be the process of removing the odor. At last you would have a better incentive to make certain that doors were secure after entering your home, right?
Your own situation is not much different from this unfortunate example. See things this way. Mistakes usually happen when we are not quite attentive to what we are inspired to do. As with what you experience now, some matters will be important enough to first think over very carefully, then arrange for meetings of discussions and negotiations guided to a safe & fair plan of approach, and do this as a family group together, first to do is go in private with your husband to chat things over, then do so as a group. Your husband, along with you, determined that opening the door to his family moving in was a good idea, yet, unfortunately, you did this without first having clear understanding of certain important details, terms & conditions, of which should have been discussed and obliged to BEFORE his mother & the rest of the group moved in. The offense of this entire situation is hinged on broken promises & irresponsible choices. Mother-in-law should have - in fact - signed an agreement to be responsible for her part of expenses beforehand; possibly even a security deposit should have enforced. And generally, by law, there are formal terms of agreement with any type of residency already in force before occupancy. It should be remembered that a written contract has legal guidelines in times of negotiation for losses, and, sadly, you've already obtained a great financial loss, which could even result in the loss of family if you decide to vacate without thinking over a reasonable settlement with your in-laws. Sitting down in a comfortable spot & having a good, reasonable talk together as a family seems necessary & the best idea before you determine that moving out is still a favorable one. By this, you may at least feel comfortable that you made a courageous attempt to finish off the awful circumstances by doing what's right & fair. No forcing is really necessary at present. Too much is left unsettled as it is. I'm so sad for this, too.
As stated earlier, turn your thoughts into your hearts & rational minds, you & your husband. Only this time I do hope that all efforts to move ahead are done by peaceable conditions.
Best,
Remiah
Remiah, I did talk to my husband about it and it has somewhat hurt him that I even needed to talk to a support group for all this. My husband has decided that it is probably best for us to move for my mental state, but I do feel terribly for his siblings.
SunCloud, I do think he does have a codependent relationship with his mother and its hard for me to interfere in that regard. I feel I need to let him work that out with her. I'm not sure how to handle it.
My husband and I are going to sit down and talk to them tomorrow again and see where or how things are going to go from here. Thanks again for all the support it has really helped. I hope everything goes well tomorrow.
I really hope that all goes well on tomorrow with the family meeting. Too bad that your husband is hurt that you came into a support community for useful advice; however, it was a choice in which, accordingly, the idea was for your own emotional interest. You describe yourself as suffering for advice. And as he desires the move or separation from his family as an aid to getting you the proper mental respite then he may later on realize that visiting a support system was a necessary decision for you to make under the circumstances of stress.
Now, as for the matter of his co-dependency & his mother. I consider that you are aware of his clinging behaviors to his mother; yet he may not be excessively dependent on her. If so, he could not assume responsibility for getting you out of his family's range. Additionally, his mother asked him; it was her idea and he never volunteered to have his mother move in, which, if he really had this full effect of this disorder, dependent personality disorder, then he would go to excessive lengths or have this excessive need to be taken care of & fears of separation would be very noticeable in him. Nonetheless, I don't believe that this type of behavior is completely the issue between your husband & his mother. And you do describe his mother as the dependent one. So this could be where the assumption of this disorder originated. Still it's too shallow of an idea to imagine that he is the problem.
⋐ɦug⋑✎❥ℛℰℳ¡Åℋ
Taking 3 times the weight allowance and then billing it to you was simply wrong and shows she will continue to take advantage of people trying to help her. You need to get her out and take whatever heat arises and do not let her back in the home.