Friend is so bitter!

She doesn't sound like a nice person at all, maybe it's just more obvious now. Something bad happening in her life doesn't give her the right to be horrible to people. I would distance. Next time she says something horrible in your presence though, you should definitely call her on it, don't just let her attack others.

Also, I agree with PP that it must be absolutely overwhelming and terrifying to go from being a coddled adult with barely any restrictions or responsibilities for her adult life, to being thrust into employment after years of doing whatever she wanted. It must have been a great leisurely life which probably looks like it was supremely desirable compared to standing on her own two feet without a crutch in her husband behind her.
To face that and make it happen without falling apart will be a huge obstacle to overcome. She's lucky to have a kind understanding friend in you.

This was the kindest, clearest, most thoughtful reply I've read on MN. It made me well.up. I totally agree with all of it.

I keep coming back to this thread with mixed feelings. I said I don’t have trouble believing the controlling husband not letting her work. The thing is, the more I think about it, I have never been in this situation, but I have had some dark times mental health wise. I have leaned heavily on friends support and I don’t doubt that as a bit of a burden. But at no point have I ever called any of my friends fat. Even drunk and without a filter. That has to be in your head in the first place, and it’s not in my head. She must have been thinking these things for them to be there ready to come out of her mouth under the influence of alcohol. I still don’t necessarily disbelieve the abusive husband thing, maybe that’s what’s made her like this. But deep down I am starting to think that maybe she’s not actually very nice. She can be a victim of coercive control and also not be a nice person. The two are not mutually exclusive.

You forgot the line where the kidult at home blames the person who goes to work for forcing them to take all the "mental load" which is actually just packing a social calendar because they're bored at home whilst the children are at school. Otherwise, you've summed it up pretty well for a lot of people who work.

I feel sorry for her and I can see that you do, too.

Maybe she is feeling very vulnerable and inadequate, to the point of not being able to vocalise her gratitude, because she is scared. Her own vulnerability may be petrifying for her.

she’s in her late 40’s. I am 44 and I have a teenager and a child in year 1. I look at myself int he mirror and often wonder, how…she is all alone, she’s never known a life alone. She’s been with her husband her entire adult life.

she is financially vulnerable. That’s petrifying. She must be quite embarrassed when you all take her out, whilst being distraught and full of grief. Maybe she picks fault in everything to balance that lack of control? She doesn’t want to be pitiful, but feels it?

she’s never worked. I’d be shitting myself, in her position. That is absolutely terrifying; she probably needs a job. How? What? What is she going to do…how will she put one foot in front of another, in order to get by?

you know what? I would talk to her when the emotions she is experiencing have settled a bit. You’re indulging your friend which is kind and loving. You are a good friend. I’m sure she knows that. What she in fact may need, is practical support to get her feet on the ground….help her grow some wings?

tell her that you can see that she’s worried about the future and she seems angry and understandably so. Maybe you can help her find a careers guidance person? Perhaps she may consider a course or some retraining? What would she like to do for work?

Maybe you could encourage her to focus on herself, whilst her children are at school - working on skills, exercise, wellness, anything that’s going to give her the confidence to be independent. On her own two feet.

sadly, so many women around me are divorcing or separated or planning to leave their husband when the kids are older/ they can get their financial ducks in a row. What I do know, is that having control over their own lives, is massively important.

Everyone needs a friend like you. Nice work.

As a friendship group what you seem to have are easy lifestyles (subjective of course). Now your friend has lost this she perhaps has nothing left in common with you. It is usual for people to find new friends when life takes a turn.
You seem to have been very kind, I think it has come to a point now where you have a little break from her. Send happy messages on birthdays etc but wait for her to arrange face to face contact. Otherwise I think you will become emotionally drained.
I don’t know if it is a possibility but if someone is this unkind to her friends is there a chance that she was not an easy person to live with. Maybe (but of course only maybe) she was bitter towards her husband, now he is gone her friends are the subject of unkindness? I cannot imagine any truly decent person asking some one, let alone a friend why they are married even though they are fat. That is bullying behaviour not a sign of grief.
Enjoy the company of your other friends.

I think she's grieving, which is why she's so out of character. The anger, the defensiveness, bitterness, attacks, self medication, creating a victim narrative, all of it, she's grieving.
It's really hard, she needs you all but can't regulate and be herself right now.
Sorry, you sound really kind.

Parasite is right, they attach themselves to a person and make the host very unwell, not dying not living just exsisting, my idea of hell.

Storytime.

Going to work, its your income or nothing, you get in and are told by the other adult that you do nothing and dont help, that the kids and house are hard, but kids are in school and you cook and clean. But its all the other stuff the classes the trips the social calender and you slowly realise, this person has intiated all these activities and you were never asked, such a small realisation breaks you. I have a dependent adult who is more a teenager emotionally and finacially, and we are now in our 40s and i dont want to die in prison. Person at work is unattached you dont cheat, actually but you divorce, go for 50/50 house was yours before ypu married. They didnt understand that 5 years is not that long and the agreement was ill support you while we are married, but we were divorcing and actually i never owed you a lifestyle, your ex says you wasted best years of my life and you realise fuck you meet them at 35 your 5 years and done wtf was going on for the rest of those 35. Then its all done kids love the new house, ex loses third court case for spousal and that person from work 7 months is looking like a sure thing. 12 months later youve got a new partner and a happy suprise. Feels like a second chance so this time the plan is to get things right this time. 10 years in, for me marriagewise a record ;)

There is nothing better then finding someone to build outwards with, someone to share the finacial load with has saved my life.

I would step back a bit and stop the invites for a while. She is lucky that she has so much support. Sometimes people can't see anything beyond their own situation. Sorry not to be more helpful x

Yeah, sounds familiar. I'm always surprised when people assume it's the person who works that must be the controlling one. I can understand it looks much more controlling to keep someone at home AND stop them seeing people, so "letting" someone go to work doesn't look controlling. But when they are at home racking up credit card debt in joint names or not accepting any visitors in the family home it does partially explain it. It's just a different form of control where they use a person in a parasitic way.

@ShinyShona i was informally fostered for a year in the 80s by a couple where the wife worked FT and the husband was aSAHP. In retrospect he was incredibly controlling, she had to defer to him in everything and he had isolated her from her family and friends. Bizarrely even though they took me in, no one outside the nuclear family came through the door except his sister in a tightly choreographed yearly visit.

One awful man we know. Walked out on first wife four children. My friend took the children in because mummy was either drunk or unconscious. She left food for mum. This lasted for weeks. She was a beaten wife physically throughout their marriage.

His second wife had the smallbone kitchen he kept bragging, diamonds etc. She did a moonlit flit with their son. He had beaten her tooThankfully her parents were wealthy and bore the solicitor costs.

Third woman he treated badly but she wisely lived semi detached never selling her home. She finally walked away.

He's now in a wheelchair, has carers he treats badly only a few male friends left who won't stand for any nonsense.

His six children, from three lovely women will dance on his grave I suspect.

I think your right and I don't think it's a gendered crime either.

Yes toxic people are clever and everywhere.

@ShinyShona

Agree with what you said . I know a stay at home husband who did nothing about the house , not even wash up a cup , loaded about in other people's houses to save on the heating and took helicopter lessons. He tried to take the working wife for everything when they split .

Also a woman who married a lovely man and married after a whirlwind courtship . As soon as the rings went on she changed . Destroyed the relationship he had with his daughter, got a dog knowing the daughter was terrified of them , the dog just appeared in the house no discussion, had a kid by "accident" despite them both agreeing no children before the marriage , hid from him the fact she was in debt and mortgage arrears , kicked the man out as soon as the child they had together was
independent after getting him into debt .

I think coercive control is more common than we realise. I have had some suspicions about a few couples I know. Most stay and take the hit.

Both can be true although that brother in law sounds like an extreme case. Normally when I find someone complaining about economic abuse at work, a quick look at the finances shows that there just wasn't any money and one spouse was more determined than the other to stay out of debt.

I do agree that can happen. Toxic people are everywhere and very clever.

But the wage earner can also be the psychopath type, restricting money tovthe SAMP, who has to beg for everything. My brother in law was like this. Big job. Loads of expensive holidays. But I remember taking my girls over once for the day and she had no food for any of us, just cheese sandwiches for her sons. I had taken biscuits and she put them away in a cupboard. I was completely perplexed - I had to stop off at a service station on the way home, we were all starving.

Then they hosted a bbq and there was fish, but only for him. The rest of us got sausages. She invited us over for Boxing Day but asked us to bring food.

I used to look after their dog when they went away on all these holidays - for free obviously - and they would give me cheap supermarket biscuits as a gift.

Anyway, turns out it was all him. He was so controlling. He did allvthe food shopping and she couldn't buy a single thing. She stashed my biscuits for later as he wouldn't buy her any.

And then he left her for his secretary.

She is a highly vulnerable person for lots of reasons. Her mum died when she was 12 and her dad had a degenerative condition. She is possibly on the spectrum. He targeted her imo as someone he could manipulate.

Sorry if i have missed this on the thread, but won't she still be able to have a nice life in a different smaller property in the same village or nearby, once everything has settled down

@NonPlayerCharacter I certainly don't think it is stupid or weak women who get controlled but my reason for thinking that probably won't be popular here because it still doesn't fit into the "Mumsnet narrative" that all SAHPs are hardworking saints and heroes.

The reason I don't think only stupid or weak people get controlled is because just as often in my line of work it is the spouse who worked in a single income household or who did the lion's share of the paid work in that household who is the one being controlled. They're not normally stupid or unintelligent, they've been in love (and often they're being dumped by their spouse because they cannot meet the escalating standards of working full time, trying to balance holding down a demanding job and keeping a demanding spouse happy) and they've been doing what they thought a responsible adult should do.

The person going to work in these situations would very often like their partner to work too because not only do they carry all the pressure of earning but they often find the other partner spends all the money that they earn too and they have to bear the brunt of straitened finances during the marriage because it is increasingly difficult for families to survive on only one full time wage. For example, it's fairly typical when you look at the finances that the spouse who works owns an old banger whilst the spouse at home owns a nice, fairly new family sized car. A perusal of the finances often shows the person working taking a packed lunch to work whilst the person at home has been "lunching with friends" etc.

What happens during the divorce is quite telling too. The stay at home spouse is often determined to keep their lifestyle and their opening offer often demands ridiculous amounts of spousal maintenance and most of the joint assets. They are determined to carry on controlling their ex-spouse as their meal ticket, dictating what their ex does for work in the future and the hours that they work so that the controlling at home spouse doesn't have to. They want everything they had before but without the working spouse in their life so that they can move in a new partner. I see this situation so often that it has gotten boring.

I've kept the above gender neutral because it is increasingly becoming a gender neutral phenomenon. Historically it might more often have been the man that worked and been controlled but nowadays you don't need to look far on these boards to find a mum who is working full time and then having to go home and clear up after her stay at home slob husband.

So absolutely, I believe hard working and intelligent people can be controlled.

I think it's a very sad situation and I can understand your friend feeling devastated and even rather bitter.

It is difficult to understand, though, why she has become so unkind to people who have shown her nothing but support and kindness. Is it possible she is having some sort of breakdown because you say her nasty comments are completely out of character?

Maybe you should speak to her about it - not in an angry way but just to tell her how hurt you feel about the comments she keeps making - and that you are worried about her. Perhaps you could gently suggest that she might be suffering from depression and that she should seek help. I think you said she has family nearby. Do you know them and could you speak to them about it?

No I don’t believe that actually but I do believe, from all that the op has said, that she enjoyed being at home and not working, that she was looking down on them because her husband wanted her to “be a proper wife”. Now it’s all gone wrong she’s angry at her friends because they have a life, a job and a husband. Woman can’t have it both ways, on the one hand wanting to be cosseted and looked after, and on the other, blaming the husband for everything! There are far to many woman on here that always side with the woman regardless of what prat’s they have been and castigate men that have sometimes done nothing wrong. Let’s be honest, most woman would have picked themselves up by now and started getting on with their lives, that’s why I think she’s weak willed and unintelligent! If she’d said to me that she didn’t know why my dh was still with me, I’d have replied, well maybe look at yourself, it’s you who’s husband has left! The op is being too nice!

Maybe in the 1970s or 80s but we are talking about the 21st century. This is very unusual now.

Where I lived far from city life in the 70's there were still mothers like this. Three couples we knew went abroad, two to Hong Kong, one to the middle east. The husbands were smiled upon by their MIL because they were destined to be wealthy.

They all had amazing lifestyles, clad in designer clothes, jewellery. Homes elsewhere in the world for skiing, a home back here, apartments where the husbands worked. None of the wives worked.

When they visited home to catch up with family, it was like Alexis Carrington came to visit.

It was much more exotic then. Nowadays everyone can get on a plane and work overseas I suppose.