MIL learned helplessness, FIL enables

it might be worth reading the “Let Them” theory by Mel Robbins. I doubt you will get your MIL to change, particularly when your DH sounds like he isn’t particularly behind it. People generally don’t change and their way of life sounds very old fashioned for people in their 70s. She isn’t going to embrace online banking and uber regardless of what you say, so it’s wasted time and energy trying to get her to do so.

Boundaries that I think are reasonable to say to your DH is that your family shouldn’t be out of pocket for this and - barring emergencies ( which is a whole other thread about what constitutes one) there is a time limit on the help given.

I would focus very much on getting the POA and moving everything on line, this could be pushed as taking the burden off them so that MIL and FIL don’t need to worry themselves about their finances. It might be worth checking with Age Concern if there is a volunteer driving service in operation as this could be offered to MIL to get to the hospital.

Try to reduce the impact on your DH and yourself but working more or less within their boundaries.

That's all fine if you can find a way to look after yourself within the boundaries you've set. Not so fine if you instead expect other people to give their time and energy to make your unusual approach to life work.

My Mum isn’t as bad as this but we didn’t realise how dependant she was on my Dad until he died. She has no desire to learn new things and wants everyone else to do things for her. It’s intensely frustrating as she has obviously suffered with anxiety her whole life but has used other people to manage it rather than deal with the problem itself.

Maybe you suggest to her that with Fil now being in not the best health she needs to pay for carers to come in as she’s so 🤒,a cleaner and apply for bank accounts and cards and to learn herself how to start doing these things.

don’t enable it op

my parents are similar but my dad does get frustrated. My mum just wants to live in her own bubble and be looked after but I frequently tell her that’s not happening forever so the sooner she starts learning how to adult the better.

your dh needs to make it clear aswell or this will be an issue

Yep.

Ds was born in 57. Full on feminist. Refused to ever get married.

I have friends born in late 50’s. All independent pioneering women. None of them ‘rely’ on a man. Some have DH’s, but they can all handle money and livingit’s not a generational thing! It’s a mindset thing.

I was born in 63. No one gave up work or had children early that l knew. Including those born in 1960. We were trying to build careers. I had my first dc at 30. And l was the first to do so.

Things had changed dramatically and affected everyone l knew.

Yes - honestly if you’re stewing about this now, it’s going to be a lot worse months down the line when you realise that you’re hundreds if not thousands of pounds out of pocket.
See if you can get power of attorney forms for them to complete, you can frame it as taking money worries away from your DM.If you have access to their bank account then you can order online deliveries and pay for your travel costs. I mean you can do this without POA but it’s easier if you don’t have to ask for your own money to be reimbursed every time. Also means you can set up their bills to be paid by DD - mine weren’t as bad as your DM but going out to the bank etc. gave them something to do so they deliberately designed their lives to be as inefficient as possible and will try and make you follow that if you let them.

MIL was exactly like this. Exactly! FIL died and despite SIL living next door and being called on to help her several times a day, she went into a care home in weeks. The sorting of the estate, house, bills, funeral etc etc was left completely to SIL and DH. MIL never asks about any of it! Cruelly, DH says his mum ‘has never brought much to the party’ but I know exactly what he means. The whole situation is leaving a very poor legacy.

What an incredibly insightful post.

Life was simpler in his 20s - he was living in a shared house and they had a cleaner and he was working from home in a friend’s start up.

Lots of ND people can hold it together (mask) long enough for a whirlwind romance (which becomes their special interest / hyperfocus) and they push quite quickly for marriage / family, after which point their focus abruptly shifts to some new obsessive hobby and you spend the next several years wondering what on earth changed and why they’ve checked out and what can be done to fix the relationship.

And everyone (particularly on MN!) keeps insisting it’s somehow your fault or his mother’s fault for not training him properly / having a low bar / making excuses for him / enabling him because there’s on the face of it no reason he shouldn’t be able to do the things he’s not doing, and you feel stupid and incompetent and ashamed, and no amount of nagging or explaining or teaching or couples therapy gets through to him, and you can’t leave because you know he won’t be able to look after your DC safely during his contact time.

And then your DC is diagnosed with ASD and you suddenly realise that it is completely possible to be very intellectually gifted and enormously functionally impaired at the same time, and to be sociable on the surface with huge chunks of understanding missing underneath.

And all along everyone’s been telling you it’s your fault for not managing him properly.

Sounds more like a Dependent Personality Disorder than ND/social anxiety to me.

if we’re bandying differential diagnoses around!

My MIL would have been born in 1960 and had her first child in 1981 when she was 21.

Times don't change for everyone (or, probably more accurately, there are always men who infantalise their wives).

My ex-MIL was like this - married at 21, 'couldn't manage a job' so only ever had occasional part-time jobs, 'couldn't deal with money', etc. When I first met her she was mid-50s but would tell you she was 'retired'. The whole family colluded in saying how useless she was with money, how she couldn't be trusted with a bank account ... well, of course not, she'd never really learned how to use one!

I agree with the poster who says it might be an abusive dynamic. My ex-FIL was not a particularly 'lovely' man, so it was more obvious than if he'd been sweet and charming - but actually, looking after someone to the extent that they can't function as an adult isn't a kind thing to do.

I wonder if her excessive focus on illness was almost to do with needing to find an excuse for not being able to do things?

It may be genuinely very hard for her to change, and if your DH is willing to keep helping her a bit, that is good. But there should definitely be boundaries in place and some sense of how money is going to be spent (ie., it can't just be your money).

Word of warning - whenever my MIL gets a bit of money (which occasionally did happen as FIL got more incapacitated) she absolutely blew it. It was almost as if she wanted to show how bad she could be with it. I would want to be very careful that she wasn't going to do that and/or assume you and DH will always be there to bail her out (I mean, maybe you can afford to and don't care, but if money is at all tight, I'd be really careful about how much a financially not-capable adult might be expecting).

Ah yes, I see your point. My mother and MIL were born in the mid 40s, so just after the second world war. Women still gave up their jobs upon marriage even into the mid 70s, maybe later - I remember my aunt doing so. By the mid 80s, things had changed though.

What @Wetoldyousaurusis good advice. As your DH seems willing to continue FILs approach to her I would suggest that you and him sit with an impartial third party and make up some rules and boundaries. It will help going forward.
It sounds really challenging - and I say this with someone with a really difficult FIL who is controlling, manipulative. To the extent that DH has had therapy.
Try to emotionally detach as much as you can. It really helps.

Surely this wouldn't be the case for women who are still in their 60s though, like OP's MIL? Possibly this would be relevant for my MIL and mum's generation, born in the 1930s but not for women born in the 1950s.

The money side of things needs sorting.

You shouldn’t have to pay for everything when ever your your FIL can’t

That needs to be the priority. I wouldn’t expect much else to change tbh.

I agree with this. It isn’t realistic that she’s going to change much, do Internet shopping or use a mobile phone etc. There will be a reason why this dynamic has developed in their relationship that may not be obvious to you. I can see it would be frustrating to you. Let your DH take the lead.

You make it very clear from your posts that you really loathe and despise your mother in law. So what if they have ‘small lives’ and have never left the country? I also don’t see the problem in them not having bank cards - my best friend, who is much much younger than your in laws, has never used a debit card and only ever uses cash. It suits her and it’s nothing to do with anyone else how she chooses to spend her money. My mum was the same with taxis and even when I organised a taxi card for her, she would still never use a taxi, but that was her choice. Just because someone chooses to live very differently from you, it doesn’t mean that they are wrong and you are right. One day, you will be your mother in law’s age, and hopefully and partners that your children might have will be a little kinder to you and more tolerant than you are about your in laws.

Both my mother and my mother-in-law are like this. I do wonder if it's generational - you were brought up to expect to rely on a man, and rely you did. All lovely and easy, unless of course, he's abusive, and you haven't developed the wherewithal to leave.

I think that their set up sounds lovely 🥺, and what a good man standing up for his wife like that. Wish I'd had just someone in my life who wouldnt have a bad word said against me.

Things do need to progress a little as he is sick. It is time for her to get some independence but it needs to come from her son/children and definitely not you

Does she have social anxiety?

If she was a bit helpless and useless but a warm and kind mother and grandmother, I'd cut her some slack. However, she sounds utterly self-absorbed and selfish so I would definitely put some boundaries down or your DH will be running around after her like FIL does, leaving everything at home for you to do.

Can your DH take her to the Post Office to withdraw the money to re-pay him/you for the shopping?

She sounds ND.

Seems like a silly and odd way to run things. But that's their problem. You now need to be careful your husband or you end up being FIL number 2. You need to start putting boundaries in, especially if there is nothing wrong with her