to feel like I cannot become a substitute daughter for my elderly uncle?

[Blaainey]

My uncle has been on his own since my aunt died 8 years ago. He has cancer and I know life is very difficult for him emotionally, more than anything. He does manage day to day, but he is clearly lonely. He has two adult sons but they both live quite far away and don’t seem very involved.

One of the sons bought him a mobile phone and now I seem to have become permanent tech support, emotional support and daily company all rolled into one. From morning into late evening I get a constant stream of messages asking how features work, whether messages are spam, screenshots of random things, articles, photos and general chat. He is also always asking how I am and being very kind, so I feel awful even writing this.

What makes it harder is that he has said a few times that he always wanted a daughter. I know he means it affectionately, but I sometimes feel like I am slowly being pulled into that role emotionally. I do care about him very much, but I also have my own family, responsibilities and pressures.

He also lives hundreds of miles away, so it is not even as though I can pop in and see him regularly. The relationship exists almost entirely through constant messaging and calls throughout the day.

The truth is that other family members seem to keep their distance because he is very needy emotionally and can become upset if people do not respond quickly enough. One time he actually called my mum because I had not replied quickly to a completely non-urgent message.

I do try to encourage him to contact his sons more, but he says they are busy. I have even found local groups and befriending schemes for him but he is not interested in any of them. I texted his sons saying their dad really needs more contact and support, but neither replied.

The problem is that I feel emotionally worn down by the constant messages every single day. I have tried gently creating boundaries a few times and he backs off briefly, but within days it starts all over again.

I feel terribly guilty because he is elderly, widowed and ill, but at the same time I don’t think I can realistically fill the role of daughter, companion and support system indefinitely

If you work in an office tell him not allowed personal phones daytime

and have a day and time to catch up for 15m then say must go need to walk the dog /cook tea/sort washing out. Speak next week and say bye

Tell your cousins that you are concerned about his welfare and are going to contact social services for advice. Gradually increased response times and tell him you are only reading messages once a day. Then you can decide what if anything needs doing. Forward all advice calls and messages to your cousin who bought him the phone. He's latched onto you as you are malleable. It's quite obvious why he wanted a daughter/carer.

Even if you were his DD, this would be really difficult to manage.
I really liked the suggestion of having a pre- prepared ‘holding text’ - this is setting a boundary but with kindness.
He may contact your cousins or mum more when you’ve set this boundary, and they in turn may try to push things back to you. Have a similar ‘holding text’ prepared for them too.

I would tell him one last time that you aren’t his support human and that you are busy, like he has accepted his sons are. Then I would personally stop replying to him. If you’re feeling kind, you could reply once a week or whatever you can fit in.

Also he isn’t kind. Kind people would listen when you say you are busy and try to set boundaries. He ignores you, steps all over your boundaries and is manipulative. Thank fuck you live miles away from him.

I had this with an elderly aunt whose husband died . She had family but felt close to me as still lived in her home country . I called my cousin and luckily she was mortified. She then contacted everyone and made a plan that each night at 7pm somebody would call her . I hope if you appeal to your cousins with this suggestion it might be a plan . Telling blokes they need to do more is too vague for them - selfish . Your mother should be included. Horrible of them to abandon him totally.

I have told him to stop. He listens and then it happens again.

My action options are to be stricter and respond when I want to.

Yes, I think that would be really cruel. It’s very sad reading this, as he sounds so lonely, and he also does sound genuinely fond of you, and yet I also feel sympathy for you.
I think the only way forward is to be honest and straightforward, explain that you can’t always reply to messages quickly, that you like being able to help but your life is really busy and you don’t always have the time. A regular telephone call with a pre-fixed ending for instance, might be helpful ? ‘I like chatting to you Uncle Arthur, but I am so busy that I get stressed if I spend too long chatting so shall I call you on Sunday for half a hour ? “ Then stick to those things. He sounds very anxious, how old is he ?
I had elderly parents (and uncles and aunts) when my dc were very small, and juggling those two things was really stressful, so I do understand the pressures of older relatives combined with your own family. It’s much harder when there are long distances too. Is he well enough to maybe go out once a week to a group ? Locally to me there are a few group meet ups for older people. He would feel less isolated if he had other people to chat to. He obviously doesn’t realise that he is draining , and that’s why his sister is avoiding his calls.
Could you visit him every few months, and suggest things he can do that will help his loneliness? Does he have any friends locally ?
My Mum would talk for ages on the phone, and I had very small children at the same time, it was really hard to manage as Mum would be crying (after my Dad died) and also the baby. I wasn’t getting much sleep either. It would have been far easier if I’d lived down the road and could have popped in with the dc who my Mum adored, have a cup of tea etc. Scattered families are much harder.

There’s a lot of talk of making the uncle “understand”.

As anyone who has ever taught anything comes to realise you cannot make anyone understand anything. That is not the way of human learning, it is a completely internal process. You can explain which the OP already has done many times and then understanding is determined by a number of factors including capacity, motivation, willingness to put the time towards understanding etc.

None of this can be affected by the OP, as she keeps saying it is her actions now that matter.

I think the OP has a very well developed (perhaps overdeveloped) sense of responsibility, conscientiousness and possibly difficulty in managing the emotion of guilt (being female it is likely that guilt has been heaped on her all her life as happens with all females as her uncle is currently doing with his expectations of her).

A number of people have pointed that it is now her capacity to address these expectations is where she can make the necessary changes to address this situation.

It is shameful to leave an elderly lonely family members with cancer alone and not help in any way.

That is incredibly all or nothing thinking. Read the thread. People are suggesting scaling back and take it from there.

I don't mean OP. I mean the awful sons and the mum.

Shame on your mother/his sons for not supporting you.

Like many needy selfish men, he has latched on to the softest woman.

Its all about him.
Very common in men as they age.

My friends bachelor uncle that she was never close to provided her number as contact when he got sick.
The hospital called her and were very rude to her about him being a bed blocker and she needed to allow him move In to recuperate in her home.

She was so upset and we encouraged her to make a very formal complaint, S she had the recording of the phone call. The administrators tone was appalling to her.

She got an written apology from the hospital and she told them she was very tempted to go to the national papers with the story.

Her uncle was not her responsibility and they found him a bed in a nursing home.

She hadn't seen her uncle in years and yet as the ONlY neice it was her number he gave.....not the 9 other nephews.

You are being used here and it is up to you to decide if you want that to continue.

I can Imagine this must be hard on your mental health.

Archive his number, or forward every single message to your mother and his sons.

I wouldn't recommend this approach. OP could find herself suddenly the main contact for her uncle with Social Services.

But neither you nor the OP knows if that is what happening with other relatives. She knows her uncle’s perspective which is clearly biased.

Not if she gives sons info to be contacted first.

OP, I think you know you are right when you say that you can only control what you do, not anyone else. No one else is going to step up, and no one else will be able to set your boundaries.

I had a relative like this, many years ago, who would "emotionally dump " via email. We were quite close, so I felt obliged to read everything just in case there was actually something of substance in the emails, or something urgent. I'm talking about pages and pages of rambling worries, six or seven times a day, from another country, almost an entire working day ahead of me, due to the time difference. There was absolutely nothing I could have done, even if there had been a problem.

This went on sometimes for weeks, until my relative apparently either solved his issue or stopped worrying about it. Then it would start all over again.

For a few years, this happened all the time, and stressed me out to the point that I knew I had to set some boundaries. I finally asked a really good friend to "triage" the emails. I forwarded every single email directly to her, she would read them, then let me know if there was anything at all urgent.

Do you know what? There never was. All he was doing was taking all his stress and worry, typing it out into an email, then hitting send. Away goes all his stress, dumped onto me! It was his way of coping. Not good for me!

So, I stopped reading his emails, in fact set it up so they went directly to a spam folder. The world did not end. Once a month, we would talk by phone, and never once did he mention any huge problems he had.

Your uncle is emotionally dumping on you. His problems are not yours to solve.

I would message his sons and your mother and say, in no uncertain terms, that I would no longer be answering the phone or reading messages from your uncle (you don't have to give a time frame), and if anything happens to him, it's on them.

Then mute, block, and if you want to, call your uncle once a month to chat and see how he is. Don't unblock him, don't start looking at messages again, just chat if you want to. My guess is that he will have moved on to someone else.

I know it seems harsh, but by setting boundaries, you can talk to him on your own terms. You cannot be responsible for what your mother or his sons do, so don't even bother getting involved with that.

Not your circus, not your monkeys.

ps. forgot to say that people with cancer are just people who may be having a difficult time with their health ( I know, I was one of those people), but it doesn't mean they are better than anyone else. You have a right to a healthy, stressfree life, as well.

Possibly, but if they refuse to speak to them, they would probably try the OP.

Replace 'could' for 'will'. She'd be walking into disaster while the relatives wash their hands of uncle.

OP as you have said yourself it is up to you to change. I think the kindest way is to text him, when he asks you something: ‘really busy at the moment, will get in touch Sunday’ (or your preferred timing). Then ignore any further comms until Sunday and don’t answer any of his calls. Then Sunday, do as much as you feel able - a text, a call… If he asks for tech support or something time consuming, just say you don’t know or can’t help. You don’t need to say who to contact instead or how to resolve it, he will just come back with a reason why not - eg sons are too busy, can’t ask them. Just no. Repeat this process weekly (or fortnightly, monthly, whatever timings are acceptable to you) and you might get him used to you not being his first port of call. And even if he doesn’t stop asking, just mute his conversation and look at it only at your reserved time for him.

What on earth would you expect social services to do? OP hasn’t mentioned anything about him struggling physically or having any memory issues. It sounds like a lonely elderly man who refuses to take steps to help himself by joining any groups or accepting any local support. They don’t have enough funding to properly support people with dementia wandering the streets at night, they are unlikely to prioritise an anxious 75 year old with too much time on his hands.

I think, realistically, you just dial it back. Assign him a separate notification/ring tone, so that when he texts/calls, you know it can wait.
Also, there's no more that you can do from hundreds of miles away, that his sons can't do. So at least you're not going to be drawn into practical care-giving.
If it were me, I'd mentally assign him 10 minutes every other day. 8pm for example, and send him one single message, based on whatever he's said during the day. Sound positive and up-beat.
I don't think you have to do more. He's got plenty of relatives who are closer relations that you are, but he's latched onto the realisation that you're the one who replies most consistently. It's time to start being less available.

And that is emotional blackmail.

You have no idea if he's been abusive over many years or not. You have not idea if he's manipulative or toxic or not.

No is always an acceptable answer.

It really isn't unless you are very selfish, thoughtless and cold. I'm sure OP would have included that info if that was the case.

No evidence that he has been abusive, manipulative or toxic. Can't be 100% of course. He and my mum were close until he started being very needy.

You can’t see that he’s manipulating you?