I know it’s nothing new but omg I’m staying with my mother at the moment and it’s nauseating. I think it always was but it’s either ramped up, or I’m seeing it with fresh eyes.
My two adult, unmarried brothers (twins, late forties) work from home and part-time farm. They live with my mother in the family home - they basically never moved out. Mother, widowed, centres her whole world around them. Like I’m feeling like a gooseberry intruding on a honeymoon!
She tells them to keep an eye on their salt and sugar intake - she acts like they are toddlers, but they don’t seem to bat an eyelid, maybe because the positives outweigh the negatives.
They pay her some rent - she does not expect them to lift a finger around the house and obviously they don’t. I have never seen them wash a single dish. Of course if I say anything she gives me that sigh and “God these awful modern women” look.
She cooks all their meals - in fact she low level hates anyone else cooking for them (jealous). All their laundry etc. she says you “could hardly expect a man to know how to do all that”. I swear she would wipe their bums for them if she could.
She has definitely held them back in life - it’s like she wants to be their ideal woman and meet all their needs. She does not treat her two daughters like this. She is not really available for helping with my children……. She has no interest- basically because she is so busy with her own babies/man-children.
If she leaves the house or goes visiting, she uses them as an excuse to leave (“ I have to go get dinner for the boys”) Ditto when she’s trying to get off the phone. It’s embarrassing - but my brothers don’t seem to mind at all that she makes them sounds so helpless.
My brothers never had romantic relationships and although my mother says she would love them to, this is clearly bollix. It has been made more than clear over the years that no woman would be good enough. She thinks my brothers are real catches that women would only love to get their hands on! They rarely if ever go out.
Would you have expected this dynamic to have died out in Irish society - is this not now really unusual? She gave up her job when she got married.
Anyway she will never change: she gets so much pleasure from this way of life. It’s her reason for living and the way she is programmed.
I can only try to see the humour in it.