Appalling behaviour-dressed up as old age-it has to be addressed

[BlueLegume]

Hi all, having followed and contributed to several threads on ‘Elderly Parents’ I want to thank so many of you for helping me look at my/our situation. I won’t name check you just yet but you know who you are. This thread is not to be unpleasant about the elderly who are having a hard time. It is to address a very honest point that my parents have always been difficult. Impossible to discuss anything important with, always known better and having watched them alienate good decent people I am angry that they made no effort in life to do anything other than fun stuff for themselves and now expect me and my siblings to pick up their mess. It seems so many middle aged people have fallen foul of these ‘war babies’ as my mother still refers to her and Dad. Yes I accept they were born at the end of the war and they will have had to live in a post war country. For our mother that is all she talks about. She doesn’t accept they had the boom years post war which she has photo evidence of living it large in the 50s and 60s. She was an incredibly authoritarian mother yet after a few drinks would party all night. Always a case of do as I say not as I do. Now as I approach 60 I am wracked with worry and anxiety because she now ‘can’t cope’. It’s ruining life . I have all the therapy theories and have shared much of it. That said I am mad at the fact I am still dictated to or it feels so by her. Father is in a nursing home after a lot of denial that was what he needed. She will not have any help in the house so it is all falling to us. We are broken. My own family are fed up and rightly so. Selfish as it sounds I did not retire to look after a very unpleasant woman who has never liked me. I appreciate that sounds very bitter.

@HoraceGoesBonkers you sound in a very similar place to my sister and I. We have repeatedly asked to meet our brother in a neutral setting to try and get him to see our Dad is in the best possible position setting as he nears the end of his life. He’s safe rested and not having to deal with our mother’s histrionic tendencies. We also need to try and get him to see IF as he tells us our mother’s histrionic tendencies needs so much support from us/him then she is no longer able to live independently and either requires professional care be that from carers or in a residential setting. My own feeling is if we suggest she requires a home she may well suddenly be able to manage. I’m so cynical about her because of her tendency to be so manipulative. As it is he will not agree to meeting for a frank discussion he continues to be disappointed in the way we show how we care as opposed to his own personal way of communicating how important his parents are to him. It’s all very performative.

Sorry last post rambled abit - on phone with no reading specs handy!

Another day another fruitless call to our mother. Brother had a rant last week at my lovely sister saying she didn’t care about our mother. My turn this week. He is clearly very stressed and taking it out on us. I have yet again asked if he will sit down somewhere neutral with us to work out how to navigate things with a frankly unreasonable woman.

Called our mother as what he tells me and what she tells me NEVER add up. He’d created an impression that he was working from her house days at a time and doing all her shopping etc. Which is untrue as my sister and I do a far whack of shopping but hey ho. I approached the conversation with Mum saying I am worried he is taking too much on. Her response was he comes once a week. I am ok with him doing that but why lie?

@BlueLegume I imagine he feels like that one day is taking over his life and created the tale in his head. Similar here with golden balls BIL. FIL says he needs time off as he does too much (one day per week of his choosing, for as long as he chooses, doing what he chooses). It’s a different world 😅 cheers 🍸

I think you maybe need to start enforcing boundaries wit your brother too - hang up if he rants, say you're not talking about it any more unless he sits down with you both together and agrees a plan. Agree with your sister in advance what the line is and stick to it.

I think the sibling thing can be hard to negotiate - my sister who died got to the point that she realised how bad my Mum was ahead of the rest of us, but we were both a lot younger and didn't realise, which I feel really bad about now.

I ended up with counselling and my sister still talks to my Mum more than me but is getting increasingly sick of her.

DF visit was crap as usual. DF slept through it, although his eyes opened briefly I'm fairly sure he didn't know we were there, maybe that someone was.

I ended up getting DH to let my mum know we were coming. She replied back saying that DF had had a lovely day trip and was very alert yesterday, and that would know we were there and understand what we were saying.

She quite frequently pretends he has conversations with her when no-one else is there so I guess he can fill her in on everything we said. 🤔The fact that he's comatose when anyone else sees him is always because he's had a trip out or a busy day before or some bollocks like that.

The pretending he's less sick than he actually is is part of her justification for trying to get every medical intervention under the sun, part emotional blackmail to try and get us to visit more, and also - and I can see this one coming a mile off - will be used to justify all sorts of terrible behaviour when he does die, because it will be "a shock".

I know it will be hard for her when he does die, but the way she campaigns to keep him alive in such a terrible way is horrible.

@HoraceGoesBonkers 🥰

I have a parent on there own that I have set carers up for, and even though they live locally I only see them once a week.

They are unpleasant, lazy, selfish and don't hide their awful bigoted opinions.

I've realised that they may be my parent and I have some level of responsibility, they were never that great as a parent and quite frankly I'm not ruining my life to look after them.

Once a week is quite a lot. I see my mother much less frequently than that and she could be described in the same terms.

Absolutely this. I honestly used to feel mentally and physically exhausted when I left after a visit - and I’m fit and well! It literally took me three of four days to decompress after spending a day with her.

My poor DH and adult DCs often had to be my counsellors and listen to me offloading in order to reset myself. It was mostly reassurance I needed that I wasn’t the worst daughter as I used to come away full of guilt, suppressed anger and frustration as she was the master manipulator and very successful at backing me into corners. She was very adept at the subtle confidence knock and snide comment, but if I bit back, I always felt it was me that was at fault for not handling it well.

Yes, I completely relate to this. It’s so bloody exhausting .

@JohnPrescottsPyjamas @AskingQuestions45 absolutely agree how draining the whole thing is. I will say and I have touched on this before one of the worst things for me is having the same feelings and emotions as I did as a kid and teenager around my mother. Always on edge never knowing what version of her will be on show today. I have also realised she purposely always says the opposite to what I say. It’s like she has to defiantly always have the last say. Black catting is a great term and sums her up.

Oh god yes.

It is like they intentionally sabotage everything. At Christmas, I would get food in I knew she preferred - but she would announce on Christmas morning, she disliked intensley whatever I had bought, and that she always had! Whatever restaurant we took her to, she ‘hated’ She would send food back when there was absolutely nothing wrong with it and seemed to take pleasure in creating a bad atmosphere, as long as she was the centre of attention.

Seemed to thrive on arguments and rows. She would love to be contrary or say something really controversial. If I reacted - she would turn it around that I was being horrible to her, cry and say I was making her feel ‘unloved’ I honestly think she enjoyed causing distress and then standing back to survey the emotional carnage she had caused.

I’ve posted before that it was like dealing with a 4 year old. The same egocentricity you expect from a young child, not a mature woman. If she didn’t get her own way, she would sulk, kick off and ruin everything for everyone else. She had to be the centre of attention and any attention, even negative, was good as far as she was concerned.

@JohnPrescottsPyjamas it is really hard to get your head around someone who seems to ‘thrive’ on being negative about everything, and I mean everything. We all have the odd bad day but as adults you kind of dig deep and reflect on the positives in life to get through sticky patches. I feel really deflated at the moment as I have reached a real dead end with my brother who keeps saying ‘Mum is ill’. She may well be but no doctor or specialist has found anything and I am sick of being a hypocrite pretending this behaviour is new and that we should all be ‘really worried’. I could sit with a doctor and give a million and one examples of how this is just her personality albeit very much worse and without Dad around to talk some sense into her she is feeding off any attention. I want to say to my brother she is playing him. Everything we ‘fix’ be it an appliance she says doesn’t work she then brings in another barrier. At the moment she is playing the ‘I just can’t’ card for absolutely everything. Harsh as it is she has always done this - I really wish our brother would see this. She has always manipulated everyone to get her own way.

@BlueLegume These personalities are very good at playing the victim when in fact they’re actually very much in control. They’re also very complex, and outsiders, such as medics, neighbours, those not emotionally involved etc, just see a snapshot and it’s virtually impossible to build the whole picture without weeks of explanations and examples! My mother was very good - short term - of projecting an image to suit her agenda. Charming, witty, benign and slightly daft older woman, when she was actually sharp as a tack with no time for anyone’s else’s needs, unless she could use them to her advantage or exploit a drama. She was also far more capable than she made out because she enjoyed the attention of people running around after her.

Your brother is interesting. Without knowing him, I wonder if he has also been taken in by her or if it’s easier to just ‘go with the flow’ and give in to her rather then risk and confrontation - sort of enabling her? My father was this; he knew what she was like as he used to ask me ‘not to upset her’ or ‘ignore’ her. Sort of difficult to do when I was a child and she wouldn't leave me alone and torment me physically and mentally, when really he should have been defending me and standing up to her.

@JohnPrescottsPyjamas truth be told I think our brother knows exactly what she is but he has always had a strong desire to ‘defend’ her over the years even when her behaviour has been appalling. I think it is a combination of ‘going with the flow’ rather than challenge partly because he is a little on the lazy side. He is always telling us how ‘busy’ he is and how ‘I am working full time’. We know. We are also retired and there is some correlation between my sister and I retiring within months of each other - quietly doing so without announcing it - and our mother and brother being or appearing affronted by this. For context he likes to command - liked to - conversations about meeting with financial advisors blah blah blah and ‘working out retirement plans’. Sis and I just got the opportunity to step into retirement so we did. We obviously had discussions with our partners and kids but we just got on with it. No song and dance.

I do think he has perhaps unwittingly stepped into Dad’s shoes of being her enabler. Lots of people have been alienated by our mother and her behaviour over the years. Brother now has a hatred for them based on ‘how could they abandon her?’ - well it has been very hard for these people who I still communicate with, very hard as they are decent people. They have just had to realise nothing they do or suggest will be met with anything other than negativity. I have 2 aunts whose adult children begged them to step away from helping our mother as they have their own health issues. They call me regularly and express how bad they feel. I absolutely do not blame them at all.

The teenager thing is interesting. I had a sibling die when I was a teenager, before my sister died. And my DM was awful.

I know, before anyone says anything, that it was terrible for her that her kid had died. But they way she went on and on was completely unbearable for everyone else - if we didn't go along with whatever she wanted she'd twist it around so nobody cared about my sibling dying like she did. She was actively horrible and sneery about other people in the family having mental health trauma and everything was meant to revolve around her.

A lot of the time I feel like my 14 year old self, trying to support her. But that's a hell of a burden to put on a teenager... my son's coming up for the same age now.

I'm bringing this up because I suspect other people on the thread might have a big sad thing that happened that gets used to hook them in again and again.

This has been a great thread.

@HoraceGoesBonkers goodness I am so sorry that happened to you. Sadly it does sound familiar behaviour making it all about them, even in such tragic circumstances. I also agree and recognise my mother has always been sneery about other people struggles in life with her ‘she just needs to pull herself together attitude’. She just always seemed to need to be the superior person in any discussion a la Hyacinth Bucket. Always, always has an opinion when sometimes opinions are not asked for and support or a listening ear is what is needed.

I am really pleased this thread has allowed a safe space to air similar stories. I am also glad it didn’t get overly hijacked by people who have not lived similar experiences and are aghast at how we now feel at the end of our parents lives.

For me at the moment I can’t quite see the wood for the trees and I am struggling with the anxiety being around her gives me. I know I am an adult and I know she cannot really hurt me but so much damage was done destroying my confidence as a kid the resurfacing feelings of me being the problem are hard to put a lid on.

Sensible head tells me, you cannot force her to do anything so step back.

I often think my mother and my father to some extent loved making everything into a crisis. It was always a scam, stuff the rest of us just got on with in life but they always had to be different. We all listened and pandered whilst rolling our eyes.

The scam doesn't work as well when you have worn out all the decent people trying to help. So then they become desperate to get attention from elsewhere.
The scam does not work as well anymore when they have got nothing real to show for their life except the sob stories they have been tripping out for years about how tough things are for them and easy for so and so.
Frankly I am no longer willing to buy in to the stories of blame and conspiracy when my mother is old enough to know better and to have done better by now. As someone who always knew better than everyone it is incredibly difficult to feel much in the way of sympathy for the hole she has dug.

Nodding in agreement with it all, especially the goading and needling until you react. Then you feel awful because you have bitten. Mine tries it all staring excessively, blocking my path etc but usually I react if she starts in about my children. I won't tolerate that and I will react.

I've not seen them for over a year but am meeting them on my sister's advice in a neutral location for one lunch. My son 22 will be there too as a good distraction.

I feel anxious already as I swore I wouldn't put myself through another meal. It is a hideous performance, has been all my life. Both of them pissed, loudly talking in the local language, boasting to the waiting staff about themselves.

They definitely think they are the main event with their sparkling personalities. I loathe it but the alternative is visiting their house which is equally awful.

Do you wonder if it will ever end? My mother is 85 and fit as a fiddle, my dad is 86 and failing with heart failure. I fear my mum could easily live another ten fifteen years. I know when dad dies it will be hysteria for months. Us three siblings are united in dread. I can't keep doing it.

@BlueLegume thankyou again for this thread, all of which I have just written I know will be understood without explanation or seeing her good side etc. thankyou xx

Forgot to write I agree that they thrive on the attention even if it is negative attention. She is gleeful and joyous, I can see it in her eyes when she succeeds in getting a reaction.

If I pull her up for being say passive aggressive she will laugh and claim not to know what that is. She is sharp as a tack and most definitely knows. Being laughed at is just awful. I do have to admit I am still scared of her if her vile temper and tongue. I could cry for the lonely,unhappy wee girl I was that was labelled difficult from birth. I loathe them.

She claims to be blind, all this my wife is blind to waiters etc but does the crossword and suduko in the paper everyday. It isn't even worth fighting.

It is all so wearisome and unnecessary isn't it x

And yes to them alienating and falling out with ALL their friends. Really decent and lovely people. Isolated and fallen out with everyone.

Only pleasure is shite holidays to Spain with no travel insurance. I swear we will have to repatriate my dad. Mum thinks this is hilarious and giggles that she will cremate him over there. No travel insurance and she doesn't have a word of Spanish. We fussy and she loves it, utterly reckless, toddler behaviour x

@Lexy70 sympathise completely.

Please can I join in? We are all at our wits end with MIL(DHs mum). I’m so grateful to find this thread, can I vent for a mo?
Long one - here goes..
MIL got RArthritis and decided drs are stupid, she’d cure it with nonsense off the internet. Well gosh! She became bedbound.
FIL 84 has been running up and downstairs caring for her, for 6 years, both denying anything was wrong. MIL refused social worker and any help/equipment. But she can do that because she expected that FIL could make exotic breakfasts and comb supermarkets for a specific cabbage to put on the soles of her shoes to stop slipping, and cook and change her and all the million exhausting things a bed bound person needs. She was also Unbelievably demanding.
FIL had a heart attack. He was in hospital waiting for an emergency stent and MIL calls him to tell him to sort out the waitrose delivery. 😮
Hospital safeguarding wouldn’t let him out until he had alternative accommodation and stops caring for MIL.
We all live miles away ( they moved away once we had babies. Eh?) but managed to get MIL cared for in a home there, super quick. - and manage to get FIL to us, with a thought to get FIL sorted asap as he’s the one most at risk and sort MIL next. he is soooo frail and stressed. MIL doesn’t seem to get how close he has been to dying twice in the last 6 weeks. She calls and is unbelievably nasty - threatens to sue him then gets all contrite, disowns her children (my dh) and now says she’ll get her family to help.
DH really upset as this family is a remote cousin, lives near the home MIL is in, who never visited but is suddenly, we believe, seeing £ signs and influencing MIL. MIL doesn’t seem to care about her husband, refuses to sign the will, and is being as difficult about everything as she can be causing immense stress and difficulty to her children, and therefore me and our child. We never know what mood she will be in and FIL jumps when she rings, he is so stressed by her games.
its heartbreaking to see him saying that he’s spent the last 8 years, devoted to her well being and she doesn’t even notice.
its only typing this out that I’ve realsied how much she influenced DH, and how much her reach extended into my family. I am bitterly regretting being so thick and so tolerant, now it’s dawned on me too late, as my own wonderful mum died. Obviously I’m trying not to be resentful but it’s hard.
sorry for a long rant, it could be A LOT longer - thank your lucky stars!
We are trying to get FIL better, so any advice on how to deal with her behavior is really really welcome- she plays so many games - goes deaf, wavery voice, if challenged she gets really obstinate and nasty, disowns us, renown’s DH when she wants another ridiculous thing sorting asap. but mainly deeply stresses FIl who just needs time to recover.
We are at our wits end and we don’t want to, but we are beginning to hate her.
Sorry for the rant. Just I read the thread and so much of what you all are going through hit home. Thanks

@Whatthewhatnowreally welcome. You have found a great place to vent but also some fantastic people who have experienced similar. I will have a read of your post properly over a cup of tea and suggest a few lovely people on here who might be able to give some suggestions. Back soon.