My P and I are mid-40s, both divorced, both have young children. We have been together four years, see each other one weeknight a week and together at the weekend with our DCs, who are the same age and get on very well.
P's exW has struggled with drug and alcohol addiction most of her life. These issues were the reason they divorced (he used to say "there was always something she loved more than me") and why he has majority custody of the DC and she has lived with an on and off boyfriend throughout the time they have been apart (who also drinks.)
I don't know how to describe it, but her spectre still lingers over our relationship. I have met her parents, his parents and lots of people who know her, and all are of the belief that she was a "brilliant person" who has become "tragic." There is quite a romantic attachment to the concept of who she is and what she could have been. Sort of like a Marilyn Monroe or Amy Winehouse "legendary" quality or a heroine of a tragic novel.
When she is not around and we are getting on with our lives, everything is fine and she barely comes up. But when she is around, as she naturally is, as she's the mother of his children, it's like living through a hurricaine for me.
For eg, she spends most of the day very drunk. This has become something that I now expect and I expect my interactions with her to be ones where she is not making sense, or falling over, or offensive or chatting up strange men, or sitting on a pavement in the middle of a busy road and holding up traffic. Everything she does is steeped in drama. However DP still gets very upset when this happens and responds like it is happening for the first time. Lots of hand wringing, and "why does she have to be like this?" He wants to talk about it for hours after we've seen her and the way it makes him feel. But he doesn't want to do anything about it.
We have, together, carried her home and undressed her and put her in bed several times. She was fired from her job ages ago and DP has taken up additional financial responsibility because of this and pays for things for her. She has sought help for addiction several times (court ordered) but has not been successful yet. She goes off grid for periods of time and then re-emerges. SOmetimes we see her in the street and she does not recognise us. There was one time we were walking with DPs DC and she did not recognise her own children.
Sometimes when she is really bad she will be quite abusive to me and openly jealous. For eg two weekends ago when she came to see her DC at my house, she was drunk, sitting in a corner and looking at me as I cooked lunch for all of us yelling "Little Miss Perfect. You think you're so perfect don't you? Got your perfect life, perfect kids - my husband." Honestly, it is like a pantomime. She is like a teenager. When I ask her questions about her life or how she's feeling, or show an interest in her, she laughs in my face or yawns. Or pretends she doesn't hear me, beckons me closer, and if I speak closer to her, wafts her hand in front of her nose like I have bad breath.
I cannot establish any boundaries with her until the family (DPs parents, his DC, DP himself) establish boundaries. But they don't. They just regard her and treat her like some tragic figure who needs to be tolerated and accepted and loved.
I had a mother like this. And I know this is why it is so triggering for me. A mother who was so toxic and drunk, that histrionic, publicly flamboyant and dramatic and (strangely sexual and appealing?) to everyone she met, and everyone around me was telling me that it was normal and okay and that I should love her and accept it, despite the fact she was quite neglectful and awfully abusive a lot of the time. She was very beautiful and sort of "heroine chic." My father was completely addicted and co-dependent to it. I felt betrayed a few times when I opened up to him about how she made me feel, and he told her. And she'd attack me for it.
I say the above ^^ because I am getting confused between my past and my current situation. I am extremely triggered by her presence. I feel like a little girl again who is having to deal with my mother. Except I am somehow now openly competing for my father's attention. There is a gut feeling I have that DP is still obsessed with her. He insists that this is my past talking (my mother creating competition between her and I for my father's attention) but I just don't know anymore.
We have two days coming up (On Monday) where we are all (including her parents) staying at DP's parents house (its' a big house in the country.) The last time this happened, she was so upset and so bad, she tried to insist that DP and I not share a bed together, because it hurt her too much. I am getting a lot of anxiety even thinking about it and trying to resist reassurance seeking from DP. But I feel I am about to boil over.