**The backstory: **My mother and I have never gotten along all that well. She has her own idea of how the world should work, which doesn’t jive with reality all that well. If someone doesn’t match her idea of what’s ‘right’, she tries to get them to change through some combination of emotional manipulation, financial incentives, or outright bullying. Unfortunately, my mother is also not terribly bright, nor does she have much of a spine, so if you point out inconsistencies in her worldview or simply stand up to her, she tends to back down. (Or she’d call my father, who she divorced because “we couldn’t agree on the arrangement of the furniture” , and ask him to yell at me. Those conversations were usually “Please just deal with it until you go to college as it’s a headache for me too”).
Anyway, about a week before I left for college, and my mother was being her usual poorly manipulative self, I blew up and pointed out “Mom, this kind of crap is the reason you’re not going to see me after I go to college. I don’t have to put up with this from anyone, and especially not from you. I might come back for Christmas and my sister’s birthday, but that’s because I want to see her, not because I want to see you. In fact, if you keep this crap up, I bet my sister is not going to want to see you after she goes to college either”.
Well, unsurprisingly, she took the Governor Tarkin approach to people slipping away - If someone stops wanting to see you because you were too controlling, you better be MORE controlling with whoever is left! Of course, this means my sister hates her too. Unfortunately, while I went into software and was able to support myself with internships, scholarships, and campus jobs until I graduated, my sister went into art, which notoriously does not pay well, and she didn’t qualify for many scholarships either, so she’s financially dependent on her mother until she graduates. Or takes loans, which she is thinking about doing.
So, since I graduated, I went home twice a year - once for my sister’s birthday and once for Christmas - until she went to college, and then it was once a year to see the extended family. This has been going on for a decade.
About 5 years ago, I met the woman that would become my wife. She has a very good relationship with her mother, so she was confused that I didn’t get along with mine. She pushed for me to reconcile with my mom. Then she found out how cuckoo-bananas my mom is, and understood why I didn’t want to spend time with her.
The situation: Last week was my sister’s birthday, so she came to our house and we took her out for dinner. We were chatting afterwards and she mentioned that her mom is once again mad at her. Apparently she had arranged housing with a friend of a friend, and then that person turned around and gave her room away, and didn’t tell my sister that now she needed a new place to live. My sister only found out when she called a week before the move to ask when they should get together to exchange keys. Apparently my mother thinks that my sister and this girl she barely knows got in a fight, and the room is available if my sister will just apologize. (Of course, this is not the case, as there is someone else living in the room that would be my sister’s and she’s not moving out anytime soon). As an example of my mother’s “the world should work this way” not being right, she drove up on a Sunday to talk to different apartment complexes. Because, you know, apartment leasing offices are totally open on Sundays. Or because she thinks my sister is incapable of going to a leasing office and asking “do you have any apartments available for $X or less?”, which she did, but on finding out there aren’t any, my mother believes she hasn’t done anything and isn’t scrambling to find a place to live.
After discussing how this is just another example of my mother being nutso, my sister drops the bomb that my mother is telling the rest of the family that my wife “poisoned my relationship with my son, and that’s the reason I never get to see my poor baby again”. Which, understandably, my wife did not take well. I’m just frustrated my mom can’t take responsibility for the consequences of her actions, and instead wants to blame other people for why she isn’t happy.
So now I’m dealing with the fallout of a pissed off wife, who never wants to see my mother, or let her see my son. Which I am OK with, but I’m sure there will be more fallout with the family I actually care about when I tell my mother this. I’m sure most of the argument with them will be of the form “But this upsets your grandmother when you don’t get along with your mom” (so, why doesn’t my mom stop being a bitch instead?) or “But she’s your mother!” (which doesn’t automatically make her a good person or someone I want to spend time with).
**TL;DR: **I have a crazy mother I try to avoid. She decided to blame my wife for this, despite the avoidance occurring before I ever met my wife. My wife is pissed, and I’m not looking forward to the familial backlash when I finish cutting ties with my mother.
