Old saying: "When you see crazy coming, cross the street.” If BIL won’t leave the psycho, then you need to distance yourself. You might think you are being cruel to abandon him but your staying is putting your family in danger. What if it wasn’t dirty water being dumped on your son but boiling water? What if your wife had been stabbed or killed? How would you feel then?
You can’t fix her and you can’t save your BIL but you can save your family. Until you can get away keep a journal describing every episode. Any time there is a physical attack or a threat call the cops. Change your locks and include a deadbolt and chain.
Long and short of it: **How do you deal with living with a maniac? **Answer: You don’t have to.
It seems like everyone posting so far is afraid to be direct and blunt with you…maybe that’s because they’re senstive towards you. But let me try and be clear.
Hey guys, there’s a honey badger that moved in downstairs. He keeps ripping my balls off every time I try to go to work, and he rips my kid’s balls off when he tries to go to school. What should I do!?
Don’t tell me to move out, I know my rights as a renter in this jurisdiction.
If she has threatened your family and poisoned your dogs, why aren’t YOU pressing criminal charges, reguardless of whether or not BIL and his kid are willing to cooperate with the police? You can record her actions. You can provide testamony against her for things she does to your family. Anytime she starts getting crazy call the police AND PURSUE CHARGES. If BIL has to bail her out of jail X number of times a week, he may start feeling different about girlfriend.
If this were a man he’d be in jail by now. Even if the brother-in-law wouldn’t display his wounds, you say that she punched your wife and threatened her with a weapon. Have her arrested for assault.
From the structure of the OP, I gather that she is not the biological mother of the son. Call Child services and tell them that he is in danger.
Forget the poisoning stuff. That’s hearsay. If you have no proof it just makes you look loopy and vindictive.
I don’t completely understand the OP’s description of events (e.g. what’s the “ran into my fist defense”? Why is your son underneath your brother-in-law’s girlfriend’s window? Do you all live together in the same tenement or something? Do you actually share a home with all of these people - that is, are you asking how you can deal with living with a maniac, or your brother-in-law?) but it certainly sounds less than ideal.
ETA: Now see that you said you live above them. So yeah, move.
Can I offer a counter-perspective? Why should she have to move when it’s the other person who is the problem?
Moving takes time, effort and money. It’s not always that easy. I say get the cops involved and the landlord. Try to get her kicked out. Explore your options before you have to move.
If all else fails you then have three options. Move, talk it out and make peace, or be an ever bigger maniac than she is. You’d have to scare her pretty good though and it’s likely to result in some nasty consequences.
Realistically though, you got two options. Kick her out or move.
And, she’s pulled knives and broken bottles on your wife!!!
First thing, go to a psychiatrist.
Why didn’t you/your wife call the cops when wife was assaulted?
Why are you there today?
Are you eating food from a communal fridge/table?
Do you have insurance on your wife?
Wow, I’m totally stunned that you haven’t left long ere this.
If money is a problem, remember that Section 8, welfare, food stamps are much better than a dead anybody in your family.
You appear to live in a hive of drama, peopled with dysfunctional drama queens, all on the ragged fringes of unbalanced.
I can’t imagine how many more red flags you need. Prone to knives, threats, and poison! And yet you continue to keep your family in this place? What the hell will it take to drive you off? If knife fights, attacks, poisoning, threats, aren’t enough?
I hope whatever it is, that keeps you there, proves worth it. It would seem that you value something above the sanity and safety of your family. Baffling, truly. I cannot imagine the unfortunate child growing up amid drama, danger and dysfunction. :::shiver:::
You’re not a tree. Get up and move your small family away. You’re supposed to be looking out for them, after all!
LOL No I wasn’t murdered. Feels weird typing that.
I realize that is the RIGHT answer, and I’m not even attached to the place but my wife is certainly attached to the house because it was her mothers(there are two floors not attached internally).
EDIT:Her brother told her he blames her of course, because she should know better and his GF is crazy. This is the only way he gets to see his child(bull go to court), he said have you noticed I don’t talk to her much? He says because if he lets her draw him in he wants to fight with her.
I blame all of you for continuing to engage the crazy when you all know she’s crazy. You don’t keep crazy in your life one second longer than you have to.
Agree with the general advice here. But wanted to throw out that I’d be terrified of somebody that I thought had or was capable of poisioning someone. At least with a gun, a knife, or broken bottle you have a fighting chance. And if you keep your distance or absolutely minimize your interactions with her your chances are even better. Poisioning? Hell, you won’t see it coming until its too late. She could poison your household food, your drinks or drinking water, pump some toxic gas into the house while you sleep, put poision on door or car handles, plates or glasses, bed sheets, and probably some other even more sneaky deadly methods I haven’t thought of off the top of my head yet. She might even not care about taking out some innocent coworkers or shoppers to get at you.
At the very least, I have my abode more video monitored and recorded than Fort Knox. Heck, you might get lucky and get her for attempted murder when she’s recorded breaking into your house to poison your cheerios.
So, it was her mother’s house so her family has to live amid the madness, anger, threats, etc ?
She cares not at all about the safety, security or sanity of her husband and child?
Rent the house and get out before you all become just like them. Because you will, especially your kid. How anyone can subject their child to this baffles me completely. How do you get so attached, to your family drama as to overlook, the well being of your child.
I was wondering how these dysfunctional fools got to where they play out this kind of shit as part of their daily lives. I’d wager it was because, like y’all, no one gave a shit about what they exposed their kids to. Looks like you’ll be repeating the tradition! The chaos makes everybody feel alive. And I think you’re none better than the other. Everyone of you is addicted to the chaos, like drug addicts are to their drug of choice.
It starts as ‘comfort seeking’, drawn to that which is familiar. You all grew used to it, came to expect it, eventually seeking out similar circumstances and reproducing the dynamic.
I wish you all great good luck, as I am certain you will be needing it in abundance in the times ahead.
She killed your dogs and you trust her to live above your heads?
Who owns this house that’s more precious than your own family’s safety, sanity, and peace of mind? If it’s just your wife, she needs to evict with extreme prejudice. If it’s co-owned, then someone has to buy out someone else, otherwise she risks her mother’s house becoming a murder scene.
I know you don’t want to leave your nephew with these two and no one else to watch out for him, but I suspect part of the reason your brother-in-law stays with this insane woman is that he can bet on you guys to save his bacon should anything really bad happen. That way he gets to blame the terrible stuff on her, he gets to blame the cops on you, making you the bad guys in his insane girlfriend’s eyes, and deny any responsibility for coping with it because of course a lunatic who cuts people, poisons animals and people, and threatens people will get custody of a kid. (Actually, maybe she will, since he’s been doing an awesome job of covering it all up for the authorities! So of course he can’t leave now!)
And I will bet you serious money that any time some kind of bone of contention comes up, he blames it all on you and your family to save his own skin.