Feel free to give advice, opinions or comments but I thought I’d update you guys on the latest. Feel free to see my other posts if you want more of the situation / story as well.
Anywayyyyys.. my boyfriend’s mother barely raised him and she tries to overstep into his adult life now and has said numerous rude things about me and our relationship over the years.
Today she sent a text inviting us to her boyfriend’s relative’s house despite us previously stating that we didn’t enjoy being around him as we’ve met him once before and he was the “rude” emotionally unintelligent type she refers to him as “nice and just a jokester” anyways she continued to invalidate our feelings and opinions on shit and she asked him why he seems like he doesn’t want to come visit her anymore and he mentioned that the constant overstepping of boundaries and all the criticisms of me and our relationship over the years and especially the last one were she told him “I just feel like if she loved you she’d take on more of the financial stress” even though she knows I go to school full time has caused him to discuss his relationship with her in therapy and his therapist told him that what she’s doing is wrong and encouraged his own idea of setting boundaries she tried to come back with “there you go again with that boundary word listen we’re all family” he explained further what he discussed with his therapist and how boundaries work and why they’re healthy even for adult children to have with their parents and she came back with “Let’s do therapy together and see what they say” I just laughed and said good luck finding a therapist that will do therapy when we don’t even live in the same state as her. My friend said she feels like his mom might want to manipulate the therapist or the narrative of things if she could.
My partner has said that even if he was somehow able to do therapy with her he can’t imagine a therapist would try to get him to change his boundaries especially with how domineering his mother tries to act but who knows. He also said he’s not gonna change his boundaries when they’re only needed because of how she acts to began with.
This should be interesting I feel like she might try to turn things around on me or this might bring up some bad stuff from the past since she lost custody of him as a young child / barely had much of a relationship with him until his early 20s when I was already in the picture pretty much.
What do you guys think? lol have any of you done therapy with a parent as an adult? Sorry for typos I’m writing this late on my phone cause my head is honestly spinning a bit after today.
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Other posts from /u/January_Blues7:
Trying to pull away from JNMIL and it’s already been interesting.., 1 month ago
I need some serious advice and emotional support after today, 2 months ago
Would you consider this to be raising a child?, 8 months ago
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It’s a terrible idea. Any ethical therapist will never let you do therapy with someone who’s abused you. She sounds abusive
I don’t think he should go to therapy with her. She’ll learn more therapy language and use it to manipulate him.
They never like it when you set boundaries. They don’t need to like them, understand them, or agree to them. IMO you shouldn’t even try to make them understand. They will never actually try to understand them even if they say they want to. They simply want to keep you talking so they can try to break you down and manipulate you.
Your boyfriend needs to stop explaining his boundaries, stop telling her what he learned in therapy about boundaries (or anything else), and finally he also needs to stop telling her what his boundaries are. He only needs to enforce them.
If she invites him to that relative’s house, he says “I won’t be going”. Any subsequent question from her get met with exactly that same answer.
Stop telling her your feelings and opinions. The extremely sad part is she doesn’t care. Just do what you need to do for your mental health.
It took me years of explaining, begging, and pleading with my JNM to realize she was incapable of real empathy. It’s all about what she wants and anything else is crazy/not valid/not what others really feel/temporary.
ETA: If she calls a second time about visiting that relative he could say “If you ask me about this again, I’m hanging up on you.” Then he needs to do that. Or he can keep repeating his first answer of “I won’t be going”. It kinda depends on how he wants to approach it. Either way you hold your boundary of not going.