That didn't come out right in the above narrative. I was saying s o c i o Psychopath a t h.

blue heron

Ah, I see some autocorrect there. Hmm. Okay, I'll work with that.

I have been reading lots of the older posts here, and can see I'm in good company. There is a lot of good advice, and a lot of kindness.

Something I have not mentioned is that this whole mess with MIL has hurt my husband far worse than it's hurt me. I'm all upset and angry mostly because of what it is doing to him.

Just to refresh, MIL is not my husband's mother. She married his Dad when my husband was about 16. He tells me they always had a good relationship (but I think maybe he has a poor memory, lol). Perhaps they got along because he was "going her way" most of the time; I mean, maybe his chosen direction just happened to coincide with what she wanted out of him most of the time.

I am a night owl, preferring to surf the internet and catch up with my friends late at night. My husband goes to bed fairly early. But over the past months he has had terrible trouble with sleep, staggering up out of bed while I am still up, talking about how he can't stop thinking about everything that's coming from "next door," having bad dreams, trying to figure out how to make it stop, how to rectify it all and make it right on behalf of the others who are getting hurt in the process -- and he cannot come up with an answer. My husband is the number one "answer man," and this has him totally stumped and hurt.

We have just about resolved that the only way we can handle it is to cut off contact with MIL. I dunno ... I already have. I don't know if he can or not.

Well, let me tell you about my lovely floor.

Before we moved into this lease unit, we had new paint, light fixtures, and flooring installed. We chose some of that new engineered hardwood that just snaps together. It's a floating floor; it is not glued or nailed down. That's in about half the house. The rest is some extra nice vinyl, and a little carpeting. The floating hardwood floor is easy to care for, but you cannot put much water on it. If you spill any liquids, you have to get it up quick because it will go down between the planks, then you have a problem. Oh, yeah.

Back in August, husband's brother was visiting, and one morning just before dawn he got up and was quietly making his way down the hall to the bathroom. He woke me out of a dead sleep exclaiming, "Oh, no! What's this? Ohhh, my."

I bolted out of bed and there he was, standing in a LOT of water. A lot of water, and more coming. Well, heedless of our respective states of undress, we started searching for the source of all this water. At first I thought the line to the ice maker had broken, so I went under the sink and turned it off. Nothing -- water kept pouring out from behind the refrigerator. There was an inch of water in about half our house.

I called the manager's office to tell them there was an emergency with a water line break "somewhere," and needed some maintenance people for help. The first person to show up, bless his heart, was the manager himself, toting a wet-vac. Two maintenance guys finally showed up, and they went looking for the source of the water.

It was from next door at MIL's unit. Turned out that nobody had ever thought to do regular maintenance on their under-sink water filtering system in the six years they lived there (!), and it had finally exploded.

Pretty quickly, those lovely hardwood planks started swelling and popping up. I can't even describe how bizarre it was.

Once the manager had things in hand, he and my husband went next door to see MIL, and she wanted to know what all the ruckus was at our place. When the manager told her that water was flooding from her water line and that it was her fault, husband says she got this blank look on her face, then she said, "Oh." And went back to what she was doing.

Now, most people would would exclaim in dismay, express some empathy, and ask what they could do to help. Or something! Nothing from her.

The manager stewed and stewed over how he would replace our wood and vinyl, and finally went to MIL to see if she had homeowner's / renter's insurance. Nahh, she didn't need it, she said. So he decided he'd had enough of her (she's messed with him the whole time she's lived here, and he finally had it) -- and told her he was going to charge her the whole amount of repairing our floors. It added up to about $4,500.

And what did she say? She couldn't see why SHE should have to fix OUR floor. She didn't put the water over there. Furthermore, she started whining about how she was "broke," and she decided she would only pay the manager $20.00 a month. When the manager related this story to us, I could see the incredulous, furious look on his face, even though he was trying to be professional and unbiased.

She never asked us one thing about our floor, or if it was an inconvenience to live with it all popped up like that for the month it took to get replacements ordered and installed, or did our new floor look nice, or NOTHING.

MIL has done some other things to the manager that has amazed and surprised him. Hey, she is above the rules of the community. Our row of units is on the back side of the community, and there is a tall fence between our back yards and a hotel parking lot. Let me say, our manager is not a micro-manager, he has people who deal with the details and he expects them to do their jobs, so he hadn't had any occasion to go in our back yard. That's somebody else's job.

But this summer when we had a horrendous rain storm and I had to bail furiously to keep water from flooding into our back door, I talked to the manager about it (some other people complained too), and he came to take a look.

The first thing he saw was a huge patio slab that MIL had had poured in her back yard. His face got all dark and he said, "I didn't know she had done this. How long has this been here?" I estimated it had been there about a year. He said she had mentioned to him how she wanted to put a little patio back there, and he told her he would have to get some people to determine what she could do, and he would find the contractor to do it for her. Apparently some time later she told him she didn't need him to do it any more.

The reason was that she got tired of waiting, of going through the proper channels, of doing what the community covenants required. She wanted what she wanted right then, so she hired a contractor. They drove their concrete truck into the hotel parking lot next door, took several planks off the fence that divides the hotel from our back yards, and happily poured a huuuuuge patio. Put the planks back on the fence, and nobody's the wiser.

Only one problem. That huge patio slab interferes with the natural drainage of several yards. The water can't go around it fast enough, so guess whose back door it goes into? MINE!

There is also an issue with some dogs she has.

It's never ending. It probably won't end until she dies. She's pretty close to it, and cruel old me prays for her end daily.

Amazing what a volume of junk comes out when you start talking about it. Geez.


blue heron

Okay that sounds like a classic N!! LOL. Her reactions sound JUST like something my MIL would do. I hope you're all getting together to make her pay to dig up her patio. Talk about above the law and above everyone else.
On our wedding day all excited we asked her to sign our wedding book. That's exactly what she did, with this stupid smug look on her face. Couldn't believe it! No well wishes, no nothing. Just signed her name. No card, no gift... well that should've been the biggest red flag but I hoped by calling her "mum" after we married she would see my relationship to her as that of a daughter and NOT competition. Couldn't understand it as I did get along with her also and helped her when she was sick, etc, etc. Well I realize now that she is the big princess, and my husband seems bent on making my daughter the little one, complete with "princess slippers" she said he got her, even though he's read the book about adult children of dysfunctional families and the part about covert incest that says it's very damaging to start going the "daddy's little princess" route.
Anyway after the MIL assured me that the birth was for the parents, she not only shows up on the day but comes in together with her son when the nurse is putting my baby in my arms for the first time. So my first reaction on seeing her is that my heart SINKS when it should only have been SOARING when I first laid eyes on my long-awaited baby, together with my husband. And my baby's birthday will be forever marred by that one event that she knew exactly what she was doing.
Apart from the "come on, stupid" remark, she takes up space in the car to come back to our place for the home-coming, and as I had to walk up 4 flights of stairs, my husband brought a chair down to the middle landing for me to sit on as I'd had a ceasarian. He'd gone up ahead with my sister with the baby. Guess who sat in the chair to rest?
As I write, this hypochondriac has my husband down at her place on the one day he comes to see his daughter. Okay with me, the longer my girl is with me instead of those psychos the better, but she keeps asking after him. She's disappointed. I hate to think she needs to get used to it with that creature (brings new meaning to "mirror mirror on the wall...") and Lord strike me down for thinking the same thing about her as you do about yours, except they say they get worse after their mothers pass on!

No card and no gift -- from the mother of the groom? Man, that's cold. Forgive me, but I had to laugh a little about who ended up sitting in your chair on the stair landing. Unreal. Text book. Whatever they "need" always comes before what you need. They probably don't have a clue that you need anything in the first place. Not that it matters.

We think we should have seen such a red flag, but truly, we have no idea. Why should we?

Our wedding gift from MIL was a plastic fake antique clock. It had a spray-painted wood look finish, and you had to plug it in to make the pendulum swing. It truly looked like something from the carnival. It had to have cost all of $25.00.

And this was a gift to two people who had a rather sizeable collection of very fine antique clocks -- wall clocks, mantel clocks, a rare "repeater" carriage clock, and a very old grandfather clock from the 1700s that would play two different chime tunes. A plastic clock that she expected we display with our fine antiques! ("I gave it to you because I knew you just love, love, love clocks!" Doh! How exactly are we supposed to interpret the intent of that?!) It was supposed to go on the mantel, but there were no electrical outlets near the fireplace. I should have seen it as the thoughtless insult it was. But I chalked it up to someone who had absolutely no taste. And forgave it. It went to the garage in the box because there was really no place to set it, and it eventually went out in a garage sale. (And now my stomach hurts just talking about it.)

Husband's actual mother, not to be outdone, gave us a frying pan. Period. I don't know WHAT she was; we haven't been able to fit her into any category. She was truly frightening. How my husband turned out as nice as he did has to be a miracle.

We never decided whether no gift might have been better than the ones they chose.

Well, I guess that's why we are sharing here on this forum. Maybe it will help others see the red flags sooner so they can run before they get too snagged up in the Psychopaths life.

I came here to deal with MIL the psychopath, and not my mother, who was a slightly watered down version of "Mommie Dearest." I already spent years in therapy over her, so I'm not going to spout off much about her. I had to figure out on my own that she is a serious narcissist. So I understand what you are talking about, Akeso.

Every time I watch "Two and a Half Men," and Charlie and Alan Harper's mother is on there, man -- I figure one of the writers knows exactly what a full blown narcissist is. It may be funny, but it's also chilling.

Oops, rambling again. I need to start a new topic and ask something about the grown daughter of the MIL.

Thanks for listening,

blue heron