Mom living with us - driving me mad!

My mother has opted to live with us - basically we’ve all immigrated and she doesn’t have enough money to sustain herself long term and into retirement. We have offered a room in our home and in the long term we will be converting our garage to make a small living area for her. It’s only been a few weeks but having her live with us is triggering me big time. She has always had mental health issues, weight issues, etc, and I’d say her biggest focuses are between how much she hates herself and food. She does nothing physical, if she goes up and down the stairs 5 times a day it’s a lot. We go for walks often and always ask her to join us, she always refuses (even though before moving in she seemed excited about being able to join). Her mobility is now becoming an issue because of this and I have done everything I can to make it easier for her (10 mins walks, knee braces, breaks when she wants it, she can turn around when she’s had enough, etc). She has no friends and makes no attempt to go out and make some, she won’t leave the house unless I am with her. Her car is literally growing moss on it because it’s been used so infrequently. She hates my husband, and I can see that almost everything he does triggers her, so she spends most of her time in her room sulking from a small interaction that really meant nothing - she reads negative intentions from him and gets offended SUPER easily. She can’t take any sort of frank conversations or boundary discussions, so I can’t speak to her about any of this or else it will turn into “Fine, I’ll just move out”, when long term this isn’t a good solution. She is not prepared to face difficult facts about herself and cannot take conversations about how her actions affect me. I’m going mad, and I can see my husband is getting increasingly frustrated with her. Honestly at this point I want to tell her to move out and she must just deal on her own because we can’t keep walking on eggshells around her, it’s exhausting. It doesn’t help that I’ve been at this game (of trying to help her) since I can remember, mothering her since I was a teenager. It’s a big trigger. Not sure what to do at this point… any suggestions would be helpful 😩

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This is literally why my mother is not allowed to live with us. Nope. I’m sorry this is happening 😔

Therapy, & if she wanna leave let her cuz they got resources. Your home should be filled with peace as your safe space and anyone disturbing that must go

Tell her to move out. If she expect to live with people and not make a 2 cents efforts, it makes it impossible. If you can't speak to her or see any future improvement, she has to move out. You are not her parents.

Sounds a lot like my mom, but I have made the decision to try to let her live with us, I hope it doesn't turn out like this. But honestly it just sounds like you are going to have to have the boundary discussion with her. And if she can't respect your boundaries then there's only one place for her to go. It's sad because I know how you feel, you want what is best for her, but It doesn't seem like she wants it for herself.

@Benet She was in therapy for like 20 years, it did nothing. She became friends with her therapist and was one of the very few social interactions she ever had 🫣 But I agree, my home shouldn’t be filled with this nonsense, I never signed up for this shit.

Update: she wanted me to grab something off of a top shelf today so I handed her a small stool that I use to reach the top shelves (I was busy with my toddler at the time), she said she still needed me to get it for her, I asked her why, she said she doesn’t have the strength to stand up on the small stool (maybe 10-15cm high) so I said very gently “perhaps you can join us on some walks so that you can build up your strength to be able to do that”, and she FREAKED OUT at me. She ran upstairs to sulk for the rest of the day. Then she came downstairs talking about where she’s going to look to move to. I couldn’t… I had to leave the room. I saw red. F her and the horse she thinks she rode in on, I’m done.

@Alexis Yeah I’m seeing the error of my ways, I think I’m being generous and helpful and she just throws it back in my face. She can live on her own and see how well it goes when she becomes immobile and alone. I’ve had enough.

@Ali she’s 64, still working (desk job). We immigrated to a new country, but she never had friends in our old country. I’ve always been her go-to for company and to fix her problems. She has depression and is bipolar, but honestly it’s mostly caused by the way she chooses to live her life. There is plenty to do for anyone that’s interested in our area. I once tried to get her to join a community for over 60s that would have meetups and fun activities. She went ONCE and never again. I’ve tried everything to help her, and I mean everything. At one point I was cooking her special meals to help her diet (that she wanted to do), and then she would come home and binge an entire box of donuts that she bought and throw out all the meals I had prepared for her. I’ve tried to go to activities WITH her, but I also have a life and can’t be her chaperone 24/7.

@Ali I’m feeling same as you though, she’s more of a burden than a help. I have a toddler and am 8 months pregnant with my second child, and she is wreaking havoc on my emotions more than anything put together. Life is difficult enough at the moment without having to pander to her crazy fragile emotions. Sorry for your awful situation, I feel your pain 😩

...hey she ran and got some cardio in which sounds like a start. And yes those boundaries with parents can be tricky to reinforce but just remember they are human and boundaries are essential to maintaining a healthy relationship.

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