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Help us live with Narcissism

Kalling
Community Member
We are a family just realizing that our son has married in to a family where the mother is a narcissist. We understand he hasn't and probably won't realize it for a long time. He has been married for a year and a half and over that time the mother is slowly tying to isolate his family from him. Not only his mother and father but his brothers and their wives as well. It's coming to a point where our family is starting to break away from our son, we've been reading up on narcissism and have finally realized what the mother is doing to our family. We know that we cannot change her behavior and don't want to cause any pain to our son with his new family. We are feeling more and more isolated and really need to know how to live with this situation instead of bottling up our anxiety. We all had a wonderful family relationship but now I am starting to feel the depression setting in please help me survive our hearts are breaking to see our family in this state.
5 Replies 5

trustlife
Blue Voices Member
Blue Voices Member
Hi Kalling, thanks for the post. I don't really understand how the Mother-in-law is driving this wedge between your son and your family. Does she feel you and your family are not good enough to be part of her family? How do you get on with your sister-in-law? I get the impression you would not like to broach the subject with you son. Is that correct. There are a couple of ways to handle this but I'd like some more understanding please.

Hello thanks for replying. I have a wonderful relationship with all of my sister in laws (4) never had a bad word and I have always had a wonderful relationship with my husbands family. You are right we are finding it difficult to approach with our son. He loves his wife so much and we don't want to cause any trouble as he is very happy and they are going to have a baby in July. When we are together as one big family the mother in law and the children (all adults)including my sons wife will never stay in the same room as us, they almost don't talk at all to our family. Whenever their mother is in the room her whole family gather around her like children and stay there until she leaves, she lives 10 minutes away from them all. They will literally get up and leave the room we are in, to huddle around her then no have any conversation with any of our family anymore, it's bizzare. Our son has started to join them in their huddle and he has never been like this always been inclusive. It's a real huddle too, the children surround her so if there is no chairs they sit on the floor with their backs to us (I know this is hard to believe) and she is generally the topic of conversation.

Hi Kalling

This all sounds rather odd - I'd be asking your son what the issue is... I mean they're all being rather strange and obvious in their behaviour, I'd be asking the "matriarch" herself.

And as far as you know there has been no "critical incident" which has set this all off that you are aware of?? Surely there was a point that there was communication and then none? Did it coincide with the wedding?

Like trustlife asked, what is she actually doing to drive a wedge, apart from isolating herself and her family at events??

She and her family are treating us all like this. It's been happening oh so slowly, before the wedding, we were great mates at the beginning, she was texting and calling as if we were friends from way back. That never bothered me at all as a matter of fact I was pretty happy that they had accepted us, It never coincided with the wedding, as far as I can see. The mother organizes everything, that is just what she is like, she thrived on organizing anything to do with the wedding so I let her because she wanted to. I helped where I could. I know it all sounds bizzare, we went to a family BBQ when all of our family was invited then they all huddled around the BBQ that no one else could get around it as it was in a small corner, they didn't make us feel comfortable or almost acknowledge that we were there. Their family her and the children are making us feel so unwelcome not just us but our sons brothers and their family that we feel we don't want to be around to be treated this way. She lives about 10 minutes away and is at their house often. So the isolation starts, my son doesn't seem to see what's happening. I thought I was alone in this but we were at a party at my sons house and it happened the then. My husband who usually seems to be unaware of these things told me yesterday how he is feeling mortified by their treatment of our family, so we talked about it together for the first time and have read a lot and from all accounts the only thing we have noticed that she is the matriarch. This is why I am on this website trying to find out how to deal with this situation as a family without causing trouble for our son.

Chris_B
Blue Voices Member
Blue Voices Member

Hi everyone, this thread is a double so we're going to close it off. You can continue your conversation in the other version of this thread here so we can keep everything in one place:

Help us live with narcissism