Advice for my mother...SHE is the BM still in love with my dad.
I read someone else's post earlier asking advice on how to handle when the BM is still in love with your husband. This totally turned everything around on me and put a whole new perspective on my dad's relationship with his wife. My own mother is the BM in that situation...she would take back my father in a heartbeat. She would love to talk to him every day, or email him every day...just to "talk". She started emailing him a few years back when my sister was getting married, her excuse being that it was about the wedding and everything. Finally my dad ended up telling her that the emailing was inappropriate and that he wouldn't do that to his wife. This broke my mom's heart -- again.
They have been divorced now for 10 years. My dad has been remarried for 6 years. At my sister's wedding, my mom told her that she 'needed' to sit next to him at the ceremony because it was THEIR daughter getting married. So in the front row, there was mom (happy as a lark), dad (awkward) and his wife (even more awkward). My mom has been in counseling, has depression issues, feels that her life has gone downhill ever since the divorce, etc. Both my sister and I feel that my dad and his wife are perfect for each other, and cannot see how my dad and my mom ever even married.
I've tried to get my mom to see that life goes on, that she is wasting her life because she won't put herself out there for anyone else. She won't join any clubs to meet anyone, and I truly believe that SHE believes some day my dad will come back for her. Nevermind the fact that he had an affair on her WITH the woman he's now married to.
I know this is going to come up again because now we are planning my wedding. I am concerned that it will be all the same issues again and that we'll be worried about my mom and how she'll act again. Any thoughts or words of advice?
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She is 52 years old. She's
She is 52 years old. She's not quite like the other crazy BMs here, although I don't know how she would have been if the whole thing had happened when my sister and I were younger. It all happened when I was a senior in high school, so we were old enough to talk some sense into her. She's always had a lot of issues with depression and it leads back to her upbringing...my dad was her only boyfriend, high school sweethearts, married for 21 years. She just can't let go.
That’s heartbreaking… it
That’s heartbreaking… it really sounds like your mom could use some counseling and closure. Her marriage is this unburied corpse just hanging around her shoulders dragging her down. She needs to accept the fact that it’s over and seriously move on and try to find her own happiness.
Poor poor woman… I’m trying to put it in perspective, my own mother has a very hard shell, she’s the kind of woman who sees her presence as a gift (not in a snobby or self centered way!) to her mate’s life, she’s said many times “if he wants to go, there’s the door, I’m not wasting my time on someone who doesn’t love me!” and she means it!
I pray that your mum finds some peace and happiness… the same way I pray that my husbands ex finds her own happiness some day. *sheeeesh* that wedding thing just gave me the creeps… trying to imagine that pew at my step kids wedding…
I can see why you would say
I can see why you would say something like that. I guess it was mostly that once my sister and I gave my new stepmother a chance, we really didn't have anything to dislike about her. My parents had been going to counseling for years on and off...it was never a "bad" relationship, as in, it wans't abusive and they didn't fight and it wasn't dramatic at all. It just wasn't special, either. I think we both deep down understood that and didn't blame my dad for what he did in the end, because he is 200 times happier now than ever before. He and his wife share all of the same interests and they truly love each other, and have fun with each other. I have grown to love his wife through the years...as I said, I can't blame him for bettering his life. Should he have made better choices in the whole affair/situation? Absolutely.
But we all make mistakes...and sometimes they hurt others. My dad would never be the type to hurt his family intentionally, so for something like this that was such a whirlwind/change for my family, it had to be a HUGE thing for him to deal with. He was in a lot of pain over what happened, and we could both tell. I don't know if that explains it well enough, but I guess that's the gist about why we forgave him.
We also can see some of my mom's...for lack of a better term coming to mind, faults. They could be positives if she were with someone else, but mixing her personality with my dad's just really didn't go together. She is very shy, and he is very outgoing. She refuses to have a drop of alcohol, and my dad likes to drink on the weekends and let loose sometimes. Just naming a few things, but I think you can get the point.