My ex-husband is relapsing. His mother is so deeply enmeshed she called herself his wife to his doctors—and now my son has to stay there.
I really just need to vent to people who might understand, because I am hitting a wall with the sheer toxicity of my ex-husband’s family.
During our trial separation, my ex crashed a car, got a DWI, and went to jail. After our divorce, he moved back in with his mother. Last year, his addiction got so bad that he ended up on life support for weeks after an overdose before going to rehab.
The biggest, most disturbing issue here is his mother’s relationship with him. To give you an idea of the nuclear family dynamic she has set up in her head: when she tells me stories about her dog, she constantly refers to my ex-husband as "Daddy."
It gets worse. When he was in the hospital fighting for his life, she "accidentally" referred to herself as his wife, not his mom, to multiple different doctors on more than one occasion. She also went out of her way to aggressively point out to staff that I was just the ex-wife. To top it off, while he was literally on life support, she decided that was the perfect moment to "come clean" to me and reveal that he had been having an eight-year affair during our marriage.
When he left rehab and moved back in with her, she claimed he wouldn't be allowed to use drugs. Then the goalposts shifted to "he's allowed to use on certain occasions." Now, he is in a full-blown relapse. She refuses to let him go, lying and covering for him because she is so desperately co-dependent and obsessed with him that she would rather watch him fall into despair than see him independent and healthy.
To make matters worse, my 15-year-old son is about to go stay with them for a whole month. My hands are legally tied because she is sober and in the home, so he isn't in "direct physical danger." But I am sick to my stomach. I do not want my teenager around this sick, toxic dynamic, the enabling, and a grandmother who is completely unhinged.