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You can't fix stupid.

However, lighter fluid is pretty cheap at Wal-Mart. /s


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Welch, I'm sorry if this is going to sound cold or mean, but people like her only continue to act that way because the people around her keep letting her get away with it - or in other words, enabling her - you included to some extent.

Leave her to fend for herself and watch how fast things change.

Welch, I submit to you that she actually DOES get it. And so does her son.

Everybody keeps giving them what they want! So they definitely "get it". They are getting it all!

And regardless of your rant to the opposite, you are actually volunteering to be their loyal servant. Some call this "enabling". Whatever name you attach to it, you are serving their hubris. The evidence is strong that you're so deep in these people's stories, with paragraph after paragraph of great detail regarding their attitudes, returns, breakages, phone arguments, lack of understanding of this or that, a true log of everything that they did. And their egos grow. Huge.

Talk to your wife about this; she's probably sick of them too. For your own health, you may want to step back a bit. Stop taking their calls for a week. Or a month. They'll get on. Or not. Whatever!

Oh and if you have made (or are thinking of making) the mistake of letting them live with you (or near you), well there's nothing that can help you until you move your keester out of there.

Count me in with the "she's found a soft spot" crowd. You've never posted anything saying that your better half is pushing you into this, so take the hint she's giving you. Leeches suck you dry and then move on to the next victim. Refuse to be a victim and force her off to the next one.

This needs to be a Friday Night Topic two days from now

Not everyone is smart. Not everyone is well educated. Not everyone is as 'fair-minded' as the majority of society. A lot of people love to play the victim.

Those are the problems here as I see it. People also naturally gravitate towards an environment which is accommodating to their behaviour and traits in a sort of Darwinian way. If you get by (or get off) on behaving a certain way than the environment which supports that behaviour is the one which is most attractive and fruitful to you. As BIF suggested if you have someone behaving badly in your life then it's quite probable that you're in some way supporting their bad behaviour.

Don't make the mistake thinking that you can change them, it's unlikely. There's a distant member of my family who seems to get off on lying to and stealing from people, even his own family, even his workplace jeopardizing a fantastic job. If he had a drug addiction perhaps his behaviour would have an explanation - but he doesn't. The drug seems to be the act of cheating others and for a while thinking he's getting away with it. We didn't stand for that behaviour around us and he doesn't come around anymore, but did he change his ways? No.

We can barely change our own behaviours, just observe how may people around you are 'on a diet' and how many succeed, that's all the proof you need for that. There is no harm in trying to help them but if you find yourself getting sucked into drama and wasting of your time and energy which is detrimental to your life it's time to distance yourself from them. Don't feel bad about it either, they WILL find other more accommodating people to fill your role in their life and they'll be happier for it.

What you guys are saying is dead on. I haven't enabled them at all after loaning him my atrix 4g that he broke. I thought I had mentioned it before but I guess I left those details out as well. My mother in law currently lives with us, it was meant to be for 1 year max while they moved here. Luckily for us after loosing her job she has already bought a ticket to move back to NY and will be gone in less than a week.

I learned a long time ago that changing someone that set in their ways at the age of 50+ is a near impossible task. At this point I don't care anymore and am happy to have them gone. My wife most certainly has been sick of it and wanted her mother gone back the second month they were here (7 months ago).

None of what you guys said was harsh, rude or mean. Its the truth. At first I was a bit soft as I like to give people the benefit of the doubt. It didn't take too long before I noticed the futility of my efforts. I've since watched them run around like chickens with their heads cut off making costly mistake after costly mistake. I found it particularly funny that she boxed things up to send back home and lost her mind when the postal service told her it would cost 104.00 to ship it. After all it was a Lowes moving box that weighed 67 pounds. Yet she swears it was only $30 before. I receieved those boxes when they first got here and they were both much smaller and lighter.

I'd say that she is looking for attention, but knowing her at this point that is giving her way to much credit. She isn't smart enough to be that manipulative (her son is another matter). I mean this is a person who argued with me that the movie "The Patriot" took place during our Civil War and not the American Revolution. I eventually pulled up the movie Synopsys to show her. She then began to talk about how it was easy to confuse because of all of the British people who were in our civil war and fought with the south, something she had just learned about when taking her college history class.... can't make this stuff up folks.

Welch wrote:

MIL stuff

Just keep in mind, you married her. NOT her mom. There's no reason whatsoever that you have to put up with large amounts of stupidity (some is probably inevitable) just because you're married to her kid.

idchafee wrote:

Welch wrote:

MIL stuff

Just keep in mind, you married her. NOT her mom. There's no reason whatsoever that you have to put up with large amounts of stupidity (some is probably inevitable) just because you're married to her kid.

The success of this strategy is inversely proportional to the quality of the relationship She has with her Mom.

idchafee wrote:

Welch wrote:

MIL stuff

Just keep in mind, you married her. NOT her mom. There's no reason whatsoever that you have to put up with large amounts of stupidity (some is probably inevitable) just because you're married to her kid.

MIL called me this afternoon. Her 90-something boyfriend bought her a WOW! computer and I have to spend my weekend figuring out how to make it Alma-proof (that;s her name). So much for anything else that needed doing this weekend. Her youngest son bought her a Kindle Fire several years ago as a peace offering when he claimed that he couldn't make the family Xmas in VT from Philly because he & wife had no more time off, then posted Facebook pictures of his family on the Florida beaches. To this day my 16YO daughter tries to walk Alma through the Kindle and all Alma can say is "how do I get the typewriter?"

Wife's family is 7 kids and this idiot is the baby and was always coddled and shielded from his narcissism. I like his wife and his kids are OK, but he needed to be shot 20+ years ago.

Step one, install Debian Unstable. Step two, laugh evilly.

On a serious note, a full-featured Linux desktop environment is actually a pretty good choice for the web/email/documents crowd. It's hard to screw it up once everything's installed, and compatibility isn't going to be an issue if all they need are a handful of static applications.