monetary dealings a sense of entitlement or truth in their eyes

[mother in law]

We are perplexed with ex dil and her dealings with money - mainly other peoples. To give you some background.

She is not into working at all and never really has been. I think maybe because she never gets on with anyone at work and also because she hates getting up out of bed and doing anything except "relaxing" (her expression) and this also goes for housework etc. Because of this she has relied on government support for money  for rent, food etc and child support from her ex (my son, and this bit is rightly so). She has not told the truth to govt agency and has done some work for cash, taken in boarders (they don't last long probably because of the chaos) therefore paid no taxes and been paid more by govt than entitled too. In years gone by when working 1 day a week she concocted a work injury (too long and involved to explain here but I heard the discussion around it with son and was shocked-he would not have a bar of it but she still did it) and when confronted and told to go back to work she resigned after taking all the injury money.

She lived with us for a short time and her expectations were that we would work and she would stay home and do little and that we should pay her for doing any cooking etc (she was not paying rent etc). A few things went missing in that time  and I had suspicions but for peace let it go. When we went on holiday her expectations were the same and even though we were paying (even for overseas holidays) if it suited she would make life difficult around food, places we visited etc. When it came to birthday presents she also set the bar very high ie wanted expensive presents and I had to reign her in at times.

In the divorce settlement she took 2/3 of the money (a significant amount) as  son had run out of strength to argue and he figured that in the end only the lawyers win. When gd (age 11) needs anything she says ask daddy or us (grandparents). The latest is she wanted a new computer and when son (her ex) said no she took the money from daughters bank account (over $300 , all gd's savings). She did not ask gd and has not acknowledged it. We needless to say are shocked as this is stealing from a child.

These are only some of the examples but does anyone else have experience of this? Does this come from a sense of entitlement  or is it the truth in their eyes? Is this BPD?

[estelithil]

Hi mother in law.

This all sounds very familiar to my uBPD mother. At least my mother did some work through her life, but she has always been incredibly lazy. I don't know if it is a sense of entitlement or what it is - maybe part of the illness where they feel lik ethey are owned something? My mother will often 'remember' great things she did and expect rewards for them (even thtough these things she supposedly did actually did not occur).

Hope someone els ehas some input, I'm interested to hear now too.

[Daliah]

Hi mother in law! My rather roundabout reply:

I can also report that my uBPD/NPD mother was downright exploitative of me in order to avoid spending money. It's a long story. The short version is that she saved herself a tonne of money (and work) because she emotionally blackmailed me into doing a lot of care-work for her mother (my grandmother) that really should have been done professionally, and menial and clerical work for her (my mother). When I cut contact after my grandmother's death, she only hired a cleaner and a secretary for herself, as she had to, once it had sunk in that I wasn't coming back. (I had taken care of the household from a very young age onwards.)

My mother had a very leisurely career as a self-employed professional because the steady income (not enormous, but very comfortable) was being supplied by my father (whom I would call an enabler on steroids).

My parents never took money from me directly because I didn't have any. As a child, I got an allowance that was a mere joke (and that I needed my parents' permission to spend when it added up to the equivalent of a few dollars every several months). I never received money from relatives (only secretly from my grandmother when I was an older teenager) because they weren't allowed to give me any. As soon as I started working as a teenager, though they didn't like that it meant additional time away from the house, they tolerated it to an extent because they stopped paying for anything until the money I had made was gone first (only on things I needed, of course, not things I wanted). So I never had money even then.

Indirectly, of course, they cost me a lot of money - all the money I made while growing up, some of which I should have been allowed to keep, and the money I wasn't able to make because my time was limited due to caretaking, household and clerical duties.

Money was what they controlled me with, especially as I got older. I suspect that how I barely scraped by well into my 20s (because I was completing a demanding course at uni, supporting myself and still as acting my grandmother's carer and my mother's cleaner and secretary) has caused me some degree of PTSD, and money remains a huge trigger for me, over a decade later.

I was often under the impression that the only emotional attachment my parents had was to their money. But, that doesn't just go for my uBPD/NPD mother, but also for my father, whom I'm having trouble categorising, though something was definitely wrong with him, too. If you had wanted to hurt them, you would have had to make them part with their money in ways they didn't want to spend it. It's not that they were cheap - they spent large amounts of money on things they liked and wanted, and on my sister, who is such a perfect clone of my mother that it is genuinely eerie. But the spending had to be on something they wanted for themselves or, when it was for my sister, on something they would have wanted for themselves at a younger age.

I can make the case that this was BPD-related in that there was only one 'right' way to be, according to my parents, especially my mother, and that the 'right' way was 'like her (/like them)', because she couldn't conceive of her children as people separate from herself. (My asserting myself as a separate person must have been to her as if one of her limbs had suddenly taken on a life of its own and refused to cooperate with the rest of her body.) If being different was wrong, she wasn't going to spend on (and reward) her child for being wrong.

But that doesn't explain why my father acted the same way, even though I have reviewed his behaviour in detail and with lots of distance, and I simply cannot identify him as a pwBPD. Perhaps his proactive enabling had a lot to do with his reinforcement of my mother's views towards me (/us).

So, I do have experience of monetary entitlement from a pwBPD, but I really don't know if, or to what extent, it is related exclusively to BPD.

[mother in law]

I would be interested to hear from some of the moderators on this as I never know what is just her cause she is lazy and doesn't seem to have any moral compass but will go on about her fellow country men being honest polite and well behaved. She had no insight into her own behavior which I realize is BPD behavior.  How much do we excuse and how much do we say no this is not acceptable?

[funfunctional]

Geesh.   You guys have been thru a lot with x dil.  So sorry.    And I can hear the sincerity in your tone too.      Your son married bad.    My husband's first wife he married bad.    She is very LAZY and yes, I think values of these woman sounds like "hell, let everyone else pay and do". 

As far as BPD I don't know.    I am not a professional and am learning & listening a lot here.   I find with many BPD people there is a general disregard for other people.  It is all about them.   My BPD sis DOES feel entitled to child support from her x and now wants more.  She dumped him for another man but of course it is all HIS fault.   Her x husabnd is kind and gentle.    He voluntarily spends extra money for things.  That isn't enough for her.  She is hateful and mean.   They really are sad souls. 

Does she have a drug issue?   

[jdtm]

Sounds almost exactly like our ex-DIL.  In fact, I was wondering if she might be same person and you were the "new" MIL (our ex-DIL has remarried).  Yes, she worked very little, spent all the family's money (our son's words, not mine) and even stole from our grandchildren's banks.  She also expected expensive gifts and rarely purchased anything for anyone else (including her children).  So, your last sentence

Does this come from a sense of entitlement  or is it the truth in their eyes? Is this BPD?

rings very true.  At least she is now our ex-DIL ... .

[Turkish]

While I don't think an entitlement attitude with regard to money, or being poor with money in general, is a BPD trait per se (how many "nons" do we know that don't handle money well?).

However, a lot of the pwBPD in our lives do seem to share this trait. With some, it's a Queen-like entitlement. With others, like my mom with her "get rich quick" schemes, it's just making one foolish decision after another. In your case, mother in law, it looks like the Queen behavior, as well as distorted thinking. For the emotionally immature person, their world-view centers upon themselves, and they can be incapable of seeing the impact of their actions upon others, no matter how obvious it might seem to us:

Emotional Immaturity

I know my mom suffers from severe depression, in addition to her BPD which I just found out about this year. She chose to retire early, a few years before she was at full retirement age to collect Social Security. She thereafter complained that for all of the years she worked, she only got a measly check each month from the government. It would have done no good to point out that her lifestyle was directly tied to her choices, so I let those comments go unanswered.

She also has traits of "magical thinking" where she wasted a lot of money on multi-level marketing and get rich quick schemes. My uBPDx, while a lot higher functioning than my mom, also has some views like this.

I'm sorry that your exDIL took money from her daughter's savings account. What can you do for your gd? Set up a separate account, perhaps, that your exDIL can't touch?

[mother in law]

Thank you for your replies. Turkish she (exdil) does have queen traits (I hadn't thought of that) as she is definitely a witch (the rages are incredible long, nasty and there is no talking before or after often for many days on end). My son has promised to try and retrieve the money and also to open another account that she (exdil) has no access to. If he cannot retrieve it we will deposit it into a new account for gd. I honestly think that exdil thinks we are "rich" enough to bail the situation out each time.

jdtm I looked back at your posts and yes there are huge similarities there. It is horrible and at times it has made me feel terrible but I have finally come to the conclusion that it doesn't help for two people to be "off the planet" so I tell myself to get my act together. I just hate my gd being involved in this and hearing so much hate about others (usually me). We have had to rescue her a few times. I find it hard that I cannot defend myself against the lies told about me such as I hit her father (after she had hit my son). Her father does not speak the same language and is much shorter than me. I have only seen him about 10 times as he lives in another country. When I look back it is laughable really! There are many other lies/distortions. The one difference is our son has always stuck by us even when he was in denial about her, we have a good relationship with him which I am eternally thankful for. And yes I it is better that she is exdil, but it still never ends or goes away. She is always having distortion campaigns and being verbally, emotionally and at times physically abusive and I think this includes towards my gd. Too sad for words.

Thank you funfunctional for your words. My son is also kind and gentle. I think the one thing it has done for me is to decide not to just sit back and put up with nastiness again. I am not nasty back but I have started to let other people know that I have boundaries and what they say is not acceptable! I think my poor husband is dealing a with a woman who was a mouse and has become more of a lion! I don't know if this is good or bad!

[funfunctional]

Hi MIL

It is GOOD!   You can't be a carpet to be walked upon. 

Keep up the strong lion approach and say it like it is.  Draw those lines.