I have a mother/daughter sympathy issue. It’s kind of complex but I’ll try to keep this short. My parents divorced 15 years ago and while it wasn’t amicable it wasn’t the worst divorce in history, my dad paid child support, he made sure we got to keep our house and my brother and I got everything we needed for school and school trips. So yeah it sucked but it happens, unless you talk to my mom and then it was the worst divorce in history, my dad was the worst dad ever, et cetera et cetera ad nauseam. Mom went back to college after the divorce and got a nursing degree so she could afford to support herself.

Anyway she has her degree and a well-paying job as a Director of Nursing for a nursing home. She worked at that nursing home for 11 years, until about two months ago, when she was fired. The circumstances of her dismissal were pretty questionable, it all started when she had to dismiss one of the nursing aides for verbally attacking and threatening one of the residents, the aide thought it was okay because he was a former family friend and her attack on him was in her opinion “outside” of work, even though she had had multiple warnings that it wasn’t. Anyway she had to go but her friends on the staff thought she was fired unfairly. Within a couple of weeks there was an incident with a resident who was being combative and my mom had to raise her voice to get the resident to hear her, a new member of the housekeeping crew heard her and reported it as verbal abuse. Well, things went downhill from there; first it was an incident that nobody saw, then they were coming out of the woodwork claiming that they saw everything and Mom struck the resident, cursed her, et cetera. Anyway she was given the boot.

Now for the problem: I sympathized with her at first in that it really sucks and it’s not a fun thing to have happen sort of way. However, her reaction to it was to basically go into mourning for a week, saying she was going to lose her house and her life was over. I kept telling her to surf the net and pound the pavement and an offer would turn up, I mean there is a nursing shortage in this country. So the second week she went out and did a job search and by the end of that week she had three job offers, all offering to pay more than what she was making before. She still acted like her life was over and moaned about how hard it would be to start a new job, she just wanted her old job back. At this point my patience was wearing thin. It’s not like she’s the only person who’s ever been fired. She took a new job where they love her and pay her better, but at least three times a week I hear from her about how this job is nice but she hates having to meet new people and learn new procedures, she liked how things were at her old job…my sympathy’s worn out.

Three weeks ago we were supposed to visit my little bro who had gotten a promotion at his new place, which is a three-hour drive away from us. Well, the Friday we were supposed to leave, the State Board of Health came to her new nursing home to investigate charges of abuse that had been brought before she even worked there. The investigation must not have gone well because her boss was upset and locked himself in his office to go over things. My mom decided this meant she was going to be fired and had a come-undone of massive proportions. I don’t know if I can even convey how ridiculous she was being. She called, and I thought somebody must have died from the way she was talking and then she told me what was going on and I almost laughed at her. I pointed out that there was no possible way she could be in trouble since it happened BEFORE she got there, but she refused to listen. So she stayed home from the trip to my brother’s so she could call all her friends and cry and scream that she was losing another job and would be out on her ass. As anyone with half a brain would realize, when she asked her boss it had nothing to do with her and her job was in no way in danger, but she now talks about that incident like it was a near miss, basically continuing her drama queen ways — and I’m done, I think she’s just being a drama queen and when she calls to cry on my shoulder I let her have her say and don’t even respond, which I know makes her feel even more sorry for herself.

I’ve tried to tell her I don’t want to listen to her whine anymore, but she turns it all around to “poor me, nobody understands how I suffer, and people who care about each other wouldn’t do this.” After the visit to my little bro that wasn’t, I told her I was sick of listening to it and she made it this whole “I can’t let you and your brother visit without me ’cause all you do is rag on me, why couldn’t you have defended me” thing. It’s like her divorce all over again, she’s been wearing a scarlet letter D for the past 15 years and now she wants to wear a scarlet letter F too.

How do I let her know that I’m sick of listening to her that if there’s a genuine issue, like when she first got fired, I’ll listen and I care but I’m sick of the fake dramas and I don’t want to hear it anymore?

I’ll wear a scarlet letter H for “Had enough!”

Well, you…stop listening. When an issue first comes up — a firing, a worry about her job, whatever it is — listen for a while, and then offer some comforting words and some advice. And then, if she’s not wanting to be comforted and she’s not heeding your counsel, end the conversation. Give her a reasonable number of “that’s terrible”s and “I see how you might feel that way”s, move on to the “have you tried”s and the “what if you”s, and if she’s still determined at that point to act like her life is an Italian opera, leave her to it.

She does it because it works. Yes, she also does it because she’s an anxious, insecure person, and there is a certain amount of sympathy you want to try to have for her on that count, but there does come a point when you have to tell her, “Mom, I’ve tried to reassure you, I’ve offered some ideas as solutions, and now I have to go — good luck, keep me posted.”

Because you can’t manage her or her reactions. If she wants to think you and your brother spend all your time together shit-talking her, that’s her choice. If she wants to give herself needless agita by jumping to paranoid conclusions, that’s her agita to deal with, not yours. You need to make it clear by your actions that you love her, you sympathize with her, and you want to help her — but if what she really wants is not sympathy or advice but a pity party, you’re not on board for that. And you do that by hanging up the phone or grabbing the car keys when she starts moaning and whining, and leaving the interaction.

She clearly is capable, when it comes down to it, of getting her shit together, but as long as she thinks she has an audience for the drama, she doesn’t do it. Close the curtains. No more whinging about your dad to you, no more self-absorbed scab-picking about her job security. And you don’t make an announcement about it; you just don’t listen to it. Hang up. Go for a drive. Remove yourself from her whine radius.

Hi Sars,

Okay! So here’s the scenario: Started dating Boy. Like Boy a lot. Realize that Boy drinks way too much. Give boy ultimatum: Me or the three martinis after work every day. Boy goes with the “me” option. Boy follows through. Move in with Boy. I still drink (glass of wine, one or two beers after work, not every day). Boy starts having, with me, about once a week, one beer or one glass of wine when I do. This is where it breaks down…

You may be wondering why only one beer or glass of wine on his part is a problem. The thing that made Boy’s drinking extra bad was that he has the worst tolerance for alcohol I have ever seen. He has one glass and it’s like he’s had three or four and he doesn’t sober up until the next morning. Plus he’s a gloomy drunk with a side of clingy.

So we had another talk, I explained all this, and he promised to lay off even this amount. And he’s stuck to that, but it’s gotten me wondering the following:

Is it selfish of me to even bring alcohol into our house, to have it around him? Is it selfish of me to want to be able to have a drink in front of him? I don’t particularly care for bars, but I do like having some wine with dinner, or a beer with television. When we had that first big “You need to stop this” summit I told him I didn’t want to end up being his nurse/enabler, but I don’t want to be actively detrimental to his sobriety. I already feel oddly guilty asking him to stop with the infrequent single servings.

Sincerely,
Not Quite Carry Nation

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Dear Carry,

The problem here, in my view, is not so much that you’re drinking in the house while “asking” him not to, although if I were him, I wouldn’t be real keen on that. The problem is that you’re trying to change him, and you’re trying to do it without any effort or discomfort on your part.

I mean, what’s the actual problem here? The actual problem is that, when he drinks, he annoys you. Right? So you want him to change this aspect of himself, which is not unreasonable but not terribly practical either, and your solution is not to address the behavior that results from the drinking, which is the real issue; your solution is to ask him to stop the drinking itself, which he is only doing for you, not for himself, so it’s probably not going to work and you’re definitely going to have to police it since it was your idea.

I’m not saying he doesn’t have a problem relationship with alcohol; I’m not going to get into the fairness aspect of this. I’m telling you that you can’t change people. People have to change themselves. You’ve made it clear to him that you don’t like how he acts when he’s drinking, and he has to make the decisions from there. You need to make it equally clear that his sobriety is important to you, and that probably means giving up the beer in front of Idol and showing him that it’s important to you instead of telling him, and he has to make the decisions from there. And if he’s still making choices you can’t live with, you need to move out.

What you want is for him to hold his booze better. That’s not on the table. You can’t change him; you can only change yourself. Decide if a real change in your own life is what you want here, if he’s worth it to you. If you can’t give up the merlot with your ravioli, okay, but this isn’t about fairness. This is about understanding that it’s not just your boyfriend who’s making certain choices here.

[7/19/06]

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