(09-30-2016, 03:37 PM)taramarie Wrote: I often wonder if sometimes I am playing the adult and my mother the child. To some degree we are. I have learned earlier on what an adult should be like by watching my mothers many mistakes. I aim not to be like that.
You need to get her some help, if necessary in a rehab center. She has problems, and she can well mess you up if you keep her around without her making some changes that make her a trustworthy adult. She can keep you from having a satisfying love life. As someone with a perverse mate with the maiden name Asperger that allowed no divorce and no cheating I can see a big gap in your life if you can't get her to drastically change her ways or get out of your life. Asperger's syndrome, I assure you, is tougher to kick than alcohol, drugs, or abusive relationships. As far as that goes, you may need some guidance yourself so that you can get some freedom.
You will have to ask whether the house you live in is a home or is a jail for you. It may be a tough thing to say, but some assets are not worth the costs of keeping them. So a house in which you are a veritable prison in which you take care of a child in adult form may be not as desirable as a tiny apartment for which you pay exorbitant rent. Life is often a question of having freedom and having property that owns you. You may have to make clear that a tiny apartment for which you must pay exorbitant rent can make life far simpler for you than having to take care of her because your mother has never grown up. Know that if you go to a tiny, exorbitantly-priced apartment, that when you do she gets to watch you give away or sell off the treasures that she cherishes... No, not my stamp collection! No, not my awards for ballet! No, not my precious china and artwork! No, not that fine furniture! No, not my music collection!
Tough luck to her. She needs to make some tough, rational choices.
If you have any success in your field, then you will be an attractive mate for someone capable of contributing along with you for paying a mortgage. But note well: your mate will have even more problems with your mother than you have. That mate will not want your mother around. There are in-laws who can get along with each other, but I can't imagine any in-law getting along with her.
I have no idea what her age is, but many people now in their late 50s to their early 70s have chosen to maintain childlike roles long after such is appropriate. Such was monstrously cruel to children (one contributor to many messed-up lives of Generation X in America) and it is now monstrously cruel to adults who are old enough to have real children -- the children whom one expects to develop in the presence of competent adult role models. But if she is a bad parent, she will be little less competent as a grandparent.
Once one has children, one must cease being a child oneself. Sure, one can watch a Disney or Miyazki cartoon epic and imagine yourself a child again for an hour-and-a-half or so... but that is as far as it goes. Children need a genuine adult in a house. As a substitute teacher I have seen the consequences of a child in a family in which there is no semblance of an adult except for age. It is ugly.
Above all, get the creditors to take away her credit cards. Credit cards are for adults == not for children.
I hope that I have not said too much.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.