Top products from r/motherinlawsfromhell

Oh dear. Very sorry to hear this.

I would echo a need for him to go to therapy as others have stated. I would also echo that HE needs to do this, not you. You might be a catalyst for him addressing it, but he has to step up and stand his ground with his mother.

A few quick things I would share.

Books:

1. Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care About Has Borderline Personality Disorder
   
2. The Wizard of Oz and Other Narcissists: Coping with the One-Way Relationship in Work, Love, and Family
   
   Therapy Concepts (worth reading about a bit)
   
   
3. Boundaries
   
4. Narcissistic (specifically in the context of being a parent)
   
5. Individuation (the process by which one truly understands themselves outside their relationship to their parentage)
   
   My Context:
   
   I had to go through this with my mother and it has 99% completely destroyed my relationship with her. We don't communicate anymore and she sold her house and moved across the country away from us. This happened because I stood up for myself, my wife, my new baby...my family. She pushed boundaries and continued to make everything about here, and I wasn't having it. I called her out hard, making the point that my priority is MY family, and I can't tolerate her behaviors effect on my family, and that I needed her to listen and understand my parameters for an ongoing relationship with me as an adult. She failed to understand because she doesn't understand how to have relationships on any kind of mutual terms. She has some combination of narcissism / borderline personality disorder. Rather than try and evolve our relationship to enjoy this new chapter of my being and adult, and now a father, she just pulled up stakes and left as a power play to try and get me to bow down and apologize. All the while, my wife is seen as the villain that caused this.
   
   One could say, this is heartbreaking because I cast my mother aside, and her support and presence in mine and my families life. The way I see it is, my mother raised me to make a happy loving life for myself, and I have pursued, prioritized and protected just that. I'm disappointed that my mother let her own narcissism prevent her from joining me in this chapter of my life, where she could have been a passenger and enjoy the fruits of her having raised me well. At some point, had I not drawn this line in the sand, I would have been failing my mother by not making a life for myself.
   
   It won't get better. The situation will stay the same, and if you get married and have a family, it will just be the same with higher stakes. He needs to outline the new world order in which he has a new family. If she can't get on board with that, then you are better off without her. Being his mother is a reason to support and treat her son well, not a blank check to do whatever she wants to him with infinite forgiveness. That's not being a good mother. Thats having an identity crisis with your son as collateral damage.

Look up the book, Will I ever be good enough, healing the daughters of narcissistic mothers, it helped me tremendously,
My mother is awful, she was awful to my husband, unless she wanted something from him, she would have preferred me divorced and living with her with our kids,
The book opened my eyes big time!

Will I Ever Be Good Enough?: Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers https://www.amazon.com/dp/1439129436/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_lA6GDbBFYB3G3