I usually don't bring personal issues onto the board, but I was wondering what people's thoughts are on controlling parents.
I was brought up in a family where our views, even if our parents didn't agree - were respected. This was especially true when it came to my mother. Everything was a family decision - when we would be looking for a car - the entire family was involved, when we discussed vacations, again everyone was involved. We were also brought up to be independent and make our own decisions, but of course with guidance from our parents. We always ate dinner as a family. Even when my father would work late my mother would ask if we wanted to eat "now" or wait until he came home. We would always wait until he came home so we could eat as a family.
My cousin Steve on the other hand has grown up with my cousin Rosemary as his mother. She rules everyone in her life with the fear that if they don't do what she wants, they will be out of her life. I'm one of those people who is out of her life, but I have no idea what I did. Steve is 21 and is not allowed to speak to me on orders of his mother. She has told him that if she finds out that he speaks to me, she will never speak to him again and will take away his car, which she merely co-signed for, but he makes the payments on, pays the insurance and put the down payment on. Every time we want to do something he has to come up with some lie to tell his mother.
Steve, instead of writing out his own checks, gives his mother money and she writes out the checks for his credit cards and bills. When last year, her father was planning on moving to NC - Rosemary put their house up for sale and moved to NC. No question or discussion from anyone else in the family. When her father ended up not moving to NC but instead moved somewhere near Atlantic City, she again made the decision to move back up to NJ less than six month after moving to NC. They now live again only a block from where they lived.
Steve always comes to me and says "my mother is making me and I don't want to". Just last week Steve came to me and said that his mother was making him go to Florida with her to go to his grandmothers and he didn't want to. It was basically because she doesn't think his life is going the right way and she wanted to talk to him about it (granted his life has been in shambles, but there are many reasons I see for it). I told him that if he didn't want to go, she can't make him. He's 21 years old.
Just a couple of weeks ago he was looking for a new job and asked me to help him. I made a phone call to one of my contacts in Seaside Heights and he got a phone call for a job there. He went on the interview, came out and told me he got the job. When he got home and told his mother, she told him that she was forbidding him from working in Seaside Heights stating that it is a dangerous place. I don't know the last time she stepped foot in Seaside, the only place she seems to go is either her house, work or to gamble in AC. Anyway - what she was reading in the papers that was giving her concern, was Seaside Park and deals with the cops and the Sawmill. It was no where near where he got the job. So instead of making about $13 an hour at a restaurant in Seaside, he's doing something that his mother approves of better - working $9/hr at Shop Rite stocking shelves from 10:00pm - 6:00am.
One time we were going somewhere and we would be driving on the Parkway. He said he had to pay the tolls with cash and he took off his ez-pass transponder. I asked why and he said that his mother checks his ez-pass records to see where he drives.
Steve is like a brother to me, but I hate the fact that his mother doesn't treat him like an adult. But it's not only him. She controls her husband, father & mother and everyone else in her life. I think one of her problems with me is that she couldn't and can't control me. The whole thing though is that this situation is SEVERELY affecting my relationship with Steve. He doesn't think it should matter to me. But the when we can't do something because he has to come up with some lie to his mother it does. Last October we had plans to go to Canada. We were all set and the day we were leaving, he tells me he can't go. At first he told me that it wa because he had to work, but then later he admitted he was afraid his mother would find out - even though she was all the way in NORTH CAROLINA! Several times we were to make that trip afterward and each time it fell through. He was supposed to go on the cruise with me, that fell through.
On my birthday, he was over celebrating it with me. At around 10:00 his mother called and told him she wanted him home "RIGHT NOW!". I think she knew he was over here, because I'm sure she knew it was my birthday.
I've thought about writing a letter to my cousin Rosemary - but Steve doesn't want that because it'll cause a lot of problems for him. He supposedly wants me in his life, but is afraid of standing up to his mother.
Does anyone have any experience with controlling parents? He seems to not believe that his mother, if he doesn't do something about it now, we control every aspect of his life even once he gets married. It can actually end up destroyng his marriage too.