How does your marriage and sanity survive living with your disabled mother?

You wrote that your mom was supposed to move in with your brother. Call him and get that ball rolling with him. When you have a plan for housing brother and mother, then inform her of the move in date. In the meantime, talk with her about problematic behaviors and your expectations. Make reasonable consequences when she falls into one of those problematic behaviors. Make sure you have a private bedroom with a lock on the door. Most of what I am suggesting can be found in any of the inexpensive "boundary books" by Townsend and Cloud. Get one, read it, and apply the principles.

Remind her of the deal made three years ago. Give her a deadline of one month or whatever you feel is fair, but she has to be out by them. Ask her how she would have felt as a young bride to have her mom live her and husband, with no privacy. Tell her you both need to be alone most of the time or you may divorce. Whatever you say do not back down. If its close to the deadline and she has not taken steps to find a place to live, then you take over and find a place for her to live and move her! Remind her weekly of the deadline. I know this is harsh sounding but why should you allow her to manipulate you through guilt. She’ll get over it eventually. Can she afford an assisted living facility or even independent living? That would be the best for her.

Marriages do take a hit during caregiving days. How can it not affect one’s marriage?

All I can say, is that many of us who did caregiving for a long time, lived to regret the loss of spending time with our spouses and children.

There has to be a healthy balance in our lives or we end up feeling resentful and completely miserable.

Best wishes to you and I hope that you will find a viable solution soon. You deserve to live your own life.

Oregon6266: Your marriage is your priority. Prayers sent for this most difficult of circumstances.

"NO is a complete sentence," try it out a few times on her without following it up with, "but" or "maybe we could do it another way."

Get her evaluated for Assisted living.

Very good question Sample.
Simply starting with realizing you cannot do it alone and you need to start living your life.
Sorry have to stop as my keyboard is acting up. More later if I fix it.

A better question is how does your marriage survive when the sick one is your spouse. Things are certainly different since my wife has become bed bound I was forced to close my business and give her full time care. Burnout is a real issue. I have also put my life on hold and not been able to do all those things I planned in retirement.

Light a fire under your brother to get the plans moving of buying a house together. I assume he lives somewhere else at this time, so you might talk to him about sharing the duties of her care - maybe at his house for a while? As for mom, I wouldn't tell her she's being kicked out, just that brother wants to spend time with her, too. Or take her/brother to look at some houses they can agree on.

Is there a way to build her a home on the property near dad with her share of the house sale money - or her share of money after the divorce? Or maybe even add on to dad's house with more of separate quarters for her to live? That might be way out of the equation if he has moved on into another relationship.

Maybe you just got a little complacent with the arrangement and have allowed a long period of time to lapse without mom finding a home for her/brother. See if you can get that moving. (Maybe her and brother could build a small home on the property???)

Is Mom only 58? What is her disability? Must not be too bad if she can be left alone. As newly weds you deserve to have your home to yourself. Again COVID halted a lot of things. Well, its here to stay so we just go on with our lives. This is now our normal.

Hopefully Mom is on Social Security Disability. She must have gotten her share of the farm in the divorce. If so, she has the money to move and she should. Be honest that you have no privacy and its effecting your marriage. That the agreement of sale was Dad was building his own house and Mom was buying a house with brother. Yes COVID happened but its here to stay. Time for her to find a place to live of her own. You need the house to yourselves.

Call your local Office of Aging and see what resources are available to Mom. Senior bussing, if she doesn't drive, is something she may need or u will find you will be driving her here and there. She should find a place near everything. Maybe walking distance to the store/pharmacy. She needs to be as independent as possible. And because for the last 3 yrs she seems to think its OK to live with a newly married couple, you are going to need to set boundries big time. Thats why I say she needs to move to where everything she needs is nearby.

Sell the farm and get your own place as far away from Mom and Dad as possible.

There’s a reason the phrase “bought the farm” means that a person died. No offense, but that was an insanely stupid thing to do. Rectify it before it destroys everything.

You describe yourself as a “working professional” so why in the world do you want to live on a farm?

Bottom line is that your husband and marriage MUST come first. Period.
And whatever it is that must happen to make it so, well....so be it.
You and your husband have gotten yourselves into one hot mess, and it's only the 2 of you that can get yourselves out of it.
So give mom a month or two notice that she needs to be out or you will have her evicted, and let the chips fall where they may. Your marriage depends on it.

You say it has been three years since you painted yourself into this corner, and paint you most certainly did with agreements about the family farm and so on. It won't be easy now to correct some of this, but the first thing that has to happen is honest discussion.
I feel that you are saying that (so far) things are going very well with your Dad. That is good, but the downward trajectory is STILL there for the future. Right now it is Mom who is the problem.
I can't know exactly what your agreements were with your parents. And that is important to know. What I do know is that right now you need the mediation and the counseling and the help of professionals. Knowing so little of your parents' mental capacity to understand I can't know if this is a time for you to sit down with them BOTH, with them seperately, with them with an Elder Law Attorney, with them with a mediator, or with them with a licensed social worker. But all of those are options. You need to come up now with the honest truth, and that is that this is destroying your lives and your marriage and you cannot go on in this manner.
Then you need to come up with a plan and with a contract.
This isn't going to be easy. You are correct, that this is a train wreck and it is one involving agreements that were made without imagining all that could go wrong. Because all you could imagine HAS gone wrong, and THEN some.
I am so sorry. But you are going to have to "take the bull by the horns". There is no way to face this without HARD HARD honesty. And it IS perhaps the most difficult thing in the world to do.
I sure do wish you the very best. I hear great hopelessness and panic in your voice. Try to slow that down and take it a day at a time, you and your hubby first sitting down and having with one another the beginning of honest talk. You need to know before this gets rolling that you understand one another and agree. Otherwise this may indeed be the end of this marriage.

What you have done in the past, out of the sincere love you feel for everyone concerned, is neither “right” nor “wrong”, but most likely pretty “misguided”, but at least right now, give up the idea of “right” or “wrong”.

”Mom is disabled but functional….”- what does that statement mean to you? Are you sure it means what you’re thinking and living within?

”…..fair with each other”? How about fair with you and your spouse?

And how does that justify her living with you, especially every waking hour?

It APPEARS that getting out from under “the family farm” MIGHT be a discussion starter. Woulda-coulda-shoulda isn’t working in anyone’s best interests, and isn’t it time to start considering “survival mode”?

How old is “Dad”? Does he work? Does he have an income? Does he contribute ANY SUPPORT to this teetering operation?

And “Mom”? How does she manage financially? Kind of you that you don’t want to throw her out, but whatever way you spin this, you ALL need to take a look at some hard choices, and then make them. Has your brother bailed out on their original plan?

Do YOU have all the information about your financial situation, including assets and liabilities of all four of you? If not GET IT. If so, find out RIGHT NOW. See if the agency that holds your mortgage offers the services of a financial manager, who can peel away the complications and drama and show you where you are in terms of dollars and sense.

Then consider where the financial resources of THE FOUR OF YOU can be used fairly (if anywhere) and THEN, remove “feelings” from facts, and tell yourself that you are in a situation that has NO GOOD ALTERNATIVES.

There are free and/or low cost weekend retreats for married couples in turmoil. Look for one, sometimes available through religious or social groups.

When you “….don’t know what to do…” do SOMETHING.

You and your spouse and your marriage ARE IMPORTANT. While you are keeping everyone else “happy”(?), isn’t it time for some happiness for your spouse and you?

I don't know why you ever wanted to buy the family farm. Even though your father living on a small house on the land works out for now, what's going to happen when he needs caregiving help? Would your H have preferred living totally separately from your family in land that was not in your family?

I think you were played by your brother. Have you asked him what's the holdup? Bet he had no intention to buy a house with your mother. And now you're stuck with your mother.

And you have a job outside the home, as presumably also does your husband? And your marriage is at the breaking point?

You will have to decide who takes precedence -- your husband or your mother.

Are there any other siblings?