MIL cant afford to eat bit of a rant...

ceridwen

Poor woman.

She has obviously made a bit of a rod for her own back by letting this lazy lump get away with murder for so long - but I can see why you want to help her and she is lucky to have a DIL like yourself.

I'm not quite clear as to what her housing situation is - maybe I missed it somewhere along the thread? Does she privately rent/rent from the Public Sector or own her own house?

The type of tenure she has would make a difference to how I personally would handle the situation in her place - so maybe it might help in her situation????

Just thinking that if it was privately rented - then that would be by far the easiest set-up to deal with - as, in her shoes, I would go behind Lazy Lumps back and give my notice discreetly to the landlord and someway/somehow manage to get Lump out of the house for the day and he would come back to an empty house and the locks changed and no indication as to where I/my property and my food had moved to and a landlord now intent on renting the property out to someone else.

I would think this would still be possible with a Public Sector tenancy - ie arranging to swap to another property behind Lazy Lumps back and ditto (ie move whilst he was out somewhere for the day).

If she owns her own house - then life becomes more difficult. Its a question of whether he would kick the door down if he came back and found the locks had been changed and his belongings were in the garden. So - its a judgement call as to whether Lazy Lump would start getting "physical" with MIL if she still has to stay living there (ie because she does own the place).

I am also worrying about her stealing food from work - that is a very high risk way of trying to manage the situation.

For right now - having MIL stay with you for a couple of weeks and having a family conference (minus Lazy Lump) sounds like a good way forward.

euronorris

BitterAndTwisted wrote: »

ETA: He's got social-interaction problems aside from his addiction to this WOW thing, hasn't he?

I would say that those issues (and probably others - if he's that overweight then I would expect he has some self esteem issues) lead to the WoW addiction. Not the other way around.

I also play, infrequently, and the only people I've known to get addicted to it, do so when there is something else wrong/missing in their life. ie, my OH was pretty addicted before he met me. It was his way of coping after his ex cheated on him. The fantasy world seems soooo much more appealing than the real one and you still interact with other people so you can kid yourself that it's normal and OK to spend all your time there.

Has he ever received any counselling? Could social services help? He's not going to get better without help, and I don't think that his family can provide all of the help he needs (or are too afraid too).

Good luck, and big hugs. xx

laurenjs88

Wow thank-you for all the responses!

I did try to talk to OH again but it just ended badly.

MIL does own the house, but has kept having to remortgage it after the state FIL left her in, so she will never actually own the house herself. To be honest its crumbling apart anyway. I think she should stop paying and let the mortgage company repo it.

MIL has completly enabled his behaviour and I know that alot of this is her own doing, but she's not done it on purpose if that makes sense. She is just too soft.

OH also went through a gaming addict stage, though through that he did actually become a semi-professional gamer and represented England in Korea for one of these game things.. quit Uni, became a bum & started drinking But snapped out of it one day.

OH says its infact not WOW he is playing on so much anymore its something else more of a niche game. But i cant for the life of me remember what he said it was called. Some kind of space soilder game i think.

BIL has been taken to see counsellors before but refused to speak in the sessions so again everyone just gave up.

MIL couldnt change the locks as BIL NEVER leaves the house, in the time i have known OH the only time BIL has left the house was to come outside the front door and tell off the next door neighbour who was shouting at MIL about her cat going onto their garden...

Shopping is turning up for MIL today, she got very emotional when we told her it was turning up for her.

I'm going to try and get her to come and stay again soon and try to go through her outgoings and things, no doubt she is paying far to much money for things.

I am hoping that even if it doesnt change the price i can get her to change internet provider as that will cut it off temp & it may be a push in the right direction for BIL if he cant use it for a few days!

euronorris

Is it EVE? That's an online game, based in space. You have to do missions etc, train. It's quite similar to WoW in that respect.

OH likes it too, but limits his game time. But, as it's so similar, it can also be just as addictive.

EDIT: It's also a little more expensive than WoW though!

As for the counselling....perhaps it would be worth trying again. I wonder if he doesn't try hard at these things because the people around him keep 'giving up' on him and so, a) he may feel they don't care enough about him to keep trying and b) he has no one really challenging his behaviour.

But, the other, advice (ie, kick him out etc) can only be acted upon by your MIL and she appears unwilling. Perhaps counselling for her would be beneficial. Help her find the strength to help him in a different way to what she's used to (she probably still looks at it as her helping him, rather than enabling his behaviour).

euronorris

Just had an idea, sorry if someone has mentioned it before (haven't read every reply yet), but, if your MIL can get access to the game (maybe when he's asleep) then she can Set up 'parental controls' for him.

So, she can make it so that his play-time is limited (say to evenings and a few hours at the weekend).

But, she will need to know his login details for this. Do you know if she has them? If not, would she be able to get them?

If he's denied access during the day, he'll have to find something else to occupy his time. Same for EVE (if that is the other game). It's unlikely that he will want to set up another 'login' as he would have to start all over again, with new characters, levelling, gaining good gear etc etc.

paddy's_mum

Seriously? Stay out of it. Back off now and drop the subject entirely. Why ... ?

Because when you have a grown woman stealing as well as allowing herself to become almost ill through self inflicted partial starvation, you are on a hiding to nothing! The only one who can alter anything is your mother in law and it is so clear that it screams 'transparent' that she has created this situation and is absolutely content to continue with it - when did she last burst into tears and appeal to the other family members to help her? What actual effort has she made to get things to change, other than heave great sighs of martyrdom?

The only one who stands to be badly hurt when all this bad feeling blows up is you. Your aims do you credit but to be frank, in my opinion, the son and both his parents do not deserve all your effort, concern and worry. They're content to leave things alone. Perhaps you would be wiser to spend your emotional supplies on your own family and leave these willing losers to their own devices.

It's not often that I feel that an unhappy situation can't be helped or changed but in this scenario, you're just another King Canute.

The expression 'casting pearls before swine' springs to my mind. Sorry, but that's how I see it and what point in making waves of upset between yourself and your hubby when the people to who you are directing your generous offer of help don't actually want it!

moromir

As a WoW player (who completed her chemistry degree, holds down a job and functions in society) I would like to address some of the incorrect, or at least misleading information given throughout this post with regards to WoW. I fully appreciate the OP's MIL's son has serious problems that should be addressed, but I also believe the OP should be correctly informed.

[QUOTE= Mupette]
especially when he is on a long dungeon run that can take about 8 hours or more.

[/QUOTE]
I wish to point out that no dungeon run in the game should take anywhere near eight hours to complete in a guild setting. Since the OP mentions he plays with 'friends' I assume* this means his guildies. This is something that was specifically addressed by Blizzard (the company that releases WoW) when they designed World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King (the current expansion game) because their whole ethos for this expansion was that casual players should not be penalised for not being able to play for great expanses of time.

On a 'normal' run you would be looking at 3-4 hours maximum, and most guilds would split this up over a couple of nights in order to fit it around 'life'. (3-4 hours = In reference to the Icecrown Citadel which is a largest and most current dungeon in the game).

* assumption is never a good thing so I do apologise if I have taken the wrong end of the stick anywhere.


[QUOTE= Redman30]

Some of the 'raids' are massively complicated and need 40 people doing exactly the right things in the right order for several hours.

[/quote]
Again this is no longer the case, certainly as of 2008 when Wrath of the Lich King was released and if memory serves even earlier when the Sunwell Plateau was released during the previous expansion, the maximum raid size was decreased to 25, there is also a large emphasis on 10 man and 5 man play again tying in with Blizzard's 'casual short term play' mantra.

You only need to type 'Wrath of the Lich King nerfed** raids' into Google to quickly paint a picture that a vocal portion of the WoW community believe that the current raid difficulty is far below what we were given in the Burning Crusade (its a massive debate, I won't go into it but suffice to say, I agree with them).

**nerf/nerfed = changes which cause something to be easier/less awesome than previously published.

lorietta wrote:

but these games... They are so expensive to run

I really have to disagree. A month's suscription to WoW is £8.99 per month if you pay on a month by month basis. However obviously there is a discount for buying 3 or 6 months. We could therefore assume he takes the £7.69 per month (6 month agreement).

Whilst I appreciate there are electric costs and the original start up cost of buying a PC (WoW doesn't need anything fancy, I currently run it on an old Dell that cost about £400 and you could get away with an even lower spec if you turned down the graphic settings) please consider the alternative. I used to have a housemate at uni that wouldn't think twice about spending £60 out on an evening clubbing. The other four of us would haul our rigs down to the kitchen with a crate of beer and a couple of bags of doritos and we were away.

The OP's relative does seem to have an addictive nature so I would say at the very least, thank god it is not something that is causing him thousands of pounds worth of debt like gambling or causing him to completely destroy his body (ie drinking) (although appreciate being holed up in his room with no exercise isn't healthy either).

Again I'm not trying to justify the guy's behaviour, it is clearly completely out of order and he needs to take responsibility for sorting his life out.

But really I just wanted you to have another view from a 'normal' WoW player and I just wanted you to be aware that Blizzard has taken steps to make the game 'casual' friendly to the point that you do kind of run out of dungeons to run if you play a lot because they are significantly shorter, easier and quicker to run than they used to be.
OP - I really hope you find a way forward with this situation.

glossgal

Sorry to say but Paddy's mum is spot on-this is above and beyond a 'too soft for their own good' situation. MIL sounds like she is seriously co dependant in this morbid relationship, I would offer her support but would not get involved any further.

ceridwen

That sounds a bit harsh to describe MIL as co-dependent.:( He's a hulking great guy by the description of him - and people that size often have a tendency to literally "throw their weight around" a bit. I've certainly noticed some people that size just stand there acting like the original immovable object - relying on the fact that they are just so much bigger than most other people that they barely have to say a word to get their way. He's used violence on her in the past as well - so I reckon she's probably pretty scared of him. Add the fact that she's probably had a lot of her "strength" sapped from her by her ex-hubbie and no wonder she's finding it difficult to stand up for herself.

She needs some help in getting her confidence up to normal level I would say - so that she can be more assertive with this Lazy Lump of a son.

I know that some people DO like to play the victim - and I've encountered some of them personally and they are very frustrating to be around. I havent seen any evidence from what we are told so far that MIL is one of them though.

puddy

i disagree im afraid, and im probably going to be a lot harsher about the situation than others here have been.

this 19 year old did not suddenly wake up one day, hugely overweight, with self esteem issues, refusing to leave the house. it has been allowed, condoned, enabled throughout his childhood.

if, as a parent, you find that you are struggling/child not attending school/making friends etc, then it is your duty to get this sorted out and get help.

but all that happened years ago, probably when husband left, so time for that has passed.

the fact that no help was sought, means she was not that bothered about the situation and is not that bothered by the current situation, except as someone said above, to play the victim role. she is enabling him and she is co dependent.