Tagged this as NSFW just in case, as this does discuss mental illness/religious zealotry.
Obligatory long time reader, first time poster here.
My MIL (46) has become a problem. My DH has been away with the military, so I’ve been the one kind of taking all the communication. Normally, at this point in time, I’d have already gone VLC but for my husband’s sake in seeing his sister & communicating with her (she’s a minor), it puts me at a wall. All that communication ends up falling on me, and it’s been an absolute nightmare.
My MIL is not mentally there. Some backstory: I’m not sure she’s ever been formally diagnosed with anything, but she tells me all the time about a TBI she has & all of her psychiatric stays. However, as I’ve come to learn, both of these are a lie. She has consistently lied to DH & I about absolutely everything and anything, no matter how small. She just recently had a fallout with her sister, and tried to repeatedly lie to us about the reasons behind it. A lot of this lying / hiding behavior came about when her step-mother died a few years ago.
Coming up into recent events. Last year, I converted to Catholicism. It was the best decision I’ve made. However, MIL has made it a point to call me a heretic, belittle my decisions to convert, and generally just bash me as a whole. She is a Christian, but she’s not affiliated with any specific groups.
She’s kinda gone off the deep end with this religious nonsense and I’m to a point I don’t want to continue to communicate with her. When I say every single phone call ends in her stating that “you’re gonna die & I hope to see you in heaven” I truly mean it’s every time. It’s unnerving and really concerning. She’s claiming she’s been watching these “YouTube documentaries” and that she’s too paranoid to talk about what she’s learned about God & the devil & whatnot. She started mentioning the rapture & I’ve told her to not have these conversations with me, but she persists.
My DH is telling me to just ignore her, but I’m just not sure that’s the best option here. He’s put up with her behaviors all his life. He lets her go on and on about this type of stuff, but I feel like that’s feeding into the problem. The more she thinks people agree with her the more frequently these comments occur.
It doesn’t help that a lot of the time, she’s a ticking time bomb. One minute she’s fine. The next minute, she’s mad over something. I need advice on how to handle this without “cutting her off.“ If I had the choice, I would. I’m just trying to help my husband preserve his relationship with his younger sister until she turns 18. (we’ve got a while before that happens.)