I feel a little strange posting about something like this that's so serious but I literally feel like sometimes I have no one else to really ask. This is going to be long, so bear with me if you can. When I say my FMIL has a serious problem, I would not go so far as to call it a drinking problem, but definitely a lifestyle one. This past Friday she came over late to my FI's house and had a drink. Later that night, after she'd headed home, we got a call from the state trooper's department saying she'd been brought in on suspected DWI. Apparently she'd failed a field sobriety test and could not breathalize due to severe athsma, neither of which shock me. Her lawyer says that because of how the whole thing was handled, the charges will likely be dropped.
REGARDLESS of how that pans out in court, whether it's dropped completely or she's charged with failure to breathalize and has her license suspended, you'd think that it might be a little bit of a wakeup call... that a 50 year old mother of 5 with 2 daughters still at home and a nasty divorce and bankruptcy in the works probably shouldn't be going out on Friday nights. I wish i could say that it was some rare occurence, but I'm 25 and I don't go out nearly as much as she does, let alone spend as much money frivilously. She says it's part of being a business owner and she needs to connect with her clients and vendors, or that she is just trying to have fun, but she's out multiple times a week leaving her daughters home alone.
That said, my FI asked me to meet them out for dinner the Monday after all this had happened and when I got there, she was so drunk she could hardly stand. I was livid, to say the least that she'd allowed herself to get that drunk, and that he had allowed it too. I suppose that's when it really hit me that she might have a serious problem... that a brush with a DWI (which I consider VERY serious) did not deter her from getting sh*t-face drunk a mere 72 hours later. Had I not been there to bring her home, I would be willing to bet everything I own that she would have tried to drive herself.
The most upsetting part about this is that when I tried to tell my FI how uncomfortable this whole thing has become for me and how legitimately concerned I am for her health and safety, he got very defensive and accused me of being judgemental. I feel like I can't make him see reason because he just wants to defend her and he insists that it's normal for her to "have fun". None of our friends in our social circle have parents who behave like this, including my own. Hell, even he and I DON'T behave like this, and we're 23 and 25 respecitvely! I've never felt such a loss for what to do having never encountered a situation like this before, but i am truly worried about her and about what this all means for how my FI will treat me in the future. He's so wrapped up in defending his mom that I feel like a total outsider when I express my concern. Anyone out there gone through anything like this? I'm at my wit's end
