Quote:
Originally Posted by Ironhead
My wife and I are very lucky. We both already work from home and already live a fairly simple, hermit-ish lifestyle. So our day-to-day life is not impacted much. We don't have kids so that is a load of worry that we don't have to face.
I am generally speaking not a huge worrier. My wife is a worrier and the longer this carries on the more I will become concerned about her mental health. She is definitely the kind of person who gets a cut outside and is immediately 100% certain they will get tetanus. If some people worry about the economy going through a drawn out depression she will take it to the next level and worry that the entire worldwide economy will collapse and we will go into a Mad Max-esque existence.
With that said, the biggest source of daily stress for both of us easily comes from my wife's family:
a) her oldest brother (early 60s) who suffers from mental illness and substance abuse. At this point he is completely incapable of functioning as an adult and is not well connected to reality. He is belligerent and cannot be reasoned with and can be violent. He isn't following the shelter in place order which means he is putting other members of the family at risk - especially his brother who he lives with who has health issues.
b) her other brother (late 50s) who's body is falling apart after 30+ years working as a waiter. He has nothing to his name due to years of gambling addiction that left him badly in debt and required him to declare bankruptcy last year.
My wife's parents enabled her brothers so badly that they never had any reason to deal with their issues. Both spent large portions of their adult life living at home. Ever since the last of my wife's parents passed away at end of 2018 the whole ball of yarn is coming unraveled. The two of them are living together in their parent's family home while trying to get by on a combined income of about ~$800 a month. They genuinely despise each other while at the same time not being able to survive without one another. Given the history of enabling and "non-adulting" they now turn to us as stand ins for their parents. We help them as we are able while trying not to get sucked too deep into their vortex but the emotional toll is there. There is 100% a real concern that one day we will be faced with a decision of 1) taking them in or 2) seeing them go homeless. I have suggested to my wife that we find a counselor who can help us prepare for this ahead of time so that if and when the time comes the stress of it doesn't tear us apart.
c) her niece (late 20s) who has two young kids. She is slowly becoming a little more responsible but still refuses to learn how to drive and get a license. Her boyfriend can't drive either due to a suspended license so they rely entirely on others. We warned them before the shelter in place order that we were taking the pandemic seriously and would not be leaving the house for a long time. They did not heed that warning and keep calling other family members expecting to be taken places (food shopping, entertain the kids, etc...). If that isn't bad enough two days ago the father of her oldest child died at 28 years old (liver failure, drank himself to death). Because they haven't been following the shelter in place orders we didn't feel comfortable going to seeing them.
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Wow, sounds as if you have to deal with a lot of 'extended family' issues. Have problems with my own extended family but relatively minor compared to yours. Good luck to you and the missus.