X-posted from my birth board. One of the ladies there told me to seek your wisdom.
I will have to start this with a little background. My parents divorced when I was 11 years-old. At that time, my mom started going on the internet and chatting with men in chatrooms (this was back when it was pay by the hour dial-up). She had a lot of beaus there but ultimately decided that she was madly in love with a man from North Carolina. They chatted on the phone long distance to the point that our phone was regularly shut off because my mom couldn't afford the bill. If she wasn't on the phone with him, she was online talking to him, running up hundreds of dollars on her internet bill. So, during their courtship, I pretty much never saw my mom. Ultimately, when I was 13, she decided we were going to uproot and move to NC to be with him.
They had a emotionally and financially tumultuous relationship and I was always a secondary concern during that time. I was pretty independent, but I was also really lonely being in a new state with no friends or family. Finally I graduated highschool and went off to university. While at school, my mom decided that she had enough of the internet guy and she moved back to Indiana to live with.... my father! I was not happy with this for the sole fact that my parents' divorced sent my dad into a deep, deep depression.
So my mom stayed with my dad for a few years, then did what I expected her to: she left him again. At that point, my dad's health was not doing great so I decided to move up to Indiana to live with my dad and look after him. During that period my mom had a revolving door of guys. I met my future DH and we moved in together and I tried to put that drama out of my mind (there was too many guys to relate the invididual disasters that they were). Well, my mom found out that she had breast cancer and guess where she goes.... back to my dad! She stayed with him until she was cancer free and then dropped him like a bad habit again. Are you starting to see a pattern yet? The comical highlights of the next few years included her getting abandoned in South Dakota by a convicted child molester, her becoming a biker babe, and then her marrying a guy without telling anyone (I found out when she changed her relationship status on Facebook). She and this guy ended up moving to Florida -- I found out that she was going the day before they left -- only for her to come back and be divorced within the year.
So, when she came back this last time, she swore up and down that she was done with these men and she was going to live out the rest of her days with my elderly father. She actually seemed serious because she was there through him having some serious heart troubles which required surgery and a pacemaker. Things actually looked pretty stable and this made me feel better about pursuing my goal of graduate school in another state. Well, it is a week before I move and I found out today that she has all of a sudden moved out of my dad's (without telling him) and she is now living with the original NC Internet guy from above. She did not tell me, but rather I found out today when she came to my home with him. She brought him in front of my kids without any forewarning whatsoever.
She says that she is still going to check on my dad once a week and make sure his meds are up to date. All I can think about is why I even bother with a relationship with her. To be clear, I don't care who she is romantically involved with... she is an adult, she can make her own choices and she deserves to be happy. But why all of the cloak and dagger bullshit? I asked her why she just couldn't tell me and she said it was because she didn't want to be hassled with people not agreeing with her choices. She acts like we would have never found out! And now I am moving out of state and I will not be here to oversee my 83 year-old father's care! My brothers have said they will check in on him but my dad is not their father. I am his only child here and all he is left with are non-blood relations and this flake that I call my mother. *sigh*
Should I even try for a relationship with her anymore? I love my mother and I want her to be happy, but I feel like as soon as I get close to her, she pulls the rug out from under me. I am so tired of her constantly running away and then falling back on us when things don't work out. Should I even expose my kids to this soap opera drama?