Background:
My mom, my daughter, myself, my brother and his daughter all live together. I'm a single mommy, he's a single daddy, grammy loves her grandchildren. It all works out.
My father died 5 years ago this June. It was a slow death from stomach cancer. He was a jerk when he had cancer. He was a jerk before he had cancer. Not that there weren't good times in their marriage, but the last 10-15 years were crap for my mom, and he could be emotional abusive towards me, and even physically abusive to my brother (before my brother got bigger than him) I loved my father, but he was a a-one jerk.
We also found out some pretty crappy things about my father after he passed. He failed to clean out his hard drive on his laptop. Suffice to say- he apparently had plans on leaving my mom for some online chick "when" he got better. (But apparently he was also delusional, because the other woman was married, not interested, and had no idea that my father had these plans)
Ok- so that is the short of a very long story.
My mom is on another forum, where she is good friends with alot of people there women and men alike. There was one man however where they became very close. And then they started private chatting. And then they started talking on the phone. They hadn't even seen pictures of each other, but fell hard and fast. He lives about 1.5 hours from us, and I believe in February, he started coming down here to take my mom out , etc etc.
Its caused alot of tension in the house. There is alot of tension in the house regardless. We had moved my grandmother up here from AZ hoping to get her better medical care for her COPD. Well after a three month stint in the hospital, she pass away last thursday. And my dog had a stroke two weeks ago (he is 90% better! but, it took alot of time by me and my brother to rehab him). I mean... I just took down the christmas decorations... today. She disappears all weekend, things are not getting done around the house....
There's a lot more, I just am tired and don't feel like getting into how she has been totally acting like a 14 year old.
I've been handling it totally better than my brother. I had to work through a little abandonment issue, but I'm ok now. My mom deserves to be happy. She deserves to move on in her life and do what makes her happy.
But I was totally thrown off by her coming home this morning and telling me he asked her to marry him.... and she said yes. They met.. what.. this past summer. Started talking this fall. Just recently met in February. And now they are engaged?
I expressed concern of the quickness. But she feels that she has a special connection with him, she loves him, he is a good man and she is happy. I congratulated her, but did say that if he hurt her, he would have to deal with me.
My brother, on the other hand, is acting completely irrational and is furious.
He doesn't believe in true love, or soul mates, or love eternal, or deep connections. He things it's hogwash and that she is making a huge mistake. In fact, me and him got into a huge fight about it today (in which I promptly binged on some oatmeal scottchies cookies afterwards!) While I don't neccessarily agree with the quickness of their engagement- I want her to be happy, and I can't tell her how to live her life. (although I haven't met him yet :-/ ) And he wants me to "do something" about it. Really? What? Lock her in her room? pfft.
When ended up yelling at each other for a good 45 mins before I decided it was time to walk away.
They aren't getting married now... no date has been set. From what I'm told he seems like a nice man, I would like to meet him soon...But my brother acts like this is absolutely the most ludicrous thing to have even happened in the history of the world. I'm not entire thrilled about it either, but these things do happen and do last. I'm sure of it.
But I'm quite sure that things in this house will be quite tumultuous for a while.... I just hope I can identify my issues before I eat 10 oatmeal cookies... not AFTER!
LR