Unwanted letters

enfield

OK I am not sure if this is the right forum so I will just throw this out and would appreciate your opinions. The wife's sister, who should be on medication but she will not take it keeps sending my wife letters about two days after my wife replies to her last one. The wife tries to wait foru weeks before she replies.
The sisters letters are usually between 25 and 50 pages long. and you can see by the content that they were written as soon as she sent the last one and just waits for a reply to add a little bit relevant to the end.
The content of the letters are always negative, opinions of things that happened to her in the past are always negative. We dont know it (is true)what she says about what she is doing with collecting stray cats and keeping them under her bed and being barred from KFC for taking scraps from the bins to feed them. Hassling the neighbours, FLAC. I am sure you get the idea. Now the thing is it is beginning to affect the wife and bring her down when they arrive. She does not know how to approach the situation without hurting her sisters feelings. They are not stuck for a few bob but she puts on the poor mouth all the time (why I dont know). Her husband looks like he has got the big C just to add to the mix. He was told years ago to have his wife 'looked at' but he says there is nothing wrong with her. They don't sleep together and he could have a mistress and he is not retired.
We really dont need this sort of hassle and the wife basically does not have what it takes to tell her sister to take a running jump and let that be the end to it and we can have some peace for the rest of our lives.
As I said before any suggestions would be most welcome but dont say just tell the sister to feck off as herself is too much of a softie.
Kind regards.
Tom

Giselle

I think this belongs in Personal Issues.

Best of luck.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

Ickle Magoo

If your wife won't say anything to her sister then I don't see you really have any choices open to you. It's really up to her, since it's her sister and it's her the letters are addressed to.

Why does your wife reply at all if she knows it's just encouraging odd behaviour and she isn't interested in the mammoth reply she is going to get? If she continues to encourage the letters then she/you can't really complain that you keep being sent letters.

Why doesn't she just stop writing? Or ditch the replies unread and just write a short card at birthdays and x-mas?

Ken.

Intercept and burn/bin. If you can.

Big Bag of Chips

If your wife wants the letters to stop, then she needs to stop replying to them.

Does she ever contact her sister by phone? Maybe the next time a letter arrives she could give it a few days and then ring her.. if her sister starts talking about anything in the letter, she could say "sorry, I just haven't had time to read it".. and then if the sister insists on going on about the content, she can say "Sorry - but I'm in a rush to go to xyz, or do xyz.. "

If she encourages her sister (and by replying she is encouraging her) then it will never stop. But if she changes the way in which the communicate it gives her a bit more control.

She could also just not read the letters. Then she wouldn't be affected by what's in them..

Kevin Duffy

lucyfur09 wrote: »

Intercept and burn/bin. If you can.

Do not do this. Ever. It's not your mail, it's your wife's. The solution to this is up to her. You can discuss it with her, supprot her, encourage her, but you can't take a unilateral, interfering action. It will add to the problem, not solve it.

Ken.

Kevin Duffy wrote: »

Do not do this. Ever. It's not your mail, it's your wife's. The solution to this is up to her. You can discuss it with her, supprot her, encourage her, but you can't take a unilateral, interfering action. It will add to the problem, not solve it.

Your absolutely right kevin, my bad op.

Firetrap

If she can't bring herself to tell the sister not to write them, just don't reply. Letters sometimes get lost in the post

enfield

Many thanks for all your help and suggestions, they really are very much appreciated. By ditching the letters before they get to the wife I am only inviting aggravation and as one of the posters say, the letters are my wifes not mine. Telephoning the sister is inviting a half hour conversation which will, (A) bring down my wife, listening to 30 minutes of depression and (B) incur expensive phone bills, besides the sister does not have the wifes number (just in case she does telephone).
The suggestion of writing sparse replies with longer time gaps between them seems to be the way forward.
I am sure you guys and gals have talked to a person who is depressed and know how intense and one sided it is, well, that's the way it is here also. The wife had a phschiatric episode in the past and she has not been the same since. If her sister would just stop writing it would be great but the wife cannot bring herself to tell her to feck off, and I can see a change for the worse every time, in the wife after reading the latest letter.
I told the wife the suggestion about sending a reply with less words and longer time gaps and she agrees that this is the way forward.
Christmas would be great if no letters came.
Kind regards and thanks again for your patience all.
Tom.

Shelli2

Can you still have people 'sectioned' these days? I'm not being smart, but your wifes sister does seem to have mental issues, especially if it's true about the cats and stuff. Maybe it would be in both her and your wifes intrest if someone called in social services. Her husband isn't getting her the help she so obviously needs.

stacexD

Doesn't sound like your wife is one for confrontation but would she consider replying to the next letter saying a bit of what's on her mind?
For example be up front that she knows they aren't poor/struggling and it annoys her that she's constantly playing the poor card (and lying to her in the process)
Tell her that she only ever seems to be complaining in her letters and that she would like to hear more about what else is going on in her life rather than all the bad things that are happening to her, something like that.

She does sound like she needs some help and might not like your wife calling her up on things, but if she confronts her sister about a couple of things that are annoying her then judge the next step by the reply maybe ye might get somewhere with it. If she's meant to be taking tablets then she's obviously been diagnosed with something? I don't think it would do any harm if your wife tried to talk her into taking the tablets and getting help or at least find out why she doesn't take them.

I'm no expert clearly but the way I see it is either confront her and try to help her or eventually cut her out? At least confronting and trying to help her gives some hope of things getting better and if not then it ends in option B i suppose

Horrible position for you to be in, your story reminds me of my dads sister, the claiming poverty and everything bad happens to me, even the big C. He finally decided last month to cut her out all together, then just last week her husband passed away. After that hes realised he doesn't want to just wash his hands of her and lose her without trying to confront her and build a healthy relationship first.

Good luck with it anyway, hope it all works out well for ye!

enfield

;Can you still have people 'sectioned' these days?' well now if it were that simple it would have been done years ago,. Her husband was in denial from the start and said there was nothing wrong with her. The second point it that all the information we 'have' on her is from her letters'. Who knows, it could be all fantasy or really happening?

After the wife goes through the letters, marking comments in them that she must address the wife replies to the letter with a comment on the marked items. The sister approaches in three ways, firstly, she may ignore what the wife has said, secondly she may mention what the wife has said and go off and do the opposite and then 'blame' the wife if it works or if it does not work, 'all things look yellow to a jaundiced eye' and her eyes must be quite yellow. Now SIL (I'll call her that, its shorter than sister-in-law) has a husband who had, for the past 40 years a great job in the Civil Service and has recently retired, so they are not stuck for a few bob. He has been diagnosed with the big C and herself is afraid and the next of kin will be lumbered with Sil if she flips.
One other facet of this scene is that the wife has a brother and Sil, all of them, including the wife have a chemical imbalance, its in the family, which can be controlled with medication. The wife uses the medication and is fine but getting to the stage of finding out about the chemical imbalance was horrendous (feck I am starting to sound like Sil), scenes from the Excorcist, but we got there and all is normal, whatever that is, for the wife.
Sil wrote a 30 page letter three weeks ago saying she mislaid the previous reply and would write a second letter when she found it. The second letter arrived a week ago. The plan is (thanks for all the suggestions) to wait until near Christmas and write a short half page letter in reply without mentioning anything Sil said in her letters. After doing this a few times Sil is sure to get fed up writing long letters, the wife is not her therapist. Long gaps between letters and little content may do the trick.
Sitting on the fence and saying to cut her out sounds very surgical and logical and easy to do, if you are sitting on the fence, herself is too much of a softie, which can be a problem.
Kind regards and thank you all for your patience.
Tom.

Neyite

I think the reply letters should be sparse, but I also think that your wife marking comments and addressing them is only feeding the monster. Why the hell would she put herself through all that? Its like an exam or something. She should read/skim the letter once only with the view that there will be nothing in it that is new.

Next reply: half a page, small talk, dont address any issues raised, dont go into detail about your personal lives. As in "Hi Sis, got your letter, wow that was a long one. All grand here. Brought dog/cat to vet yesterday. It might snow.....etc"

Your wife is an adult. Her mental health is her (and your) issue to deal with, and it sounds like she is doing just fine with your support and her medications. She does not answer to anyone, least of all her interfering and opinionated sister.

Kevin Duffy

Shelli2 wrote: »

Can you still have people 'sectioned' these days? I'm not being smart, but your wifes sister does seem to have mental issues, especially if it's true about the cats and stuff. Maybe it would be in both her and your wifes intrest if someone called in social services. Her husband isn't getting her the help she so obviously needs.

enfield wrote: »

;Can you still have people 'sectioned' these days?' well now if it were that simple it would have been done years ago,.

This is all utterly wide of the mark. Having someone "sectioned" is not about a few letters, or someone saying odd things. It's also not something to be aimed or to get rid of a problem for you, it's about getting people into an environment that's supposed to help them and protect the people around them when they have become a danger to themselves or others.

enfield wrote: »

After the wife goes through the letters, marking comments in them that she must address the wife replies to the letter with a comment on the marked items.

Your wife is just facilitating her sister's behaviour. You may want to stop blaming your sister-in-law for the whole problem - a message is not just what's sent, it's what's received. There's a pair of them in it. The letters may be unwanted by you, but they may not be as unwanted by your wife as you think. All sorts of things that seem odd to us become an acceptable part of people's everyday lives. In the same vein, who your sister and brother in law sleep with, whether it's each other or not, is absolutely none of your business and mentioning it seems to be an effort to paint them in as poor a light as possible, rather than seeing that the problem has two sides, not just your sister-in-law's behaviour.

enfield

Many thanks for all the replies, observations and pointers lads and lassies. I take on board all you suggest and think the way forward is now clear.
Kindest regards and thanks you all again.
Tom.

Maple

As the OP appears to have resolved his issue, I am now locking this thread.

Maple