What to do about my manipulative uncle?

Question

My uncle is a very manipulative person. He has been taking advantage of my grandmother for as long as I can remember. He moved his family in with her and she practically raised his 3 kids while his wife did nothing and he drifted between jobs. He "borrows" obscene amounts of money from her with no intention of repaying it.

About 12 years ago, my grandmother was seriously ill. There was a lot of concern as to whether she would pull through. At the same time, my uncle announced to the family that he had contracted HIV from coming into contact with infected blood while working as an EMT. At the time, everyone was shocked and very sympathetic.

In the 12 years since my uncle told everyone about his illness he has never once been sick or hospitalized. He was also in the Air Force Reserve at the time and was not given a medical discharge. He remained in the service until he retired about a year ago.

Now my grandmother's health is bad again and he whines about having to help take care of her, often arguing that my mother and I should take on his share of the responsibility. I live 6 hours from my grandmother and my mom lives out of state. My uncle lives 20 minutes from her house. We already do everything we can to visit her as often as possible. His excuse is always something to do with his own health.

My grandmother's late husband owned a successful construction firm and left my grandmother a sizable estate. I strongly suspect that my uncle assumed she was dying when she was sick 12 years ago and told her he had HIV in an attempt to make a grab for a larger share of the inheritance money.

I want to believe he's really sick because it breaks my heart to think my uncle would lie to my grandmother like that. He is the youngest, so he's my grandmother's baby and can do no wrong in her eyes. I've already voiced my suspicions to my mom and she admitted she's doubtful about the HIV thing too. Unfortunately, bringing these accusations to my grandmother, especially in her current condition, would open a huge rift in the family.

So what do we do? Do we keep quiet and allow my uncle to continue to leech off of my grandmother and manipulate her with his lies? Or do we tell her how we feel and run the risk of causing a huge fight? It's not about the money for my mom and me. We're both comfortable and agree that my uncle can have it all for all we care. We just want him to stop the lying.

Answer 1

Don't keep quiet. Talk to your uncle ... It would be better , I suppose. He will probably be ashamed of what he has done and will stop manipulating your grandmother, if you're lucky ... but he may not do this and continue with this bad behavior , then you should suggest your grandmother that her son is taking advantage of her. She might not believe you but at least tell her to be less confident and help her to pull trough. I wish you good luck with this complicated situation and soon recovery to your grandmother. Sorry if my answer didn't help you at all but that's my opinion about it. What a difficult situation..pff  P.S. Sorry for my English and I hope that I didn't do any big mistakes :-s

Answer 2

Wow! That's awful! Your uncle is a classic user and manipulator! I have to say, though, that getting to the bottom of this and revealing his lies to your grandmother, if indeed they are lies, would be counter-productive. It WOULD break her heart. Or, alternately, she'd just be in denial. So I don't think any good can come of it from that perspective. You're also not going to make your uncle stop lying--he clearly has little to no conscience. He might be extremely narcissistic, or he might even be a sociopath. Likely narcissistic, since true sociopathy is rare. Either way, you're not going to change who he is. If you feel your grandmother is in danger in any way, you could see about convincing her to move in with you.

As for his HIV status: he may or may not be lying--it's amazing what "the cocktail" of drugs can do to prevent illness. If you don't see him taking massive quantities of drugs every 6 hours, though, then that might be suspicious, since most who have no HIV symptoms do take those drugs that often, and a lot of them. If he lied about HIV to get money, then that would point more towards sociopathy. But there's another reason he could be lying: he was upset that he wasn't the center of attention, and your sick grandmother was, so he lied in order to bring the attention back onto himself. He one-uped her. That's more of a narcissistic personality disorder kind of ploy.HIV+ status isn't enough to get one kicked out of the Reserves. It might mean he can't be on active duty, though--very convenient.

So, in short, your situation sucks, and there's little you can do to change it. That's the burden of the sane and good-hearted in the face of the manipulative and exploitative.