Hi Carm,
Gee, and I thought I was one of the few with a dysfunctional family, ha!ha! sorry, I am not making fun of you, my mom would be a good match for your mom, she too seems to live by the same motto, "misery loves company". There has been times that I have "lost" it with her and/or my dad about their childish behavior with one another, or with my 2 brothers and I. When mom gets annoyed with my brothers and their wives or ex-wives, she'll dump on me, it has taken me a lot of work with some help from my former therapist, how to handle her, at first it was hard disengaging myself from this, but I had to work at it cause it was one of my major stressors without exageration, so I had to work hard not to always give in and have "guilt" make me the "door mat". In time it has worked and mom caught on and she seemed to respect my feelings after awhile. We referred to it as the "3 strikes an your out" technique ex: mom calls on the phone "dumping" 1) I nicely tell her I don't want to her about her disagreements, or I do not want to part of her problems with dad or my brothers, etc. 2) If she still keeps going, I tell her "I really have to be going now, I'll talk to again sometime this week. 3) I'm going to say goodbye now. . . Mom, actually caught on soon but we talked about why it was important that our calls need to more pleasant for the sake of the whole families well being. Mom and Dad still fight, if they start while I am on the phone I tell them I am hanging up and when they can call me on not fight I will talk otherwise do not call me, I do not want to her other people arguing, I've heard enough througghout my whole childhood and then some!! They abide I don't know if this info was of any help to you I just thought I'd let you know how I handle my "dysfunctional family", I often say I must be "masochistic" to continue to still be there for them when they are very much a source of many of my major hangups that I've been working on and through, ha!ha!
Take care and good luck with this, it's not easy
"darkeyes"