Hello all
I am new to this website but very glad it exists. I’ve just been reading your stories, and compared to what some of you are experiencing I have it easy. For starters, we live 400km from my MIL, and that really helps. I would recommend that kind of geographical separation to anyone out there who can possibly make that a reality for themselves. It prevents a lot of intrusion, and it feels very good to have that kind of buffer zone.
Well, as for me… happily married for two years to a lovely, lovely man who unfortunately has rose-tinted spectacles when it comes to his mother’s behaviour, but at least the tint is slowly getting lighter…and for just over one year now, I have refused all contact with MIL. I don’t have the disposition of the Dalai Lama, and don’t want to expose myself to continual hurt, embarrassment and unease. In the end, we do have the responsibility to look after our own happiness and peace of mind, and like a lot of you here, cutting contact has taken most of the sting out of the situation for me.
But cutting contact doesn’t stop all the tension, and I don’t think I’m alone in having tensions with my husband over this measure, especially since with time it is getting easier for him to forget why contact was cut, and to blame me for not wishing to reciprocate any advances made by his family. I’ve been down that road, and nothing changed – the central problems kept cropping up, even though I made it very clear to MIL what they were and then gave her a chance to change her behaviour.
The other tension is the one of, what if we have children? Do I then have to move to Africa? This whole dilemma is a work in progress, but since we met and married relatively late in life, we may never end up crossing that bridge.
So, the basic problems with my MIL:
1) The common experience many daughter-in-laws have of not being good enough in the eyes of their MILs to marry their precious sons. For that, read, “She’s not a copy of me, or someone I can easily mould and manipulate, so she’s not what I want for him.” And so, you don’t get accepted for who you are. At best, you get provisionally accepted like a leper that needs cleansing. My MIL belongs to the category who will fake acceptance where it makes her look good, but come through with her acid remarks and her unreasonable expectations at other times. If a person patently doesn’t like me or treat me with respect, why socialise with them? We have some of our unhappiest relationships in the name of duty and family.
2) The MIL’s inability to distinguish between what is her business and what is ours. From the moment we got engaged, the MIL tensions began appearing on my radar. My then-fiance thought I was imagining things, but then it began in earnest when we shared with them what kind of wedding we were going to have. Goodness knows what they would have said had we wanted to get married scuba-diving in a sea cave, or in a hot-air balloon, or bungee-jumping – all of which are surely legitimate options when consenting adults marry – and all we wanted was a low-key, quiet, dignified occasion amongst close friends. We decided to dispense with the paperwork in advance, at a celebrant’s residence, and to have as our witnesses friends who had been married the longest of anyone we knew – more than 50 years. Then, as my husband and I were from far-apart towns, we decided to hold private celebrations of our marriage on separate weekends in both towns. We had a lovely wedding day, although the MIL did her best to ruin the atmosphere at the happy celebration in my town by running around vinegar-faced all afternoon and huffing at me about “her son”, and then completely hijacking the subsequent celebration in my husband’s town (one of the most embarrassing and uncomfortable occasions of my life) because in her view we hadn’t had a “proper wedding.”
And that’s just a summary of the wedding. After that experience, I attempted to set boundaries on my MIL’s interference, but with very limited success. Also, the things she said (and continued to say) about our wedding had been extremely hurtful, and at this point I was really, really beginning to dislike her.
3) The MIL’s inability to treat my husband and particularly myself respectfully and as adults. This is especially ridiculous given that both of us met in our mid-thirties, and had been living independently for decades. But thinking about it, my MIL lives in a sort of fossilised family. The younger brother is still at home and acts like a fifteen-year-old boy who fell into a coma and woke up twenty years later. My husband alone had flown the coop and gotten out of this time warp. Perhaps the time warp they live in helps to explain why I feel as if the MIL talks down to me like she thinks I’m still in high school.
Yeah, anyway, that’s my story boiled down and in a nutshell, and like you guys, I need support sometimes to cope with that. I see from what I read here that many of you are also experiencing one or more of our three basic problems, and I wish you all the very best in finding solutions and being happy.
PS: I had to post in “Crazy MIL Stories” because the plain “MIL stories” have disappeared from the posting options, but I suppose the really crazy thing is that people can’t just treat each other respectfully as adults.
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Advice
3 Responses to “At least we live 400km away”
Hon, you forgot to post your MAIN problem….that of you hubby who refuses to take those rose colored glasses off after a period of time away from mom. Ask him to go to therapy with you to iron those out between you.
As to your MIL not “liking” the type of wedding you had….it’s over and you did the legal paperwork…you had a “proper” wedding. She needs to get over her yen for a fancy whoop-te-doo. Maybe Rip Van Winkle, the second son, will give her her desired party.
Stop giving her access to your information that you do not want feedback on …. talk about everybody else instead. Quit worrying about if she treats you like an adult …you know you are. Grow your thick DIL skin for protection. She has a rock for a brain….STOP LETTING HER BLUDGEON YOU WITH IT! Ignore her yapping.
Hi Louise
Thanks, you’ve made me laugh!
I’ll never think of my BIL the same way again. Also for your tips.
Re the wedding, I agree… but it’s funny, about a quarter of our friends think MILs have a right to be disappointed about their children’s weddings. To which I say, maybe they have a fundamental right to feel any way about anything, but you can see that it’s going to be a major impediment to whether you’re going to like such people. I firmly belong to the generation that says how adults marry is their business alone: It’s the bride and groom’s special day. I had to remind my MIL that she’s already had HER wedding. (Who knows, maybe someone else planned it for her and she didn’t get what she wanted either.)
Re my husband, yes, the rose-tinted spectacles were a huge issue, but he’s coming round. I find it really interesting that while he has a lot of respect for his mother, he doesn’t actually spend that much time with her, or phone her very often – I have a lot more contact with my own family (who really like and respect my husband and didn’t get hung up about anything that was our business). He also ventured out on his own as a young adult, buying his own house, when he could have stayed in the nest like his brother. Even more interestingly, he had never invited his family to his house before I met him – he’s always seen them back at their home. I have a theory that maybe subconsciously he worked out that this was a good way to get his own space, and to avoid interference – but if you point it out to him, he just says, “Oh, my place was a lot smaller than theirs, so it was just more convenient for me to visit them.”
And he certainly doesn’t go to his family for advice on anything. He goes and they sit drinking tea and talking about books, television dramas, etc. Typically English family – don’t talk much about personal stuff, and they don’t hug each other – the only physical affection displayed is towards the cats. And it’s so funny, because with me he’s totally different – we talk about everything and anything and I get hugged all the time. See, I’m Mediterranean, and it would drive me nuts to live like, “How was your day? Not too much information please. Pass the peas please, and don’t touch me. I say, that’s a nice bit of alliteration on the cereal box.”
So, my husband certainly isn’t attached to his mother’s apron strings. He is very protective of his privacy. His line is more, “My mother is a really nice person, you’re a really nice person, why can’t you two just get on, dammit?” And yes, I’ve talked through the list with him, and he’s finally beginning to suggest to her that maybe there were some things she shouldn’t have said and done, when she acts all sad that I don’t go around to see them anymore. Bit of an understatement, but it’s a start. I think he has difficulty standing up to his mother through direct confrontation, and has avoided a lot of confrontation by living so separately from her, as I described before, and keeping things to himself.
But you’re right that we will need to iron out some things professionally if children do appear for us, because then it becomes much more difficult. Unless we move to Africa.
As long as you never have children, you cannot in any way be bogged down by the MIL and you need not have anything to do with her. Think long and hard about what a child might do to the troll who lives far away, under the bridge.
It is okay for you to dislike your MIL because of her unacceptable and continued rude behavior. Tell your husband he can spend all the time he wants with her, but to leave you out of it.
If he has issues with this, take him to couples therapy sessions so a neutral third party can tell him WHY you will have nothing to do with this viper. Obviously he needs to hear it from somebody else.
Or, you could suggest that HE spend tons of time with somebody he dislikes, because you are “sure” that if he does that, “he will grow to love them! And vice versa.” That is about the only way to drive the point home with a man wearing rose colored Momma glasses.