Hello – I’m new and here out of desperation. I’m on the other side of your traditional coin, as it were, and am hoping you’ll have some wisdom or strategy we haven’t considered, as I’m rapidly reaching the end of my tether with my mother in law, and all the daughter-in-law forums I’ve been to recommend we run and never speak to her again, which is a fairly drastic step I’m trying to avoid taking. I also apologise for the length – there is history, but I’ll try to be brief.
To set the scene, my husband is the only child of his parents, and his mum, my MIL, is also the only child of an only child. My MIL’s mother passed away about 6 years ago, so we and her husband are all she has by way of family, which is why we’re trying to avoid cutting her off.
My husband and I have been together for 11 years, married for 4. When I first met his mother, it was immediately apparent we’re very different people – she’s involved in the arts, is very extroverted and outgoing and open with her emotions, whereas I’m science-y, quiet, introverted and hate being the center of attention. Despite this, I was still hopeful we could have a good or at least workable relationship, as I get along brilliantly with his dad and also DH’s university friend who they’ve sort of ‘adopted’ as a pseudo-son.
Things were okish until we got engaged after we’d been together for 5 years (broke students = long engagement). At that point, her behaviour started to spiral. She’d always been a bit overbearing with how much involvement she wanted in our lives, and we did give her jobs and responsibilities with the wedding, but she went from ‘a bit over-excited’ (every conversation she had with us had to be about the wedding, she’d send us long rambling emails full of ideas we didn’t want, would attend wedding fairs without us) to ‘invasive but we could just about cope’ (she sulked and made PA comments for weeks when I said I was buying my wedding dress rather than letting her make me one, she nearly sabotaged our venue negotiations by calling them behind our backs, those long rambling emails became weird entreaties begging for us to change our dates or locations to something cheaper along with lists of things we could better spend the money on – not items that would have been helpful, but things like fresh rosepetals strewn down the aisle and things like that) to finally in the last 6 weeks, totally off the rails.
Due to a mix up with hotel rooms, we had to intervene and swap things around so a disabled guest could actually have a room with disabled access. MIL lost it.. Twelve increasingly hysterical and abusive voicemails, then radio silence for a fortnight, then when DH finally called her, she spent over 3 and a half hours screaming, crying, and wailing down the phone that if DH didn’t give her the control over the hotel rooms back, she and FIL would refuse to attend. Eventually, DH caved, but our opinions of her from that point on were permanently changed.
The wedding itself, the night before we each had family gatherings at separate restaurants. A cousin of DH’s grabbed me the following morning while I was getting ready, to report MIL had gotten drunk and spent the evening badmouthing me and DH about how we were so shameful and disgraceful and thoughtless, etc. Faced with having to confront and eject them from the wedding the day of and my DH not having his parents there, I kept my mouth shut, but having to cope with my blood boiling every time I looked at her didn’t exactly mean my wedding day was happy or relaxed.
After that, she sort of returned to normal for a little bit, and I kind of wrote it off and tried to just swallow the bad feelings – afterall, weddings make people crazy right? I was sure if she hadn’t apologised for her behaviour, it was only because she’d realised how bad it was in hindsight and was thoroughly embarrassed and didn’t want to bring it up.
Unfortunately, the last 18 months have given lie to that, and we’re now faced with how on earth to handle her. The first incident was she had a screaming temper tantrum in a car park at my DH that we should call our son her maiden name – I was not, and had never been pregnant at the time, we weren’t ready to TTC. This was followed up with an email that started out sensible but then became increasingly rambling and incoherent, and centered around the fact we’d double barrelled our surnames and this somehow made her feel left out and then spiralled into weird justifications about how he would always be her baby? DH acknowledged we’d received it, but never replied and never brought it up. He also overheard her saying to mutual acquaintances multiple times that she would have loved to have been more involved in our wedding but she ‘wasn’t allowed’. Blood boil – that was when I finally cracked and told him what she’d said about us the night before the wedding. He was horrified, but didn’t confront her.
God this is long: to the point. We’ve recently had two big things happen; we’ve just bought our first home (yay!) and are finally TTC (double yay!) She obviously knows about one but not the other, and she’s repeating the same behaviour. She got upset and very insulting to DH when we wouldn’t give her a house key to our new home to decorate it without us there, even when he spent 2 hours cajolingly explaining why. And now she’s kicked off a big argument because she has a whole load of her old furniture in storage, and feels we’re ‘insulting her’ by buying our own furniture rather than using what she keeps repeatedly offering. I want – no, I NEED to stop this behaviour NOW, before I get pregnant. Women from my family have dangerous pregnancies anyway, and the added stress she is likely to dump on me if she continues like this (or gets worse; she’s a little baby obsessed) could jeopardise the health of both myself and my child, and if it gets to that, I will cut her off rather than risk that, but I want to avoid it getting that far. So we need to force the issue NOW, rather than let it drag on to that point.
However, any drawing a line…well, the history speaks for itself really, in that it’s her way or the highway (with lots of screaming). When she isn’t acting like this, she is very loving and nice. She obviously adores her son – it’s just that she doesn’t appear to have any grasp of reasonable boundaries or expectations, and we really need to give her some.
So, MILs and grandmothers (and grandfathers, if there are any!) have you been in this situation? Did you and your adult children have to have a sit down and reset expectations? Did it go well? What would have made it go better? Are there any resources or books that I could point her at that might help her manage her expectations? Was there any logic or thoughts you had that led to an ‘Aha!’ moment that you think could be suggested to her? Is there something you think we might have missed that should be considered where we could change how we behave?
Help?
I think even professionals would listen and hear what is going on in a person's head and in their life before offering possible courses of action and going over the potential outcomes. 