The Vine: May 18, 2011
I am hoping you and your readers may be able to provide me with some advice on dealing with my mother-in-law.
I have been with my partner for almost six years. He is one of three children and the only one who has a consistent relationship with his mother. His elder brother was estranged from her for 13 years and while they semi-reconciled two years ago, he lives overseas and communication is limited to sporadic emails. His younger sister, who has two children, fell out with her mother over two years ago and has had no contact with her since. The MIL has been divorced from her children’s father for over 20 years and is as bitter as if it was yesterday, despite having remarried a lovely man 15 years ago.
My partner loves his mother but learnt at a very young age that he needed to keep an emotional distance from her so he would not be caught up in the bitterness between her, his father and his siblings. He has a caring, and reasonably close relationship with his immediate family. He is always adamant he will not get involved in her disputes with his father, brother and sister and refuses to discuss these matters with her. Her whole approach to conflict is “that’s it – I’m never speaking to you again!” and it mystifies me, but it certainly makes me appreciate my own family and my partner’s freakish normalness.
I find my MIL to be a selfish, insecure, irrational, moody and tactless person and after a few years of trying to find a way to like her, I eventually came to the realisation that will never happen. However, after the relief of realising this had finished washing over me, I vowed to myself that I would be as polite, cordial and friendly as I could with her and I wouldn’t take her occasionally sporadic psychoanalytical emails about how her son and I were emotionally crippled personally. I figured if he could find a way to handle her, I could too. However, I have always known that when someone is as easily offended as she is, eventually we will become estranged too and it will probably be something to do with me. She lives interstate and we see her about twice a year, so keeping our relationship light and casual has not been too difficult so far.
I feel the estrangement time is impending as we are expecting our first child in June. She is very happy at the idea of being a grandmother again as she has three grandsons that she never sees. I will say, she is accepting of me being the mother of her grandchild. She has taken the opportunity to increase contact with us (two years ago she decided that she had made enough effort with her children and they can contact her from now on) and now calls weekly. This wouldn’t be so bad, but now she wants to talk to me as well as her son. In her last call, she again expressed her disappointment that the baby is most likely not going to be a girl and her hopes that maybe the scan was wrong. I gritted my teeth and said, “We don’t care as long as it’s healthy and really there is nothing anyone can do about it anyway.” I then changed the subject, until I ran out of things to say, so I said I needed to get to the shop to get her off the phone.
The problem I have now is that because I have spent a few years not providing any personal insights or information to her about myself or my family (for self-preservation purposes), she has made a number of incorrect assumptions about me. She seems to now want to be a mother to me (I have a perfectly happy relationship with my mother and have told her as much) and wants me to be more like her own daughter — the one who is just like her and doesn’t speak to her as a result. She is frustrated that I don’t have any desire to confide in her and that I seem to have a very casual approach to impending motherhood. Keeping our relationship light and casual is easy when I see her twice a year — but now I have to work out how to manage this person I just don’t understand at all more frequently.
So, my question is — how do people deal with mother-in-laws they don’t like? Particularly when kids come along? Are there any tips or tricks anyone has for setting ground rules and getting her to respect them? I have already told her that she is welcome to come and help with the baby if she wants to, but I would prefer her not to stay with us — explaining that in our small house help would be appreciated from someone who had a decent night’s sleep the night before — and she said she didn’t see the point of coming if she didn’t stay with us. So now I haven’t said anything further about her offer and it seems the baby’s gender has put her off the idea anyway…
Picking boy names is hard, but MILs are harder
Dear Harder,
The best and most important strategy for dealing with a difficult MIL is to get your partner on the same page with you, about everything — your feelings about your MIL; the boundaries you would like set as a couple, as a household, and as parents; how to manage your boy’s relationship with his grandmother as long as he’s too young to grasp what’s going on.
It sounds like your partner tries to maintain a pleasant relationship with his mother, but is not in denial about who she is or how she behaves, which is good. That said: make sure he’s not assuming a greater tolerance on your part than you can carry, and do it now, before the baby arrives, because it’s not a conversation you want to have while riding the Estro-Cyclone with 49 minutes of sleep between you.
The next time she calls, manage it the way you usually would, and afterwards, take the opportunity to tell Partner, “You know, it’s awkward, and I don’t want to overstep…but we need to discuss your mom and some boundaries I’d like to establish with her.” Tell him, gently, what you’ve told me. Suggest that, sometimes, if she asks to speak to you, he tell her you can’t come to the phone; mention that, sometimes, you just…won’t come to the phone. Talk about how you can jointly handle remarks you don’t appreciate, or offers to visit that will create more hassle than goodwill. Decide who’s going to be the bad guy. Rehearse “keeping the baby on a schedule”-type fibs that can reduce your exposure in the future.
In the conversation, listen and compromise; remember that he’s your partner, and you want to find a way to deal with MIL that’s comfortable for both of you. Remember too that you can’t change her behavior, only your own and how you react to her.
And don’t underestimate the motivational power of a comment like “if you’re uncomfortable with how we do XYZ, you’re probably not comfortable seeing your grandchild either,” chilled to a refreshing 32 degrees and served with a sprinkle of sugar. Nobody wants to go there, but sometimes you have to, and not every grandparent is worth the diplomacy, sad to say.
Readers, any personal stories about clueless, borderline, bitchy, or even merely annoying MILs, and letting them have a relationship with the younguns without sacrificing your sanity?
Tags: kids the fam
My MIL sounds a lot like yours, Harder. I could regale you with 20 years worth of stories of her special brand of crazy, but, frankly, there isn’t enough internet.
The only advice I have is what Sars said. Figure out between you and Partner (Thank GOD he’s on the same page. My husband wasn’t for the first 10 years or so, and it was brutal.) what your boundaries are, and STICK TO THEM.
It’s not a MIL issue, it’s a narcissist issue. Firm boundaries and rock bottom expectations (and certainly no depending on her for anything) should be the order of the day. There are lots of web resources out there for dealing with narcissists – good luck!
Ah, the classic question of MIL management. My own MIL and I don’t get along well — we don’t actually dislike each other, but we simply have personalities guaranteed to strike sparks. (I think she’s a passive-aggressive control freak; she thinks I’m a lazy slob. So be it.) But the entry of (grand)children into the picture vastly changes things.
I lucked out, here: my MIL is fantastic with the kids. She is patient and understanding and learning-oriented and though the amount of control she tries to exert over the way they play makes me grit my teeth, the kids seem to love it. So when my teeth start to ache from all the gritting, I just excuse myself (I’m gonna go take a nap — you guys have fun!) or try to change the setting (Hey, let’s go to the park/library/local tourist attraction!).
The only other advice is an echo of what Sars said: if you feel you need to approach her on a specific issue, please by all that’s holy get your partner to do it, and make sure he does not say, “Harder doesn’t like it when you do XYZ…” — he needs to present a united front (“We really have a problem with XYZ”) and as much as possible shift toward logic and away from accusation — even give her an excuse, if you can: (“Hey, you probably didn’t know this, but we’re trying to avoid XYZ because…”) Doing what you can to make the boundary-setting easier on her (not that you’re setting the boundaries further out, but giving them a little sugar-coating, so to speak) can make it a lot more palatable, which makes it much more likely she’ll pay attention.
Good luck — and congrats on the baby! :-)
Hi, Harder: you and your partner probably know this already, but just to be safe, plan for the worst. My husband and I have been dealing with my “It’s All About Me” mom for fifteen years now. We’ve always lived several states away and visited twice a year, like you: nice and light, who cares, it’s only few days of crazy, we can deal. Then we had a kid. While he was an infant, everything was fine. Now that he’s seven, and acts like a normal seven-year-old, and thus is not The Perfect Child, Mom decided to discipline him on her own terms and then lecture us about how she’s right. I put my foot down — gentle-but-firm at first, then, when she didn’t get it, still calmly but with the chill Sars references and a few F-bombs. She went to Def Con Five instantly, and has cut off all contact since. My husband and I had already worked out a plan of how we’d deal when this happened — WHEN, not if. It wasn’t fun, because it feels kind of cold putting plans in place to deflect your own family’s bullshit; but it helps you feel united with and supported by your spouse. Plus, when it finally happened, we stuck to the plan, it worked, and it was stress-free.Also, and this is very important, plan for a way for each of you to get a break. She WILL stress you out sometimes, because you’re human. Plan a signal between you, and a line to give her, so one of you can leave and blow off steam out of her range, then come back refreshed and able to deal like an adult, which she isn’t.It SUCKS, and I’m so sorry; you and your partner sound like such normal adult good people. Once Child is old enough to catch on to the problem, I have no doubt that he’ll learn from you two having set a good example. Maybe focusing on that future Good Thing will help you get through immediate stress.
From a brand-new (baby is 3 months old) first-time mom: yes, yes, YES, to Sars’s advice to “do it now.” Just making a sandwich is SO MUCH HARDER after the baby arrives, and emotion-laden issues like this can seem like the end of the world.
Even if you don’t end up with full post-partum depression, those first few weeks are hell on the emotion roller coaster. Talk about this ahead of time and have a plan — and emphasize to your partner that he will have to take a lot of the burden of whatever approach you decide to take with the MIL. Even the most polite, cordial, and friendly person is stretched to her limits with a weeks-old baby and shouldn’t be expected to remain polite, cordial, and friendly with someone who is making those early days difficult.
I think the real decision the two of you have to make is whether estrangement is the worst thing that can happen. Having this narcissist cut off from your family seems preferable to having her continue to inflict emotional damage on all of you, particularly your baby boy (who has done nothing to deserve her disappointment)(WTF, by the way). I would look at it as a necessary risk to keep your family healthy and happy, and talk frankly with your partner about that. There needs to be a bottom-line for enforcing your boundaries or they will never stick. You’re sort of her last chance, so maybe she’ll come around. Good luck!
I recommend joining the babycenter community and subscribing to the group “Dealing with the In-Laws and Family of Origin.” There are women who have seen it all and know just how to manage it. Sars’ initial advice is exactly how you start. Partner must be on the same page and you must back each other up through it all.
Since I really scored with my MIL, I don’t have any personal advice, but one thing that I think goes for dealing with Difficult People of any stripe: it’s okay to lie a little bit sometimes.
I’m not talking big lies, like moving and forgetting to tell her–just little things, occasionally. You can’t come to the phone, you’d love a weeklong visit from her but just can’t find the time right now–basically anything that gets you a little breathing room when you feel like “handling” her has become a full time job.
This isn’t the gun of first resort, and being on the same page is ultra important. You don’t want to tell her one thing and your unwitting partner says another thing. But an agreement that when MIL asks/demands X, you both state Y can give you some footing.
You both (you and your husband, I mean) might want to read a book called Boundaries, about… setting the boundaries you are talking about.
I’m about to have my first kid too (well, in 6 months) and I plan to read this ASAP. My MIL is pretty decent but, like you, I do best with her in small doses. I don’t think this is her fault, though. We are very much alike and I’ve noticed that when she is annoying me it’s because she’s being like me and for some reason it just gets under my skin. But that’s my thing, not yours. Anyway, being able to kindly enforce some boundaries should help, right?
Good luck!
I second everything Sars and Dorine (above) said. I have a challenging MIL who I was able to handle/avoid pre-baby, but post-baby was a whole different ballgame. When she tries to interfere or override my judgment when it comes to my kid (even on the littlest of matters), the hair on the back of my neck stands up and the maternal instinct comes out, and I have little use for politeness.
The “Estro-Cyclone” (HEE) is no joke. You will not be able to handle her crazytime behavior in those fuzzy postpartum days, so I really think keeping her away until you’ve at least got a tiny bit of footing as a new mom is the best short-term plan.
I’m pretty lucky insofar as both my mom and MIL are concerned, they’re the two sweetest people I know. Other family…. well, let’s just say that there’s crazy on both sides, and both my husband and I have learned to just deal with it as it comes, but under no circumstances buckle on our resolve to keep the kid crazy free.
So that necessitated telling my dad that no, we can’t come visit with baby if you can’t be pleasant and civil the whole time (he gets angry easily at perceived slights), and telling one of his aunts who could give the mayor of Crazytown a run for his/her money that “baby is our daughter who we are raising how we see fit, so no we can’t keep her up past her bedtime because you want to spend more time with her, and that no, rocking her will not calm her down if she wants to be held by mommy now”.
The advice I can give you is that while you’re nice in that you want to handle this delicately, being a parent does give you allowances for being blunt whenever necessary, especially when it comes to setting boundaries with well meaning but exasperating relatives. Like Sars said, sometimes you have to pull the “well, access to grandchild requires you to operate by our rules, not whatever rules maximize your brand of crazy” card. Decide beforehand that you’re going to do so with a united front, and don’t allow yourself to be guilted out of it.
I second-third-fourth everything said above, with one more add: video chat is your friend. Frankly, neither my husband nor I wants either of his parents visiting for a myriad of reasons… and we find it’s a little easier to push them off when we offer up a video chat once every few weeks. (Oh, and as far as my MIL is concerned, I must do more grocery shopping than ANYONE IN THE WORLD, as I never seem to be around when she calls….)
Good luck with everything @harder. My advice is probably a side dish to the actual problem, but I’ll throw it on the table anyway.
The first is that having a baby comes with a fair degree of really annoying comments from people, even those without all the horrible issues of your MIL, so if you can somehow let some of them wash over you, it will do wonders for your sanity. (I’m pregnant with number two and the exclamations of joy by some that *this* one is probably a boy has led to considerable teeth-clenching on my part.)
The second point is that unless your husband can’t take any time off and you are totally on your own, I’d think about declining in-house or constant presence from even the helpful relatives in the first two or three weeks. Let them come over so you can have a shower or they can bring you dinner, but I found it helped with my first not to have someone always second guessing my decisions or offering parenting advice that’s decades out of date. I guess it’s best explained as “you can’t hear your baby’s rhythms over someone else’s talking”. Once I felt like I sort of understood what I was doing, I was far more confident about putting other’s help into the appropriate context. Of course, YMMV and none of this applies if you’re not coping and going crazy.
I don’t have much to add to the excellent advice you’ve already been given by Sars and others (particularly as I’m one of the lucky few with an amazing m-i-l), but I would say that – her historical craziness aside – this woman’s sudden urge to deepen her relationship with you probably isn’t all that uncommon for mothers of sons. It’s been said many times before that ‘women with daughters have daughters for life, but women lose sons when the sons gain a wife’ (or something similarly twee and rhyming). She’s already buggered up relationships with two of her three kids and she’s probably pretty scared that, as he starts his own family with you, she will end up on the outer.
Not that you should excuse any unacceptable behaviour, of course – I just think that it’s sometimes useful to consider other people’s motivations for bad behaviour, as it can make it a bit easier to stomach.
Good luck with your baby!
Your husband might not go for this, but I can’t help thinking it would almost be worth intentionally saying something to piss her off to go ahead and get the inevitable blow-up out of the way. You know it’s going to happen anyway; why keep enduring all of this stress and aggravation for the sake of putting it off? The next time she waxes disappointed about your child being a boy, you could point out that you’re actually pretty relieved it’s not a girl, as you’d be so worried she’d end up flat chested like the women in your husband’s family. Not the most graceful maneuver, but at least you’d be free of her for a while so you could get through an already plenty-enough-stressful time without that unnecessary complication.
I would also talk to your husband about what your own mother’s role with the baby will be. There could easily be jealousy and recriminations if one grandmother stays with you and the other doesn’t. Not that you have to set equal rules for both – and you shouldn’t feel guilty about reaching out for whatever support you need – but be aware that if MIL is looking for something to get upset about, that will do it. My own mother and MIL both like each other, thank god, and we still had issues about who got more time with the baby, etc.
My MIL was a beast and a half, and I spent many years (before her death) reminding myself that while I loathed her, she was the mother of my husband and grandmother to my son. I kept the badmouthing to a very dull roar in front of husband, and vented only to a friend who would just listen. That being said, I never answered the phone in the evenings (she’d call drunk and verbally abuse me), and when she offered to come stay with us after Child #1 was born, I told my husband she was welcome but the baby and I would be elsewhere. You HAVE a mother you get along with, and if you need help after the arrival of the bambino, I figure you would turn to your own family first. Don’t open doors you don’t want open.
I don’t want to scare you, but those first few weeks post partum are no joke, and all the cordial dealings with inlaws go right the eff out the window. My MIL is a lovely person, but old-fashioned, snobby, insecure, and very proprietary about her only son. I am not what she pictured as her only son’s partner, and she lets me know in hundreds of tiny little ways. My FIL is Old School conservative and used to getting his way with everything.
I wasn’t clear enough when my first was born, and it resulted in a lot of hard feelings and judgment (motherhood – ur doin it rong!). They barged into our tiny home, stayed for weeks, demanded things that they thought were reasonable but were not, expecting me to play hostess. I was running on no sleep, not healing quickly, trying to figure out nursing, and dealing with all the body changes and hormonal tidal waves that happen to a new mother.
I finally burst into ugly, ugly snot ridden yowling tears and completely broke down in front of everyone. It was awful, but I think everyone was so used to me just dealing with their bs and making things work that they didn’t realize how serious I was when I kept saying that I needed space, time, and help.
They moved out to a hotel that night, and when my second was born, it was no question at all that they needed to stay elsewhere. They were wonderfully helpful, and continue to be to this day. So, I guess the whole episode was actually cathartic, and may have helped our relationship, but if I had just been more firm from the beginning, things would have been much easier.
Longwinded way to say — trust your instincts about your MIL, and talk with your partner seriously to set the boundaries now, no matter how awkward. It will only get harder. Good luck with this, and best wishes for a safe speedy delivery!
In my case, I have both a difficult MIL and a difficult step-mother. My own mother will joke when I relate stories of the other two that it’s nice to be the sane one :)
Do not tell her you ‘prefer’ she not stay at the house. Tell her you would be happy for her to visit, but that you *will not be able* to accommodate overnight guests. Repeat this as often as you need to. I’ve learned from experience that certain people do not take hints and do not give a $&^*^! what you prefer.
As others have said, excellent advice already, especially the part about figuring this out BEFORE the baby comes. Even if you are the most mentally healthy new mom on earth, you will still be exhausted and emotionally fragile for some time, and things you find “irritating but manageable” in normal life will become “the straw that broke the camel’s back” pretty much immediately. When my daughter was 2 months old, I burst into tears at the thought of getting together with my husband’s family again when we’d just seen them two days in a row. ACTUAL TEARS at the mere thought of more chaos, even for a couple of hours. Handle it now, while your emotions are still reasonably stable. Trust us.
In my case, I am also lucky to have a great MIL, but our problem is a totally bat$hit SIL. I’ve actually written a Vine letter about her before…and that was when she lived across the country. She now lives IN MY TOWN, and it’s a total nightmare. Or, it could be a total nightmare, except that before she moved here, Husband and I sat down and discussed our boundaries and strategies and put together a united front that we have not deviated from…and now we are the only family members not continually hounded by her. Does she think we don’t like her, and does it cause some awkwardness? Yes, but it’s mild, and TOTALLY WORTH the sanity that comes from not having to deal with her 99% of the time. Does our strategy involve a whole lot of avoidance and white lies like others suggested above? Absolutely–but only at first, and she quickly stopped trying to get in touch with us at all except for big family gatherings, her kids’ plays, etc. Perfect. We also employ a lot of Sars-style bluntness/not offering information or explanations beyond what’s actually required. Passive aggressive “I haven’t been to your house in so long!” gets met with “No, gosh, was it Thanksgiving? I guess that’s true! So. How’s your job these days?” And it works!
When Bad Families Happen to Good People. At least you know you are far from alone! Good luck.
Man … my MIL offered to “come babysit so you can get out” when my daughter was two weeks old, and I spent days crying over the fact that she was trying to get me to leave my baby, just so she could get one on one time with my kid while I wasn’t around. Seriously, this is how I felt, and in retrospect, hormones were probably making me extremely territorial, but I just about hated her for the first few months of my daughter’s life. And while I definitely have some issues with her, she’s not NEARLY as difficult as Hard’s MIL sounds. So, yeah, don’t underestimate what hormones and no sleep will do to your interactions with someone you already mistrust on a good day.
It sounds like the partner has a realistic view of his mother, but since no one else has mentioned it, in case it does seem like you’re pushing for more boundaries than he wants, consider finding practical reasons for things that might have impractical or potentially offensive motivations. My husband doesn’t think the sun shines out his mother’s ass or anything, but he definitely has a better opinion of her parenting/grandparenting skills than I do. Instead of telling him “I don’t really want your mom babysitting because I don’t trust the way she does things,” I went with “Your mom already does so much for your siblings. I’d rather she just be able to enjoy her grandchild, rather than making her time with the baby an obligation.” Similarly, if you think it will in any way ruffle your partner’s feathers, you can go with “I really don’t want your mom to have to deal with a crying newborn and sleepless nights while she’s in town,” rather than, say, “I won’t have that woman in my house.” Again, it doesn’t sound like Harder’s partner will have a problem with the boundaries she wants to set, but I find looking for a rational, rather than gut instinct, argument to work better with a spouse who doesn’t have nearly as many reservations about his parents as I do.