DH and MIL lied to me about knowing about our pregnancy

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I am always going to be someone who is not willing to share a pregnancy until after the first trimester. DH knew this before we got pregnant and as we struggled through various infertility issues. It is part of my culture and also just part of how I best deal with difficult situations. Next time I may have to keep the pregnancy entirely to myself, but if that is what I have to do, that is what I have to do. I can't compromise on this one.

So if your DH is always someone who wants to share such exciting news with his parents, especially after the time most people share, then...what?

As someone who has, in fact, struggled (permanently, in fact) with infertility issues I am amazed that you are focusing on this in light of the fact that you have a healthy child. Really, this is just nonsense. You are looking for a reason to cause a problem. And your DH's poor mom! Tasked with an exciting secret she wasn't supposed to know, she didn't lie well and you are mad at HER? Poor woman obviously was stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Your infertility is not a part of this discussion.

[Anonymous]

I can't imagine the eggshells that poor man walks on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OMG. OP. Holy crap. You are NOT hearing folks here.

OP, if you have a son, you may understand someday that your loyalty to him will trump your sense of responsibility to anyone else. So if your son tells you a secret and asks you to keep it a secret, you are going to protect his secret, even if you wish he wasn't keeping it a secret. Your loyalty will be to your child, not his wife or anyone else.

Your DH violated your trust by telling his mother a secret that you didn't want her to know yet. She stayed loyal to her son and protected the secret. She's a bad actress but she did nothing wrong...or, even if it was wrong to some degree, her loyalty to him trumps her sense of it being wrong to you. In short, she chose to wrong you in order to avoid wronging him.

I don't know any mother who would choose differently. Accept that your MIL will always be more loyal to your DH than to you. That's as it should be. But your DH should be more loyal to you than to his mom. HE is the only one you need to work anything out with. She owes you nothing, least of all an apology.

My mother would choose differently, as would I. Lies are bad. Lying to your wife about something she cares about is very bad. That doesn't bode well for anyone. It's pretty simple.

OP, Are you close to your mother? Do you have siblings?

Yes - part of the reason we are all still close, as well as with everyone's inlaws, is that our parents respect that our spousal families are most important now.

Yes, because OP and her family are perfect and never make silly mistakes that would cause their psychotic in-laws to lose trust in them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP you're getting some rough treatment here.

FWIW my DH and I have had occasional issues around him sharing personal (to me/us) info with my FIL. I have a somewhat strained relationship with my FIL anyway, but to me, these instances don't make me angry with my FIL or make me rethink our relationship. To me, the issue is that it seems/feels like DH is still in a place where his family of origin comes first, while I feel like now that we are married with kids we are the family he should feel primary allegiance to. But I get that for some people that is hard.

I do think your DH betrayed your trust. First, he did something he said he wouldn't do. Then, he kept it from you for a long time. So I do understand feeling betrayed by him.

As for your MIL, would your expectation be that she tell you directly, "I already knew"? That seems like a major intrusion. Perhaps she could have said to your DH that he should tell you, and maybe she did, but that seems to me like really overstepping parental boundaries.

Thanks - this is really helpful. You're right, I wouldn't expect her to tell me she knew, necessarily, although that would have been one option. My hope would have been that she would tell her son, "you should tell her that I know" instead of manufacturing a spectacle to deceive me. and/or after I had made clear that the spectacle was not going over well with me, to fess up instead of (when her son wanted to fess up), telling him not to. I think it was just basic poor judgment on her part, I don't think she's evil, but I can't trust her and feel sad about that.

I do believe strongly that open communication is the foundation of healthy relationships, so that is part of where my strong feelings are coming from here. People who feel less strongly about open communication probably wouldn't mind it as much.

Honestly, after seeing everything you wrote here, she probably thought there'd be hell to pay if you found out she knew.

What a silly, silly thing to not be able to trust someone over. Your husband put her in a really bad position, for which he owes her an apology.

I agree that he owes her an apology and put her in a bad position.

But I disagree that lying to someone about something because they'd be upset if they found out the truth is a reason to lie to someone... if anything, that is a reason you need to tell them the truth. I live by this principle and expect my spouse to as well. If his mother doesn't, that's fine, but I trust her less.

HOW do you not see that you are giving DH every reason to keep things from you? He already kept it tucked away for 1.5 years and made another mistake when he confessed it two weeks ago. He'll try not to make that mistake again.

By treating DH like the enemy you are setting yourself up for a lifetime of wondering and worrying what else he's keeping from you.

Eh, I'm not worried about DH - we are communicating very productively about this. He recognizes that he is extreme on the side of conflict avoidance and knows it's something he actively needs to work on. It's easy to blame me for all this for ever having a negative reaction to anything, but it really is a known issue with him. I certainly work on trying to respond to him in a way that encourages discussion as well. But not telling someone something important in a marriage isn't justified by you're worried it's going to upset them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I can't imagine the eggshells that poor man walks on.

Why? Because I posted in a forum asking for advice about it? Or because I care about something you think I shouldn't? He doesn't think it's wrong for me to be hurt by this, and my communications about it have been very productive with him. You guys really think it's ok to just lie about a promise you made to someone? <shrug> ok, that's fine but it's not the relationship for me, and my DH agrees.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OMG. OP. Holy crap. You are NOT hearing folks here.

OP, if you have a son, you may understand someday that your loyalty to him will trump your sense of responsibility to anyone else. So if your son tells you a secret and asks you to keep it a secret, you are going to protect his secret, even if you wish he wasn't keeping it a secret. Your loyalty will be to your child, not his wife or anyone else.

Your DH violated your trust by telling his mother a secret that you didn't want her to know yet. She stayed loyal to her son and protected the secret. She's a bad actress but she did nothing wrong...or, even if it was wrong to some degree, her loyalty to him trumps her sense of it being wrong to you. In short, she chose to wrong you in order to avoid wronging him.

I don't know any mother who would choose differently. Accept that your MIL will always be more loyal to your DH than to you. That's as it should be. But your DH should be more loyal to you than to his mom. HE is the only one you need to work anything out with. She owes you nothing, least of all an apology.

My mother would choose differently, as would I. Lies are bad. Lying to your wife about something she cares about is very bad. That doesn't bode well for anyone. It's pretty simple.

OP, Are you close to your mother? Do you have siblings?

Yes - part of the reason we are all still close, as well as with everyone's inlaws, is that our parents respect that our spousal families are most important now.

Yes, because OP and her family are perfect and never make silly mistakes that would cause their psychotic in-laws to lose trust in them.

I didn't mean to sound smug, I was just answering the question and its implication that if we were a close family we would be loyal to each other above our spouses. I believe the contrary is true.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can't imagine the eggshells that poor man walks on.

Why? Because I posted in a forum asking for advice about it? Or because I care about something you think I shouldn't? He doesn't think it's wrong for me to be hurt by this, and my communications about it have been very productive with him. You guys really think it's ok to just lie about a promise you made to someone? <shrug> ok, that's fine but it's not the relationship for me, and my DH agrees.

Tell me why you think he didn't reveal this for a year and a half? He had plenty of opportunity, and you said you "again" traced it back to this trip. He has heard you repeatedly review this trip and has kept his mouth shut. Do you really think you have created an atmosphere of openness in your marriage? As a bystander I can say it doesn't seem that way.

[Anonymous]

^I think I'll bow out now because you are beyond what a message board can offer. Go to counseling, individual and couples.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can't imagine the eggshells that poor man walks on.

Why? Because I posted in a forum asking for advice about it? Or because I care about something you think I shouldn't? He doesn't think it's wrong for me to be hurt by this, and my communications about it have been very productive with him. You guys really think it's ok to just lie about a promise you made to someone? <shrug> ok, that's fine but it's not the relationship for me, and my DH agrees.

Tell me why you think he didn't reveal this for a year and a half? He had plenty of opportunity, and you said you "again" traced it back to this trip. He has heard you repeatedly review this trip and has kept his mouth shut. Do you really think you have created an atmosphere of openness in your marriage? As a bystander I can say it doesn't seem that way.

lol at you considering yourself a bystander to our marriage, and lol at your logic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I can't imagine the eggshells that poor man walks on.

He walks on eggshells because... what?
OP is "oversensitive" because she and her husband had an agreement about whom they would tell about a very personal event going on in her body, he broke that agreement, and then lied about it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:


This is 1.5 years of strange interactions with his mother that I'm wondering if could have been different had this not happened. I'm not trying to be a drama queen. In fact, I'm trying hard to take the space I need and work through the emotions surrounding this so that this doesn't cause unnecessary drama.

I don't think that your strange interactions can be traced to that episode, since you did not know about the lie and MIL probably thought nothing of it. There could be other factors at play, but you ascribe too much significance to this event.

[Anonymous]

Well, I agree with everything you said except this. I do think that what her MIL did was somewhat wrong, but not nearly as wrong as what her DH did. I would feel weirded out if my MIL was insanely overacting annoyance with me about not telling her I was pregnant in order to hide the fact that she knew I was pregnant. I would not, however, be dwelling on it or expecting an apology two years after the fact. I would probably think, "that was kind of annoying and over the top on MIL's part. What a waste of time and energy," and move on.


See, if MIL and I had a great relationship at this point, I would think that too. The problem is, something was off about that whole trip, and afterward I left feeling confused and not really trusting her and not knowing why. I guess I'm sad about what could have been had this not been hanging in the air all this time.

But you are not going to have a great relationship with every person - whether they are your mother in law or not. I think what you need to focus on is why you have such a hard time letting go of the idea that you would have had a great relationship but for this incident. Yes, the behavior of both your MIL and DH strikes me as inappropriate (especially your DH, but her as well). But it seems to me from your postings that it is unlikely that anything can be done to resolve your issues with MIL - and that is fine. But I do think it would be helpful for you to speak to someone to figure out how to move forward productively and not dwell on it, whether or not you wind up being close with her. You are expending a lot of emotional energy being upset about this, and it doesn't seem that you are getting much benefit from it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:


This is 1.5 years of strange interactions with his mother that I'm wondering if could have been different had this not happened. I'm not trying to be a drama queen. In fact, I'm trying hard to take the space I need and work through the emotions surrounding this so that this doesn't cause unnecessary drama.

I don't think that your strange interactions can be traced to that episode, since you did not know about the lie and MIL probably thought nothing of it. There could be other factors at play, but you ascribe too much significance to this event.

Right, I don't know the extent to which this is true, but I do think it has had an impact. They were just seriously bizarre, and I immediately thought of her differently, and it colored interactions subsequent to that. But I'm not necessarily ascribing any particular significance to this, just wondering what things might have been. And the answer might be, they would be the exact same.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Well, I agree with everything you said except this. I do think that what her MIL did was somewhat wrong, but not nearly as wrong as what her DH did. I would feel weirded out if my MIL was insanely overacting annoyance with me about not telling her I was pregnant in order to hide the fact that she knew I was pregnant. I would not, however, be dwelling on it or expecting an apology two years after the fact. I would probably think, "that was kind of annoying and over the top on MIL's part. What a waste of time and energy," and move on.


See, if MIL and I had a great relationship at this point, I would think that too. The problem is, something was off about that whole trip, and afterward I left feeling confused and not really trusting her and not knowing why. I guess I'm sad about what could have been had this not been hanging in the air all this time.

But you are not going to have a great relationship with every person - whether they are your mother in law or not. I think what you need to focus on is why you have such a hard time letting go of the idea that you would have had a great relationship but for this incident. Yes, the behavior of both your MIL and DH strikes me as inappropriate (especially your DH, but her as well). But it seems to me from your postings that it is unlikely that anything can be done to resolve your issues with MIL - and that is fine. But I do think it would be helpful for you to speak to someone to figure out how to move forward productively and not dwell on it, whether or not you wind up being close with her. You are expending a lot of emotional energy being upset about this, and it doesn't seem that you are getting much benefit from it.

lol @ the evidence of expending emotional energy being because I posted to DCUM about it and paid a lot of attention to my thread today. Isn't the standard for posting to DCUM about something much lower than that?

I have no idea whether or how much our relationship would be different, it's kind of the "what if" that is unsettling. I do think it has had some impact but not clear how much. And curious about where to go from here. If I have to tolerate her only, then that's what I'll have to do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can't imagine the eggshells that poor man walks on.

Why? Because I posted in a forum asking for advice about it? Or because I care about something you think I shouldn't? He doesn't think it's wrong for me to be hurt by this, and my communications about it have been very productive with him. You guys really think it's ok to just lie about a promise you made to someone? <shrug> ok, that's fine but it's not the relationship for me, and my DH agrees.

No, I don't think it's okay to lie.

On the other hand, you have wrecked your relationship with your MIL and are currently wrecking your relationship with your DH because he lied about something you profess to not care about.

No harm, no foul, lady. If you don't care about whether his mother knew or not, you don't get to punish him for it. It's a white lie. Move on.