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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP here. I can handle the group situations, it’s the one-on-one  stuff that I really dislike. I’ll think of some neutral topics we can discuss before she arrives. I’m a driven litigation attorney that loves college sports and hates/never cooks. It feels so strained to find something to talk about. MIL likes to ask questions about DH, and I feel so awkward answering. Maybe nature and travel. No politics or current events (she’s very republican, DH is a moderate republican, and I lean left). She likes to discuss how Biden is ruining the country. I don’t want to go down that rabbit hole.

In the past DH would tell MIL stuff about our relationship and then she’d call me and ask about it (fights we’d get in - how expensive of a house we should buy, whether we should get a dog). To me it’s like she’s trying to find a way to maneuver a seat in our marriage. I told DH to stop telling her about our fights. MIL is a therapist and has this advice giving role for DH. I think he misses that, and I’m the bad guy for not wanting to jump in a share all our issues with her. [/quote]

It's early days yet, OP, and you have to understand it will take a while for your husband to gradually wean himself off his mother's advisory role. He needs to start now, obviously, but it's hard. If you can talk to him in those terms, and explain that the married couple relationship takes precedence over the previous parent-child relationship, he will eventually understand. You have to insist that it's a recipe for more conflict to have a third party, however well qualified, insert themselves with opinions. What he's doing is triangulation, and it's sabotage. Tell him this needs to be fixed ASAP, because soon children will be in the picture and conflicts will get 10 times worse, since everyone will have strong opinions about how to raise them.

I was quite enmeshed with my mother, and it took a few years to let that relationship go and understand that the marriage comes first.[/quote]

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