Reply to I lose respect for DH when I hear him talk with his mother....

Forum Index » Family Relationships

Reply to "I lose respect for DH when I hear him talk with his mother...."

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]As someone who has the difficult parents (actually, just one, my dad is awesome), let your husband handle his mother how he sees fit, and leave it alone.  You'll likely only end up driving a wedge between you and your husband on this, and you'll be in the wrong.  I made it clear to my husband from day one that how I handle my mother is up to me because it doesn't affect him (I don't let her come over and yell at him, for example).  He wasn't there my whole life, and has no idea of all the complications involved in our relationship, so he respects whatever I choose to say or do because, like I said, it doesn't affect him.  Let your husband do and say what he wants and acknowledge that there's a lot you don't know about their relationship.  Having a difficult parent is really hard because even when you might hate them, they're your parent.  Don't make it worse for him.[/quote]

It was toughest on our marriage when my oldest child was a baby/toddler and she would successfully make him feel guilty for 1)not doing everything the way she wanted regarding caring for our baby and 2) not leaving our baby for extended periods of time in her care.  He would pressure me to "forgive her, give her another chance, not hold a grudge, etc"  It wasn't about holding a grudge, it was a true concern for safety!  Those were the worst fights. I would get so angry because I felt he was caving to her at the expense of risking our own child's well being.  Like I said....this among other things led us eventually into marriage counseling.  So, yeah, it DID affect me...and my kids.

Boundaries are MUCH more clearly drawn now, but she still is who she is.  For the most part, I do stay out of it.  When she is mean to him (say on a phone call) I'll typically just ask if he's ok and say something along the lines of "It bothers me that she treats you that way....you don't deserve it and its not fair."  He just acknowledges and says his usual "oh well, what ya gonna do" - and that's that.  No fighting.  Then I vent on a anonymous forum about family relationships  :D

[/quote]

PP here.  It's hard to know if you were being dramatic about your MIL or whether you were truly concerned for their safety, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt on that one, in which case, I agree with you that you needed to step in because it did affect you.  However, your post was about how he talks to his mom now, which didn't seem to me to affect you (sorry if I misread that).  In that case, I'd leave it alone.  My husband does some things with his family that drive me crazy (and affect me financially, although not drastically), but I've had to let it go out of respect for how he wants to handle it since they're his family.  I've seen stuff like this create problems between spouses (as it sounds like it did in your case if you went to counseling over it), so I would just encourage you to try to let it go now since it sounds like the worst is (hopefully) behind you.  I'm sorry you have a MIL like this.[/quote]

Thank you for your condolences.  :-)  You (and likewise PPs who have made similar comments) are completely right about just letting stuff go at this point  - like I said, we don't fight about it now, it just occasionally gets under my skin - and it did this time and so here I am releasing my frustration with you.  Things are much different now than they used to be.  We went through some really hard times and perhaps that is why I'm hypersensitive.

As far as my exaggerating.....well....let's see....there was the time she said to give my 8 month old NyQuil because she had a little cold.  I said no (politely) and she insisted. It got awkward.  I kept trying to find polite ways to say no.  She got angry.  She started yelling that most pediatricians are young and don't even have children so what do they know???  She knows better and why don't I listen to her???  And see....based on her history and what she has done with my nieces and nephews, if I left my baby with her, in a heartbeat, she would give her NyQuil just to prove a point that she gave it to her and she survived.  This is one very small example of many crazy episodes that convinced me I couldn't leave my babies with her.

The one incident that made DH turn a corner and stop pressuring me to 'give her another chance' involved her leaving our home with our then toddlers in her convertible without telling us and without carseats when she was supposed to just watch them for one hour while we had a meeting nearby.  He was furious with her and and she immediately began to act like a timid lil' ol' harmless lady, total victim, "why are you being so mean????"  Even then, he was respectful to her, just talking to her sternly and was clearly exasperated with her.  The whole car seat issue had already been a "thing" between us - with us insisting on them and her insisting they were totally unnecessary.  So she knew how we felt about car safety and did this just to "show us."

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics