Reply to MIL as DH's confidante - how would you feel about this?

Forum Index » Family Relationships

Reply to "MIL as DH's confidante - how would you feel about this?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Thanks - OP here.  I don't have any real indicator that he's talked to her about anything recently.  It came up a really long time ago about something pretty major.  In the context of some troubles we were having, he told her I was pregnant even though we'd agreed not to tell anyone (I may have even posted about this here, I can't remember).  About 1.5 years later he told me that, which is when I found out that he talks to her about marital stuff.  I overreacted, and basically forbade him to do it going forward.  That was all a year ago.  We did have at least one conversation since where I softened my position on him talking to her... I think similar to what PP suggested, we agreed in principle that he wouldn't talk to her about something without telling me either before or shortly after.  But really we haven't talked about this

Something happened this morning that I would really not want him sharing with her, so it just occurred to me to post, to see how reasonable that feeling was.  I don't think I'm going to specifically bring it up with him, I don't have any real reason to think he's doing it.[/quote]

I remember your post!  I think when you finally did a pregnancy announcement to the family, she pretended to be surprised or something, and you found out that she already knew after the fact?

If you're the same person, your husband is [b]completely[/b] out of line.[/quote]

Ha, yes, that was me.  A lot of people flamed me on that thread though, if I'm remembering correctly!  But after that ridiculous performance on MIL's part, our relationship really was damaged.  She basically betrayed my trust before she had a chance for us to establish any kind of trust.

I don't think confiding about marital issues is per se bad ... but I do think it's pretty fraught when you do so to family members, and even more so when the relationship between the spouse and the family member is already strained.  I wanted a reality check to see how normal my feelings of discomfort are - like, is it just the nature of the relationship that makes me uncomfortable?  Or is it MIL specifically?

In my case I think it's a bit of both.  As DH's mother, she inherently has investment in the situation and her judgment is clouded by that as any mother's would be.  But in her specific case, MIL means well, but I do not consider her a relationship role model and I think any advice she gives is likely to be subpar.  Going back to the pregnancy thing, telling your son to contrive a performance to cover up my knowledge of the pregnancy is just plain bad advice.  I would really like to believe that as a mother, I would never condone my son doing that - I would say, ok, you need to tell her that I know.  And if he were afraid to do that, I would say, if you want to stay with this woman you need to be able to be honest even if it's going to make her mad.

Part of me wonders if on some level, she wants DH to end up single like her.  Is my assessment of her fair?  Probably not completely, but it's how I feel.  [/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