A win yesterday. I guess?

We have family in town, and we had some celebrations going on for our own kids. DH and I were wrapping gifts and he was bickering with me, needlessly, about the bags or which wrapping paper, or if we needed to go to the store and get more paper.

Dumb marriage stuff that’s not a big argument. The kind of thing where no one is right or wrong.

He’s been a little bit more like this lately, trying to win fights. I’m just trying to get stuff done. I don’t really care if we fight or if we don’t fight, it’s just a matter of getting done the thing that needs to happen.

MIL was very close by. I basically mouth silently and calmly to him
“DH, can we not bicker about this in front of your mom?”

Because from day one, she has seen this kind of bickering and she cannot stand it in any of her kids marriages. In fact the first one married—now that I see how she is—I bet they were NOT on the brink of divorce for years, as the lore goes. Or else if true, her experiences watching them triggered her for a future minor marriage fights. Even from our engagement, she wasn’t quite understanding that there was no argument occurring. It was literally just discussing the pros and cons of different furniture for our first apartment. And she got like, “hey hey hey you guys, can you come to an agreement?”

Over the years also, she inserted herself into our minor, minor angry moments, and she thought it was her, and she thought that I was mad at her. She has zero tolerance for anybody around her being 2% upset.

So DH stopped bickering, and we got the job done. We just wrapped the gifts, which is all I wanted.

How to share this here, because I have no one else to share this with, my best friends are tied in close with my family.

That’s all!

Follow up for anyone who experiences this:
Do you have an in-law that has no tolerance for the most minor of disagreements between anyone? Ex: 6 people want to go out to eat: 3 people want one place, 3 people want the other place?