Confessions of a Daughter-In-Law

And another one...

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 21:23:51 GMT

The reason this is so disturbing is a) the content and b) this was sent from mother-in-law to BIL (brother-in-law), and half if it was about MH (my husband):

For MH's part, he's always asked for our advice as well. Especially for the last couple of years, I've tried to preface unsolicited advice by asking if he was OK with me giving him some. His reply has always been, Yeah, I always appreciate the advice you and Dad give me. Well, apparently he wasn't telling me the truth (apparently, he was saying one thing and meaning another, which obviously is entirely my fault because he must have learned it from me). Now he says it's always bothered him. You know, like when Dad and I pushed him to apply for a job at X and gave him advice on how to dress and what to say during the panel interview. What a mistake! Maybe MH will quit his job in protest - the job that in a few months will pay him more than $X per year. I mean, we gave him unsolicited advice and he took it and now look where he is. How awful for him! Yesterday in my conversation with His Wife (me), she criticized Dad for reminding MH to change his life insurance to make His Wife (me) the beneficiary. Then she reported our conversation back to Matt, twisting things that I had said to make it sound like I was deliberately saying hurtful things about him. Dear God in Heaven. Matt's e-mail to me said Dad and I have to change our ways or it will ruin our relationship with them. That works both ways.

This is not all about you, Your Wife (she again omitted his fiancee's name entirely), MH, and His Wife (me). Dad and I have feelings, too. I have never seen your dad as upset as he was last night, and I can assure you that right at this moment I feel worse than I did on the day my father died or the day we found out your father had cancer. I looked at your dad last night, and I said to him, isn't this ironic? We had these children out of love and joy, we tried so hard to raise them in a loving way, to help them grow, to give them everything. And now, if one of us died tomorrow, we'd be all alone. And yet, we know plenty of people our age who've been really rotten parents, and their kids actually LOVE them. Go figure. So, no, we're not hanging around here after we retire to be near the four of you. Our love for you and MH is limitless, as it should be. But your love for us is selfish; it's predicated on whether we behave the way you want us to behave. If we aren't living up to your standards and MH's standards (and especially, apparently, to His Wife (me)'s very high standards), then you don't want to have anything to do with us.

~Seriously? Worse than Cancer? Raise your hands if you think this is a little dramatic. Her sense of reality is so warped and distorted that I can't get over that in an attempt to move beyond it. I'm angry because everything she says is so psychotically hurtful so totally out of control that she's devastating my husband.

And I quote...

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 18:52:09 GMT

Directly from the horses mouth: ~Here's a bit from yesterday's e-mail.

You have no idea – no you don't - how hard we have worked to be good parents to you, how much we've tried to give you all of our love and care. I feel as if we've given you tons of love, tons of understanding, tons of support, and tons of consideration for your feelings. Maybe you disagree. But to me, if feels like we got an A in all the important things, but you're flunking us on the parent test because we give you too much advice and we "meddle."

So, please, please don't ever again under any circumstances ask us for our advice or opinion about anything. Don't ask us to look at a house you're thinking of buying. Don't ask Dad whether he thinks the noise Your Wife's car is making could be a valve that's sticking (and can you come over and work on it in our driveway and use his tools and track grease up and down the basement stairs). We'll just be hanging around humbly waiting to drive you back and forth to the airport whenever you go on a trip, offering to pay for you and Your Wife (and BIL and His Wife ~please note she's left out their fiancee, and since this e-mail was sent to her son's I'm guessing he might be hurt by that.~) to go to Florida for Your Cousin's birthday, taking you and Your Wife out to dinner (at your suggestion) and picking up the check, giving you money for your wedding, making jewelry for Your Wife's friends, etc.. You know, stuff that stupid parents would expect their son and daughter-in-law to appreciate. Stuff that you'd think would encourage their kids to overlook the parents' inexcusable failure to have achieved perfection, rather than attacking them for something they know nothing about.
~So now the mother-in-law is trying to buy our love in exchange for our silence when she meddles in our lives, screams and curses at us on the phone, says horrible things... we're supposed to forget about all of that because they also do nice things for us too? Spouses who go back to their abusers use this kind of logic, thank you but I'll have none of that for me.

Miss Me?

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 15:18:30 GMT

So I send the e-mail about how it felt awkward for me to be involved in her lie of omission and she calls me at work. Call me at work?! You have got to be kidding me! And she doesn't even call my direct line she calls the main office so one of the administrative people has to call me and ask if I want my mother-in-law forwarded back to me.

When she gets on the phone with me she starts screaming at me, -f-this, what the -f- are you thinking and she never curses like this so I'm freaking terrified. Was my e-mail harsh? Yes, I certainly should have worded it differently but I believe that you owe it to the people around you to say how you feel.

(If you always offer your brother the last cookie, the last Popsicle, the last slice of cake but secretly you wanted it. You never say anything and secretly consciously or subconsciously resent your brother for never saying "No, you have it." you're helping no one.)

I digress. So my e-mail was poorly worded and harsh. In this hour long phone conversation she says to me:
She says she has never meddled with us and she never meddled even with his ex, who she secretly didn't like. She asked me to give an explanation of what I perceive to be meddling (which was something my husband (MH) had discussed with her earlier). She and her husband made MH's ex go on the pill when they wanted to move in together in college... which I thought was a good example. Her response, literally, "I would never f*cking say that... I might have suggested it to her but I would NEVER make her do something like that".
~In a subsequent e-mail she admitted I was right "My husband says we did do that." but the mouth of a sailor that I had to endure until her husband 'reminded' her was lovely.~

When I asked her about how she thought MH and I were having kids right away she said "You were f*cking sitting in my kitchen when you were talking about planning to have kids right away." ~Again with the mouth of a sailor?!~
I said, "We never said that."
She said "Jesus Christ, yes you did, you might have changed your mind sooner than MH did but in subsequent conversations he said you were going to have kids right away several times."
To which I replied "This is another example of you meddling, you are telling me that my husband said something different that what I know to be the truth, so you're putting me in a position where I have to go confront him because of something you're saying."
Her reply, "I was only saying that so I didn't have to call you a liar."
~So she's angry because I accuse her of lying by omission, which admittedly I could have done differently. And her way to resolve the situation is to call me at work, scream and curse at me on the phone and then knowingly, intentionally lie to me. Good.~

She also said she thought I was selfish for wanting to have kids right away (which I still don't want) because I was older than MH and had already seen more of the world and that I should let him see more of the world first.
~How does one actually respond to that?~

The best is that she said she has always had a wonderful relationship with MH (read: I'm ruining her relationship with her son). And she has never meddled in his life.
~Never? Hello, she made his ex get on the pill. She keeps talking about and asking about grandchildren. She gives a huge speech about how she doesn't want to meddle or guilt us into anything and in the same conversation asks about Christmas and acts disappointed that we might be splitting it half with my family, half with his.~

I never yelled.. I never used a curse word, not even 'shit". I said several times I'm sorry you feel that way. I even said "I don't dislike you I think you are a sincere good-intentioned person who doesn't always realize how your words and actions impact other people. If something I said hurt you I'd want you to tell me, so that's what I'm trying to do for you." She of course replied with "Well I think you might say these things because you think they sound nice coming out of your mouth but I don't think you believe them at all."
~Ok then.

I call my mother-in-law by her first name. I already have a Mom, and that relationship is one-of-a-kind. At the end of this conversation she says "Find something else to call me besides X. Because we're not friends." I say, "If that's something you'd like me to do, I can do that. Did you have another name in mind?" Then after being snotty she says "I'm just hoping that I'll be more than a friend I want to be more special than that."
~What the heck? How freaking bi-polar can you be? It's like talking to two different people, one who might kill me in my sleep if she ever had access to my apartment and the other who is so vulnerable and meek and just wants me to love her. I'm so damn confused.

There is one other thing she said that I will absolutely take to my grave, but if MH new she ever spoke those words he would be devastated.

I'll save some for later.

Where were we?

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 14:23:35 GMT

That's right, on the subject of children. Here's what I don't understand, if we ever had said "We want kids right away." every subsequent discussion we had used language like "In 2-4 years when we start thinking about kids..." or "Once we've purchased our first home and had a chance to travel for a few years..." or "If I look to get a job at X I'd want to work there for 2 years before..."

Even if we actually said, "We want kids right away." once in one conversation why then choose to ignore all subsequent conversations they witnessed? If they thought we had changed our minds what harm would there have been in saying "Oh, are you now thinking about waiting?"

Whatever.

So my husband (MH) and I went to lunch with his brother, his wife and his fiancee. Yes, my brother-in-law is in a polyamorous relationship, try not to make a big thing of it. We're all talking about work and jobs and what not, and I ask "So, what are you doing for Christmas?" Well, they have plans with his wife's family. I say "Oh that's too bad because it would have been fun to all be at your parent's house for the Holiday." MH's brother (lets start calling him BIL, brother-in-law). So BIL says "Oh, Mom said they didn't have plans for Christmas."

So mother-in-law is not comfortable with the Husband-Wife-Wife scenario so BIL probably called to say "What's up with Christmas?" and since she hadn't actually made any plans she said "Oh, we don't have plans." Which is true, but she had to have known that she was thinking about asking MH and I to come to their house for Christmas, because not a week later we knew we were going to their place and BIL was going somewhere else. Now this is his mother's prerogative to invite who she wants for Christmas but now I feel like an idiot because now her own son knows he's not wanted in her home for Christmas.

So I send her an e-mail saying, hey, this is awkward for me because I feel like I let the cat out of the bag and it made me feel uncomfortable to be involved in her lie of omission. Again, she can invite and not invite whoever she wants, but how hard would it have been for her to say "BIL, I just don't think I'm ready to have you all for Christmas, I hope you understand, I'm trying but this is hard for me."

Time for a breakfast bar.

First things First...

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 13:46:09 GMT

Lets get some background: My husband's parents are still happily married. My husband has a brother who is also in a committed relationship.

Prior to meeting me my husband (MH) dated a woman in college. His mother told him that in order for her to continue paying for his food and rent, if they wanted to move in together his girlfriend had to go on the pill. Yes, his mother made is girlfriend go on the pill.

My brother-in-law is in a wonderful and loving relationship. They are considering having a family. My mother-in-law told them:

"There's just no way you can fathom before you have kids how much it will change your life. My Friend and I were having a serious discussion a few weeks ago, and I asked her whether, if she could go back in time and live her life over, she would have children, she said, "No, it's been too painful." (Mentally, not physically.) And she really meant it.

Enough. I know you know perfectly well why I'm tossing out these comments about having children. :->" ~This is pulled directly from an e-mail.

I would consider this to be inappropriately meddlesome.

She has convinced herself that my husband (MH) and I were planning to have children right away. She is absolutely desperate for grandchildren. She, and her husband claim that we sat in their kitchen and said, we're planning to start a family right a way. MH and I are dumbfounded because we've never planned to have kids right away, that's a big decision and we want to wait a while before we make it.

I'll pause for a minute to get myself some coffee.