Friday, January 15, 2010

Mother in Law

Our relationship with my mother in law has been rocky for my whole marriage. My husband didn't really have much of a relationship with her before we got married and they would go long periods of time where she wasn't speaking to him. The funny thing is that there are never any fights. That is hard for me to grasp. In my family, we have arguments - sometimes we have full on fights - not physical of course but there are times when we are just fighting with each other and not getting along. We always seem to hash it out and work it out and I always know they love me and me them. That is not the case in my husband's family. There is a lot of passive aggressive stuff that goes on. My mother in law wore a pant suit and loafers to my wedding. The woman has very nice clothes. Both of her daughters have been married - one twice - and appropriate wedding attire was worn to all of those weddings. It was her way of saying she wasn't happy about the marriage, me, whatever and it was not lost on me or anyone else. I'm not sure why she doesn't like me and over the years I have come to not really care. Most of the time she is superficially nice to me and I am always nice to her. She ridicules most of what I do - my parenting, the birthday parties I throw for my daughter, the fact that we send her to private school (all of her children went to private school and she teaches at a private school), that I allow her to take dance lessons (her daughter took dance for years), etc. I choose to ignore these things and know that many mothers in law criticize their daughters in law. When I had cancer she told the nuns at her school that she needed time off to come take care of me but instead of coming to take care of me she went to their beach house for a week. When she did come weeks later for four days she had me tearing apart my pantry and trying to organize closets because she "thought it would be good for me to do something". Okay - but I'm not supposed to really be lifting anything or raising my arms above my head yet - I just had a bilateral mastectomy. I supposed she didn't think it was a big deal because as my father in law told me at his next visit, "Cancer just sounds really scary. It's really not that big of a deal". Um, thanks for the input?! Sorry, I digress...

She is not nice to my husband and never has been really. She has done unspeakable things to him over the years. The worst of which is keeping the fact that the father who raised him is not his real father from him until she blurt it out one day when she was mad at him. He was 23 and she has never again spoken to him about it. Over the years we have chosen for the most part to ignore her antics. We don't have a particularly close relationship with her but we do go when we are invited and when they want to visit us we make them feel welcome. We basically carry on as though nothing is wrong even though everything about that is very wrong. I've given up on trying to fix it. I've realized that it is not my family to fix and if my husband is content with the relationship he has with them I am not going to waste anymore energy trying to make it into more. She really is not stable and I just keep trying to remind myself of that. Unfortunately for her and all involved really, she chose to take her nastiness out on my 6 year old - not cool and won't be tolerated. We let her back in our lives because we (me really as my husband had no interest in allowing her back in) thought that it only fair to give her another chance when Madison turned one. We invited her to the party even though we had not spoken in a year and she really has been as good of a grandmother as I think she is capable of being. She doesn't have the relationship that my mom has with her but my mom and my mil are two very different people so I would not expect their relationships with her to resemble one another and that is okay. Well, I really don't know what she is upset about this time. She fabricates things in her mind and then punishes us for them for whatever period of time she deems necessary. I know she does this with us and has done it over the years with one of my husband's other sisters. I'm not sure about his youngest sister. I think she is spared some of the craziness. Anyway, long story short we thought she might be upset with us because she had my fil tell us about a month before Christmas that they wouldn't be buying presents for us this year only for our daughter. They haven't bought us gifts in years opting instead to give us a check so we thought that was strange and probably indicated she was mad. Money is not an issue for them in the slightest so we knew that wasn't the reason. I had already done much of my shopping for them so we sent their gifts anyway. Then when we called them on Christmas we spoke to his dad, our nieces, and his sister who asked my daughter if she wanted to talk to Grammy. Of course she said yes and when my mil got on the phone, she basically was nasty to my daughter and then hung up on her. Ummm, really?! We were all sitting there listening to the conversation because my daughter likes to talk with the speaker phone on. I looked at my husband, he at me and my daughter said, "Wow, that was so rude - Grammy just hung up on me. I was just trying to tell her thank you for the gifts she sent". A few days later she told me that Grammy is pretty much the worst grandparent any child could ever have. When I asked her why she feels that way she responded that Grammy never calls to talk to me, she never writes me letters, when I call her she doesn't answer the phone and when I do talk to her she cuts me off and doesn't listen to anything I say and she hung up on me on Christmas. Plus she never comes to visit me. She's been to my house like maybe two times in my life. Wow - I was shocked. All of these things are true of course (although she has visited more than two times) but I didn't realize she realized any of that. We don't discuss his mother in front of our daughter. We try to encourage her to call her, etc. So, that put a damper on Christmas a little. I know it is not my husband's fault but I do end up getting frustrated with him when things occur with his parents. He refuses to talk to them about anything. They just won't speak for a year or so and then it will all be forgotten. That doesn't really fly with me. I think this time may be different because we have always been in agreement that it was one thing to treat him badly and to treat me badly but if it happened with our children that would be the end of our relationship with them. We'll see. I feel badly because I know as much as he pretends not to care about them, he does. I just wish they were normal or even somewhat sane.

1 comment:

Lisa said...

wow!! I have issues with my in-laws but not to that extent!! I agree, once it affects the kids, all bets are off. Good post.