Feeling sad that my mother in law is sharing my good news before I can

  • Thread starter Thread starter joyfulandactive
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
J

joyfulandactive

Guest
I just got wonderful news that I am in remission for cancer. Many, many people all over the world have been praying for me. Two of my oldest friends, godparents to our eldest child live in another country. I have been playing phone tag with them because I wanted to tell them my good news myself.

They just contacted me saying my Mother in Law sent them an email with the good news. It may seem very petty and ungrateful but they are friends I have had since 17 (I am now 50). My MIL only knows them because of me and has only met them about 3 times. I feel pretty devastated to be honest. My MIL loves to gossip and I have deliberately kept information from her and not shared all my friendships with her once I realised that she has a tendency to behave like this.

I am sure I seem unkind and cruel. I just feel it wasn’t her information to share. She has not experienced what I have gone through in the past year. Now I know ANY of my friends or family that I haven’t reached yet and she has their information will have already been told. I am also not on social media so I am sure it is all over Facebook etc. I should be so grateful for my healing - and I am but I also feel that not only is my privacy invaded but she is taking my joy by stealing my thunder of being able to share good news after so much suffering.

I feel really devastated right now especially because of the time difference I can’t talk to my friends until tomorrow. This kind of thing has happened so many times in my marriage with my mother in law and she never asks me first if she can share information.

Please don’t be too hard on me in your replies (!)…
 
Hi. I´m glad to hear that you have been healed from cancer.
I understand that this is something you would have wanted to share with your friends and family by yourself. I don´t look at that as cruel or anything like that.

I´m young and I don´t have much advise to offer on this. I would consider to make sure that whenever you tell her something that is not official yet, you should tell her that you want to tell people yourself and want her not to say anything to anyone about what she knows. If she can´t do that, then I would choose to wait with telling her good news in order to make sure she doesn´t share it further.

I don´t know how close you and your mother in law are, but is there a slight chance that you could tell her how her sharing the news have affected you? Maybe that could make her be more conscious about what she is sharing with others? As long as you both are respectful and kind towards eachother while bringing it up.

The key in this is communication. You both have a responsibility when it comes to that. Talk about it instead of letting the bad feelings about it grow.
 
My husband told his family which is normal and natural. Unfortunately my mother in law does not have any boundaries and will not see anything wrong with sharing any news she wants. I have coped during 20+ years of marriage by keeping information private. Unfortunately she got my friends email address and took it upon herself to tell them. I won’t say anything to her because I know it is pointless. I have to say it didn’t occur to me she would do this, I forgot this is her Modus Operandi. She opens private mail not addressed to her and tries to figure out people’s passwords to get into their email and phones. It is just who she is. She is in her 70s and is not going to change.

I will get over it, I am just sad right now because I wanted the opportunity to tell my friends myself. I will be fine in the morning and still call them and have a joyful call.

It just reminds me why when we were newly weds my husband wanted to move far away and we have never lived close to his family as we would have ZERO privacy.
 
Once, many years ago in the pre-internet age, my wife was chatting to her parents on the phone – they lived in another city, a long way away – and when they asked about their other daughter, N., she replied, “Oh, she’s fine, she had a cold but she’s better now.” A day or two later N. found out about this conversation and she was furious that my wife was “passing on gossip” about her to the rest of the family. She went for a week or two without speaking to us.

I’m sorry to sound negative, @joyfulandactive, but in this particular instance I suspect you may perhaps be overreacting. The business about spying on other people’s emails is a different story, of course.
 
I am sorry you feel badly about your family situation.
I agree it is going to seem minor to many people reading because you have just gotten a huge blessing of being in remission from cancer, so it’s hard to see how your MIL sharing information that you were planning to also share (so no invasion of privacy or blabbing of a big secret) is so bad. But we don’t have to deal daily with your MIL, and I suspect your frustration here is not just this incident but is coming from a whole basket of situations with your MIL that have built up over the years.

I would suggest that maybe for future situations, where you want people to know directly from you, you consider sending the e-mail or a text to them yourself, before MIL can do it, and then follow up with a phone call. The reality of today’s life is that people and their friends are in different time zones and even when you’re in the same one or calling at the time when they’re awake, people expect to get most information by text, e-mail, Facebook post, etc. A lot of folks I know don’t even answer the phone unless it’s their significant other, their child, or their job calling. You’re being a little unrealistic by expecting to be able to set up a phone call before someone beats you to the punch with the other electronic means of communication.

Regarding your MIL, I would also suggest just not telling her anything you don’t want her to share until you’ve already reached or told everybody else you want to tell it to, particularly folks in a foreign country who are unlikely to run into your MIL at the grocery store and let slip that they already know something big before she does.

In this case, you can certainly still call your friends and share your joy. No one is going to be any less happy for you because they already heard the news. It’s not a surprise party that got spoiled. Try to set your MIL aside because you can’t control her, you can only control your own reaction to her, and stewing over her is not productive for you.
 
Last edited:
I’m pleased to hear that you are in remission! That’s wonderful news. I had a mother-in-law who loved to gossip too. It’s hard, I had to stop sharing any news with her that I didn’t want shared with the entire town where she lived. My husband and I had many conversations about establishing boundaries with her and luckily he was on my side throughout out marriage.

I understand and share your sadness. You should be able to share your personal news the way you want, when you want, with whom you want without having to worry about other people doing it for you. 😦
 
It’s great that you are in remission! What a blessing!

I can certainly understand why it would never occur to you to specifically tell your MIL, “Now, don’t share this news with my close friends whom you barely know before I’ve had a chance to do so.” That does seem to be overstepping things just a bit!

I know from my own family experience how this can go. It’s generally not out of a desire for idle gossip but just because—with a larger extended family—it’s just second nature for many of them to talk about what’s going on with others in the family. But it does make me want to guard information I don’t want shared with everyone. Even still, if I explicitly ask that a piece of info not be shared yet, they are pretty good about respecting that.

I tend to try to look on the bright side of it. If I ever need to pass on information, I just have to tell one person and I can rest assured that everyone else will find out without me having to contact everyone individually. 😝

Certainly, you know better than any of us how to deal with your MIL. I think it would be warranted for you (or your husband) to mention to her that it hurt a little that she would do such a thing. But I understand why you might rather just let it go, too.

God bless!
 
Last edited:
joyfulandactive said:
Unfortunately my mother in law does not have any boundaries
Click to expand...
Sounds like you should pray for her. It’s obvious that she means well but if she has ruffled your feathers then she probably has done the same with other family members.
 
Thank you everyone. I hope you can see from my first post that I was just trying to get this off my chest and rant a bit because I know it is insignificant in the great scheme of things. And of course I am filled with relief and gratitude that prayers have been answered.

I think Joe captured it well, it’s the oversharing with people “you barely know” that is so mortifying. I am feeling a lot better, not angry and more just sad. I also remembered that right around the time of our wedding I found my new mother in law had told everyone in my friend and family circle she met (i.e. first time she had ever met them) about a private family scandal involving my brother that had nothing to do with me. I had confided in my husband who had told his mom and she took it upon herself to tell everyone. It was so mortifying because it was digging up something that had happened ten years previously.

In fact these two friends were some of the only people I had told and my MIL was frankly amazed that they had never shared the information.

So…it does have a long history and I am naturally a very open, relaxed person and I hate that I have to be so guarded around her.

A priest friend is coming to see me in 20 minutes so I’m sure I will feel a lot better after speaking to him.
 
joyfulandactive said:
I just got wonderful news that I am in remission for cancer. Many, many people all over the world have been praying for me. Two of my oldest friends, godparents to our eldest child live in another country. I have been playing phone tag with them because I wanted to tell them my good news myself.

They just contacted me saying my Mother in Law sent them an email with the good news. It may seem very petty and ungrateful but they are friends I have had since 17 (I am now 50). My MIL only knows them because of me and has only met them about 3 times. I feel pretty devastated to be honest. My MIL loves to gossip and I have deliberately kept information from her and not shared all my friendships with her once I realised that she has a tendency to behave like this.

I am sure I seem unkind and cruel. I just feel it wasn’t her information to share. She has not experienced what I have gone through in the past year. Now I know ANY of my friends or family that I haven’t reached yet and she has their information will have already been told. I am also not on social media so I am sure it is all over Facebook etc. I should be so grateful for my healing - and I am but I also feel that not only is my privacy invaded but she is taking my joy by stealing my thunder of being able to share good news after so much suffering.

I feel really devastated right now especially because of the time difference I can’t talk to my friends until tomorrow. This kind of thing has happened so many times in my marriage with my mother in law and she never asks me first if she can share information.

Please don’t be too hard on me in your replies (!)…
Click to expand...
I suggest you tell your mother-in-law exactly what you just told us here online. Have her sit down and just listen to you say everything you just told us.

If you need too, type it out and read it to her. If this was a one time thing, I would simply tell you to get over it, but it seems like she does this kind of thing often.

So have a heart to heart with her and let her know that it hurts your feelings when she does that.

But also make sure you know that she is sharing it out of love, but that it still hurts your feelings when she does this.

Godspeed & God bless
 
joyfulandactive said:
I had confided in my husband who had told his mom
Click to expand...
Frankly, it seems the problem is your husband. He knows his mother is a gossip, lacks boundaries, and pries into other people’s business and then shares it with no regard for anyone’s feelings. And yet, he not only shared private info about your family that was then spread around by her, he is also the one who told her your news. (Do I have that right?)

Seems to me the gossip didn’t fall far from the tree. Why would he undermine you like this, knowing his mother is going to trample your boundaries? this is a question he really needs to answer, and then he needs to commit to changing his OWN behavior.

I have a feeling most of this isn’t from you oversharing, but from your husband telling his mother things he shouldn’t.

That’s the impression i am getting from your posts.
 
Last edited:
Well I just had a lovely visit, anointing and Holy Communion. Phil I have realized over the years that sit down chats are just not going to make any difference and I really don’t want to draw attention to this as my MIL will blow it up into a drama which I really don’t want.

I feel fine now. I just need to get over myself and be grateful that because we live far away we are not around this constantly. We are in fact the only immediate family members on my husband’s side who are not divorced. We are happily married but I think if we lived closer our marriage would not have survived either.

Praise God for my healing, praise God that my lovely MIL raised such a great man who I am happily married to.
 
1ke sorry if there was any confusion but that incident happened over 20 years ago and my husband and I did learn to not say anything unless we wanted everyone to know.

I definitely don’t think my husband should have kept the good news of my remission to himself, he had felt so much fear and anxiety and of course he wanted to tell all his family.

I just forgot and didn’t anticipate his mom calling my dear friends because I guess our measures have been working. We have put in our own boundaries so that this kind of thing is now rare.

When I was first diagnosed the same thing happened, she told the entire world without asking me first but I was resigned as I knew it would happen. In this case, I was just caught on the hop.

I am so glad that I remind my three teenagers not to tell their grandma anything that they don’t want all over Facebook within 5 minutes (no exaggeration). As we all know and as mentioned, she won’t change, I have to change my own behavior to handle it and I have. It’s a good reminder why we put in boundaries.

She has told me so many things she should not about other people when I was a newlywed. I was just getting to know her and was an immigrant to the US so I didn’t say anything to her at first because she was older and I have been taught to be respectful of older people. Also my own family don’t behave this way so it took me a while to know how to handle it.
 
I was just about to say Are you asking your husband to keep these as confidences?
Your mother in law is no doubt very thankful and joyous that you have beaten cancer into remission. There may be a wonderful support network for your husband that includes his mother, and your close friends. They may know each other quite well now, through praying for you and watching your struggles and the struggles of your husband.

I would not, however, paint your mother in law in uncharitable terms other then in not understanding boundaries.
This is not an uncommon character flaw in human nature.
 
Last edited:
First of all, congratulations on being in full response. I would advise you to step back and look at the big picture. Are you not like the woman who lost the coin, but then swept her entire house and found it? Then, she called her neighbors to celebrate with her? I sense a hint of animosity toward your MIL and although it may be warranted, your best response would be to pray for her. Some souls just have this overpowering need to be first with the news. It may give them a sense of power or importance. In that regard they are in need of prayer.

If your friends are still your friends, let them come to you and ask.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top