How to love a mother-in-law

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Advice, stories, insight, etc. wanted regarding relationships between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law. MILs receive a lot of bashing and cruel jokes, yet if the good Lord is willing, I hope to be a mother-in-law some day. Sometimes I sense that as I try to deal with my own MIL, I might simply be dealing with an older version of the person I might become. Scary thought.

My MIL and I have many things in common. We both love the same man. We both contributed genetic material for 7 of her grandchildren. She’s a fabulous cook. She keeps beautiful gardens and shares generously when she divides perennials. So why does it seem so hard for me to love her?

No MIL bashing on this thread. (As much as I might enjoy doing that, remember, I hope to be a MIL one day. Do unto others and all that. 😉 ) Any thoughts or insights?
 
I really like my mother in law. She just lives across the country and we never see her. She is very much like my own mother and I know she tries really hard to make sure I like her which is sweet but I do want to show her I really like her no matter what!

I like how she says she loves us when we call. My own mother has never said that to me.

I told her I want her to visit real soon after the baby is born but she said she doesnt want to come too soon in order to give me my space. I thought that was nice, but she is his grandmother! She can come anytime! I LIKE her. 🙂

I hardly know anyone who doesn’t like their MIL…

My best friend (a guy) has a mother who I know very well… she can be difficult. I did warn my best friend’s now wife that she was in for it… but they have managed to get along. Especially since a baby was brought into the picture.

It’s nice to have extra parents eh?
 
Another here who loves her MIL. She is kind and gentle, the best cook and housekeeper I’ve ever known, if shopping were an olympic sport she would be a Gold Medalist.

I am blessed to have both her, as well as my GMIL as part of my family.
 
It is a struggle sometimes with my MIL. I do enjoy her company and we have never argued :extrahappy:
I can’t say we are dear friends, we are only on our 3rd year so that may change. I know she would do anything for me and DH! I enjoy that she is giving. DH & I vowed to eachother prior to our marriage that we would never include family in any of our problems. My MIL accepts that and she does not pry :extrahappy:

I know you didn’t ask for it, although my advice to MIL’s or Future MIL’s is to remember that your child and their spouse are one with God! Respect that and stay out of anything that may come up!
 
Great thread! I have issues with my MIL, won’t get into them here. But I realize that I need to work past them and not hold grudges. I’m feeling called by God to have her in my life more and I feel that as a Christian I need to try to love her, but it’s hard. She did give birth to my DH, so that’s a wonderful thing!
 
I think I was lucky to live thousands of miles away from my mother in law. (She died last year.)

Part of it is that two grown women are going to have disagreements. We are all wired for control, especially when it comes to our husbands and children. Think “mama bear.”

Now think, “two mama bears.”

That’s the problem, right there - two mama bears.

How to keep the peace? My husband deals with my Mom by making “peace gestures” whenever the opportunity arises. He does things with her that he wouldn’t dream of doing with anyone else. One time, he took her to the opera.

Me: The opera?

Him: “Just keeping the peace, dear.”

Me: Aha. 🙂
 
Sina said:
I really like my mother in law. She just lives across the country and we never see her.
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OK, obviously given the rest of your post, you didn’t mean this the way it sounded, but you know when people write “lol”? I actually DID lol when i read those first two lines:D
 
Luke 4:38-39;)

38Jesus left the synagogue and went to the home of Simon. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was suffering from a high fever, and they asked Jesus to help her.

39So he bent over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her. She got up at once and began to wait on them.
 
While we have had a few boundary issues with my MIL, my husband is a strong man who draws clear lines and stands his ground. He got his backbone from somewhere… 😉 Which is probably why it irritates her so much.

Usually my MIL is very good at respecting boundaries, especially when it comes to parenting. She defers to our authority, but we also respect that when our children are visiting her house without us, SHE and FIL are the authorities. We don’t call them up and complain about how they do things differently. We just tell our kids, that’s how Grammy and Opa are, and if you want to be at their house, you have to do things their way. They are the only people who ever really babysit our kids, because we know we can trust them and their parenting style was closest to ours. They are also practicing Catholics, so if they are with them, they go to Mass on Sunday.

I am not the woman my MIL would have chosen for my husband. Once she got over the fact that she didn’t like his choice, she reigned herself in and respected him enough to be decent to me. We now are pretty friendly and get along well enough that we visit their house for vacations. We talk about stuff, and I have shown myself willing to learn from her. She has shown herself willing not to try to override me. We do both love her son, very much, and it is a bond. I would also like to think that I have shown her over the past 15 years that I am good for her son and have taken good care of him and made him happy. He likes being married to me. And I am a good wife… my focus is taking care of my man and my kids.

I honor her for having the RESPECT to back off and let him make his choice without making him pay for it. So many MILs do not do that. Perhaps it is because she is confident that she raised him well. When he got to adulthood, she was able to respect him because she knew he was responsible and level-headed.
 
I think that the “love the same man” is the problem! As much as MIL and I disagree I know she loves us. Sometimes I think my MIL forgets her little boy is a husband and loves another woman a lot, and that this is a good thing and she should be proud that he is a good husband 😃

Advice for getting along with a DIL - I once commented (and shouldn’t have) that I disagreed with DH, MIL asked me “Why I didn’t support him” I did/do support him, part of that support was honestly tell him that I thought one idea was better than another. I learned to not say these things around MIL, and that MIL’s will always think their sons ideas are great. And really this is what we all need in life, someone to who thinks we are great all the time, and someone who always wants to help us be great even if that means saying you would be better at x then y. These two people should not be in the same conversation. 😃
 
My MIL and I have been really close for most of the time but since BIL has gotten a divorce and she is dealing with that most of the time our relationship has suffered and I know I am mostly being jelous it still hurts that she is distant from me now.😦
 
I need help dealing with my MIL. My husband and I fight so much about her I am afraid my marriage with not be sucessful. He has no boundaries with her and she is often his #1 behind myself and our 3 month old son. He is the only child and she does not have any other distractions. It makes me sad because I love him and my son.
 
I love my MIL. She’s…eccentric, I think is the best word for her, but also a very devout and loving person. I have a LOT to learn from her spiritually. She is a great MIL–she doesn’t butt in. It’s my poor hubby who has MIL problems with my mom :rolleyes:. Poor guy, he tries, but she doesn’t. 🤷 That’s another thread though. I got lucky! 😃
 
Feanaro_s_Wife said:
OK, obviously given the rest of your post, you didn’t mean this the way it sounded, but you know when people write “lol”? I actually DID lol when i read those first two lines:D
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Hahha I realized it may be semantic what I wrote there!! Eee!! Maybe I like her so much cos she lives in Ottawa 🙂
 
My mil is great and she is really easy to love. In the begining it was somewhat rough (18 years ago) but when the smoke cleared it ended up being MY mom who started it all by telling my mil falsehoods about ME prior to the marriage! So it is dh who has the looney for the mil. The only thing good about that is that I know, I mean I really, really know dh loves me, he married me after all that!

Anyway, the way we worked it out (even in those crazy circumstances) was, I listened. I respect her opinions (not that I always follow them, but I don’t disrespect them) and I ask questions about them. And I truly love hearing old stories I think that helped me out a lot.

The only scary thing is that my youngest brother is getting married soon and he says that his future mil ‘sounds like your’s did’ - from info he received from my mom. I’ve tried to warn him,but what else can ya do?
 
Tim_Kirchoff said:
Luke 4:38-39;)

38Jesus left the synagogue and went to the home of Simon. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was suffering from a high fever, and they **asked Jesus to help her. **

39So he bent over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her. She got up at once and began to wait on them.
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Thank you. Reflecting on scripture is very good. I highlighted the phrase that particularly stood out to me.
 
Thank you to everyone who has posted on this thread. 🙂 I appreciate you sharing your own stories! How wonderful that so many of you have great MIL and strong relationships with your MILs. You are blessed.

As a point of clarification, my question isn’t so much about how to keep the peace or how to put up with each other. **My question is how to LOVE. **

I used to really like my MIL, (we lived farther away then 😉 ) We moved closer to live near my husband’s family, but now find a greater emotional distance with her. A speaker once said that if we really knew her, we wouldn’t like her. (Everyone who honestly knows themselves can say that.) The speaker contrasted that by saying God knows us best and loves us most. I reached the point where I have gotten to know my MIL enough to know what I don’t like about her, but God still calls me to love her as He loves her. Ironically, what I don’t like about my MIL grows as I grow in my faith. She holds, preaches and lives by many secular viewpoints, but my faith tells me I am still called to love her. I don’t simply want to put up with her; I want know how to love her and that’s harder. I guess my Catholic faith already taught me about how to love, which is why love sometimes feels like a cross.
 
gardenswithkids said:
Thank you to everyone who has posted on this thread. 🙂 I appreciate you sharing your own stories! How wonderful that so many of you have great MIL and strong relationships with your MILs. You are blessed.

As a point of clarification, my question isn’t so much about how to keep the peace or how to put up with each other. **My question is how to LOVE. **

I used to really like my MIL, (we lived farther away then 😉 ) We moved closer to live near my husband’s family, but now find a greater emotional distance with her. A speaker once said that if we really knew her, we wouldn’t like her. (Everyone who honestly knows themselves can say that.) The speaker contrasted that by saying God knows us best and loves us most. I reached the point where I have gotten to know my MIL enough to know what I don’t like about her, but God still calls me to love her as He loves her. Ironically, what I don’t like about my MIL grows as I grow in my faith. She holds, preaches and lives by many secular viewpoints, but my faith tells me I am still called to love her. I don’t simply want to put up with her; I want know how to love her and that’s harder. I guess my Catholic faith already taught me about how to love, which is why love sometimes feels like a cross.
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I don’t think I have any advice on this because I struggle with this too. Like you said love is like a cross sometimes and just be sure that Jesus also struggled with those he loved holding onto ideas that were not in line with the Truth. From the Pharasies to the Apostles to us today we all stray from the straight and narrow some times. Sorry if I am rambling God Bless:D
 
gardenswithkids said:
As a point of clarification, my question isn’t so much about how to keep the peace or how to put up with each other. **My question is how to LOVE. **
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I can give you advice in the form of a very short book. Fr. Thomas Dubay’s “Deep Conversion, Deep Prayer”.
 
What’s that phrase? “Fake it until you make it!” What I mean by that is that if you deliberately choose actions that show love, your emotions will follow. Think about how one would resurrect a marriage that had gone sour…you can act like you’re in love again and eventually, all those actions (hugging, kissing, praising, etc.) invoke those emotions again.
So do the same with your MIL. Do all the things that one who loves another would do (pray for her, (only) praise her to others as well as in her presence, ask for her advice, do loving gestures (baking, sending gifts, doing errands/tasks for her,) very lovingly and eventually your emotions will follow. After all, love is an act, not only an emotion, and in the end, the emotion is truly secondary.
I say all this as a person who has had many conflicts with my MIL, with both of us disrespecting each other and often getting my husband in the middle.:(. I have learned to defer to her…she is my elder and if we have problems, I always apologize and seek to reconcile, even if I feel that I was right. I am very friendly and do help nice things for her when we visit or she visits us. I have learned to keep my distance emotionally, not too close, but not unfriendly. She and I just don’t “mesh” when we get too close or have “too deep” of conversations, so I don’t initiate such things. But I make myself love her because I love her son…and I act in a way that a loving person does for both her sake and my husband’s. Luckily, we moved 8 hours away so she and I can’t really spar as much as we used to and my DH and I have been able to have more boundaries without her meddling…
So, in the end, I wouldn’t focus so much on the emotion of love, but the actions of love.
🙂
Good luck and may God send His Spirit to guide you in this relationship!
Jess
 
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