How to love a mother-in-law

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I want to add that in the beginning, I tried to be “her daughter” and expected her to act like I thought a mother should. (Mainly because I am estranged from my biological mother and it is hard to be close to my adopted mother so I thought this was a “fresh start”) In the end, I had unreal expectations because I compared how she treated me with how she treated her own daughters. Big Mistake. I realized that she has daughters and so she doesn’t/can’t treat me like she does them…it’s just not emotionally possible. (I understand that now that I have my own daughter and feel those “motherly feelings”) So I decided to lower my expectations and I have been much happier since!👍
 
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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Actually, keeping the peace can be an act of love. And “love” does not necessarily mean “like”. You can love your MIL by being respectful. You can love her by being kind. You can love her by setting healthy boundaries. You can do all this with someone who is not very likable. Let’s face it, some people are not very nice, and some of these people are MILs. Sometimes the best thing you can learn from a MIL is what NOT to do when you become one yourself.
 
newf said:
Actually, keeping the peace can be an act of love. And "love" does not necessarily mean “like”. You can love your MIL by being respectful. You can love her by being kind. You can love her by setting healthy boundaries. You can do all this with someone who is not very likable. Let’s face it, some people are not very nice, and some of these people are MILs. Sometimes the best thing you can learn from a MIL is what NOT to do when you become one yourself.
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👍 so very true!

I love my MIL, but I can’t say that I like her. I joke that we get along because we live 8 hrs apart. The reality is, our relationship would be the same if we lived 8 min apart.

I love my MIL in the sense that I love all of God’s creatures. I respect my MIL in that she gave birth to my DH, a man whom I love. She respects me for being the mother of 1/2 of her grandchildren.

How do I love her and keep the anger from boiling over? PRAY!! A LOT!! I also realize that our problems are not a reflection of me. My DH sees the issues we have and helps me to realize that my MIL is just the way she is. Recently, DH went to visit his family w/o me and the kids (we couldn’t afford for all of us to go). His stories of what he experienced were similar to what I was always victim of. It made me realize, that’s its DH’s mom and family!! Its not me!! they just treat others in the way they do, not just me because I’m not trying to get along, or I’m just not tolerant, etc. I had looked for years for ways of improving our relationship, but now I just accept it for what it is. Two people who share the love for certain others (DH and our kids).

We are in no place to change her, but accept her for what she is and let our children enjoy her when they can. My children will grow and make their own views of her as they watch and listen. My oldest is already figuring things out. I try not to be judgemental, but I will not sugar coat things for my kids either.

So, for me, love is a prayer when ugliness rears its head. Love is patience when I’d love to snap back. Love is visiting her to let her see the grandkids. Love is realizing I will not change her and I will not ever be like a daughter. We keep our visits short and busy. We’ve learned to keep occupied when together. We are polite, but by no means are we best friends. I would hazard a guess that we’d have little time for each other if I hadn’t married her son.

I feel for you that you are now closer to where your MIL lives. It makes things harder when a poor relationship that you WISH with all your heart would be a happy healthy relationship, is poor and you are faced with constant reminders of the poor relationship.

Keep praying for strength. Pray the Rosary before every visit. Pray to St. Ann the mother of Mary. She’s a grandma too!! They will give you strength to treat your MIL with love and respect.

Also, have a plan for each visit and activites to do. This helps to keep you from focusing on the bad parts and makes time spent go faster.

My heart goes out to you! :hug1:
 
I have a great relationship with my MIL…
But I thought I’d post some things that have helped me LOVE her more…
Honestly… humor… and the butt of the jokes is DH. 😃
We also “defend” each other a lot… especially when it comes to DH teasing one of us. For example… over our poor memories, or our non-sequential conversations - we’re both able to have a complete conversation without staying on track to the general listener - so DH will tease us over this… and we’ve CONNECTED!
I think this underlying humor in our family has really helped me bond with my MIL…
Besides… every good DH needs a wife AND mother to mock him once in a while. 😉
 
Thanks for this thread, we’re due for mil visit this weekend and I’m trying to get a handle on what will either be a great visit or a terrible visit. You just never know until you’re in the midst of it! 😃

I just wanted to agree that Love is not only a “feeling” but Love is action. Think of how God loved us–“For God so loved the world that He GAVE his only begotten Son.” I continually have to remind myself this! So I pray for my MIL, I offer help when needed, I try to be generous and I try to ignore all the annoying things she does. I’m also grateful that we live far from each other–much healthier for everyone. It also helps to know that she treat everyone the same, lol, it’s not just me 😛

I hope that I have learned, through this relationship, how NOT to act as a MIL.

God bless all of those who are dealing with MIL’s and God bless all those MIL’s!
 
Here’s just another little side note. In my troubles with my MIL I’ve become more sensitive to my SILs (married to my bros). I try to be more compassionate and loving toward them. I’ve also noticed that my mother gets along great with two out of three of them. The one she gets along the least with is the one she is the MOST like! I think it’s true that we look for spouses that remind us of our parents. Did our DH’s do this when seaking us?? Are we so much like our MILs that we rub each other wrong?? 🤷 I don’t know, but something I keep in mind to keep me humble enough to love her.

Hopefully all my boys will be priests and I won’t have to worry about being a bad MIL to future DILs 😛
 
I too have a fairly secular MIL. One way I have grown to love her is to really find the things about her secular life that I can live spiritually. She loves her garden and her large pond that she built. When we visit I always go out and pray by the pond. I’ve let her know that I find great peace there. I love that she was able to build such a wonderful mini-retreat.

I personally do love my MIL, but when I am getting frustrated with some of her very non-Catholic opinions I look for specific things to love. If I am struggling to love the whole, I concentrate on loving the parts. I think it would be like someone who is struggling with a teaching in the Church. They are obedient yet don’t agree with something. They focus on the Church and the things they really love while staying obedient to the things which they don’t agree.

Blessings to you Gardens!!
 
I have such a respect for the way my sister treated her MIL. My sister’s husband is an only child and Jewish, so I don’t think my sister was quite what they had in mind for their son. Not to mention they were wealthy and we were raised poor. The grandchildren helped a lot. My sister visited her home every Saturday, all day, for years, with her family and I don’t know that she really ever felt welcomed. The amazing thing is when her MIL developed cancer at 86 years old (and really no other health problems) my sister took her into her home to care for her. She lived 2 years after that.
That care really took a physical and emotional toll on my sister, especially that we really didn’t see her for a lot of that time.
I think about my sister and her devotion to her MIL and wonder how many people, myself included, would give themselves like that.
I guess my advice would be to think about what you would rather be known as to your children and husband, the person who gave or the person who didn’t.
 
I have a MIL who is very secular as well. She actually gave me a prayer book last Christmas, though. Sadly, it was from the Episcopal Church with prayers to “Godde”, who is a “she”. Also, prayers for acceptance of homosexual clergy, choice and God knows what else. I really was struggling to think kindly of her after seeing what was actually in the prayer book.
We do not see eye-to-eye on anything, except maybe that we both like to cook.
Years ago the four of us were playing cards and drinking wine. We each must’ve been just a bit less inhibited than normal. The subject of “choice” came up, and while I usually try to restrain myself somewhat when the topic comes up, the wine aided my defense of the unborn.🤷 My FIL, who is astute enough to see where this was headed, slammed his hand down on the table and ordered us to stop. On one hand, this was in my house, so I was ticked (DH was there), but OTOH, he did prevent some possible irreparable damage being done.
I dread her visits.
 
LittleDeb said:
I personally do love my MIL, but when I am getting frustrated with some of her very non-Catholic opinions I look for specific things to love. If I am struggling to love the whole, I concentrate on loving the parts.
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Hi LittleDeb- good to “read” you again. 🙂

Deep down, I do love my MIL, and I should focus on the positive because she has many good qualities. It’s almost like with all her good qualities, I feel blindsided by the junk she says and does. We don’t get together often, but I spend a few days before we get together dreading what I might face, and a few days after we get together processing what just happened. I’m processing now, but I should focus on the good more.
 
My MIL drives me nuts…but after 21 years of marriage, I have come to realize that much of the problem is mine rather than hers. She doesn’t DELIBERATELY do things to annoy me–she just does things in ways I wouldn’t do them. At any rate, although I don’t feel all warm and fuzzy about her most of the time, there is no denying her place in our family as the grandmother of our children. She is WONDERFUL!!! Much like my own grandmother was to me and for that, I am tremendously grateful. My mom (she passed away last June) never acted like she wanted to be a part of my kids’ lives, but MIL has done it all. My kids love her to pieces.

MIL is widowed (twice) and I know that she feels deep loneliness at times. We have her over for dinner almost every Sunday night and invite her to attend church functions with us. These are very small things that mean a lot to her. I’m lucky!

Kathy
 
kage_ar said:
I can give you advice in the form of a very short book. Fr. Thomas Dubay’s “Deep Conversion, Deep Prayer”.
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Thanks–I’ll add that to my “wish list”. I heard Fr. Dubay speak on tv before, and if he’s the priest I’m thinking about he seems like a kind and saintly soul. I read the pre-views of his book on Amazon, and they offered significant points to ponder. For those interested reading some of the book, here’s a link and you can click the arrow on the right side to turn the page: http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/1586171178/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link
Thank you everyone who responded on this thread. I didn’t address every post personally, but each post gave me something to think about. :grouphug:
 
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