Meddling mother in law

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I am not saying the MIL is right. I see this a problem, like most of the posters here.

It is what the OP can do in a very bad given situation for her. Bashing the MIL does not help her marriage though I feel the MIL can deserve that.

Basic question to be asked is: why get married? It is not where one will get new freedom to do what one like, a false ideal of modern marriage many people would like to think. It is not. One will lose that personal freedom and instead embarking into the unknown where one has to accept things/family members which one did not have before.

Christian principle is to love the parents - in order to obtain blessing in our lives. To love the in-laws for the same reason.

The Book of Ruth is a good example - how faithful she was to her MIL Noami despite all the difficulties. She went on to be the ancestor of our Lord Jesus Christ - that’s how God honored her.

The OP has not much choice but to recognize she will lose certain freedom in a marriage. It is easier for that to be done if she take a paradigm shift - love her MIL for example like her own mom.

Like I said, try to prioritise what matters and what not very important. The former for examples:

You got to marry the man you love.
There is food on the table, roof on top of the head, perhaps a promising career ahead and thanks God, a baby is coming.

In-laws are always part of the new family from time memorial - Chinese, Indians, Arabs, Jews and Romans. That’s not going to change no matter how much we want to idealise marriage.

The thing is how to deal with it. Ideally the MIL should not interfere but that’s not the case here. The OP has to deal with this together with her husband. The other alternative is unthinkable, probably a divorce. If the husband can put his foot in, it will only solve the immediate problem, the MIL will not likely change, and the burden will be on the husband to do the balancing act in this marriage. One day that may just snap off or someone goes insane.

Acceptance is still the pragmatic way to do this. The couple make the decision and will not compromise on somethimf they deem important to them. The others they have to try to learn to live with. It would be easier if the attitude is not ‘I and her’ but rather that she is part of the family that probably need to be taken care of at some point in time.

God bless.
 
That would be good but we do not know the husband background with her mother.

Why was this not thought about before marriage? What was his family background; his relationship with his mother, or what was the mother looked like?

Probably she was in love and dreamed of good thing to come. If she failed to make the initial investigation, she only have herself to blame with what she landed with.

We seen people getting into mixed marriages. Some Christian girls married Muslim men because of love. They did not take into consideration that the man could have four wives and the possibility that she might have to share her husband. But if that’s her choice, then she has to make the best out of a bad situation.

Just to warn our single girls out there about marriages.

God bless.
 
Allegra said:
I don’t know. I’ve interacted with a LOT of Italian mothers and I’ve never heard of one that demanded to be allowed to choose the baby’s middle name. Sure, they have opinions on the name you choose! But they don’t usually expect to be allowed to pick the name themselves! This situation seems to go a little bit beyond the Italian style of loudly over-sharing opinions or concerns. This MIL actually expects the right to make demands and have them followed!
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It is an old school italian tradition to name the first born male child after the paternal grandfather, and the first born female child after paternal grandmother.

Idk if this applies here
 
Yeah. In my ex’s Sicilian family, the first born boy is always named after the father, but with the first and middle names reversed. So every other generation, the name is exactly like the grandfather.
 
Reuben_J said:
That would be good but we do not know the husband background with her mother.

Why was this not thought about before marriage? What was his family background; his relationship with his mother, or what was the mother looked like?

Probably she was in love and dreamed of good thing to come. If she failed to make the initial investigation, she only have herself to blame with what she landed with.
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This post seems to lay all of the blame on the OP and the husband gets a free pass on his bad behavior.

You know, some people are really good at hiding things. You only find out when you marry into a family some of the weird dynamics.

Do you really think the OP would have thought the MiL would sneak into the house and paint a room? Come on, that isn’t normal, and not a scenario anyone would ever think to question before marriage.
 
Reuben_J said:
Basic question to be asked is: why get married? It is not where one will get new freedom to do what one like, a false ideal of modern marriage many people would like to think. It is not. One will lose that personal freedom and instead embarking into the unknown where one has to accept things/family members which one did not have before.

Christian principle is to love the parents - in order to obtain blessing in our lives. To love the in-laws for the same reason.
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While I agree that there are certain freedoms one gives up when married, that does not mean that we need to allow our privacy to be violated for the sake of the marriage. The OP married into her husband’s family, but did not marry his mother. His mother is not entitled to decorate her home, be present during a childbirth, choose her child’s name, etc.

It would be kind of the OP to love her mother in law, in the same way we are all supposed to love everyone, even those who have hurt us. Loving our parents does not mean opening ourselves up to be abused. It does not mean that we are not allowed to set boundaries to protect ourselves.

If this mother in law is allowed to get away with this stuff going forward, it is only going to get worse when the baby arrives. The husband needs to start acting like a married man and care about his wife’s preferences, and the OP will need to be more direct about setting boundaries with both him and his mother.
 
OP–your entire post is disturbing and sad. You need professional help to figure out what social and legal ramifications this may have. In some states there are grandparents rights meaning that your MIL could have legal rights to your child.
 
Irishmom2 said:
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Reuben_J:
That would be good but we do not know the husband background with her mother.

Why was this not thought about before marriage? What was his family background; his relationship with his mother, or what was the mother looked like?

Probably she was in love and dreamed of good thing to come. If she failed to make the initial investigation, she only have herself to blame with what she landed with.
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This post seems to lay all of the blame on the OP and the husband gets a free pass on his bad behavior.

You know, some people are really good at hiding things. You only find out when you marry into a family some of the weird dynamics.

Do you really think the OP would have thought the MiL would sneak into the house and paint a room? Come on, that isn’t normal, and not a scenario anyone would ever think to question before marriage.
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It is not blaming the OP. Please do not misunderstand. I think the MIL is wrong. Period. My post, if the OP wants to take heed of, is to address her situation.

The MIL is wrong and thus what has to be done about it. All the posts here seem to want to make the OP feels good but that will not solve her marriage problem, which is the crux of the matter.

The marriage is committed already. She entered into it and now this. What to do?

My suggestion:

The husband is very much a part of her life. Alineating her MIL without the understanding of the husband will only affect the more important relationship - between her and the husband.

Ideally, the MIL should let go, and she and the husband has the freedom of the new life in their marriage. But that’s not the ideal here - the MIL is a factor and the husband, what? Perhaps he does not think it is problem.

The best suggestion before this is to go for counselling - she and the husband if possible, together.

I am just pre-empting it. I am quite sure a counselor would more or less say the same thing.

Whether she (OP) likes it or not, the MIL will be part of that marriage until she (MIL) dies. That would be going to be a long time. And what happen in between?

God bless.
 
Clementine14 said:
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Reuben_J:
Basic question to be asked is: why get married? It is not where one will get new freedom to do what one like, a false ideal of modern marriage many people would like to think. It is not. One will lose that personal freedom and instead embarking into the unknown where one has to accept things/family members which one did not have before.

Christian principle is to love the parents - in order to obtain blessing in our lives. To love the in-laws for the same reason.
Click to expand...
While I agree that there are certain freedoms one gives up when married, that does not mean that we need to allow our privacy to be violated for the sake of the marriage. The OP married into her husband’s family, but did not marry his mother. His mother is not entitled to decorate her home, be present during a childbirth, choose her child’s name, etc.

It would be kind of the OP to love her mother in law, in the same way we are all supposed to love everyone, even those who have hurt us. Loving our parents does not mean opening ourselves up to be abused. It does not mean that we are not allowed to set boundaries to protect ourselves.

If this mother in law is allowed to get away with this stuff going forward, it is only going to get worse when the baby arrives. The husband needs to start acting like a married man and care about his wife’s preferences, and the OP will need to be more direct about setting boundaries with both him and his mother.
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I agree wholeheartedly with this.

It seems to be depending on the husband.

God bless.
 
To the original poster: You really do have a difficult situation. The first talk needs to be with your husband. He should be on the same page as you. Your mother in law does not have the right to come into your home and make decisions about how it looks and does not have the right to make family decisions for you. Go see your pastor and/or a counselor to help you. You may want to please your husband, but you do not have to be a doormat for his mother in order to do this. If you do not make a point of setting limits now, her behavior will continue and will only get worse. I have had experience with dealing with controlling family members in my own family and believe me, you absolutely have to set limits. Don’t fall for the trap of her saying she was only trying to help. She may get defensive. She may get upset and feel hurt. Let her deal with her own emotions.
 
Amen to this.
Remind the hubs of his wedding vows.
He’s married to YOU, not to his mother.
I feel for any child brought up in this type of dysfunction. Remind him of his responsibilities to present a unified and loving front as a married couple to any children that come along. If he remembers at all what it was like growing up with a domineering person, he won’t likely want that for his child. He may end up very grateful to break loose. I hope so, anyway.
 
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OP, it seems to me like there a couple of issues here.
Firstly your husbands over bearing mother and her lack of boundaries,secondly your husbands allowance of this and his unreasonableness,inconsideration and indifference,and thirdly your perception of wifely submission etc.

Sometimes we teach people how to treat us and this ideally should have been “nipped in the bud” early on as now she has has learnt a pattern of that you will accept this.

I’m not sure how the MIL situation can be fixed fully as long as you have this perception of submission as it seems your idea of submission is letting your husband decide whatever he wants, and then you going along with it.
This to me though just seems like bossiness?
For example,your husband changing his mind and deciding that you will now work and his mother will look after the child part time.
Such a big decision such as this is something that should have been discussed between both spouses-not just something he decides and then “announces”.

Personally I think to change the MIL situation will also come with a change in the “structure” of how you view submissiveness otherwise he can just say he is happy with how things are and you would just have to go along with it,no?
 
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Here’s a thought I’ve had from a secular blog:
Most reasonable people respect other reasonable people and tend to think that if we go along and work hard and do our best to accommodate others, we will get the same treatment and respect in return. Unreasonable people do not respect people who always say yes to them – the opposite is true.
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That is, unfortunately, something I’ve found to be true. Unreasonable people tend to see people who work extra hard to get along with them as, well, suckers. Probably not in so many words. More likely, the more you accommodate, the more they start to see you accommodating them as something that’s their due. They don’t learn “this is a nice person I can work with,” they learn “this is a person who lets me push them around.”
 
Hi. Unfortunately that happens in real life, and therefore true. You give in, they will take it as a given, and want some more. Obviously such people do have a problem.

In the Christian teaching, we would not expect the worst in people, though the same people can be very difficult, to accept and to love. We are called doormat if we accomodate them, and therefore the wisdom is not to.

Looking at the Biblical verses of honoring our father and mother, we should take the difficult road, because they are our parents or in-laws - the spouse parents. Many times we have lost that value, because it is not the teaching of the world, the secular and trend of conventional wisdom, which are more attractive to us.

Those are perhaps things to think about.

Today Christian marriage requires a pre-nuptial seminar. There are organizers who run such seminar would include relationship with in-laws in their course module.

Perhaps people like us would know how to treat our future daughter/son-in-laws.

The OP’s MIL obviously did not have any training on being an in-law. And the husband too, perhaps being too familiar with having the kind of relationship with his mother.

If the husband can be talked out to recognize his wife’s dilemma, then all problems are solved. But if he does not, then it will not bode well for their marriage relationship, as anything taken unilaterally by the wife against his mother would result in his resentment in the years to come.
 
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Reuben_J said:
In the Christian teaching, we would not expect the worst in people, though the same people can be very difficult, to accept and to love. We are called doormat if we accomodate them, and therefore the wisdom is not to.
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The way I would put it…it is not loving someone to accommodate inappropriate behavior. I have struggled with this for years with my own mother, wanting to love and honor her, and yet knowing that if I try to “make nice” it’s going to be taken as saying that I don’t mean it when I say no.

Frankly, unless she has some sort of serious mental disorder, she has enough training to know this sort of thing is not appropriate. It doesn’t take special training to realize you can’t paint someone else’s house, or change someone else’s wedding flowers. All that takes is a basic concept that other people aren’t yours to control. (I mean, let’s be honest, if my mother went into my apartment without permission and painted, well, anything at all, it would not go over well.)

I would also worry that we simply cannot expect the OP to be superhuman. Resentment on the part of the wife that her conjugal life involves being subservient to her MIL would be corrosive to the marriage as well - and I think she would have to be superhuman to not feel it.
 
As husband and wife, they should discuss this together to come to an agreed action to be taken. If she take unilateral action against the MIL without the husband knowing why, he may think she is rejecting his mother. From my experience with simliar cases with problematic in-law, the daughter in law should consider the stand taken by her husband.

In one case, just because the wife bought a present (perfume) for her mother, which she knew her mother liked during their holiday in Paris, but did not buy for her MIL, it caused a misunderstanding on the husband who remembered it some twenty years later. Just imagine the bad feeling being kept all that years, which can affect their marriage relationship.

They have to do this together.

God bless.
 
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I think that ship has sealed, frankly, The husband has chosen a side, and it’s not the one he professed to take in his marriage vows. Counseling is needed. Urgently. With or without him, but it’s really HE who need s a good talking to by the priest.
 
It js easy to say but not easy to solve in real life. Theoretically, this case is obvious. If you have done counselling on difficult marriage relationship, you would know the difficulty. Here, we are dealing with problematic people, not something on piece of paper where you can just see the problem clearly. It is about people.

All the suggestion here are right but have you considered what will be the effect on the couple if it is not done correctly?

Saying is one thing, knowing and understanding the character and personality of the people involved is another. And that need to be taken into consideration when we advise people so that it will not make the situation worse than already it is.
 
Reuben_J said:
All the suggestion here are right but have you considered what will be the effect on the couple if it is not done correctly?
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My worry is that there may not be a “correctly” according to your view. The wife cannot make her husband go against his mother, nor do I think she could without misery live with the MIL behaving this way. I think it’s important to talk to the husband, but I worry that the effect of much of what’s being suggested is that both her husband and MIL come to view OP knuckling under and being subservient as the way things should be.

What I do have is a lot of experience with controlling people. The way I heard it put…some people are like vampires who will suck you dry and then get angry with you for not giving them more blood. That’s been very much my experience. You try to work things out, and what happens is you yourself get more and more exhausted and unable to cope from trying to work with the other person. But they don’t view themselves as doing anything abnormal - they may even be doing it for you! So you end up having to fight the same battle at the end, only now you’re completely exhausted and they have had time to view you giving in as normal.
 
I can also attest to this type of person, from first hand experience. Giving in only makes it worse; it never resolves.

There’s a graceful, loving way to set boundaries, and that’s what this OP needs to do. It will work best to have husband, MIL, and a third party- preferably a priest familiar with the circumstances, or a therapist - present at the same time in a neutral setting to establish personal boundaries.
 
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