MIL is getting remarried

[Kelfa28]

for the third time.

There are two major problems my husband and I are having…

One problem we are having is that she is a baptized Catholic who converted to Protestantism and is arguing with my husband and I that there is nothing biblically wrong with her re-marrying.

The other problem is my husband does not want this new guy around our kids….at all. He doesn’t want to explain who this man is in relation to Grandma and we’ve made is clear to her, even before she met this guy, that our kids have four grandparents and that is it.

I’m angry and emotional with both of them because this is already causing us to lose one quarter of our family. We were invited to a family birthday party for a cousin close to my eldest daughter’s age and my husband declared we won’t be going if my MIL brings her “guest”.

My husband is angry with her but he’s also been dealing with my MIL’s marriages and boyfriends for his entire life and just doesn’t want to deal with it anymore. I’ve never been exposed to this. No one in my family has ever divorced and re-married. I know of only one aunt who divorced but she’s never even dated in the past 15 years since the divorce. This is completely new territory for me.

I’m really torn right now on how to feel. I don’t want to expose my kids to something that I know is seriously heretical and also wrong from a secular stand point. I don’t want to go overboard with cutting her out of our lives but I also know how contentious of a relationship she and my husband have and I want to respect and stand by him as well.

I also don’t know how to handle my husband. He would have no issue cutting out his entire maternal side of the family because of this. I, of course, want to avoid drastic measures. Any advice?

 

[VeritasLuxMea]

This is tricky, but I’m sure you know that.

All I can tell you is what I would do as a husband, if my wife was going through the same thing. I would give her the best counsel I could (which in this case, might be some sort of reconciling or other arrangement) but at the end of the day, I would let her make all decisions as it pertains to her own side of the family.

It sorta depends on what the consequences will be for your children, if any.

But other than that, I think it’s right and proper to give the other spouse the final decision in such matters.

 

[Allegra]

Unless I’m really missing a crucial element of the situation, I think your husband is being really foolish and petty. He can explain the situation to your children with the simple lesson of, “Not everyone believes as we do.” Both my parents are remarried as are my husband’s and we certainly include our step-parents in our lives and that of our child. If your MIL’s fiance is a good man, I really don’t see the reasonableness of cutting her out of your lives. I don’t think any priest would recommend that either. I feel like I must be missing something about this story.

 

[Xantippe]

I am guessing there is more to the story, my guess is your husband sounds fed up over years of his mother’s behavior (as he sees it) and is ready to be done with her once and for all.

Well, if I’m reading it correctly, this is husband #4, so I can easily imagine that the OP’s husband has had it up to here.

 

[getysbg]

I think she is correct on this. There are lines in the Christian canon that talk about remarriage

.

I guess you missed the part where Jesus instructs us “what God has joined together let no man put asunder.”

 

[Xantippe]

I think she is correct on this. There are lines in the Christian canon that talk about remarriage being accepted.

Depending on how you read the OP, this is husband #3 or #4.

Even Protestants who are OK on divorce and remarriage tend to blanch a little at #3 and #4, not to mention bigger numbers.

For the OP, have your husband talk to a priest that he trusts. I suspect the answer may be, don’t go to the wedding, but be prepared to deal with the new husband socially. My feeling is that a person like your MIL who runs up the big numbers probably has mental issues that reduce culpability. Tell me if I’m wrong, but I’m guessing this isn’t the only area of her life that is a mess.

 

[Kelfa28]

Alright, I just spent about 30 mins drafting a long reply that got completely erased.

To sum it up.

My MIL has issues. I don’t want to go into too much detail and air dirty laundry out of respect for both my husband and my MIL. But, according to my husband…my MIL has never had a healthy relationship. Both of her ex-husbands (to clear up some confusion) and her other ex-boyfriends that my husband has had to put up with during his childhood have all been very unhealthy.

I’m sorry if my original post was confusing but I was reacting out of raw emotion and general confusion on what exactly is going on right now.

My husband’s reaction towards his parents and any problems they cause tends to always be a “scorched earth” approach. He wants to just completely eradicate any problems he encounters with them. They are both difficult to deal with. His mother is manipulative and passive aggressive and his father is an alcoholic who is verbally abusive.
He wants us to have a relationship with them both but wants to do everything he can to protect us (especially the kids) from their behaviors.

Keep in mind, we just found out about this new relationship about a month ago and now they are seriously considering marriage. She told us so tonight. My husband’s reaction was tense but amicable.
This did result in me putting the kids to bed myself and then escaping for a run while they hashed it out a bit.
I have no idea what went down because she was leaving when I came home and my husband didn’t want to discuss it.
We were discussing the upcoming party this weekend and she wanted to bring a “guest” his reaction was to tell her to call him when she made up her mind so he could decide whether to go with the kids.
That got my attention because despite talking about our Christmas party and our rule that his parents can’t bring significant others (because things get seriously heated and uncomfortable if they do) we hadn’t talked much about other family events.

When I brought this up later…I basically asked if he would actually want to boycott any event on his maternal side where his mother and her new friend would attend. He said yes…unless we could figure out a way to alternate events.

I wanted to disagree but I was getting emotional and he was angry. Not at me but at his mother.

Our Parish Priest is quite good and very orthodox and a man my husband respects very much. He is good friends with the parish director and a number of other good Catholic men in our Church but despite all of this…I seriously doubt he would go talk to them about these issues. Especially at my prompting.

I tend to be his sounding board and I have brought some of his family issues to our priest myself looking for ways to deal with them.
He wasn’t too thrilled about that. He is a very private person and shares just about everything that bothers him with me.

I expect that if I do bring this up to my priest I will get the standard don’t attend the wedding but be prepared to attend family events.

I guess I should just let it go for now and wait. I don’t want to disrespect my husband. I know he’s been through a lot with his parents and he truly thought his mother was done.

He is angry with her but more then anything wants to convert her back to Catholicism.

 

[EasterJoy]

… he’s also been dealing with my MIL’s marriages and boyfriends for his entire life and just doesn’t want to deal with it anymore…

I think I’d venture the Lord’s advice about what to do if a brother sins against you (and marrying and divorcing over and over is a lot to ask of your children, even if it had been a series of good-faith attempts at what eventually proved to be invalid marriages).

“If your brother sins [against you], go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won over your brother. If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that ‘every fact may be established on the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If he refuses to listen to them, tell the church. If he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector. ** Matt. 18:15-17**

Based on this, I’d argue that your MIL and her consorts are owed no less than the patience and kindness due to all of humankind, even to an enemy. She is still owed the respect due to one’s mother. They are not owed the privilege of being in your family’s inner circle. I would not refuse to go to a family event because she is going to be there, but I would feel free to conduct family holidays such as Christmas and Thanksgiving without including her.

You have to remember that you want a precedent that you will be willing to extend into the next generation without violating the demands of charity. If a family member is abusive, whether by verbally attacking others in the family in an intolerable way, undermining the dignity of others in your presence, or by showing up drunk and disorderly to family events, then they might be utterly shunned until they apologize, do what they can to make amends, and clean up their act–it is like dealing with someone who wants to stone you. If they are not directly abusive towards your family but give scandal with regard to their moral life, then you might instead decide to socialize with them as you would someone you know less intimately.

 

[EasterJoy]

Alright, I just spent about 30 mins drafting a long reply that got completely erased.

To sum it up.

My MIL has issues. I don’t want to go into too much detail and air dirty laundry out of respect for both my husband and my MIL. But, according to my husband…my MIL has never had a healthy relationship. Both of her ex-husbands (to clear up some confusion) and her other ex-boyfriends that my husband has had to put up with during his childhood have all been very unhealthy.

I’m sorry if my original post was confusing but I was reacting out of raw emotion and general confusion on what exactly is going on right now.

My husband’s reaction towards his parents and any problems they cause tends to always be a “scorched earth” approach. He wants to just completely eradicate any problems he encounters with them. They are both difficult to deal with. His mother is manipulative and passive aggressive and his father is an alcoholic who is verbally abusive.
He wants us to have a relationship with them both but wants to do everything he can to protect us (especially the kids) from their behaviors.

Keep in mind, we just found out about this new relationship about a month ago and now they are seriously considering marriage. She told us so tonight. My husband’s reaction was tense but amicable.
This did result in me putting the kids to bed myself and then escaping for a run while they hashed it out a bit.
I have no idea what went down because she was leaving when I came home and my husband didn’t want to discuss it.
We were discussing the upcoming party this weekend and she wanted to bring a “guest” his reaction was to tell her to call him when she made up her mind so he could decide whether to go with the kids.
That got my attention because despite talking about our Christmas party and our rule that his parents can’t bring significant others (because things get seriously heated and uncomfortable if they do) we hadn’t talked much about other family events.

When I brought this up later…I basically asked if he would actually want to boycott any event on his maternal side where his mother and her new friend would attend. He said yes…unless we could figure out a way to alternate events.

I wanted to disagree but I was getting emotional and he was angry. Not at me but at his mother.

Our Parish Priest is quite good and very orthodox and a man my husband respects very much. He is good friends with the parish director and a number of other good Catholic men in our Church but despite all of this…I seriously doubt he would go talk to them about these issues. Especially at my prompting.

I tend to be his sounding board and I have brought some of his family issues to our priest myself looking for ways to deal with them.
He wasn’t too thrilled about that. He is a very private person and shares just about everything that bothers him with me.

I expect that if I do bring this up to my priest I will get the standard don’t attend the wedding but be prepared to attend family events.

I guess I should just let it go for now and wait. I don’t want to disrespect my husband. I know he’s been through a lot with his parents and he truly thought his mother was done.

He is angry with her but more then anything wants to convert her back to Catholicism.

By her past behavior, your mother has earned a rule whereby she does not bring “new” guys by until she’s been with them for a particular period of time. Maybe she has no trouble with “love 'em and leave 'em,” but the rest of the family has good reason not to want to forge emotional ties with someone who is going to be discarded and out of their lives before they turn around.

 

[EasterJoy]

No, I didn’t miss that part at all. After all, it’s a famous line.
But that is only one sentence of many that touch upon the topic of marriage/divorce that were written down by writers and then included in the canon.

.

The choices surrounding what was included and excluded from the canon were deliberate, and made by those with the office to do so. The canon was laid down by those with the office to discern what to include. We are being taught moral law with regards to marriage by those with the office to teach moral law that is binding upon the faithful. There is nothing to be gained by speculating about what was proposed and discarded early on, as if we are going to overrule what has been handed down by Apostolic tradition. It is irrelevant.

 

[Allegra]

Alright, I just spent about 30 mins drafting a long reply that got completely erased.

To sum it up.

My MIL has issues. I don’t want to go into too much detail and air dirty laundry out of respect for both my husband and my MIL. But, according to my husband…my MIL has never had a healthy relationship. Both of her ex-husbands (to clear up some confusion) and her other ex-boyfriends that my husband has had to put up with during his childhood have all been very unhealthy.

I’m sorry if my original post was confusing but I was reacting out of raw emotion and general confusion on what exactly is going on right now.

My husband’s reaction towards his parents and any problems they cause tends to always be a “scorched earth” approach. He wants to just completely eradicate any problems he encounters with them. They are both difficult to deal with. His mother is manipulative and passive aggressive and his father is an alcoholic who is verbally abusive.
He wants us to have a relationship with them both but wants to do everything he can to protect us (especially the kids) from their behaviors.

Keep in mind, we just found out about this new relationship about a month ago and now they are seriously considering marriage. She told us so tonight. My husband’s reaction was tense but amicable.
This did result in me putting the kids to bed myself and then escaping for a run while they hashed it out a bit.
I have no idea what went down because she was leaving when I came home and my husband didn’t want to discuss it.
We were discussing the upcoming party this weekend and she wanted to bring a “guest” his reaction was to tell her to call him when she made up her mind so he could decide whether to go with the kids.
That got my attention because despite talking about our Christmas party and our rule that his parents can’t bring significant others (because things get seriously heated and uncomfortable if they do) we hadn’t talked much about other family events.

When I brought this up later…I basically asked if he would actually want to boycott any event on his maternal side where his mother and her new friend would attend. He said yes…unless we could figure out a way to alternate events.

I wanted to disagree but I was getting emotional and he was angry. Not at me but at his mother.

Our Parish Priest is quite good and very orthodox and a man my husband respects very much. He is good friends with the parish director and a number of other good Catholic men in our Church but despite all of this…I seriously doubt he would go talk to them about these issues. Especially at my prompting.

I tend to be his sounding board and I have brought some of his family issues to our priest myself looking for ways to deal with them.
He wasn’t too thrilled about that. He is a very private person and shares just about everything that bothers him with me.

I expect that if I do bring this up to my priest I will get the standard don’t attend the wedding but be prepared to attend family events.

I guess I should just let it go for now and wait. I don’t want to disrespect my husband. I know he’s been through a lot with his parents and he truly thought his mother was done.

He is angry with her but more then anything wants to convert her back to Catholicism.

If your MIL brings a date to the birthday party, couldn’t you just tell your kids that grandma has a date? You don’t have to call him “grandpa” or “uncle” or anything like that. Just call him “grandma’s friend”. I could see not wanting the kids to go to her home if he is living there, but seeing them at a brithday party just doesn’t seem like a big deal. I can also see your husband being annoyed at her history of bad decisions and he should be clear about boundaries in this scenario, but bailing on a family event because one guest is bringing a date seems very silly to me. Kids need relationships with their extended faimily where possible.

 

[sadpanda2]

No, I didn’t miss that part at all. After all, it’s a famous line.
But that is only one sentence of many that touch upon the topic of marriage/divorce that were written down by writers and then included in the canon.

.

So you’re basing your opinion off of the other stuff that Jesus said but isn’t written down? It must be fascinating to know what that is.

 

[Kelfa28]

If your MIL brings a date to the birthday party, couldn’t you just tell your kids that grandma has a date? You don’t have to call him “grandpa” or “uncle” or anything like that. Just call him “grandma’s friend”. I could see not wanting the kids to go to her home if he is living there, but seeing them at a brithday party just doesn’t seem like a big deal. I can also see your husband being annoyed at her history of bad decisions and he should be clear about boundaries in this scenario, but bailing on a family event because one guest is bringing a date seems very silly to me. Kids need relationships with their extended faimily where possible.

This was my exact reaction initially when I first heard about my husband’s decision to avoid all interactions with my MIL and her new boyfriend.
I couldn’t understand why it wouldn’t be okay to limit the relationship to family gatherings and not allow them to spend the night at our house or allow the kids to go over theres and also not have them over for family birthdays or Christmas based on the history between my husband’s parents (I think it’s unfair for my husband’s father).

I still agree with what you’re posting but I’m starting to realize just how unhealthy and selfish my MIL has and been and still is.

My husband talked to his sister today (half-sister but they don’t address themselves that way). His sister feels almost exactly the same way he does. What makes it difficult for her is that she isn’t a Christian and has difficulty expressing why she is so uncomfortable with the situation.
She doesn’t want this new guy to every stay over her house or be around her children in her environment…married or not.
She can’t recognize the validity of what her mother is doing but can’t express why she feels this way.

I’m discovering little things that I never knew before about the history my husband and SIL have with their mother.
It’s disconcerting because my MIL is such a nice person. She is wonderful with the kids and is generous and kind.
It’s only when you lift the rock up and see whats underneath that you start to realize what kind of a person she actually is.
She is very selfish and immature. She puts her needs before everyone else and now is trying to disguise her selfish behavior behind her Christian beliefs.

My husband could see it right away and so could his sister. I couldn’t but I’m starting to see it more and more.

I didn’t know that my SIL has actually had it worse then my husband. She is 7 years older so there were even more boyfriends in her life…all of whom were very unhealthy and in some cases downright abusive.

My husband is just fed up and so is his sister. It’s amazing how stable the two of them are considering their family of origin history.

But I can understand that they just don’t trust their mother at all. This guy could be decent and well rounded and trustworthy but there is too much damage already done.

 

[Kelfa28]

The fact that my husband called his sister this morning to talk and also made an appointment to talk to our Parish Director, who is a dear friend of ours, is a really good thing.

Our Priest was on vacation but we didn’t know he was coming in at midnight tonight and needs a few days to catch up with the swing of things in our Parish.

I’m glad my husband is looking for outside advice.

He also figured I would be posting and has read the comments posted. He’s a bit indifferent to many of them but I think it’s mostly because there is so much more to this situation then I could express on a forum.

 

[manualman]

Sounds like you’ve got a handle on it. I do think it’s important to continue to love family members that are messed up, which necessitates going out to meet them where they are at. That said, it’s also completely normal and healthy to condition that on certain boundaries that should be clearly communicated with MIL and diligently defended!

You’re fine not attending the faux wedding, just put your cards on the table as gently as you can. Explain that you don’t believe in multiple marriages and take Jesus at his word that divorce and remarriage is adultery. Acknowledge that it’s not your job to judge her soul, but it IS your job to raise your children consistently in the faith you hold, which sometimes requires tough decisions.

I’m not sure you need to hide the guy’s existence from the kids. You don’t have to acknowledge their relationship as a “marriage” though. If they’ll be at a family event, call him her friend. You can even insist that obnoxious PDAs not occur in front of the kids as part of the boundaries.

Somewhere inside, she already knows this is wrong. Daddygirl’s feeble assertions aside, Jesus teaches devastatingly clearly that divorce and remarriage is adultery. There was some early controversy about whether WIDOWS could remarry or if that would be adultery, but it was relatively quickly resolved in the western church (thus our “death do us part” vow). If I understand it correctly the Eastern Orthodox still struggle a bit with the idea of widows re-marrying (but I get my information on that from EO laymen, so don’t quote me on it).

 

[manualman]

No, no…the stuff that’s written down. Written down.
In the Christian canon of books.

(Although I am aware that many Catholic teachings are based on stuff Jesus may have meant but was not written down)

Would you be so kind as to direct us to WHERE in the Christian canon divorce and remarriage is endorsed? No offense, but I think you’re making it up. I’ll eat cyber crow if you show me a nice, solid source to back that up.