Mother-in-law problems

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Gullveig

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So, some may remember my last thread. Long story short, my husband and I are recently married and expecting, and there was quite a bit of family drama with my husband’s very Catholic parents about both. Which I thought we had gotten sorted out a couple months ago, but apparently not.

My mother-in-law asked to exchange e-mail addresses so she could stay abreast of wedding/baby news, pictures, and so on, which seemed like a reasonable request and sort of a good ice-breaker type thing. And it started off just fine, she’s kind of chatty and appends me to a lot of those junk e-mails, but I figured she was starting to warm up to me. Anyway, I thought everything was going well. Then I get an e-mail where she had accidentally responded to me instead of starting a new e-mail to someone (she’s not a very tech savvy person, so I’m going to assume that’s what happened and this isn’t just some kind of bizarre passive-aggressive thing) which starts off kind of innocuous, so I didn’t realize it wasn’t written to me until the part where she starts talking about how upset she is about my husband and I and how worried she is about the kid when it gets here, etc. I didn’t really read past that last part, because she basically said she thinks I’m going to be a bad mom and that’s sort of a kick in the gut, because I have doubts about my own future parenting skills. 😦

I’m not sure whether I should just let this slide or not. Clearly, the message was intended for someone else in confidence, it just happened to wind up in my hands, so I sort of feel like I should just forget about it. Everyone vents. But at the same time, it’s disturbing to me that she would pretend like everything is just peachy when she clearly really dislikes me and it sort of makes me reluctant to interact with her for fear of making it worse. A lot of the issues she seems to have with me are stuff that just really can’t be changed. My husband and his parents have sort of a strained relationship at the best of times, so I don’t want to make that worse either.

So, do you guys think it would be better in the end to talk to her privately about it or try to pretend it didn’t happen?
 
If she’s as two-faced as your post portrays, not sure what good a confrontation would do; at best she’d apologize but you’d be skeptical about it given her history.
Let your husband know (granted I don’t know the man, but in his shoes I would want to know), pretend it didn’t happen, but make note in case this becomes more common and a confrontation becomes necessary.
 
I’d go for don’t mention it (because I don’t think there’s anything you can do to fix her anxiety about you), but definitely watch out for your social media contacts. She should not have access to your Facebook if you do Facebook, unless you’re a social media ninja and can manage her presence there. There are so many huge family fights that never needed to happen that are sparked by social media stuff.

A certain amount of ambivalence about the DIL is normal in an MIL.

Best wishes!
 
I would probably point out that if she’s going to write nasty stuff about you, she should make sure that she doesn’t send it to you by mistake. Maybe the embarrassment will make her think twice about gossiping in the future. I don’t think there’s anything you can do about her attitude though.
 
Gullveig, I’m going to take a different tack here than the other responses, and I hope you’ll take it in the spirit in which it’s meant –
Obviously I don’t know exactly what your MIL said, so I could be completely off-base. But sometimes pregnant women are super-sensitive, emotionally. Could you be reading more into it than was actually there? Could she just have been venting a little normal concern about a new mother-to-be? Especially if she wasn’t thrilled about your marriage in the first place?
 
If there have been problems with the MIL and she’s continuing them behind your back. It will continue.

I might respond with… “Please pray that I’m not as bad a mother as you are with technology. In fact, please pray that I’m the mother that dreams are made of. Thanks” I might cc my husband too. That way he can’t say he doesn’t/didn’t know his mother is a monster-in-law. Especially when you have to put your foot down with regards to the little one. You don’t need your husband playing the “oh you’re imagining it”

Passive aggressive behavior from the in laws is my specialty by way of years of experience.
 
Dear OP

This is what I suggest you do :
  1. Do not answer the letter and show it to your husband but tell him not to say anything to prevent family problems
  2. You already know the truth on how she feels about you so might as well stay away from her but always treat her with respect if she calls or if you are invited. We will always have to keep God’s commandments to honor the parents but stop giving them details of your married private life…
  3. I also agree with not putting your life in Social Media like facebook and have your life scrutinize by a lot of people especially the inlaws
Good luck and God bless !
 
Congrats on the marriage and the baby!

As for the MIL…if this was me and I was in your situation, I’d show my husband the e-mail and let him choose the course of action to take.

I’m going out on a limb here and assuming that because you state your husband has a strained relationship with his parents that he won’t cater to them…if so, my husband and your husband have a lot in common and I know how my husband would act. He’d come to my defense in an instant.

Fortunately my in-laws do not act like this towards me and the strained relationship exists just between my husband and his parents.
But I know that if they did…he’d want to know about it.

He is your husband and his duties are primarily directed to you and the baby. I think he’d want to know what is going on.

For me…I might let it slide if she was just venting about how she is upset with her son’s choice of a wife because of whatever. But going the next step and taking a dig at you as a future mother is about as low as it gets.
For me…I don’t think I’d want my children around a person like that. It’s not her place to judge regardless and the baby isn’t even here yet.
 
Gullveig said:
So, some may remember my last thread. Long story short, my husband and I are recently married and expecting, and there was quite a bit of family drama with my husband’s very Catholic parents about both. Which I thought we had gotten sorted out a couple months ago, but apparently not.

My mother-in-law asked to exchange e-mail addresses so she could stay abreast of wedding/baby news, pictures, and so on, which seemed like a reasonable request and sort of a good ice-breaker type thing. And it started off just fine, she’s kind of chatty and appends me to a lot of those junk e-mails, but I figured she was starting to warm up to me. Anyway, I thought everything was going well. Then I get an e-mail where she had accidentally responded to me instead of starting a new e-mail to someone (she’s not a very tech savvy person, so I’m going to assume that’s what happened and this isn’t just some kind of bizarre passive-aggressive thing) which starts off kind of innocuous, so I didn’t realize it wasn’t written to me until the part where she starts talking about how upset she is about my husband and I and how worried she is about the kid when it gets here, etc. I didn’t really read past that last part, because she basically said she thinks I’m going to be a bad mom and that’s sort of a kick in the gut, because I have doubts about my own future parenting skills. 😦

I’m not sure whether I should just let this slide or not. Clearly, the message was intended for someone else in confidence, it just happened to wind up in my hands, so I sort of feel like I should just forget about it. Everyone vents. But at the same time, it’s disturbing to me that she would pretend like everything is just peachy when she clearly really dislikes me and it sort of makes me reluctant to interact with her for fear of making it worse. A lot of the issues she seems to have with me are stuff that just really can’t be changed. My husband and his parents have sort of a strained relationship at the best of times, so I don’t want to make that worse either.

So, do you guys think it would be better in the end to talk to her privately about it or try to pretend it didn’t happen?
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Hello Gullveig,

I think that maybe you can try to talk to her and if she doesn’t understand, then try to pretend it didn’t happen.

I will pray for you and for her.

Have a nice day.

hope19
 
:eek: What an awful thing for her to do.

What I would do seems to be very different from what everyone else would do. Frankly, I find this behavior to be disgusting and undermining. I could not imagine ever saying those things about a close relative’s pregnant spouse! That’s the time to offer nothing but love, support, and any help the couple may need. It is not the time to bash the new mom to whoever will listen about how she shouldn’t have married her son and how “sorry” she feels that the baby will have to have her as a mother.

Here’s what I think should happen. I think that you should print off the email and take it with you next time you visit your MIL. Have your husband do the talking, but you make sure to be there with a very serious look on your face. Your husband needs to ask his mom what this is all about, if that’s how she really feels, who she has been saying this stuff to, and if she thinks that she is in any way equipped to be a grandmother to your children. If she says that she is, it needs to be made clear to her that she will not have a role in your kids’ lives if she is so intent on running their mother into the ground. You simply can’t trust someone who would do something like that around your children. Have your husband explain that you guys are willing to let this go, but that if he gets wind of anymore negativity or disrespect towards his wife and/or kids, that you will be forced to seriously alter, if not end, the relationship you and your family have with her. Normally, I’m for the spouse who’s family it is to deal with the problem, but in a case like this where she has so explicitly called you out and drawn you into this, she needs to know that you know what she said and that you agree with your husband fully. It will make you feel better to watch your husband defend you and it will very clearly show her her place if you guys are a united front.

I am so sorry about all of this. But I don’t think that you should in any way let it go. It sends the message that you guys will tolerate this kind of thing, and that’s not what you want to have happen as you’re bringing kids into the world.

I had an aunt that would very subtly disrespect and bash my mom to me when she wasn’t around. When my mom found out, it crushed my mother, but it also caused a huge rift in the family when my mom decided that I couldn’t be around my aunt without her supervision anymore. By taking care of this now, rather than when your child is 8 like I was, you can prevent her from bashing you and undermining you to your own kids.
 
And yes, in the above confrontation scenario I am envisioning raised voices, clenched fists, and a few choice words that can’t be repeated here. I’m not talking about coddling her because she’s upset about her son’s marriage, I’m talking about really confronting her and making it clear that as far as your family is concerned, defending you comes before protecting her feelings.
 
BEL,

And how does that make anything better?

The OP’s MIL is entitled to her feelings and her concerns and she is allowed to confide in a friend or a sister. (Let she who has never told a in-law story to a friend throw the first stone.) I think there’s a big difference between a private email and, for instance, ranting to the OP’s husband about what a bad mother the OP is or posting unfortunate Facebook updates. I personally have sent plenty of emails that I would prefer that my in-laws not see, and for all I know, they’ve done the same. (One of my in-laws has to have doors shut juuuust so and he has many other peculiarities that if I didn’t share with somebody other than my husband, I’d probably burst.)

Knowing what she knows, the OP is not going to want to be best buddies with her MIL, and they can spend as much or as little time with the in-laws as they choose to. The in-law relationship is one that often develops very slowly. When I met my in-laws, it was a total disaster. We had about an hour to talk, and I made a terrible impression 1) because I was nervous and trying too hard and 2) because my in-laws were not disposed to like me. They then gave my husband a long post-mortem of the meeting, which made me sound like Cruella De Ville’s less nice younger sister. It was very upsetting and I cried a lot. Also, there were disagreements over wedding timing. My husband and I got married rather more quickly than his parents wanted us to and there was a long chilly spell afterward. MIL warmed up pretty fast (being a more pragmatic person), but FIL literally didn’t speak to either of us for years (beyond the most necessary communications). That’s the bad news. The good news is that about 10 years and two kids later (after years of basic civility on my part), FIL finally started speaking to my husband again and even started to thaw a bit toward me when we were expecting our third child and I was having a lot of complications. That was after we’d been married 14 years.

So, all in all, I am a believer in keeping up a basic relationship and not having any huge scenes, but also not having more contact than is comfortable. What’s the OP’s MIL going to say? “I’m never going to complain about you again?” That’s just not a reasonable expectation.
 
To be very fair, I should mention that my in-laws were not informed of our marriage for over half a year, which precipitated the 10 years of my FIL’s not talking to us. On the other hand, by the time my husband and I got married, talks had pretty much broken down as to setting a wedding date that the in-laws would attend. So I don’t think either party was entirely in the wrong. They should have been told earlier, but there was so much carrying on about the wedding date that it was just so much easier to just move on without them.

I mention this story because our secret wedding is more or less equivalent to the OP’s premarital pregnancy, in terms of contributing to a rocky start to the in-law relationship. (And in fact my future in-laws asked more than once if I were pregnant after my husband told them about the engagement and our wedding plans, and they were probably very surprised that I wasn’t.)

Be cautious. You can always say more later, but you can’t take back what you’ve already said, and people tend to have truly elephantine capacities for remembering in-law offenses.

Best wishes!
 
I would return it back through e-mail and I would write, I got this by mistake.Now she can handle it anyway she wants. if she does not reply back to aplogise, or call- drop it, and she knows you know.

if she does call- don’t go into a big discussion, just say thank you for apologising and I would drop it then too. .

You should feel blessed that she gave you a hint to her character. It is her problem not yours, so don’t get entangled by a big reaction from you. Your husband comes first, so keep the peace and stay out of the drama she is creatiing.

But next time, she will not write about you and will be careful. You are asserting yourself this way. Not confronting. If she confronts, you do not have to participate. Just say thank you for the apology.
 
agnes_therese said:
Gullveig, I’m going to take a different tack here than the other responses, and I hope you’ll take it in the spirit in which it’s meant –
Obviously I don’t know exactly what your MIL said, so I could be completely off-base. But sometimes pregnant women are super-sensitive, emotionally. Could you be reading more into it than was actually there? Could she just have been venting a little normal concern about a new mother-to-be? Especially if she wasn’t thrilled about your marriage in the first place?
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I thought about this, but it was pretty cut and dried in the e-mail. I didn’t finish reading the e-mail, as I figured out at that point that it was clearly not written to me. I can understand why she would be a little wigged with the way everything happened, but it’s the two-faced-ness of the whole thing that upsets me the most (plus the jab about the being a bad mom, because OUCH) because she’s given me every indication since we decided to get married that everything was cool. I don’t mind being the “evil” daughter-in-law as long as everyone knows where they stand with each other.

Thanks for the (name removed by moderator)ut, guys. I guess I’ll show my husband the e-mail at least, and see what he thinks. He and his dad are in a snit at the moment over something else, so it may need to wait till that blows over a little if we talk to them about this anyway.
 
mommy_k said:
I would return it back through e-mail and I would write, I got this by mistake.Now she can handle it anyway she wants. if she does not reply back to aplogise, or call- drop it, and she knows you know.

if she does call- don’t go into a big discussion, just say thank you for apologising and I would drop it then too. .

You should feel blessed that she gave you a hint to her character. It is her problem not yours, so don’t get entangled by a big reaction from you. Your husband comes first, so keep the peace and stay out of the drama she is creatiing.

But next time, she will not write about you and will be careful. You are asserting yourself this way. Not confronting. If she confronts, you do not have to participate. Just say thank you for the apology.
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👍👍👍
I would click ‘reply’, cc my husband and type…'I’m pretty sure you didn’t mean to send this to me…"
 
I would let this go. Sometimes what I call “silent knowledge” is best kept that way as your own personal assessment tool of others. You have no need to share it with her or others and just keep in mind that she may have bad feelings about you that she doesn’t even understand.

If you are nervous about how you will do as a mother, you are among many and that is normal. See if there are any child rearing classes out there, that can show you things about sleeping, changing babies, feeding and taking care of your self. And don’t dismiss all old fashioned ideas in the process. Some of those are great.

You will be nervous I am sure, but the love you feel for that new life will be astounding. If you do have trouble with depression after the birth of your child seek advise immediately. Sometimes just having a good friend come by and let you get some sleep can really help.

You can always take any advise from your in-laws with a smile and a gentle response that you will give this idea or that idea some thought and thank them. Don’t get stressed out by aggressive approaches and ideas by anyone.

Now here is something you may want to consider, just in case: If you little one has a problem with human milk, check into goats milk before you ever try the formula’s out there. Goats milk is closest to human, but can result in less allergic reactions and development because of the way goats eat. (They eat about anything so build up immunities that can be handed on to the baby.)

The formulas often have soy, and in caring for a little one myself, I found her to have more trouble with that than if she actually got old fashioned home made formula or goats milk. Good luck, and remember, you are the one who will make the choices you feel best about. You and your husband that is. No one else. Peace.👍
 
Cricket2 said:

“You have no need to share it with her or others and just keep in mind that she may have bad feelings about you that she doesn’t even understand.”

Yep. MIL/DIL jealousy is legendary. Don’t play–you’ve already won.
 
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