Hello lovely MNers - I've changed my name
DP is wonderful - great partner, great dad, soul mate. Nobody's perfect -I'm not, he's not - and we've had our ups and downs. I think for the most part we've always done our best, in our own ways, to keep things working in the relationship.
But when it comes to the 'soul mate,' I wonder whether it's still true.
Potted summary. MIL has had a tough, tragic life, and, further, played the part of good cop parent to DP. So he's very protective of her, and believes that she is extremely nice.
When PIL came from overseas to visit us when our first DC was two months old, MIL decided she was going to let the hussy (me) know who was boss (her) and gave it to me with both barrels with her bitter, snide passive-aggressive manipulation, with a good dose of more blatant nasty remarks behind closed doors, and emotional blackmail on DP. Several of DP's relatives have hinted to me that they know what she is like and that they sympathise. So it's not just me having anti-MIL sentiments, ha!.
Now, I tried to be as gracious as possible to MIL, and not to mention it to DP, partly to keep the peace, and partly out of respect for DP. To this day, he probably has no idea of some of her meaner remarks. But I thought he must have known about it because so much of it went on right under his nose and he even remarked on some of it (though later claimed to have no recollection of it).
I could put up with this as long as I believed I had DP's support, and I thought I did.
But there was one incident where in a minor misunderstanding (my fault, but with obviously good motives and utterly resolvable peacefully), MIL turned to DP with damp eye and quivering lip. And in a heartbeat, he sided against me with a sarcastic comment. Didn't stay neutral or try to mediate, or even try to mollify MIL. No, actively sided against me.
I guess he hadn't known that just minutes earlier, that poor teary woman had been screaming in my face in the kitchen over the way I did the laundry, while I tried to keep calm and carry on. But never mind that - it hurt like hell that he would automatically side against me. Just like that.
So after PIL's visit (five weeks, though they stayed elsewhere) had ended, I raised this with DP. He didn't want to know. Now at that stage, I wanted an apology, or at least some acknowlegement that he could have handled it in a way that showed some more loyalty to me.
But he stonewalled, so in a desperate bid to get some communication out of him, I pointed out some things his mother had done. Cue, 'It sounds as though my mother behaved badly'.
And whenever I raised this since, I would get stonewalling along the lines of 'we've discussed this'. I would point out that we haven't as we never went into the details of why he behaved that way, so it was raised but never properly discussed.
So initially I wanted an apology or even just an acknowledgement that he could have handled it better. But it escalated into my needing him to stop stonewalling, and to acknowledge that he had been stonewalling.
When I was about three months pregnant with DC2 and another visit was imminent, the topic came up again and I told him, with tears streaming, that it had been eating me up that he wouldn't discuss this properly. And he said something then, I completely forget what, which I decided to acknowledge as sufficient acknowledgement from him.
And then, bless him, he took his parents aside and had a discussion with them. I gather he told them that they had upset me and they must try not to. Incidentally, FIL has his own little ways and I think it irks DP that it is his mother that I have the most trouble with. But as I pointed out to DP, a) FIL doesn't see or treat me as the enemy and actively target me, and b) plenty more people will give me sympathy over one of FIL's strops than over MIL's snideyness.
Now that should have been enough. And I think in the most recent visit, though DP will never admit it to me, he could see some of his mother's behaviour in new light. When she tried to insinuate that the duvet I'd used to have an afternoon nap (when four months pregnant and alone home with a toddler) were a sign that I was having an affair, FFS. Or the way she completely disregarded his requests.
But somehow, it's still not enough. I still feel that DP withdrew affection for me by stonewalling for all that time, and that he's still doing so because I'm still not aloud to say a word against his mother.
I think he feels the topic is done to death and he won't have another discussion. He recently acknowledged that he tends to get defensive, as a by-product of the way he was raised.
So I feel I have three options open to me:
Option 1 - Withdraw emotionally from my beloved DP.
Option 2 - View him as a victim of his mother's emotional manipulation, so that I can move on. I try to do this but I can't help feeling that he is a grown man who ought to be able to see past this.
Option 3 - Find a way to view what he has done as his own special way of having given me the acknowledgement and apology that I am so desperately crying out for, so that I can move on.
Or perhaps option 4 - breastfed DC2 has now moved onto solids and maybe my hormones are playing silly buggers with my head.
In fact, I have been withdrawing emotionally, and when I don't do that, I find myself a mess of tears. This can't go on - just crying in front of my children all day.
So please, please, give me mechanisms to sort my head out and follow option 3. Or even 2 or 4. Anything but 1, where I'm withdrawn and/or crying all day.
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Relationships
Please help me move past this old row that is eating me up
14 replies
maudlin · 22/06/2011 20:24
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