MIL and her priorities!

I seem to be the only one shocked by her behaviour and infidelity!
My Dad had early onset Alzheimer’s and the disease was brutal right up until he died in a care home at the age of 69.
Mum and I cared for him at home then visited the care home daily when we could no longer meet his needs safely.
I’m pretty sure it’s ‘until death do we part’ not ‘until that person can no longer recognise you’. It would never have crossed my Mums mind to begin a relationship whilst Dad was still alive and they were still married.
I completely sympathise with you and your DH. It must be awful and must make the grieving process much harder to navigate. I don’t think he is being childish at all.
I’m sorry as I don’t have any advice to provide, just wanted to send some solidarity ❤️

I totally get your point and I really get peeved with the ‘you are being entitled brigade’. Essentially your DH has lost both parents, your DC their grandparents. All well and good your MIL getting to live her life but no doubt as age and circumstances creep up on her she will need you again. No need for her to be completely selfish. She is grown woman not a love struck teenager.

Absolutely, what selfish 'children' He prioritised his kids even as adults first.
So none of them thought about ever allowing him or advising him to think about himself?

This is a really shocking perspective. No-one is put on this earth simply to serve others. we are not slaves.

Yeah. Super shitty situation.

husband needs to navigate this mostly himself. You can support.

as for baby vs weekend away, the dimensia is hell, she’s coping how she can.

yes. Super shocking for the kids the new relationship, but they are adults. The marriage may not have been terribly happy. She may not want to say much to tarnish memory or look like an ass.

anyway. Give them grace. All of them.

Totally agree, @EmsSummer . Also, there are no rules about death and behaviour these days. People have to manage in ways that work for them, and the less judgement, the better. Obviously difficult for a son, though.

I have no words.

We all have ONE life

ONE

If someone has done the best they could and then fate has slapped them in the face, they deserve to be happy

Just not at the expense of someone else

And in this case. does the man's partner know anything at all about it?

@scrollathon I honestly think it could be more that the FIL and MIL relationship wasn't quite what the DH here thought it was.

There was a large age gap, FIL already had children, she got pregnant very young. To me, it seems more than possible that it wasn't a happy marriage on MIL's side

@scrollathon

its not good for a person to be selfless, for fucks sake.

This is such a hard situation. His mother clearly isn’t the person you all thought she was. You’ve described her as selfless and the best grandma to his older kids but she isn’t. Your poor husband has to deal with grieving his father, the mother he thought he had, the grandmother his kids had and in all likelihood questioning how much care she truly gave him towards the ends if she was preoccupied with an affair. My grandma died young and my grandad left a widow. Their priority was their family. This remained the case after her death. He waited a respectable time (years/ at least publicly) before finding another partner. He prioritised his kids even as adults first and continued to support them navigate the grief. He didn’t suddenly start a new life and stop being selfless. He remained it to the end. This woman’s choices are selfish. I think I read she hasn’t ’bothered to pick up the ashes in her own words’. It’s just incomprehensible and I completely understand your husband’s reaction.

Like others I doubt your MIL dealing with it was as short term as you think. Dementia is cruel and I think you grieve long before your loved one dies.

She's not elderly and she wants love.

But I also think there's room for both things. Your MIL's bf and you and your baby. If things work out with your MIL's bf he could become another DGF and I always think the more people to love a child the better.

Agree. Someone described it as losing your loved one every day.

Whilst obviously caring for someone with dementia really takes its toll I am baffled by the amount of responses suggesting that it is fully acceptable to have an affair not once but at least twice!
For those saying the son has nothing to forgive. Respectfully I think you are wrong. Whilst his dad was going through the stages of dementia to the finality of his death his mum was cheating. You marry someone in sickness and in health. Which doesn’t mean once you are sick that’s when you can start seeing other people. I think that is a super hard thing for a child to see from their parent. Someone that they clearly massively respected and possibly held up on a bit of a pedestal for being that caring, kind person that looks after people. It’s a massive knock to thinking that you know someone and their morals and suddenly don’t really know them at all any more.
I’ll be honest. I do think that this is something that he will have to sort himself. There isn’t really anything you can do to help the process bar listening to him and allowing him some time to grieve and then see how he is feeling about the situation.
It’s obviously been a very tough time for everyone for a few years.

I agree. It may be poor wording, but it’s said now. On the other side, picking up ashes is painful in itself. The wording may not be great, but look at the why. MIL was with FIL for years, retirement to look forward to and now there’s a pot. All of that snatched away. Its desperate. As an olive branch, why not suggest to your husband that one of you pick them up for her and keep them at your house until she’s ready to have them…this may be a long time. Then look into sharing them out so that you recognise the value you all had in his life. There are some lovely things you can do with them. Jewellery, little blown glass ornaments.

You have real power here to extinguish this and help your DH get there too. Try not to stoke the fire with him in conversations where you both end up talking about all the wrong choices she’s made (wrongly or rightly). It can be very easy for this to happen but it’s toxic and no good can come of it. It’ll just push them further and further apart

This is so common and likely transference. It’s a very real and often frightening thing. I had it after my finance died. Basically you’re deeply in love, then the grief hits you, all that love and emotion doesn’t go away but you can’t ’put’ it anywhere so those the feelings attach to other people. Then there’s the shame and guilt you feel with that. It leads to people thinking the love you felt for the person who’s gone was never real. That’s so far beyond the case though. And just so untrue.

OP MIL and her new partner will likely have both been experiencing anticipatory grief and will have in essence ‘lost’ their partners long before just like I presume your DH lost his dad. I think it’s lovely that they’ve got each other to understand what they have each been through. Your DH is likely to be angry with a lot of things and that’s understandable from a grief point of view. Like with transference, the emotion, whatever that particular one is, has to go somewhere whether that’s anger, denial, sadness. All you can do is be there for him, maybe see if things calm down without so much spotlight on the issue. Things are obviously very raw at the moment so very hard to solve.

😢

I'm really sorry that DH and yourself are going through this,I can understand how DH must be hurting. I've sort of been through this with my own mother but the gap between was larger and with no intent of moving said person in but he was awful and I actually thought my mother had lost her mind. Grief is strange but the quickness of the 1st affai whilst FIL was still alive,that would hurt.i often wonder if people actually really read the post properly. I've been married 30 years and I'm 55, my sons would disown me if I did this,however it honestly would never enter my head to get involved with another man or even contemplate having another man in my home, for years or ever. Now I've witnessed male neighbours remarry within months of their wives deaths ,one of the wives was a dear friend of mine and I've never forgiven him.She was always wondering if he would leave whilst she was living and took no time at all after she died suddenly of a blood clot. The marriage could not have been what you think it was,people who have affairs have been thinking about it for some time. This seems like she's suddenly got her freedom and enjoying it,menopause can do strange things too.
However none of this helps your situation and it's very sad,because you want her in your child's life,Ibdo not think your husband is being selfish,he is hurt ,grieving and can not understand her behaviour as being correct. I'm sad for MIL too because when things go tit's up,because they invariably do when feelings or grief have not been addressed,your DH may not want to let her back in. Just be there for your husband in this.Good luck.

I think your husband, however hard this may sound, needs to act like an adult.

Your mil has nursed/dealt with her relationship breaking down due to dementia - unless you've loved that 24/7 you cannot judge.

Your mil is an adult and entitled to a happy life and now her children are grown adults with their own families.

By no means does she have to put her children first.

Personally I'd distance yourselves until your husband has dealt with the loss of his father - pushing this and trying to have a relationship with his mum is just going to cause further upset at the moment.

OK then. We’ll have to agree to disagree. First hand experience of a close relative with dementia makes me think that the onset wasn’t as ‘rapid’ as the OP likes to think. MiL was likely dealing with a lot on her own and has found comfort with someone who has similar experience. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, and where dementia is concerned similar situations are probably a lot more common than people think.

We only go at Christmas to the grave, birthdays, Etc you can remember in your heart, as you do often.

I've been asked several times why I don't spend half my life at my DPs grave - I go on a couple of significant dates. It's because it interferes with the "happy memories " I'm supposed to focus on. I have a quite literal and visual brain, and looking down at the hole where DP is makes it difficult not to see him dead and knowing how things work below ground. He's not there for me, he's in my heart.

Why wouldn't he? Because his Mum is no longer the same person. She is X years older than she was then, she no longer has her husband to support her, she has cared for her husband with dementia and is grieving for her life partner. Why on earth would your husband expect her to be the same?!

And can't you really not think why she might be avoiding collecting her husband's ashes and instead pretending she can't be bothered. You are both clearly assuming it's because she doesn't give a shit. Have you ever thought that maybe, just maybe, it's too painful for her?

This.

There's been a tonne of really good advice on this thread - including @exprecis 's calm and knowledgeable posts.

I always find that if I ask for advice and get opinions/ideas that I react to quite angrily or vociferously - as @ChristOnABike87 has at several points on this thread - I need to reflect on why I react so strongly & negatively.

Maybe that's telling you something, OP?

None of your, DH’s or MIL’s feelings are wrong, but the ways you all are expressing them could lead to misunderstandings and hurt feelings. I recommend you encourage your DH to start grief counseling and/or a support group, especially one for carers of people with dementia. After a couple of sessions, he should reach out to MIL and invite her to attend with him. He should script what he wants to say in advance, so he doesn’t accidentally say something accusatory or hurtful. I’m not saying he would lash out, just that it is easy to misspeak in an emotionally charged situation. Something like:

”Mom, I’ve noticed that we aren’t as close since Dad passed. I know you are grieving and so am I. I’ve started going to this support group/grief counseling and it would mean a lot to me if you would attend with me. I love you.”