to feel bereft since my DS got married?

[GluttonDressedasLamb]

I didnt expect to feel this way. DS has lived in a different country from me for 10 years, so Im used to him being away. He lived with his girlfriend for three years before marrying her, and I was fine with that, too.

But I cried all through his wedding service, and the tears are still welling when I think of it.

I am glad he found someone he loves, and who loves him, and yet I can`t stop crying

Ive always got on well with his wife, and have no intention of morphing into the mother-in-law from hell, but I suppose I feel shes taken him from me, and where I am is no longer home. AIBU?

I would be so wounded if mum carried on this way at DB's wedding but not mine

Lurking- she discreetly cried at her son's wedding, she hardly "carried on".

TBH, as the mother of two sons, I can understand where the OP is coming from.

I will be mainly happy when they marry, since they need someone to love them long after I am gone, and it's life's natural pattern. But I will be sad too as a wedding is the sign of time passing, happy memories from his childhood being in the past, and the fact that the most wonderful thing to ever happen to me has changed in its dynamic and I am no longer needed now he is an adult and a husband.

I don't see why the OP is getting attacked and called possessive and even evil on here. It sounds totally natural when your end of service is underlined and well and truly over. You love someone deeply, and they take a natural step further away from you- it's always going to hurt inside and it's not like she's sent her son on a guilt trip or told him and his wife is it? She's kept it to herself.

My son's childhoods are bringing me so much joy and happiness and there is a bittersweet note that the time they won't need me is much longer than the time they will.

I'm sure I will cry buckets at my son's weddings, I thought it was traditional for mums to cry at weddings!

I wonder whether there is just a divide between those who see their babies slipping away from them, and those that don't. I remember a thread discussing Abba's 'Slipping through my fingers' with lots of mothers really feeling it resonated for them. For me it was oddly maudlin.

This week in our household we have two firsts. dd started her periods and ds is going to high school (she is 12 he is 13). I didn't/don't feel any inclination to cry or feel sad. My children are growing up. It's great! I am very proud of both of them. In a few years they will leave home to go to university. I am excited for them, and dh and I are excited to make plans for a future that will be mostly about the two of us again.

I also think the son/daughter thing is odd. My brother is probably the most solicitous toward my parents of my siblings. My mother was very difficult with his first partner, but then she's not liked any of her ILs. They are all very definitely 'other' to her.

YANBU. My DS is just starting 6th form and I am dreading the day he goes away to uni. He is an only one so I suppose that makes things worse.

I was walking round IKEA at the weekend and there were two ladies walking round blubbing. I was a bit until I heard one young lad say "for God's sake mum I'll be back in a few weeks" and then twigged that the trolley was full of pots and pans etc for their uni digs.

Am secretly hoping that my DS will go to uni near home but I suppose that's selfish.

Thank you again YouOldSlag - I feel that you really understand how I`m feeling.

I knew when I began this thread that I would doubtless arouse a certain amount of hostility, as a MIL seems to be an automatic target for some people. Perhaps they have had bad experiences with their own MIL.

I am not a crazed, possessive woman AThing - if you read my OP properly you would see that I said I am glad DS found love, that I get on well with my DIL and that I did not expect to feel the way I do. All I have ever wanted is for my DCs to find a partner who will love and care for them as much as I do.

My DCs all left home at 18 to go to university, my nest has been empty for several years now, I have got on with my life. To Margerykemp who says there is no wonder DS lives abroad, I think that is rather a nasty and gratuitous remark as you know nothing of me or my relationship with my DCs. I suppose you are a perfect mother?

I wish DS and DIL only the very best. I do not expect to be the most important person in DS`s life - his wife and future children should be his main focus, it would be wrong if it were not the case.

A childs wedding is one of lifes big events, a big change in family dynamics, and therefore bittersweet.

Thank you to all those who said kind words. And to those who didn`t - well, wait and see how you feel when your DCs marry, and then remember how you judged me.

My response was not to your OP, which seems reasonable enough, but to yourvlater posts that indicated that this was not bittersweet tears (but really, the WHOLE way through the wedding? That seems all bitter and no sweet) but possessiveness of a male child.

Wanting to be the "alpha female" in your male child's life is creepy and weird.

"Reversing" the genders is mostly pointless and misleading, but I think it's interesting here.

A father who considered himself the "alpha male" in his daughters' lives would (rightly) be considered controlling and suspect.

You then started finding fault, based entirely on hearsay, with your DIL that you claim to think is great.

Looking for reasons to justify your newfound dislike of the woman who stole your son.

I don't blame anyone for having a quiet weep when their child passes a milestone, but this was more than that.

Glutton I think you sound lovely and I don't know where people are picking all this 'alpha female' crap up from. You can't help how you feel and I suspect the 'possessive' comments from other people have probably troubled you more than you think.

DSS has a very possessive partner and it really concerns me and his dad because we just don't want the drama for him but we both know that it's not our relationship to deal with. I'm sure your feelings will pass and please just ignore the 'ick' etc comments on here, they're just odd.

I have found this thread really interesting. For both DP and I we have the added issue of being only children.

However, my 1st H was one of 3 sons and his mum was a bit odd. She kept saying how glad she was she didn't have girls as she wouldn't want the 'competition'. (my aunt says this too).

My current MIL is barking and see's DP in a very creepy light (not saying you do OP). SHe is really playing up at the moment as we are expecting our 1st dc and I think she is acting weird because she thinks this makes her not his no1 (but she hasn't been for ages). She quite clearly never wanted him to have a wife (i honestly think she would have liked an old fashioned 'discreetly' gay son and often asked him if he was and told him it was fine, despite him having gf's) or dc. She doesn't acknowledge me and has made it clear i am not welcome in her house, that she wont come to our wedding or see our dc. The baby is 5 days late and she is refusing to answer the phone or speak to DP.

I also think the 'home' thing is possibly a separate issue. A lot of parents of both genders see their home as their dc's 'true' home. I left home when i was 16 (tbh it never felt like home for me, ever) but my parents held onto the massive house till it was costing them so much to keep, 'just in case' i ever went back. They now consider their new house my 'home' despite me never living there.

ExPILs kept on a 4 bed house even tho they were in dire straits just so each of their boys could still have their bedroom. They insisted it was their home even tho they had all moved out and married.

It's somewhat irrational, but I think it is normal to feel slightly thrown by the marriage of your ds if you are a woman and dd if you are a man. Makes. No sense and for most people, like op, it's a strange feeling and you get over it but it's still there's. My mum is the emotional one and she cried at my wedding but there's no doubt that it was harder for my dad and he loves dh, thinks he's fantastic and celebrated for a week when we got engaged! My mum found my brother's wedding harder and will find my other brother's wedding torture as they ate very close. Doesn't mean she won't want him
To get married, just that she will feel a special tug. (she still mourns his break up from his last girlfriend who I think she saw as being perfect, not least because she grew up nearby and most likely they would always have lived nearby).

Athing - that's hilarious. Brought up in an 'independent way'. How? Love to know.

OP - sounds normal - I think the stuff about your home no longer being his home is the key. But you will get through it.

You aren't crazed or unhinged love. It's change, and change is sometimes hard. He was your last baby to "offically" cut the apron strings. I think that kind of gear change (after so many years of being the pivot that anchors them while they wander off) must be a wrench and leave a person wondering where and how they are going to make their niche for the next stage of life.

Probably it's as big a change as when our babies arrived, and I remember howling and feeling emotional up shit creek without a paddle around that time till I got the hang of it some four years later

PS my MIL lives with us. I am an expert in "unhinged and crazed" MILs, you sound nothing like one.

Emotions are very irrational things. I am the last person to have expected to cry at my sons wedding, thats why it has unsettled me so much.

The negative remarks by people close to DS unsettled me further at a time when I was feeling vulnerable.

But to be accused of being a psycho and weird is just...weird. I get the impression I must be coming across as a wailing, teeth-gnashing harridan who wants to hold on to her DCs at any cost.

Im really quite the opposite. Ive never criticised my DIL, I nag my DS to cook dinner for her when she`s working late (instead of skyping me and expecting her to do it when she gets in). I cook all her favourite things when they visit, we share plenty of wine and laughs. We also share the same basic values.

What Spuddybean said about home is interesting. My DM still considers her house as my home despite the fact I left over 30 years ago and have never lived there. My DH refuses to downsize (which I would happily do) because we need the space for when the children come to visit with future grandchildren.

Suocera -

OOps, posted too soon, meant to add that you`ve hit the nail on the head suocera

Glutton- you sound entirely rational to me and I'm amazed that a post that I think sounds normal can be interpreted as possessive and not normal and unhinged and ... well. As a mother of two sons, I can see myself walking in your shoes years from now.

Grooms mother cries at wedding and worries about his happiness. Hold the front page!

glutton My half sister was horrified at my parents selling their 4 bed house (altho just them 2 lived there) and downsizing to a 2 bed. She honestly thought they should get into massive debt and UPSIZE and buy a bigger house, just for the 3 days a year over xmas that we all visit! Utter madness. But then again she is a selfish prick!

I know YouOldSlag

Why are some people interpreting all this as creepy? If Id been pulling DS by the ankles screaming Dont do it, youre mine! then yes, that would definitely be creepy, but shedding tears discreetly - I hadnt realised it was a world first.

Yay, I`m unique!

I think it might be the use of the word "bereft"-especially since he has been living abroad for 10yrs & living with his now wife for 3yrs, and you putting that you feel she has taken him from you.

Yes if you'd said 'AIBU to feel a bit emotional' the responses might have been different. 'Bereft' seems a bit over-dramatic for the situation...

Maybe I expressed it wrongly diddl but I do feel bereft in a way - as I said earlier, emotions are irrational. My head sees very clearly, but my heart is a bit foggy at the moment.

DS left home 10 years ago, but I suppose I`ve always hoped he would move back to this country one day - not to live at home again, obviously, but it would be nice to live in the same country again and see him more than once or twice a year.

Now I know for sure that he will never move back, as DIL has said there is no way she would ever live here. (I don`t blame her for that, they have a much better life where they are).

No, I think bereft sums it up. I will feel bereft when my DSs leave the nest. They are the centre of my world and I will have to find a new centre when they find their feet in the world. It's the end of an era.The most important and incredible era of my whole life.

I do sympathise with the OP, despite the fact that my ds is only six and therefore not likely to get married any time soon. However, i do feel that the OP appears to be struggling with this issue and if she is not careful she may end up alienating her ds and his wife.
My mil did not appear to have a problem with me when i was cohabiting with her ds, we were together for nine years before we married. I was a frequent visitor to her home, to the extent that when she fell ill, i moved into her home for a month and took care of her. The day i married her ds, my mil began causing trouble. She crticised me every time she saw me, complained about me to anyone who would listen and abused me .
I tried to be understanding, but after three years of this abuse, i cut all ties with mil. She no longer sees her granchildren.
My point is that despite the fact that the OP appears to be a decent person, if care is not taken and she is unable to contain her emotions, she will have problems with her dil and the OP, will be the loser every time.

I think getting married makes them officially grown-up. As you said, YouOldSlag, it`s the end of a wonderful era.

grandchildren

I think I´ll feel bereft when they first go.

The first morning that you get up & they aren´t they-and won´t be for the whole day/week/month...

forehead - I have given no hint of my feelings to anyone in the family, certainly not to DS and DIL. I am fully aware how delicate an issue it is, and would never say or do anything to alienate them. As you said, I would be the loser. Besides, I don`t have anything against my DIL! We get on fine!

They got married on Saturday, so its still a bit recent, but hey, Ill get over it!