How can I forgive MIL

[Hocuspocusandfairies]

A few years ago I had a miscarriage. MIL said she'd come down and sit with my children whilst I went into hospital only she changed her mind at the last minute when my husband went to pick her up.

This resulted in me going into hospital on my own as my husband stayed with our children and things got pretty serious as I had a haemorrhage. Once in A&E the crash team were around me as a doctor manually removed one sac and when was more stable I was taken to theatre to have a D&C to remove the other sac.

After this MIL didn't get in touch for 5 months.

The issue I have now is my husband says he can't stay angry forever with his mom as she's his mom. This causes conflict with us as I feel so very hurt and alone by it all.

How do I stop this coming between my husband an I as I can't seem to let go of the anger and blame towards her

Wow! That is unforgiveable behaviour. I am usually a bit of a peace keeper, but to be let down so badly like this is just awful. I wouldn't stop your husband from reaching out to her, but I would find it very difficult to be friendly towards her.

You dont need to forgive her. Your DH can do what he likes but he cant force you to push your hurt aside because its inconvenient for him. Clearly MIL is not someone who supports you or DH as you say there are numerous time she has let you down. Times when TBH a neighbour would probably happily watch your kids because you're giving birth or miscarrying. Even if your miscarriage had been physically simple, emotionally you should still have had your husband there to support you. I think you need to consider why you keep allowing this woman the opportunity to let you down when you know shes unreliable? How many chances is DH expecting you to give her and how does he expect you to emotionally heal if she let's you down repeatedly. Surely this will be very triggering for you if you have contact again. I would NC.

@Wheresthebiffer2

Maybe MIL was feeling terrible that OP had to go through the experience alone. Maybe that is why she has not been in touch. There is no way that MIL could have known what was going to happen that night, she couldn't know the significance of not babysitting. (for which we don't know her reasons).

We can interpret her not getting in touch or asking how OP is, as her not caring, but perhaps she cares very much, is feeling awful how things turned out, but it wasn't her fault.

then it's down to MIL to get over this and reach out, she is an adult and she needs to manage her own feelings. Her son gave her an opportunity to discuss it when he broke their silence, but she deflected. She needs to put on her big girl pants and acknowledge how badly she let down the OP, whether or not she intended to.

I'm not unsympathetic to your interpretation of what has happened, whether or not it's correct - I can see that for some people it is instinctive to hide from their guilt/consequences of their actions. But to put the responsibility on OP to forgive her because of these hypothetical feelings is not really OK.

Whether or not she knew that OP would end up in such a dangerous and traumatic situation isn't really relevant, it was always going to be a very sad and unpleasant situation and OP deserved to have her husband's support through it - MIL took that away from her. She does need to own her shit. OP is entitled to feel upset and to expect an apology.

I'm so sorry. It sounds as though your mother in law went into a blind panic at short notice; that made things difficult for you but she wouldn't have anticipated it.

I agree with your husband that he can't be angry with his mother forever but what is needed is a proper explanation. I hope you can all talk about it, clear the air and forgive. She must feel terrible, I know I would in her shoes.

I think your DH is unfair to push you to forgive this. Also how long would she have kept out of contact had your husband not contacted her? She clearly doesn't see him as important as he sees her.

That is incredibly bizarre behaviour and I wonder if she has a history of maybe undiagnosed mental health problems? Because I think it's unlikely she would behave like this otherwise.
My mother has mental health problems and I remember had to break the new of a very loved ones death to me when I was 14 and she did this by sitting behind a desk as far away from me as possible and saying so and so has died, I needed a hug and absolutely crumpled into pieces and all she said was for goodness sake pull yourself together, it was just so heartless. Also if one of my pets died she'd remove herself and shut herself in a room so she didn't have to deal with my grief.
That's the only explanation I can come up with. A normal person doesn't behave like that.

It would be a short conversation as far as I'm concerned:

You are perfectly entitled to have a relationship with your mother. You are not entitled to expect me to have one. Given the way she behaved I have no interest in seeing, speaking or having anything to do with her. Your relationship with her is none of my business.

As a PP said it's not her behaviour, it's how she was after when she realised what you went through. She has refused to acknowledge how her actions contributed to what you went through, or apologise. And how can you forgive someone that hasn't actually explained or asked for forgiveness? I'd say he can see her if he wants but its clear from her actions that she doesn't want to mend the relationship between you

I don’t think you need to forgive her. Would you accept this behaviour from a friend? I wouldn’t. I don’t understand why we need to accept more crap from family. If your DH wants a relationship then that’s up to him but he can’t force you.
Any possibility she’s had miscarriages previously and this could have triggered something for her children or is she just unkind and unreliable?

PS: I also want to say I'm sorry you had such a horrible experience. I know that alone would take a long to accommodate. .

@ohfourfoxache

Forgiving her implies that she was apologetic in the first place

If there is no apology then it’s simply “letting it go”

In your situation I’d be willing to “let it go” but only as far as your own feelings are concerned. You don’t need to worry about shit like this, it’s not going to change anything and is just going to steal joy.

But would I have anything to do with her again? Not a fucking chance. And I certainly wouldn’t do anything else for her either.

This. In spades.

In order to move forward though I would do everything in my power to stop it being a 'hot button' issue. I would never see her again or do anything for her but if DH wants to that's fine. If he wanted to talk about his Mum I would say things like 'That's nice dear' with a beatific smile. If he is trying to demand you become friends with her, that would be wrong and you need to say you will facilitate his relationship with her only and that is where you draw the line.
She sounds dreadful but we all have to accept dreadful people exist of course.

You need to take a sanity check. You've said you are being 100% unresaonable.

Get that thought out of your head. You are jot being unreasonable at all.

If she explains and apologises then I think you should forgive her. However, if she is not even willing to discuss it then it is hard to see how you can forgive her and move forward.

It's easy to say " fuck her" and "I would never forgive" but we don't know the reasons why she acted like she did. If it was because she coukdnt be bothered and didnt give a shit, fair enough.
If something triggered her and put her into flight mode, well maybe more understandable. As for not being in contact after that I think if she knows she was in the wrong, even if her mind wouldn't let her go, it's hard to make contact and the longer time passes the harder it gets.
If this was me I would want to know why before I fell out forever.

he wants me to be on good terms with his mom and I just can't

Hé is entitled to have a relationship with his mother but he has no damn right to expect the same of you. Fine, she had no way of knowing that you would be in such danger. But she ignored you afterwards and has not apologised. That makes it worse, not better.

It sounds like he wants you to just 'be nice', to give him permission(in his mind) to move on/ignore the extremely shitty way she behaved. It's not your responsibility to paper over the cracks in his relationship with his own mother.

I couldn’t forgive this. I might have if she’d given a really good explanation of why she let you down at the last minute, been deeply remorseful and tried very hard to make it up to you. She clearly doesn’t care! In which case I couldn’t forgive or forget. I would tell DH in no uncertain terms that what he chooses to do in terms of forgiving and repairing his relationship with HIS mother is up to him but you will not be coerced into a relationship with her. Your feelings are your feelings and you are entitled to them. You are in charge of your own destiny and make your own decisions about who you want to be in a relationship with. He should respect that and not try to coerce you just to make life easier for him. He must respect your wishes.

I wouldnt forgive her. What she did was cruel and intentional. It's one thing letting you down at the last second, but it's really cruel to not even bother for 5 months. And only then because your husband got in touch. She has shown you how ugly she is, why would you ever want her in your life.
I would tell your dh he can have a relationship with her but you are definitely not. That way she cant hurt you again. Your dh doesnt get to tell you what you should be doing. His mothers or his feelings doesnt trump yours.
And you are definitely not being unreasonable!!

For those saying that the MiL has no way of knowing it would turn out that way:

When I had a miscarriage I phoned my mum at 3am to come watch my son as I needed to go to the hospital. At THREE IN THE MORNING. My mum came straight away.

Yes, it was my mum and not my MIL but it still concerned her family, her grandchildren.

Your MiL has behaved very badly, I agree with PP that the five months of silence afterwards probably stems from guilt. Whether you can forgive her or not is your decision. I wouldn't be
able to. I'd probably be polite and all that, but I certainly wouldn't ever treat her as anything more than a vague acquaintance ever again.

What Arno said x1000.

Dont let them bully you into accepting something that you know was wrong. It will only benefit them while it will eat you up.

my husband says he can't stay angry forever with his mom as she's his mom
My MIL did some truly horrible things to me. She ruined my wedding and I will never forgive her. I tolerate her on the rare occasion we see each other, maybe half a dozen times a year. Mostly I avoid her. DH visits every week but I don’t go. I’m only civil for DH’s sake, I don’t think anyone can reasonably expect more than that.

MIL owes you an apology. She didn't know how bad hospital would be but she did know you were having a miscarriage and hasn't offered any sympathy or support subsequently. But I don't think she will ever recognise she is in the wrong.

Agree with PP let your DH have as much as a relationship with her as he wants but I would not be playing happy families. As someone else said I would do xmas & significant events but certainly wouldn't be doing in between chatty phone calls, sending cute photos of DC or trips round with the DC without DH.

@ArnoJambonsBike

You need to take a sanity check. You've said you are being 100% unresaonable.

Get that thought out of your head. You are jot being unreasonable at all.

Absolutely.

Of course she didn't know how it would pan out-which (imo) makes it odder that she reneged at the last minute.

Christ, her dil wanted her to sit with her own GC so that her husband could be with her during a difficult time.

In those circs you'd sit with the kids of a neighbour that you barely know!

The only way you can have a relationship with her going forward is if she apologised and explains. Even then it depends on what she says.

I haven't read everyone's answers but the only way you can forgive her is if she asks for it. And it doesn't sound like she will. Personally, I'd be telling DH that he needs to sit down and explain to MIL why her behaviour was so bad and ask her to apologise. But appreciate dynamics are different in every family.

Byt you don't have to have someone so unkind in your life. At worst, DH will have to have a relationship with her without you.

MIL may be to blame for cancelling the babysitting last minute. We don’t know what her reasons are and neither you nor your DH seem to have asked her.

However, whatever her reasons are, it is unreasonable to blame her for your miscarriage procedure resulting in a life threatening emergency. Which I can see was terrifying and traumatic for you to go through without your DH with you. But MIL did not cause that to happen. What happened to you is very rare and so MIL could not have even suspected that might happen to you.

The only thing there is to “forgive” or not is the cancelling of babysitting at the last minute. I agree an explanation would help with that. But even so, it appears to me that you are thinking you cannot forgive her because your MC procedure went the way it did. That is unreasonable thinking.

It’s like a situation where you promise your teen a lift to college but wake up with a headache and tell them last minute you know what, take the bus today. The teen gets on the bus and the bus crashes and they die. How would you feel if the other parent then turned and said they could never forgive you for not giving the teen a lift that day? Is it really your fault? Or was it just horribly bad luck?

So, I’m afraid I agree with your DH, you and he and MIL need to get all this out in the open. You need to actually talk about it. Because it’s all been bottled up for so long, anger and resentment has built up and taken on a life of its own. Is it really porportionate to never speak to MIL again? To have this come between you and your DH? You will never heal from this and the ripple effects will just keep amplifying the damage.