Spoke to MIL yesterday who is moving her sister to a new house. She is her unpaid carer so they are one support bubble. Moving from one place to another is a huge task, let alone in a pandemic.
Yesterday MIL commented on how her other son (golden child) is coming over to help with the move- load the van and drive and unpack I imagine. We are in the U.K. so in lockdown and technically he isn’t allowed to go help. He is though which is fine, he isn’t being forced but choosing to do it.
MIL has realised what a huge task this is doing the move. She is upset that others are not coming to help. I’ve explained to her their brother can’t come down and help as he lives far away, your not supposed to leave your local area unless for a good reason and certainly not allowed to mix households and if he is caught he would get fined. She wasn’t having it though.
Then went on to say how wonderful her son is (golden child). I’m with her other son, this massively pissed me off! I know she is his mother, but he is my husband and I’m not going to sit there and nod along when I feel someone is putting my other half down!
I said to her, well of course your son can come and help you with the move because he is rich and if he gets caught it’s fine as he can easily afford the £200 fine, it would be like handing over a couple of pounds to him. She then said that “it’s not about the money” meaning it’s about the thought of wanting to help instead. I said of course it’s about the money- of course your son (my partner) wants to come and help but if he gets caught we are in debt, we have lost our jobs and have a mortgage to pay that we can’t even do at the minute let alone a £200 fine on top, he just can’t do it!
The conversation about it stopped after that and was moved on to something else and whilst I did stay civil through the rest of the call, once I got off I was fuming! She always treats the golden son like he is a legend and my partner is like the failure back boy who isn’t successful in life (he doesn’t have a career job, but has always worked- always!)
I fee a little sorry for him but he is obviously used to it.
Would you have gotten annoyed if your partners mum said this to you? Implying your partner doesn’t want to help because he doesn’t care as much as golden son, when in fact we can’t afford to get fined, we’ve been so unlucky due to covid that it’s almost written in the stars he would get caught the second he stepped out of our door! It’s been totally rubbish for us and everything that could go wrong has! Hence why we don’t want to risk it.