MIL dying, husband angry at me for not being closer to her

[alicedbr]

MIL has a terminal illness and it's looking like she won't be with us for much longer. Understandably DH is beside himself, he is very close to his mum and an only child.

I've never got on with my MIL as I feel like she's always given unsolicited advice, tried to get over involved in my parenting and in our relationship with DH (examples: got very offended that I didn't want to have a C section as she advised, said things like "mummy isn't being very nice" to my DS when I was attempting to put him down for a nap that he was resisting, given cake to DD "because it's what grannies do" when I specifically asked her not to). Because of that I limited the time I spent around her, although I never stopped DH spending time with her and encouraged him to visit solo, but DCs are very clingy to me so never went without me to see MIL.

Now that she's ill my husband keeps getting VERY angry at me that I didn't just tolerate her treatment of me, always saying "she didn't mean it like that", "she just wanted to be a hands on granny", annoyed at me that DC are much closer to my parents than MIL because we saw them more often, blames me for 'time wasted' that she could have spent more time with our DC. In my view I have never been rude to her or restricted her contact with DH or DC, just protected myself from stress and comments that I didn't like.

Unsure how to deal with this. Is he BU? Is this a natural reaction? How should I be responding? I don't feel like my mental health was or is worth sacrificing just because one day she would die earlier than me, but equally I see why he's upset.

Quite. Reading a lot of these posts from clearly very damaged people lacking boundaries and wondering whether they’re also nasty MILs, or had to put up with nasty MILs so resent anyone who doesn’t stand for it, or are just horrible people with no excuse. Very interesting.

I’m surprised at some of these replies. OP isn’t purposefully preventing a relationship. I assume that the h would rather OP takes the kids than deal with their crying too.

Even if OP hid in her room, you can’t assume that the kids wouldn’t have wanted to stay in the same room as her.

If OP’s husband doesn’t do much childcare, he should have put more effort in so the kids would be ok with him for a few hours. I know that involved parents are sometimes not the preferred parent but dads are less likely to do 50% and there’s a shocking number of husbands on here who can’t or won’t look after 2 kids on their own. He’s had years to address the separation anxiety but many men are too lazy to think beyond using the excuse to delegate all childcare to their partner.

He has not only delegated the responsibility of the childrens' behaviour in this situation to his wife, but also the relationship between her and his mother, and his children and his mother. It was single-handedly her responsibility to create the scenario he wanted, regardless of his own parenting ability and regardless of his mother's behaviour. It is also OP's job as his wife to soothe him in his grief as he mourns a relationship with his own mother that he refused to manage, as he berates his spouse for failing to have 'womaned' properly.

A married woman has no rights, only wrongs.

Well, OP didn’t want to go to her place, so reasonably she travelled to OP’s to see her son and her grandchildren. Since the DC can’t be away from OP, then in order to allow the grandmother and children to have a relationship, OP would need to either ignore MIL or go to a different room!

If MIL was just so awful that there was absolutely no bearing to be near her, and knowing how spineless her DH was, why didn’t she see how untenable the situation was? Why bring another child into that? Because surely OP could see how much her husband loved his mum and how much he wanted his mum to have a relationship with his children?

'Why didn’t she see how untenable the situation was? Why bring another child into that?'

Why didn't the DH see how untenable the situation was? Why did the DH faciliate the conception of two children with a woman who didn't get on with his mother, when a relationship between his children and his mother was so important to him, and he was unwilling to mange the relationship himself?

Because she was married to and had kids with the husband, not the mother? And he has seemed perfectly fine with this arrangement until his mother’s imminent death? He chose to marry someone who doesn’t get on with his Mum, he chose to stand by while his Mum was vile to his wife and mother of his kids and did fuck all about it, why is all the blame sitting on OP?

I can’t believe how many people are holding OP responsible for the fact that her husband didn’t do the work to facilitate a relationship between his own mother and his own kids. He’s clearly feeling guilty now because she’s dying and it’s too late for him to make the necessary effort, but he is in no way reasonable to blame OP for that, and the posters who think this is somehow OP’s fault are either toxic themselves, or are the victims of toxic people who have warped their sense of what is normal.

Because she was married to and had kids with the husband, not the mother? And he has seemed perfectly fine with this arrangement until his mother’s imminent death? He chose to marry someone who doesn’t get on with his Mum, he chose to stand by while his Mum was vile to his wife and mother of his kids and did fuck all about it, why is all the blame sitting on OP

It's unbelievable how all the blame for this is being laid on the OP's shoulders - the person at fault is the MIL, her attitude, her behaviour towards the OP. The MIL could have solved this she didn't want to. The OP's husband also shares the blame he could also have solved this, he didn't and he didn't support and stand up for his wife and mother of his children. None of this is the OP's fault, two adults colluded in treating her with contempt and disrespect and somehow OP should have submitted and smiled about it, un-fucking-believable.

I can’t believe how many people are holding OP responsible for the fact that her husband didn’t do the work to facilitate a relationship between his own mother and his own kids

I can. There are always people who don't want to attribute responsibility to the father.

These example are NOT mild.

OP should not have had to put up with an endless stream of criticism and insults.

Perhaps many of you think you would be fine tolerating it but no one wants to be treated like that. Her MiL also had the option of modifying her behaviour.

OP your answer needs to either be among the lines of ignoring anything he says as if he never said it, or remind him firmly that it is not ok to lash out at you repeatedly because he is hurting, and once he is in a better place you can both have a reasonable discussion about why things happened the way they did.

Pretty sure he wouldn’t be ok with his DD being treated like that by her future mil. Or her DH for that matter.

It's not all being laid on the OP's shoulders. This current situation - MIL terminally ill - DH losing his DM - isn't a situation that centres the OP. In a healthy relationship, the partner who is imminently losing a parent is at the centre of the circle of support.
Of course, unhealthy relationships can have the other partner vying for support or needing to justify actions from four years ago.

This is OPs thread. She is the centre of her thread. In real life, she hasn’t been telling her partner his mum is a bitch while she is terminally ill. She’s just been trying to work out how to react to her partner’s anger towards her without making things worse. That was literally her question for mumsnetters. The fact that she then tried to justify her previous actions on this thread to mumsnetters laying into her does not mean she’s been having those same arguments in real life. In real life she’s trying to avoid those arguments and trying to help her husband. She isn’t going to agree with him that it’s all her fault, because it really isn’t. There were three adults involved in this family dynamic and it wasn’t great. Unfortunately they probably all thought there was time to improve things later when the baby and toddler days were over and there would probably be less conflict and the kids would be more independent.

Yes the DH is losing his mother and that is very sad and very hard. Perhaps if he had supported his wife and mother of his children regarding the way his mother treated his wife there would have been a far better relationship between them.

Equally the MIL could have seen how damaging her behaviour towards the OP was and changed it and apologised to build a better relationship..

OP is being berated for refusing to be treated like crap by her MIL and now is being expected to suck up abuse from her husband. No. The OP will support him in his grief but not to abuse her and blame her for not allowing herself to be treated with such disrespect by his mother and his spineless failure to put her first and deal with his mother.

“and encouraged him to visit solo, but DCs are very clingy to me so never went without me to see MIL.”

🤣 they didn’t not go because they’re clingy! They didn’t go because he couldn’t be arsed to take them. Something for him to live with now. 🤷🏻‍♀️

The husband could have addressed the separation anxiety!!!

Well surely the onus is more on the parent being clung to to facilitate separation? Otherwise it could be viewed by DC as husband dragging them away from OP, as opposed to OP encouraging them to be less dependent on her?

Needs to be addressed by both parents together so both at fault here.

They are some serious mental gymnastics you have going on.

The OP has done nothing wrong that she needs to justify.
The MIL and the husband were the ones who did something wrong.

Providing support does not equal putting up with being attacked over stuff that was not your fault.

'Well surely the onus is more on the parent being clung to to facilitate separation? Otherwise it could be viewed by DC as husband dragging them away from OP, as opposed to OP encouraging them to be less dependent on her?

Needs to be addressed by both parents together so both at fault here.'

I think this is actually the first time I have seen the suggestion the mother is primarily responsible in this scenario, on this website. I mean, in some ways... well done?

Absolutely not. There's no onus on the mother at all unless she's going to provided with kindness and support.

MIL was appalling to her and told her her babies were waking in the night because she had them so close together that she wasn't giving them enough attention so they were not feeling loved, and that not everyone can be a natural at being a mother. Absolutely vile.

If you put those ideas in a persons head and make them feel that shit then they will struggle massively trying to deal with separation anxiety if their kids are distressed.

Of course OP doesn't need to justify it. That was my point. But OP is on here explaining decisions from 4 years ago. For some reason, she feels like she needs to justify them rather than trying to tease out the grief and guilt they (her and DH) may be feeling.
It's really easy to turn grief into anger and arguments. It's a common deflection. But it's not healthy. And it doesn't help OP - who hasn't said she had a bad relationship with her DH prior to this point - to spend pages calling her DH names and trying to entrench division between them. It's like relationship advice from a bunch of toddlers who don't understand cause and effect and have been fortunate enough not to experience loss or grief. But that's what you get in AIBU.

My MIL was besotted with our DCs when they were babies and was always at our house. But once they started nursery she pretty much lost interest and only visited a few times a year. When she passed away DH blamed me for her rarely visiting because it was easier to think that, than to acknowledge that his Mum only liked helpless babies to cuddle. His Mum was very sweet of limited intelligence and treated our baby DCs like dolls. But I never tried to dissuade DH because I knew it was just his grief talking.

She's explaining it so that people on here know what happened in the past and why and what the current situation is. Do you not understand how an internet forum works? Or how conversations even go?

She has NOTHING to feel guilty for so she doesn't need to 'tease out' the guilt she may be feeling.
If she wasn't being attacked by so many toxic people with toxic views then perhaps by now she would have got better responses for how her DH can 'tease out' his own guilt instead of blaming it on her.

Also the reason that many people are calling her husband names is in response to the barrage of bullshit the OP has received on her making out she's an awful person and should take the consequences because she caused all of this and shame on her. Pure and utter nastiness, and it's not the 'advice' that anybody on here would give to their own daughters but when it comes to a random woman on the internet people think it's fine to pile on.
If there's a pile on in one direction then the arguments for the OP are going to follow that tone, and you're just joining the pile on going on about the OP justifying and making excuses 🙄 Leave her alone for Gods sake.

It's true, isn't it? Both are responsible.

If you're the parent that they are apparently clinging to you need to encourage/reassure them more so than anyone else.

Besides the point but a 3-4 yo is too old to be acting like that. It should be nipped in the bud if it's so bad their own father can't take them out.

Dad didn't press the issue despite being the one wanting MIL to have contact, so that's his fault.

Well you don't get a mother to address separation anxiety by telling her that her babies only wake up in the night because "they're not feeling loved" do you? and you don't get her to address it by telling her that some women aren't natural mothers do you??

In fact that's the exact opposite environment that you put a mother in if you want her to address separation anxiety.

But the suggestion that OP should just accept what her grieving husband is saying to her in a rage, which lays 100% of the blame for the lack of relationship with his mother and 0% with the other two parties, is like relationship advice from a bunch of toddlers. Misogynistic ones.