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.

More in the sense Leanne Morgan means when she says if people knew what having GC would be like, they’d have them first

Go with your husband and children and visit your MIL
Life's too short and hers is neary ending...make peace...your husband will be very grateful with your kind gesture....end of the day it's about your peace....atleast he can't say later on you didn't visit her while she was alive...do your bit for him...I'm sure it will help with this current situation of digging at you.

I don’t agree the behaviour described here constitutes abuse and suggesting it does waters down actual abuse.

I'll ask again @AnneValentine what do consider to be 'actual' abuse?

As posters here seem to be fixated on the cake example - I have had grandparents, my children have grandparents, I am a grandparent, guess what in all cases grandparents have taken their lead from the parents.

Under no circumstances would my grandparents have fed me cake immediately before bedtime when my mother or father had specifically asked them not to, under no circumstances would my children's grandparents have fed my children cake immediately before bedtime if I or my husband specifically asked them not to under no circumstances would I or my husband feed our grandchildren cake immediately before bedtime when their mother or father had specifically asked us not to. It's called respect, it is the most basic of considerations and undermining the wishes of parents is not just what grandparents do the ones who want to destroy any relationship they have with the mother or father of their grandchildren maybe because it shows they have no respect for them and can't be trusted.

Mind you no set of grandparents in the above would even have thought about feeding a child cake immediately before bedtime.

Coming from a different culture is no excuse for not respecting the mother of your grandchildren, none at all.

If the husband was the one making those comments to his wife then would you think it was abuse?

Telling her some women just aren't natural mothers?
Telling her that the babies are waking up in the night because she doesn't give them enough attention because they're so close in age so they don't feel loved.
Shouting at her that she didn't get a C-section

You can have strong boundaries within yourself, they don’t have to involve distance. If you don’t care what someone says because they’re an idiot it doesn’t affect you whether they’re near or far. That’s not pandering it’s just immunity.

Talking about “shit” and “negative effect” indicates you can’t imagine what immunity would feel like.

A few sharp words generally shuts people like MIL up. She’s not a bright woman and she’s very silly.

Your idea of strength seems only to be distance. Can you conceive that someone with a strong personality could have MIL under control quite quickly? That someone could simply not give a toss what she comes out with next, take control of the situation, and ensure she doesn’t bore them further with her batty outbursts?

This of course what OP’s DH could and should have done. He could have managed his mother and he chose not to. So OP felt obliged to distance herself.

The MIL would have been an awful role model for the DC anyway and I think that’s more important in this scenario really. Imagine if they had grown up thinking it was ok to insult people because Granny does? Doesn’t really matter if the OP had strong internal boundaries and was immune to the comments, the DC would have been exposed to it and could have ended up learning from it. OPs DH should have stopped his mum saying such horrible things to his wife if he wanted to play happy families.

And many times boundaries do involve distance, and that's perfectly fine.

And even if you don't care you still don't have to have it around you.

No it doesn't indicate that I can't imagine what immunity feels like at all, that's just a weird assumption that you've made. I can know what 'shit' is without it actually negatively affecting me at the moment. I am well able to categorise what is normal nice behaviour and what is shit and negative behaviour even if it's not affecting me.

If someone is saying to a mother "some women are not natural mothers" and "your babies are crying because they don't feel loved" then that is shit, negative behaviour, whether the mother is thick skinned or 'immune' or not.

I'm not sure if the OP did ever try the few sharp words method, but even if she did the outcome now could still be the same with the DH blaming her for the lack of relationship.....and some people choose not to go down that route while protecting their boundaries and just distance themselves instead. Again, that's fine.

No it doesn’t, it just shows you up as being someone who is ignorant to the spectrum of abusive behaviour

Sounds like the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. He also sounds horrible. Do you want to stay with him.

Why can't you conceive that someone else with a strong personality could choose distance? They might simply not be arsed in any way trying to attempt to take control and they just distance themselves and let the other grown adult work out themselves how to behave.

Only op and her husband know what’s gone on, and how ‘abusive’ MIL was towards op.

The thing is, what matters now is how her DH sees it, and the finger of blame is pointing at you op. You can’t change the past, but how you deal with the coming weeks/months will determine if your marriage will/can survive.

Good luck

I haven’t suggested anything of the sort. Of course distance is not the only indication of strength, but it is one indication of it.

If MIL said to me “some women are not natural mothers” or “your babies are crying because they don’t feel loved” I’d take that not as shit but batshit. She’s an idiot and what she says is meaningless. I find it hard to imagine taking that seriously.

It’s true DH would blame OP regardless but that’s a different matter.

Exactly this. I refuse to engage or argue with people who I know are not going to communicate with me - saves me the agg. Some people the only option is to distance yourself and IMO that’s ’stronger’ than putting up with a load of nasty comments. Unfortunately the MIL and DH both made their bed with this situation.

Where have I said I couldn’t? I simply pointed out there’s more than one way of being strong to the posters who believed the only way was to distance.

If MIL said to me “some women are not natural mothers” or “your babies are crying because they don’t feel loved” I’d take that not as shit but batshit. She’s an idiot and what she says is meaningless. I find it hard to imagine taking that seriously.

If my MIL had said that to me (she never would because she is absolutely wonderful) I would have told her where to go as would my husband - that is the difference here the husband didn't support his wife and tell his mother her fortune.

I have never once on this whole thread said the ‘only’ way was distance. Try again.

So what though?
If another woman finds it hurtful you want to make out it's because they're not strong or robust or don't have a strong personality, so patronising.

Were many of us at our strongest if we had a toddler and baby and were most likely sleep deprived? Probably not!!

Great, you'd think it was 'batshit' and not 'shit'.
Guess what, we don't have to tolerate batshit behaviour either. And many of us have boundaries in place to ensure we don't.

You find it hard to imagine taking it seriously, but you also seem to find it hard to imagine that other women might take it seriously which shows a serious lack of empathy.

Absolutely!

Even my daughter who is only a very young teen took this approach with her dad lately.
She told him her issues with him, he played dumb, tried to deny and gaslight.

She said to him "I've been clear and I'm not explaining myself again, it's up to you to take responsibility and change".

And she has no interest in talking to him until he does. And I told her how proud I was of her and her approach and I hoped she'd always have that attitude with other people in her life, particularly romantic relationships etc where we might be more likely to not uphold our own boundaries because we want to give people a chance and then we explain ourselves over and over and have to keep telling them over and over why their behaviour was offensive even though they already know. I learned a lot later than my daughter obviously 😂

Wow that’s an impressively mature approach for a teenager. It’s taken me a lot of therapy to learn that confronting someone, biting back or getting drawn into arguments with people who are deeply committed to misunderstanding your perspective or resistant to compromise or change is an utter waste of time, and it’s better to simply smile and distance than give them the satisfaction. You must’ve done a great job with her!

Thank you for so many responses, sorry can't respond directly to all but to the comments I'm reading many of:

She wasn't shaming me for the fact my V will be stretched and bring less pleasure if I don't have a c section, it was more that he'd be traumatised by the sight of me giving birth and a c section would be more "neat". Not sure that's even factually correct, therell still be blood everywhere, c section or now.

Yes he did visit his mum without the kids.

Yes she came down to visit us and I've tried many times but if it's more than a few hours and I felt my mental health suffering, I'd rather go out than put up with it.

We will all go visit her, yes, but his whole "issue" is that before I didn't happily just go along to see her. And he brings any conversation back to 'but if you just quietly put up with it, she'd have seen more of us'. If I even mildly suggest she was ever in the wrong or might have been less than polite to me, he goes crazy defending her and how she 'never meant any harm', all her comments were well meaning. And with her comments about the age gap being too small she was just trying to prevent us from having a 3rd very soon (why is that her business even?) because she thought that's what's best. She was just looking out for me and my health with the breastfeeding comments (for reference I'm a size 8-10, not overweight, was v happy to breastfeed). All was so well meaning and he refuses to accept she's ever said a word wrong. It's me that's misinterpreted.

She's been in the UK for a while and worked part time as a translator at one point. Her English isn't bad at all.

I have never said it was because someone wasn’t strong enough. Either you haven’t understood my point or you’re intentionally misrepresenting it.

This discussion came about as I said that I think the posters on this thread who say MIL wouldn’t bother them are not doing so out of meekness, as was repeatedly alleged, but genuinely not caring what others say. Diff’rent strokes and all that.

If you’d read my posts more carefully I was supportive of the OP in her choices and understood why she chose to distance herself, I criticised her DH.