AIBU to be worried about my son’s marriage dynamics?

[MyCyanShaker]

I've noticed some concerning dynamics in my son's marriage. When I call him, he'll often rush off the phone as soon as his wife comes home from work or starts talking to him. Sometimes she'll even answer his phone when he's not around. When I offer to get him something, he'll mention what she'd like too, without even asking me if I want to get something for her. It feels like she's dominating the conversation and possibly even controlling him.

My son works overnights, and I rarely get to talk to him. When I do, he often sounds agitated, even when I ask him simple questions. I've tried texting him to check in, but he doesn't always respond. He's always been a bit independent, but lately, I've felt like he's becoming more distant. We've always been close, but now it feels like I'm struggling to connect with him.

They've been married for 5 years, and they've been together for 9 years before that, so I thought they had a strong foundation. I'm worried about his well-being and feel like his wife might be isolating him from our family. We've always been a close-knit family, and it's hard for me to see him pulling away. He's always been closest to his younger brother, with whom he shares similar interests and personality traits. They're close in a way that he and his middle brother aren't. Given this, I'm thinking of asking his younger brother to check in with him and see if he's okay. Maybe his brother can get a better sense of what's going on and offer some support.

I'm torn between being a concerned mum and respecting their marriage. I don't want to overstep or interfere, but at the same time, I want to make sure my son is happy and healthy. Has anyone else dealt with similar concerns about marriage dynamics? Should I be worried, or am I just being a concerned mum?

Way too much!! He obviously doesn’t really enjoy these phone calls or he wouldn’t be hustling to end them, even when she isn’t around so clearly she isn’t the reason you so want her to be. Maybe he just isn’t a phone call person. Anyway, what would you even talk about? ‘Yes I went to work yesterday and today. I had spaghetti for tea.’… riveting stuff! I rather think you’d be best aiming for once a week, and making the conversation more valuable. And stop calling right when she’s due to be home, it’s natural he’d want to wrap the call up then, there’s no sense in purposely entering into a competition for his attention.
Personally I do think going on holiday and only buying a souvenir for your son and not buying even a token gift for his wife is rude.
All in all op, I think you need to adjust your expectations.

OP, if you are really concerned about your son being in a controlling relationship, the thing to do is put your own expectations and hurt feelings on to one side, and listen to what he says without judgement. I hope you can do that.

No it wouldn't, of course. Some of which is to do with behaviour patterns between the sexes and societal context that make our daughters more vulnerable within relationships than our sons. Some of which is due to the odd way in which people see a wife as a replacement mum, so there is no room in a man's life for both, whereas a mother/daughter relationship is not seen as a rival to that of a woman's with her husband.

I rather suspect that sometimes your DIL answers your son's phone because he is refusing to and she feels sorry for you and feels you should be acknowledged despite the fact she knows you don't like her and don't feel she's part of the family.

Also, he clearly loves his wife which is lovely and maybe he sees the way you think of her and resents you for that. It's odd that if you go somewhere and buy a gift that it's not something for both of them. I could see if you were away and spotted something that you knew your son would specifically like that you would buy it just for him, but asking what he wants, just him, is really rude and obviously excluding the woman he loves.

I think you are reaping what you have sown.

This has already been asked, but you seem to have stopped responding to anyone who isn’t agreeing with you -

why are you choosing to call when you know his wife is due home?
call half an hour earlier. Call when he’s on his way to work, call any other time. He is actually being polite to his wife by wanting to greet and talk to her when she gets home from work.
my partners mum often calls him when it’s dinner time/the time we’d be sorting the kids for bed and it baffles me! Choose a better time.

Unreasonableness isn’t helpful here.

clearly you’re hurt.

What change do you want to see, and what can YOU do to bring it about? If you want to be closer to him, and he wants you to give things to his wife, then a good way of being closer to him may be to do that.

Let him to him and you do you. Stewing over whether it’s ok or not is not going to be constructive here.

Poor man. Leave him to lead his own life. You sound insufferable.

If the wider context was the daughter works nights and her husband (and possibly kids?) are walking through the door and they only get a couple of hours together in a day because they work opposite shifts why would anyone think that it was unhealthy or unsafe for the daughter to prioritise relationships with the family she lives with?

Gosh, we're a very close family, never had a cross word, go on holiday together etc BUT I only speak to my married son about every 2 weeks, visit about every two months. I see and talk to my daughter more often as she only lives a few miles away and we help out with the GC but we can go over a week with no communication. They have their own busy lives, as we do. Whenever we buy gifts we always include their spouses, I wouldn't dream of leaving them out.
Sorry, but it sounds to me like you're jealous of your DIL and see her as the competition. You'll end up with no relationship with your DS if you carry on like this.

By the way OP, my MIL won't buy something just for my husband. She always gets me something as well. She buys gifts for myself, my husband, my sister in law and the husband. So I would advice you to be considerate in that sense. You would expect for your son to be treated with love at his wife's family and not an outcast.

I honestly wouldn't know what to talk about every day.

I love my sons deeply and am glad to see their partners love them too.

I don't buy random gifts very often and it's usually for my DILs and grandchildren.

We have WhatsApp groups everyone can post on.

I agree with you but this is mumsnet and the woman’s mum is great and the mil is the devil personified.

I would LOVE to hear your son and DILs side of this story. You sound like a nightmare. My ex mil was like this.

Equally if it was a father calling his daughter at inconvenient times and whining about being de-prioritised then people would more than likely call out the wife’s dad for being inconsiderate.

His wife Is the centre of his universe not you! They are a couple so the done thing is to buy them a gift for both. Probably the only time it's acceptable to buy a single gift would be his birthday. It seems youve created some competition in your own head with your DIL and are jealous of her.

Your the problem not his wife. I've a problematic MIL - couldn't deal with not being no1 anymore and i became the problem, I was somehow causing her son to be like this. The truth was quite the opposite and I tried with this woman but there appeared to be nothing I could do to make this woman approve of me. She had never actually been no1 anyway but liked to think she was ,but she is a very problematic woman.

I never wanted the relationship with her to be like this, and before I was introduced to her I had hoped we could be friends and build our own bond as I had done with previous partners mothers. He warned me what she was like. she was lovely to me when I first met her but it went downhill quite quickly as my now husband had sadly warned me of.

He's now very low contact with her as she's went too far on many an occasion. I've not seen her in years thankfully but she's brought it all on herself. Her other children are low contact as well.

Does your son have any children, possibly so if he’s been married for 9 years?

If so I find it very telling as to the type of MIL that you are that you haven’t mentioned them once.

You do know the son that you speak to every day is probably just better at pretending?

Your son has a life. You're being disruptive to him in some way perhaps by excluding his wife of many years.

Treat them as a couple and respect that relationship.
Let your son know that you love him.

Can I ask what has triggered you to post? Has there been something bad happened recently which has stressed you out? Are you ill?

I know of a couple of relationships like this, in one of them the new wife began her task of alienating the son from his family the day after the wedding, it was quite shocking. The relationship between son and family has still not fully recovered years later.

I’m not sure what the OP can do about it, and trying to get reasonable advice on this forum as a MIL is usually a waste of time. Answers would be very different if it were a daughter the OP was worried about.

I have a close relationship with my dad who lives 5 hours away. We talk on the phone for about an hour every one or two weeks. I wouldn't have anything to say if he called me every two days! I love talking to my dad but I would be annoyed at constant calls and texts.

Absolutely, 100%, yes.

I ring my mum once a week. If she wants me she can ring or message me.
She has three children but a variety of friends and activities to occupy herself with.

Except a few of us have commented that we have/had wonderful relationships with our MIL.

OP, you have got an overwhelming amount of good advice and posters on this thread explaining to you why your son’s behaviour is likely how it is, but it’s been a rough thread for you and you’re feeling attacked which is making you defensive and much less likely to take anything in.

I massively sympathise with you here, because you clearly adore your children, are a great mum who raised lovely boys and just want to know they’re happy. You’re just struggling with a really difficult transition in your life and theirs, from active parent to parent of adult children. No one ever teaches you how to manage that transition and if your own relationship with your parents never went through that transition gracefully you have no idea how it’s supposed to work. The best framing I can give you is this:

Stop thinking of yourself as a parent to this grown man and start thinking of ways to show up in his life that bring him value, because he no longer needs a parent but you want him to still need you. You cannot control his behaviour or how he feels about you, but you can control your own. The most successful way parents to adult children tend to show up in their children’s lives is as sort of ride or die wing men. So basically, You are not there to choose things for him or guide his choices anymore like you would as a parent, you’re there to have his back no matter what his choices are and be in his corner. Your responsibility to him now is to make sure he never feels judged by you or unwilling to talk to you about something, and stops seeing you as a parent he needs to keep happy. You want him to give you honesty and not the rose tinted view of his life we all give our parents as teenagers when we’re afraid of their reactions. This is fixable but it has to be you who changes YOUR behaviour, not him. He has no incentive, you do.

Below are the practical things you can do right now:

1. You might be bang on about DIL, it does not matter. If your DIL is controlling or whether your son just doesn’t want to talk to you and is using her as a reason to get you off the phone, The advice is the same. He loves her, he is presenting to you that he is happy in his relationship and therefore there is nothing you can do about it other than maintain a relationship with your son so that if there is a problem he’s not telling you, he can come to you. Right now he won’t because you’re still acting like a parent, and he needs a friend to open up to if something is wrong.
2. Your son does not want to talk to you 3 times a week and finds your conversations too frequent and therefore strained and uncomfortable. To fix this, call him once a week on a Sunday, but skip the first couple of weeks and text/ message him instead. Set up a regular message chat with him rather than phone calls, you’ll get better quality conversation. Pull right back and the quality of your interactions will greatly improve. Relationships with adult children are about quality NOT quantity.
3. It doesn’t matter what your contact schedule is like with your other children or how they manage their relationship with you, they are different people. THIS son is giving you clear signals he needs you to show up differently. Never compare them either in your own head or outwardly, it’s unproductive.
4. Stop thinking about his time as a resource you need to get a ‘fair share’ of. You are not in competition with his wife and if you think of it this way you will lose. His time is his own and you want him to choose to spend some of it with you, otherwise it’s meaningless.
5. Regardless of DIL, focus on showing up for your adult child in a way that is rewarding for both of you, not a chore. That starts with less frequency and more quality but also in the types of conversations you’re having.
6. Right now you’re coming across on this post as very rigid in the way you think, so asking someone like that for advice or support is often difficult because there’s no empathy. It’s your way is right and no other experience or way of behaving or living their lives is ok. This might not be how you feel but it’s how you come across. That can make adult children feel very judged for their choices and therefore less inclined to open up. If he says something you disagree with from now on or does something you don’t like, your response is either absolutely nothing, or ‘oh that’s interesting, I’ve never thought of doing it like that before’ or words to that effect. Open mind, open heart. Work on that to improve the quality of the interactions with your son.
7. Your son has asked you not to buy gifts for just him and has asked you to gift them both or not at all. Instead of arguing the right or wrong of this (again, you will lose) LISTEN. If you want to buy for your son, also buy a token gift for her. If you want to feel better about this, feel free to buy her the same gift every single time and it can even be something you know she’s not keen on if it makes you feel better. It can be very small. Once you have a better quality relationship with your son you won’t need to ask him what he wants because in the course of conversations it will come up, so no need to ask at all.
8. Stop trying to be right and creating a wicked DIL figure in your mind. The more you do that, the less success you will have maintaining a relationship with your son. The goal here isn’t to be right it’s to be a meaningful part of his life.
9. Being someone’s mother does not magically entitle you to a place in their priorities. That’s hard, but it’s true. In reality no one is entitled to a relationship with anyone else whether they gave birth to them or not. Your entitlement here is a massive problem and even if you've never said it to him, it will ooze out of you and make him feel indebted and stifled. You don’t want him to come to this relationship from a place of duty or obligation, that makes you a burden. Again, quality, quality, quality.

Here’s the crux of the issue:

Your expectation of your relationship with your son does not align to his expectation of that relationship, nor his wife’s. It is not important who is right or wrong, what the ‘correct’ amount of contact is etc, You are not his priority and will not win if you push the issue, therefore if you choose not to adjust your own expectations you will lose contact with your son. You need to decide is being right or being in his life is more important, then act accordingly.

Hmm going against the grain here and just want to suggest quiet observation of the situation.
My DB met his exW at university and moved 6 hours away to be near her family. He gradually disconnected from his own family and friends until we only saw him once maybe twice a year. Very sporaidic contact and only if we made the effort.

Gsve him space, assumed he preferred being with wife’s family and just felt very sad about the whole thing, especially our DM.

20 years and 2 DC later he fled with his dc after years of coersive abuse. She had systematically isolated him from all his support network and although we were concerned we never imagined how bad it was.

He is now near us with sole custody of his DC and rebuilding his life.

Not for one minute suggesting this is the case with here OP but you are right about how opinions would
be if this was your daughter. Trust your spidey senses.

I would advise a quiet watch and keep trying to maintain communication with your DS even if it is brief. You are a loving mum

No. Give it a few weeks, change some details and repost it as your daughter. You might get less snide comments. (Meanwhile ask your other son's opinion. Text or email mean he can respond in his own time.)

How often are you phoning him?