DP and I have just got engaged (Yay!), but the response from my DM has be distinctly underwhelming. I am not quite sure what I am asking in this post, so apologies if I ramble a bit. I suppose I could just do with some advice/views to help my understand my DM's response.
DP and I have been together for over four years, and we bought a house together nearly two years ago, so engagement/marriage has been on the cards for a while. He is a very good man: kind, honest, hardworking, generous with his time and attention to others, is very much a homemaker and will be a brilliant dad. We are quite different in some ways - I am far more political than he is, and am passionate about my demanding career, whereas he is much more of a work-to-live person, and his life outside work is more important to him. However, we are very alike in terms of our views on politics generally, religion, how to raise children etc, and we have several overlaps in terms of how we like to spend our free-time. Being with DP makes me feel very happy, strong, and confident, and I know that I am making the right decision by marrying him (yes, I do love him lots too, but am very much a head over heart type so hence putting this as an add-on!).
Despite this, my DM has said that she does not like DP. She says that she doesn't dislike him, but that she can't find any common ground with him, and that she finds him difficult to talk to. She is perfectly polite and welcoming to him even when he has visited my parents without me being there, and she always tries to buy him something he will really like for birthdays and Christmas.
I know really that I should let it go, that I can't force her to like him, and that I should be content that she is nice to him despite not getting on with him, but it does bother me, and I can't work out why or what I should do about it.
I think one reason that I am bothered by it is that my previous long-term relationship was awful. ExP was physically, emotionally, sexually and financially abusive towards me for the whole 6 years we were together. I did not tell DM about this at the time, but have told her some of it after we split. DM liked ExP. Despite the fact that the majority of stuff that came out of his mouth was complete BS nonsense, and that his understanding of and interest in current affairs was pretty non-existent, she could apparently talk to him. She used to say that he was "good for me" (No, mother, he made me damn miserable). It was despite him, not because of him, that I turned from a very shy teenager who found it difficult to talk to different people, into a gregarious adult.
I don't blame DM for not picking up on how unhappy I was when I was with ExP, as I never told her, but I think that is part of the problem. When I was a young teenager living at home, relationships with boys were 'disapproved of', as DM wanted me to concentrate on my studies and my sport. As a result, my first relationship of any description was not until I was 19 and had left home. I think that this has been a large reason why DM and I don't have a script, or language to talk about relationships.
One other thing that is nagging at me is DM's reaction when I first told her I was in a relationship with DP. She was initially interested, but when I told her who DP was, she seemed to be immediately negative. She had met DP once ten years previously. We knew each other from when we were teenagers, and DM had given DP a lift in our car for about 20 minutes. I brushed her reaction off at the time, but wonder if it has led her to view him in a negative light from the start.
I think that part of my unease about DM's reaction is that I am still lacking in a bit of trust in myself to pick a good partner, after my disastrous judgment with ExP, and it makes me a bit uncomfortable that DM would obviously prefer it if I had not decided to marry DP.
As I said, I don't really know what I am asking here. I am sorry to have written such an essay and thank you if you have read this far! I suppose that any suggestions as to how I might talk to DM about this, or how I can move on and not let it bother me, would be gratefully received.
And before anyone asks - my Dad has been much more congratulatory, but he comes from an age and background in which men did not talk about their feelings, so although I can talk to him about almost literally any subject under the sun to do with politics, history, philosophy etc, I don't think I have ever had a successful conversation with him about feelings. I love him to bits, but he is just not that sort of dad!