What would you do with this e-mail from MIL

[halvedfees]

Concerned DP here. During lockdown my OH spoke to her 85 year old mother every day. We went round with milk etc. Sent her a recipe box from Mindful Chef. Supported her at a distance as much as possible. Tolerated having the phone slammed down on her after refusing to enter the house during lockdown to persuade her 90 year old father to go in a care home. When her mother slammed it down for a second time 4 weeks later ( due to not being sympathetic enough over the next- door neighbour recently widowed owner selling her house and the annoyance of people driving up the private drive to view it) she stopped phoning her mother. 2 weeks later her mother sent an email to our 23 yr old DS and all her sisters and brothers. This is the snippet

"Chips off old blocks" come readily to mind! because I'm sad to say that on June 3rd. your mother was most unhelpful and rude to me on the phone. I know she and your father have huge worries workwise but I found her attitude very upsetting and unsupportive.
I haven't heard a peep out of either of them since - but of course your Dad does as he's told. I'm afraid that I too have taken that line of least resistance in the past which was cowardly and foolish. I have decided it's time to end [name removed by MNHQ]'s covert bullying even if it means an estrangement.

X is unable to visit but has been in frequent touch sending flowers and chocs out of her meagre income. She may be autistic but it's at times like these when innate kindness means a lot.

Auntie Y is a pillar of strength but is strangely unsurprised by your mother's attitude. Likewise Z

Maybe we should keep this email to ourselves but that should be you decision."

My DP only found out because our DS forwarded the email to us.

This was all 6 months ago and she hasn't spoken to her since. She has communicated by email and told her what she was upset about. My MIL has side-stepped the issue.

How would you handle this?

To be honest, I think you need to let your DP work out how much (if any) contact she wants with her DM. Your role will just be to support her in any decision she makes.

Whether you want any contact between yourself and MIL is another matter

Your DP may need to accept there will be no changing of her DM now, but to maybe just have limited contact and practice ‘grey rock’ etc in order to keep some boundaries if that’s what she wants

@Willow4987 thanks. Never heard of the "Grey rock " method, though it is instinctively the way my wife has been handling emails. The email that was just facts disputing her claims my MIL chose to ingore. Indeed when my MIL found out my wife was suffering from post-herpetic neuralgia via another source, she used that to tell everyone how worried she was.....

With DP, he has limited contact with his father, and very much on his terms. There are topics that if his father tries to bring them up, he terminates the call. Our DD's will no longer have anything to do with him, after he made a smart comment about one of them's weight on a call.

Has your DW been less stressed after stopping contact with her mum?

I don't think you need to do anything with the email.

@RantyAnty she is less stressed in a way. However, she gets stressed when she sees an email from her DM in her inbox. She is also concerned her DM is trying to sweep it all under the carpet, which she is, but without full-on confrontation I don't know what to do. And full-on confrontation verbally will just be twisted by MIL to spin her way....

I would stick with waiting for an apology before doing anything else. Your wife should say straight out to her that it is necessary for them to rebuild their relationship so to get in touch when MIL is ready to do that.

@Butterymuffin should you have to ask for an apology? Surely it is obvious one is necessary. If you have to ask for one then does it not speak volumes about my MIL?

My late father used to send angry emails accusing us all of being bullies when we went low contact with him. IMO bullies are always the first ones to accuse others of being so.

I would honestly block your MIL’s email address. If it’s causing your mother stress to receive them, stop her from receiving them. She doesn’t deserve contact.

[quote halvedfees]@Butterymuffin should you have to ask for an apology? Surely it is obvious one is necessary. If you have to ask for one then does it not speak volumes about my MIL?[/quote]
Agree completely. But you said yourself she's trying to get round that. So spell it out to her that that's not acceptable.

I've seen some posters here suggesting to cut MIL some slack given the situation. Usually I would agree, but the email to your children is unforgivable. That's not a person who is stressed, tired of the pandemic, etc (the slamming of the phone could be excused by that). But the email - it's malicious, manipulative, and unforgivable. Nothing good will come out of this. The fact that MIL is now ignoring all the evidence laid before here is also a bad sign and gaslighting.

Do listen to your partner and how she's feeling, but I would definitely support low contact or no contact in this scenario.

Difficultly with blocking MIL completely is that FIL is in a care home and needs to coordinate re him. Also my wife is lasting power of attorney for her.

Also re phone slamming. I was in the car on both occasions when this happened (we run our own business and my wife called her mother on the 45 minute commute home ) and I can vouch for the triviality on which she slammed the phone down the second time in 4 weeks (MIL complaining about her newly-widowed neighbour's house sale)

[quote halvedfees]@RantyAnty she is less stressed in a way. However, she gets stressed when she sees an email from her DM in her inbox. She is also concerned her DM is trying to sweep it all under the carpet, which she is, but without full-on confrontation I don't know what to do. And full-on confrontation verbally will just be twisted by MIL to spin her way....[/quote]
A few thoughts:

1. I've gone NC (No Contact) with some of my family & with a friend. One relative & the friend carried on sending me cards & postcards assuring me they still felt the same about me (shudder!), & it was ALWAYS upsetting to get them. Over time it got easier, until I could throw them in the bin unopened/unread & carry on with life. Just because someone writes to you, you don't have to read it, let alone respond.

1. When the person (say, X) you've gone NC with realises they can't influence you directly any more, they may engage other people to contact you & spin you a sob story about X or a bit of generalised emotional blackmail. These are known as FMs (Flying Monkeys, from The Wizard of Oz). If you know this in advance, it's easier to resist them.

Examples of FM talk:
(a) X is crying because you won't talk to her.
(b) It's a terrible thing when a daughter won't speak to her own mother.
(c) She's an old lady now.
(d) How would you feel if she died?
(e) She's very ill. (Sometimes this is completely invented.)
(f) This might be her last Christmas/birthday/Mother's Day.
(g) Can't you forgive her?

These are the milder ones :-)

I'd advise closing down FMs. Don't engage, explain or use them as go-betweens. Say something like, "That's between me & her & I don't want to discuss it." Then change the subject & if they won't let it go, invite them to leave/end the call.

1. It can be very difficult & painful to go NC. It may take a few goes, & that's all fine. One thing I used to do when I saw NC looming because I was more & more uncomfortable with the way I was being treated, was to work out in my own mind/discuss with DH what exactly would make it possible for me to CONTINUE to see that person or couple. I would imagine scenarios where I felt comfortable, note how someone's behaviour or speech would need to change for that scenario to take place, & then ask myself how likely it was to happen. The answer invariably was that it would never happen, that they would have to become an entirely different person - & at that point I had my answer: NC was the only real world option.

1. When someone is used to doing things & not being called out for it, they won't admit their guilt or apologise. They absolutely will not. I had people like this in my family. When I was a child & a teenager I learned that whatever they did wrong, however undeniable it was, however trivial or massive it was, pushing them to recognise their fault only resulted, when they had no other way out because I would not believe their lies, in their either making it my fault in some ridiculous way or flat-out insulting me in a hurtful way to shut me up. This is how some people operate & there's no way to change it.

I hope this might help in some way. I have every sympathy for your DW. It can feel like an impossible situation; but it isn't. There's a way out which you & she can find together & implenment in your own time. It may be NC or it may not. Good luck.

Many thanks for the detailed reply :)

Out of interest, her birthday is coming up soon - beginning February. Assuming no apology, would you send a birthday card? (She sent a cursory birthday card to my wife on her birthday 10 days ago from her and FIL)

I wouldn't, because in my situation once I'd gone NC that was that. No Contact means No Contact. I knew that if I made a move towards my family (like sending someone a card), they would take it as a sign that I was 'back in the fold' & they could carry on exactly as before.

But that's me. What you & your DW do is up to you & depends on the specifics of her family, her feelings, what she feels ready to do, etc. Recognise that feelings & wishes can change over time; be gentle with yourself & don't live your life according to somebody else's rules. Think about what you can & can't put up with, about how you want your life to be in the future.

Just because MIL sent her a card, DW doesn't have to reciprocate. On the other hand, it's something of a statement to NOT send a card.

If breaking away seems too harsh or too big a decision right now, would it help to think of it as I did at the time, i.e. that I was taking a holiday from my family? I left open the door, in my own mind - I didn't tell them that. Then, once I was NC & got over the bit of fear & guilt that came with that, my life just started getting better & better. I never went back.

You have complications with FIL (how does DW feel about him?) & with the Power of Attorney (could someone else in the family take that on?).

Funerals may be another source of angst. I avoided all family funerals & if they were for someone I loved, I sent flowers & wrote to their spouse apologising for not being there. This was fine, but all families are different. Oh, & for one funeral, a FM tried to get me to go, assuring me that the person I absolutely did not want to see wouldn't be there: I found out afterwards from someone else that yes, he had been there. Trust no-one.

One more thing: sometimes when you go NC with one person or a set of people, you lose others who you wanted to keep. Sad but true.

@halvedfees

My children want nothing more to do with their Grandmother. The main question is how does my DP handle her mother? My MIL has asked to come back ib her life but has sude-stepped any apology etc. Would you continue to ignore her? And what could my MIL say that could redeem the relationship anyway?

I would. My mother played a lot of nasty tricks on me. Throwing strops, blaming me for stuff, ignoring me, bad mouthing me to others including my Dd, making up lies about stuff. Then after weeks or months of silence she’d ring and act like nothing had happened.

After one time I felt enough was enough and she was told (by my brother) that until she was prepared to apologise and sit down and have a conversation about how she was going to change her behaviour we didn’t want contact.

Apart from the odd nasty letter she never contacted me again. Six years. And you know something....they were the best six years of my life. No fear, no guilt. No constantly being defensive against all the snipping.

She died recently. She sent me a nasty letter from beyond the grave. Hurling yet more insults.

Some people don’t deserve family. My feeling was that I wouldn’t put up with being treated like that by a friend. Why should I from her. The ball is in her court, if your mil wants contact she can apologise. But you need to make sure she doesn’t think she can get in a cycle of behaving badly, saying sorry and repeat.

And I would say no the birthday card.

Your dp needs to work out how to build a relaxing with her dad without her mum, so she may need to involve the home staff more rather than go through her mum. But it’s do’able. No reason why she can’t keep power of attorney. Or if fil has capacity he can remove her if he wants to. Not your partner’s problem.

Never heard of the "Grey rock " method, though it is instinctively the way my wife has been handling emails.
I don't think it is. Grey rock is about offering as little information as possible to a manipulator. Responses should be short and as bland as possible. No information should be volunteered. So a long email rebuttal of facts is definitely not grey rock. (I appreciate her mother had asked how she could rebuild the relationship so no real 'grey rock' response existed, except not to engage with the question in the first place).

I'd encourage your DP to focus on reducing her stress. I feel like this year we are all on a knife edge as it is and any amount of additional stress can quickly become unmanageable. If the sight of emails stresses her out, I'd suggest she sets up an inbox rule so these go into a separate folder, meaning she can choose when to engage with them. It might be helpful if you screened them, so she only saw emails actually about her father's care.

For the birthday, I would send a similarly cursory card. Unless you're actually going to go NC but I don't think your wife is ready for that yet.

Thanks for all your replies, they have been most helpful.

My wife now feels guilty about her father. Her mother had spent years wrecking his reputation to her and the rest of the family. Used to say he was a narcissist! My wife now realises that although he was no angel, he had been the subject of a life-long smear campaign. Indeed recently, when asked by her father how her mother was (all through a crack in the window) my wife alluded to the fact that her mother had not been speaking well of her. Her father replied - don't worry, she never has a good word to say about anyone...

My wife is now trying to build up her relationship with her father, albeit through a window.

She’s 85. I am sorry there is unlikely to be an apology or understanding. Really your partner needs to decide what sort of relationship she wants to have with her given it’s likely she will continue to see things through skewed lenses!

Your children do not want a RS with their GM given her nasty antics over the years and the final malicious smearing email.

Your OH physical and MH has been severely affected by her DM behaviour.

You need to take all of your family out of punching distance of this unhinged vicious woman. She asked how to rebuild contact - it was obvious that she should have at least acknowledged your OHs feelings and facts as expressed in her email to her Mum - never mind apologising for sending malicious emails to a wide distribution - this is a criminal offence under cyber bullying and harassment.

What have all of her siblings done ? Just stood around and watched her being attacked ? Are they complicit in this as well - or have any of them offered your OH support.

MiL is 100% unable to apologise or change - she just needs you OH back in the toxic system for her own comfort....and in no time the shit will happen again.

Take some of the role modelling from your DC - swerve and protect yourself from emotionally violent people.

Seems that you are at a cross roads now - either slip back down that LC slope with emails, cards back into punching distance - or take this time to consolidate the detachment and go full NC. Don’t even engage with MIL - just block her on everything and live a better life.

You make a lot of valid points here.

One of my MIL step- sisters rang her apparently to berate her for sending such an email. However, they did not offer support at the time because they knew we did not know about the email. It was only 2 weeks after it was sent that our son forwarded it to us - he had only just found it.

My Mils only sister is torn. She speaks a lot to my wife, much more than she used to. However, she keeps saying things like " I hope both of you can be reconciled soon " and doesn't really seem to get the gravity of it all. Indeed she was surprised that we knew about the email - I rang her to discuss it and initially she refused to talk to me. However she did eventually, admitting that my MIL had been a horrible sister when younger.

The aunt is a flying monkey. This (no surprise) increased contact is keeping you all in the game and info and hurt feelings are still flowing through this person who has their own agenda guilt tripping your wife.

I would cut right back on that channel - either via a grey rock or fade or state some v overt boundaries - do not tell me anything about MiL and do don’t give MiL any info about us - but seems that this aunt is not capable of diplomacy if she has been manipulated into this position by her sister.

What do YOU think should happen here?

Problem is the aunt has been a rock/surrogate mother at times in my wife's life. I think she would struggle to NC her completely, but equally well I agree, she has been manipulated by her sister unwittingly and could never be trusted to say nothing.