Wife wont let mum come round at Christmas

[Unjeffeson]

Background:
My m(41) wife hates my mum. There wasn't one incident but she just thinks shes selfish and manipulative and just wants everything on her own terms, including spending time with pur daughter. She feels my mum tried to dominate when our daughter was born and has never considered her feelings, and is rude and catty to her. My wife also thinks I take my mums side too much when i try and explain her point of view or try and create compromises. This has led my wife to feeling like my mother is ‘the other woman’, and she sees red almost every time we discuss her.

Things have been stable if unpleasant for a while, with my wife agreeing for my mum to see our daughter every couple of months for an afternoon. In the meantime my mum is on the phone to me regularly about how depressed its all making her.

Whats happened:
My mum has asked if she can see us on Christmas day, so she doesnt have to be by herself. My wife has said hard no, she doesnt want her anywhere near us at xmas. Mum can see us at some point around the end of December but not on Christmas day. Wife says we need to maintain a united front to set boundaries with my mum on this.

Ive been managing my mum’s feelings on all this for two years now as well as putting my wife’s desires first. It is important to me that my daughter knows her grandmother and that she doesnt get dragged into it. When we argue about it my wife makes ‘it’s me or her’ noises and i refuse to break up my family for what my mother wants. But dealing with mums misery on the whole thing is very hard.

What should I do? Is it okay to say no to mum at xmas so long as we have another date lined up?

And i guess more importantly - had anyone here had a mother in law you feel is so unpleasant that you prevent them visiting, keep them away at xmas etc, in spite of the difficulty it causes your SO? Where’s the line of tolerance (if there even is one)?

I agree with other posters you are enmeshed and in so deep your role is to always appease her and always has been - I suspect you are the good son the one who listens and helps and loves her and therefore you want to continue to do so (your brother I imagine was treated differently which is why he is no contact)

please seek counselling for all of this and I think trust your wife’s boundaries on this

Totally agree. Without knowing the full story, I find it a bit heartless to ban mil who lives on her own from seeing her son and grandchild on Christmas day. Unless mil has been very unreasonable in the past, I feel sorry for the mil. Mil deserves to see her grandchildren just as much as the wife's mother does.

If Christmas Day is special enough to want to have 'family time' then surely you can see how awful it would be to leave the mother in law on her own on the same special day while her family enjoy family time without her? It's not the same being alone on Boxing Day or the 27th - Christmas Day is the one day of the year when pretty much everything g is closed and being alone really does mean that.

She has been pretty awful though, as the OP's update shows.

I think the OP has probably become used to his Mums behaviour over the years and hasn't considered how others see that she is unreasonable.

On the other hand it sounds like his wife is made from the same mould as his mother. Both seem unreasonable to me!

OP,
You are piggy in the middle, and the two adult women in your life are not thinking about you much are they?

So, they don't like each other....tough. I'm sure they both have good reason, they both sound pretty awful.

But in you mothers favour, she raised you with love, that's what you remember, and she probably dedicated her life to you and your brother. She feels very alone now, and obviously thats not your fault or your responsibility, but to include her more in your life now you have your own family, would be kind. It's also good for GD to have loving relations with their GM....not feeling that they are second generation piggy in the middle.

Your wife doesn't want your mother around, not at Christmas, not at any other time it seems, she has that right. My own MIL was horrendous too. My DH was divorced, MIL would call me by DH first wife's name (out of everyone else's earshot) and go on about her all the time, she never let up. Eventually I had enough, DH understood, but I would NEVER have made a fuss about him taking our own baby/child to see his GM.

Their relationship stayed intact and close, and that's how yours, and your child's should be, with both women in your life.

Oh god, honestly, the problem here is so obviously your mother. Don't you think the fact that your brother has already refused to spend time with her is a big fat clue that the problem here is not your wife? Your wife clearly has some self-respect and you should follow her example. Don't be a wet wipe DH. The world is already too full of them.

Except that she's horrible. So why should the OP and his wife have to martyr themselves and ruin their own Christmas Day to appease a woman who won't be grateful in the slightest?

@Yellowgoldsunshine @Growlybear83
I was the child taken to see awful grand parents.
For me as a child, it was awful.

And then it carried on as I became a teen and a young adult. Why is Coming not coming to see me? Layers of guilt etc…
I hated it and couldn’t wait to escape from those ‘visits’. Even if they were ‘only one day in the year’

@Unjeffeson

you said: My mother is selfish and inconsiderate and isn't willing to back off when asked.

also:
I don't like that my wife is unprepared to attempt to improve the situation.

neither of them is prepared to change, your mother HAS insulted and upset and unapologetically so, she’s taken the child away from its mother, taken her out and about like she’s an accessory which was NOT part of the plan for the little one and is constantly pushing pushing pushing

your own brother has cut her off due to her treatment of him. She has nobody because she’s not a very nice person to be around.

shes abusing you by making you her crutch and now you are paralysed with Fear, Obligation and Guilt.

you say you don’t care what happens to you - this too is a symptom of a deeply unhealthy relationship with your mother, you could end up a dumped dad seeing your kid EOW because of this, you need to care more about your wife and child and pander less to your mother.

offer to take the little one to your mums for a couple of hours on Christmas Eve or something, but you’re having a quiet family day on Christmas Day, no guests, just you and leave her to it. She’ll be fine.

i know this will stress you out, but that’s what you need to work on, she’s not healthy to have in your life to the extent she wants.

She's been so unpleasant to her other son that he's gone no contact.

OP

Your own inertia when it comes to your mother is a problem that hurts you as well s your wife. You are both enmeshed and a wet lettuce (linked to inertia) when it comes to your mother because you cannot and equally will not do anything when it comes to your mother. You take the path of least resistance here because you are far more afraid of tour mother than you are of your wife. You’ve been conditioned to think that the sky will fall
in on you if you upset your mother in any way.

Get therapy and deal with this now before your marriage is over.

This is the right answer, it costs nothing to be kind.

The OP's brother is no contact with his mum, due to her treatment of him. So no, it's a bit unlikely that she 'dedicated her whole life' to her boys. And actually, if she had, that isn't healthy at all. Mums aren't meant to be martyrs.

Read Toxic Parents by Susan Forward.

Completely on your wife’s side and there is no way she can be there on xmas day - people like that don’t ever just behave and be gracious. If you let her come there will be comments, there will be fights and tears and your daughter will remember Christmas being ruined.

I have some difficult family members so I totally understand the guilt but you can not make your wife and child suffer because you feel guilty. Your mam is an adult. Tell her to get counselling (cognitive behavioural therapy might be good), work this year on making amends and showing your wife she can change and then perhaps in a year it might be a different situation. She needs to be the one to make an effort.

Sadly such disordered of thinking people like Ops mother are unlikely to go into therapy. This is because they think they have done nothing wrong re her sons. She has no empathy nor insight into her behaviours.

I think who comes for Christmas Day should very much be a joint decision and if your wife really isn’t keen you need to say no. And compromise by having your Mum over on Boxing Day, perhaps or bringing the kids round to hers as others have said.

If we role reversed and made it a husband who didn't want his mother in law around, Mumsnet would be calling it coercive control. Trying to push people away from their family like this is really not okay.

I think when we marry someone, we have to be grown up and learn to accept the family that they come with, except in the most extreme cases. Going no or low contact is okay if the ostracised person is violent, a drunk or dealing drugs but it seems very unfair on the husband her to destroy his relationship with his mother and to ruin the relationship between grandmother and grandchild because the wife finds her mother in law "a bit catty."

There's also something incredibly selfish about refusing to let family members be there on Christmas Day. Why is it some people get so obsessed about the "perfect Christmas" that they end up behaving like spoiled children?

You sound like my other half, I was ready to leave a couple of years ago as it was all just too much. My OH realised how much it was effecting me and has since started managing his mum so I have very little involvement. I have a feeling that his mother was the reason his ex fiancé left him also. Your mother needs a hobby that doesn't involve your family. My mil bitches about everything /everyone and I can't stand listening to it, it's just awful.

I think this is madness.

Ooof, sorry @Unjeffeson you have a mother who has become a MIL from hell. I've got one of those, and I'm very glad my DH has boundaries. In fact, I've been the one in the past trying to persuade him to soften a bit!

The guilt is understandable, and it is hard to deal with a family member who lays it on thick, but from the examples you've given I can understand why your wife doesn't want her around on Christmas Day. She's agreed to see her after Christmas which is more than fair - she's not demanding you go no contact.

Remember, your mother does have choices here - she could choose to apologise for past behaviour and change how she interacts with people. She has not done this, and still expects people to be fine having a close relationship with her. She's not owning her part.

If the OPs brother posts his problem with his mother, we would be able to get into that too.
He could be as unreasonable as the others in this scenario.

According to the OP...

Hopefully the majority of people who have been seriously hurt never take their pain out on others.There is always an exception. An example is children who have grown up in a dysfunctional family often become dysfunctional & go on to hurt others. Hurt people can & do hurt people & they need help. It can become a vicious circle. Everyone involved has a responsibility to at least try and get to the route of exactly what is causing the issues.