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)?

Maybe some of the commenters that are so vehemently against the MIL, didn't have such a good relationship with their own mothers.
We all see things, in part, from our own experiences.

Has no one read the update?

You sound incredibly reasonable! I think they both need to consider you in this and compromise. I hope your wife realised the impact on you too…

His inertia when it comes to his mother hurts him as well as his wife and child. He just wants everyone to get along so he does not have to deal with his mother. He cannot and equally will not deal with her, such is the extent of his fear obligation and guilt : three buttons his mother installed in him.

This is absolutely insane - you believe OP should prioritise his mother to the extent he should divorce his wife and go for 50/50 custody just so his mother gets more access to his daughter??? No wonder you spend Christmas alone. Sounds well deserved.
😂😂😂
Good job I'm not emotionally engaged with you and your answers!

The OP's wife sounds like a controlling, miserable woman. Of course he should divorce her. Everyone would benefit.

OP, my husband could have written this 4 years ago and if he hadn’t gotten his head out of his ass he’d be single living with his mum.

You feel a deep responsibility to your mum that you don’t feel to your wife. You probably know your wife is stronger and more capable and subconsciously expect her to deal with her feelings and desires while you manage your mum. But the damage you’ve done by not EMOTIONALLY supporting your wife in these years will leave scars on your relationship for life. You also need to make sure your daughter doesn’t see her mum as number 2.

My husband had to learn that if he wants our family intact then our family is number one and our parents etc are after that. They don’t get to break our boundaries or say nasty things. And I don’t say nasty things about his mum (to him). It sounds like your wife is avoiding saying nasty things about your mum which is HUGE.

I’d stick with no mum at Christmas this year because your marriage is in danger and asking for a compromise is a disaster. Let your wife know she’s number one and you don’t want your mum to come first. At a calm time you can talk about healing things with your wife and mum. Ask what YOU should have done after your mum snatched the baby. (You should have gone mental and not let your mum hold the baby unsupervised and adked your wife sfter 30 seconds if it was time to pass the baby back).

As your daughter grows up maybe you set up something like an evening visit with your mum while your wife does something she likes. And if your mum even slightly criticizes your child, wife or father/siblings, you leave.

YOU hold boundaries and your wife can probably eventually trust you to protect her and your child. If you don’t, she’ll protect herself and she will be very justified in getting rid of you. She already is justified in leaving, but she is giving you a chance.

”I’m sorry I pushed back on keeping my mum out of Christmas. I was processing. I’m really excited to have a nice family time where we can all be relaxed and happy. Thank you for suggesting it and thank you for being open to seeing her another day. She hasn’t been good to you and I was being an idiot. Let me know if she’s being too much and I’ll back you up when we see her.”

But I gotta tell you all the BEST one I ever received from my MIL was this....ready...its good....

After my 3 rd kid , she was staying with us at the time. I arrived home after my c- section and she said ...she said (God rest her soul) ....

"You're not meant to look pregnant after you've had a baby!"

Wowza! I recall it well! Of course she said it when I was a alone.

She sure revealed HER emotional state at the time hey!

This a 100%.

It sounds like your mother was no picnic when your wife had your daughter but frankly she wouldn’t be the first. And who knows maybe your wife won’t be the perfect MIL either.

If your wife is judging your mother for being upset that your dad got someone else pregnant (!!!!) that is your wife’s issue, And without context she may been trying to encourage your brother to lead a healthier lifestyle who knows.

My mother talks too much and sometimes says the wrong thing. My MIL has also at times crossed a line including by trying to give my baby chocolate and telling me I needed to stop breastfeeding. It’s forgotten frankly.

Neither you or your wife should be ok with leaving an elderly women alone on Christmas Day based on that list of “sins”.

She sounds very much like my mother....she's a covert narcissist. I can just about manage her behaviour when it's just me and her but when someone else is around it's incredibly difficult because she does what's known as triangulation and tries to get the other person on her side. She doesn't care about what she's doing to the relationship you have with your wife - she cares only about her own needs. She's demonised your wife, and it's a game of one-upmanship, hence the snide comments. She's so intent on 'winning' that she's giving no thought to the damage she's doing to the family.

I think you're going to have to take your wife's side because your mother will never reflect on her own behaviour. She sounds like she has the emotional maturity of a three year old and that's how you have to treat her.

Yep, still think that's batshit!!

Ellepff

This one is on the money! OP I'd listen to this for sure...for sure!

My ex fi's mother was vile and ultimately broke us up. Had we got married she'd made it clear that she didn't want to see me ever again.

I have little sympathy for people who put their loved ones in a "them or me" position. In my case it was MIL making the threats.

I would have ultimately dealt with the situation by accepting DH and any kids visiting MIL pretty much whenever, but without me. Assuming she wasn't bad mouthing me to them behind my back.

Definitely not everyone!

Op - look at your child. Now imagine you’ve said something to them so hurtful they didn’t want to speak to you again. Or you’ve said multiple things that hurt them so much they cut you off. What would you do? Just shrug it off or try to fix the problem you caused? Apologise? Try to change?

what did your mum do when your brother cut her off? Has she tried? Over the years when she’s hurt him, did she feel bad and try to make it up to him? Try to stop herself being rude to her child?

You don’t just cut your mum off for one rude comment. If you’ve just accepted that’s how she is, perhaps you’ve not really thought about all the small things she’s said to your wife that aren’t acceptable.

if it was just your wife who didn’t want anything to do with your mum, then maybe this could be fixed, but your brother too? Your mum can’t be a nice person. And people who are consistently horrible to others do end up lonely, unless they keep making new friends to make up for the old ones they’ve lost.

24th or 26th is a compromise. Keeping Christmas Day just for you three and giving your mum a different day to ruin.

You feel so much sympathy for the bully and none for the victims. You only have to read some of the heartbreaking threads on here where people are reluctant to cut their parents off, even after the most horrendous abuse. I'm sure that the OP's brother had good reasons to go no contact with his own mother and it wasn't a decision taken lightly.

OP's wife and brother refuse to invite his mother for Christmas as a result of the things she has said and done. It's as though you think the OP's mum has no agency and cannot be held responsible in any way for her words and actions and their consequences. The victims of her words and actions are the bad guys.

I don't know how inheritance is relevant as we don't know whether MIL has an inheritance to leave. It's just another stick to beat the OP's wife with.

Yes think you might want to keep quiet because I think you are underplaying this. Most of these are kind of annoying in and of themselves, but in aggregate become (clearly) intolerable.

A lot of people have commented on how awful it is to be alone on Xmas.
My perspective....
Being alone on Xmas sounds like a stress free day in so many ways, so many ways!

Just a thought - all this is not actually about Christmas Day. That is just a kick off to an underlying bigger issue.

Btw Elderly woman does not need to be on her own, she has a second son (who unfortunately also wants nothing to do with her). It takes quite a lot for a child to disown a parent.

She lots of choices here- apologising and modifying her behaviour is one of them.

Comtesse

But when such comments are chronic , albeit just little 'human' snide comments, it feels horrible, just horrible. Incredibly hurtful

With respect to your own situation the word “narcissist” is widely overused.

At worst the OP’s mother sounds demanding and insensitive. She has had her own struggles - being left high & dry by her husband. By the OP’s account she was a good mother.

She’s lonely and getting older. I notice that people who spend a lot of time alone can talk a lot.

If my MIL was minding my baby and didn’t stick exactly to my routine I’d let it go personally.

The wife sounds like she’s well able to make her own demands. Saying no we won’t see your mother on Christmas Day leave her by herself is pretty damn heartless.

People saying this mother is hard work. I'm sure she is. I'm not sure what she's done deserves being left alone on Christmas Day though. I think it's a sign of the times that we all live for our own enjoyment and show a great deal of intolerance towards others. That and this obsession that Christmas has to be perfect when really it's just a day of toil and endurance for a lot of us!

I cannot stand my mother in law. She drinks too much, she's strongly opinionated about things she doesn't understand and she has a weird, distant kind of relationship with her grandchildren. I still wouldn't insist on her exclusion on Christmas Day though. It would be an incredibly unfair position to put my partner in and it just seems cruel to me too.

One thing I will say re 'the wife' and what ultimately stopped my MIL from her nasty comments was when I faced her directly. I stopped complaining to my DH, I stopped complaining to myself about her. I told her to her face , alone, how I felt when she said certain things. She minimised, denied them a little but they gradually slowly but surely STOPPED. Result!

We don’t know why her second son doesn’t speak to her. My mum has regularly made comments about my weight & health because she doesn’t want me to end up with bad hips etc like her. At times it is annoying.

It doesn’t sounds like the MIL does have a lot of choices frankly. The wife has taken offence to things aren’t particularly offensive (baby related stuff aside) and now says she won’t see her MiL on Christmas Day.

I wish it was possible to vote or change the title of threads. This one is more accurately: my Mother wants to come at Christmas, be rude and ride roughshod over everyone else! I can see why you wife doesn't want her to come, your mother sounds dreadful. It sounds like you are try to be diplomatic but if you want to remain married that you need to make your wife more of a priority -by the sounds of it you are trying to keep everyone happy. Even though you know your mother is a nightmare

MrRobinsonsQuango

Good point.