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)?

Grow up stop taking Mummy's side and support your wife!

That's a mature approach

Because although she is deplorable in her beliefs and behaviours I have taught my children tolerance. They are teenagers now and can choose the amount of time they are around her. They also know she is a product of both her past and her current life.

It's as difficult as both parties make it. My DIL is more like a daughter. We we are best friends. I'd never take the place of her own mother but she does confide in me & I love that as it brings us closer. We've had a few disagreements over the years & once a proper argument but no different to what Ive had with my own mother, its natural.She also makes sure both sets of parents see the grandchildren as equally as possible. Perhaps if the DILs who don't get on with their mil asked for their advice sometimes they'd find it would make their relationship stronger.

Children of a toxic parent don’t realise how toxic that parent is because the toxicity is all that they have known. Your wife didn’t have to grow up under such toxicity and has therefore a different experience. She has chosen, correctly in my opinion, to have a zero tolerance to the toxicity.

You are being disengenious when you say you don’t care about your feelings, when your posts are entirely about your feelings. You would rather your wife be exposed to your mother’s toxicity, so you don’t have to deal with your mothers guilt tripping. It’s this attitude that has probably pushed your wife to her decision, she no longer trusts you to have her back. You didn’t protect her from your mother in the early stages because you were too focused on trying to appease your mother and your wife was collateral damage in that mission.

Op you need to be very careful because you have already damaged your wife’s trust, if you continue to push, she might decide that breaking up your family is a price worth paying.

Tell your mother that Christmas Day isn’t up for discussion, it’s a done deal. Prioritise your wife’s mh.

Surely the sensible answer is you facilitate your daughter’s relationship with your mum without your wife?

Take your child to see her grandmother once a fortnight or whatever works.

Wife never has to interact with her, and compromises by allowing her daughter to have contact.

Your mum compromises by not pushing herself into your wife’s space/face/life but still gets to see you and dd.

And yes you will have to hear some anger or grief from both women but you also need to have boundaries in place for yourself and how other people treat you.

See this is a perfect example of the problem with in-law threads.

No your spouse doesn't come first if they are also being high conflict, emotionally immature, dramatic and controlling. Which his wife is.

We have swung from a society that really didn't value emotional boundaries to a society that actually doesn't understand them any better. Displays just as toxic behaviours but wraps in a bow called "healthy boundaries" those are things you can put around yourself and your relationships. They are not something you impose on someone else as their boundaries. That is control. So his wife demanding, dictating and manipulating him emotionally about his relationship with his mother is as toxic as the behaviour she is complaining about.

Her dictating when they will see his mother is controlling.

And as for the mummy boy posts. Pathetic. Men are as entitled to want relationships with the parents and family as women are.

But it’s one of the things that upset the wife. I read it to mean that the wife did not know that the MIL was taking her baby out of the house. There is no way my MIL would have done this.

I don’t think that anyone who is babysitting should wander off with the baby to their friend’s house.

How f’d up is a mentality that a man leaves his mother for his wife. She is his mother, she will always be his mother. She is not the other woman. They are different relationships.

The wife is very easily upset, she’s on a high alert when it comes to her own needs and emotions, but happy enough to leave MIL alone at Christmas.

I resented my MIL also when my DS was born for overstepping the mark massively, and felt resentment for years. I didn't stop her seeing her grandchildren though, and would certainly not have made a fuss over Xmas. What you describe your mother doing is more thoughtless than horrifically catty. I think your wife is being oversensitive and unnecessarily unpleasant about this, to be honest.
She can let your mother come round for a couple of hours on Xmas day, and you should ask for this (your mother wont' be around for ever!).

I would compromise and see your mum on Xmas eve and Boxing Day but not the actual Xmas day.

It is unreasonable for your wife to dictate that you’ll not be seeing your mum until the end of December.

It’s ok for her to say she doesn’t want to see her on Xmas day, but she doesn’t get to dictate any other day.

If she doesn’t want to see her, then you can take your child to your mums house instead.

You say your wife "thinks" your mum is selfish and manipulative. Is she right?

The issue seems to be that you want to sit on the fence. If your mother is those things you need to address her, you need to hold her accountable, explain the consequences and what would be needed to build bridges.

If your mother is not you need to talk to your wife about isolating you from family and your concerns about your mother's wellbeing. Because if your wife is the irrational one this could be abusive.

But their experiences are so opposite, while I imagine no one is a full saint, there is a side you need to take. And pleading obliousness and hoping for the best means you'll just have a frustrated wife and a miserable mother. Get off the fence, and work this out.

My mother in law took against me the day we announced we were getting married and she never ever liked me. Everyone knew this, but I would never have not invited her to ours for Christmas and she would never have excluded me from their house. Yes it took a lot of tongue holding but my kids and husband knew I was doing the right thing.

From the examples, MIL is bad but some of the stuff like giving unwarranted parenting advice is made by everyone, not just MIL. It sounds like she hasn't moved on from being cheated on which adds to her feelings lonely and grasping on the relationship she's got left.

I would have an honest discussion with her 1-1 over dinner or coffee to be straight up and explain why she's burning her bridges with family. Set some ground rules if she ever wants to be invited to things and slowly test the waters if she can keep to those rules by progressively give her a bit more access. If she messes up you go back to reducing access.

However, no MIL is perfect either and that's something your wife needs to understand. Christmas is important family time. Have your own close knit family Christmas and maybe take your daughter and visit your mother at her house for an hour. Bring a gift, a bottle of wine and Christmas treat. Just be civil for the hour.

But a mil not the wife's mother so lesser person in many eyes.

I don't think an invitation would ever come seriously do you?

Exactly

It’s very hard, and we can only tell so much from one side of the story. I’m sorry you’re in the middle.
I agree some of your mother’s behaviours haven’t been good, and I think your wife is not being fair to you about it either. They are both at fault to some degree. Both sound selfish to be honest,

I, as the mother of a son, would be very sad indeed if I was cut out of my son and grandchild’s life and didn’t get to enjoy grandchildren over Christmas. I respect that they are committed to their wife, but I hope to still be worth spending time with over Xmas, I don’t like the cliquey “mini family unit” Christmas bullshit anyway. Exclusivity is great, until you find yourself the excluded one..

A lot of marriages fail (the stats say so!) but your mother will always be your mum (parental relationships can be complex if issues aren’t resolved).

I think a fair compromise would be (if local enough to be feasible) to spend a bit of time with your daughter and mum on Xmas day.
You've got to be pretty harsh to leave someone alone on Xmas day who doesn’t want to be.

Some of these women on here would be devastated to lose contact with their sons, and have no real involvement with their son’s children in the future. Everyone loves a MIL bash it seems!

Your mum sounds like one of those manipulative types. Your wife may be the problem of course but I sense it's your mum.

I sense you've just gone along with your mother's ways like some sort of golden child, or enabler. It isn't always easy to see what is going on in our own family. Your mum sounds like she's playing the victim role by protesting at how depressed she is rather than being accountable for her behaviour. I have family like this. They're not to be trusted, ever.

You can just take your child to see granny but in this situation, at some point, I would be very concerned about any negative manipulation that the granny was spinning to my child in my absence. This will be in your wife's mind at some point as your daughter gets older.

You didn't expect any sympathy on here did you?

OP said his mother was very loving to him growing up
Are you seriously suggesting that she should be prevented from having a loving relationship with her grandchild just because she poked her nose in/gave unsolicited advice which the wife has taken umbrage with?
You have been reading too many "narc" books. In what way is she never to be trusted?! She's not playing the victim. She misses seeing her son and grandchild for weeks on end AND this every two month visit is only recent as the wife has only recently "allowed it". No wonder she's depressed. She's wondering what heinous crime she's committed.
Most people are human with good and bad qualities. If she loves the grandchild why would you take it away from her?

It is impossible for us to know who is unreasonable here. The MIL may be a horrible manipulative person or the wife may be someone who takes offence where none is intended and wants to control the OP, or they may both be at fault. Only the OP can know the answer to this.

What I would say is that these kinds of situations are very sad, especially for someone like OP who is caught in the middle between two people he presumably loves. I think too that, unless a grandparent is genuinely a vile and toxic human being, it is very sad for grandchildren to miss out on a relationship with them.

I have a relation who has gone NC with his parents for nearly 30 years. I know them all well and everyone involved is normal and decent but a bit thin skinned and liable to take offence too easily. I have heard from both "sides" about the events/behaviours that caused the breach and, honestly, they seem trivial in the grand scheme of things. Both sides seem to have over-reacted to some very minor differences of opinion. No one is evil, toxic or badly intentioned. The parents are now in their late 80s and are desperately sad that they have had no relationship with their child, their grandchildren or their great grandchildren, despite repeatedly trying to make contact and build bridges.

IMO going NC with close family should only be a last resort for absolutely unforgivable behaviour. I really hope the OP can find some way of avoiding such a painful outcome in this case.

How very very sad.
And so unnecessary too.