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)?

We made the decision that Christmas Day was for us and that we would visit parents either side of it, just not on it.

It works well, neither side gets favoured, we still see family at Christmas, just not on Christmas day.

Sounds like the very compromise OP's wife wants, and as such I feel it's very reasonable.

If your mother is on her own, suggest she invites a friend that is on their own to her house for Christmas, or does she expect to visit you every Christmas from now on? She needs to get a life of her own. Maybe you go and visit her for an hour on your own, Christmas Eve and take her a present to open? You really need to say, get some friends your own age and invite them round to yours, ive got responsibilities to my wife and child now and much as i love you im not putting up with this behaviour. Im on my own but dont expect my DD to have me there all the time, everyone has their own lives to live.

She does have a life of her own. She sees her son and grandchild (not DIL ) for one afternoon every two months. That equates to 3 days a year!
The other 360 days she does NOT see them!
She's hardly monoploising their lives.
We're talking about an important cultural day in the year when she would like to be with her son!

From the information we have:

1. OP is clearly a kind and thoughtful person; he has been well brought up.
2. MIL was a loving and good mother.
3. MIL has not done anything malicious, only foolish.
4. Wife vindictively wants to ensue MIL is alone on Xmas day, while she has company. Is this why OP doesn't take child to visit granny? ie Wife doesn't want to be left alone?
5. Wife is trying to drive a wedge between parent and child - how cruel.
6. It's game set and match to MIL IMO.
7. Also, why can she only see child once every two months? How controlling!

What goes round comes around. Perhaps wife will experience the same treatment from a future DIL in due course?
You sound guilty about caring for your mother OP. Please don't feel bad about being a good son and loving father

From the responses, there must be a lot of very unhappy grannies around and many selfish DILs.

Happy families!

@SixtySomething
I think there are so many unhappy grannies out there...labelled as toxic because they gave unsolicited advice!
But actually I think being totally selfish does not give people happiness either.

We also know that despite being a loving and good mother her own son has gone no contact with her. You can't blame the wife for driving a wedge between them.

Funny how so many people blaming the wife completely ignore the fact that one of her own children have been so hurt by her that they have also gone no contact.

Er, hurt because his Mum cared enough to tell him he should lose weight!

You are stating as fact that MIL has not done anything malicious, only foolish. The OP doesn't say that. It would be just as easy to state categorically that MIL's actions were malicious towards her DIL.

Making inconsiderate comments to his wife when she was struggling with breastfeeding about how easy it was for her could easily be motivated by malice. How could she have thought that these comments would be helpful to a new and struggling mum? She also made similar comments about other aspects of baby rearing.

When he mentions his mum taking the baby away from his wife without permission when she was recovering from birth,OP doesn't give any further details but this could easily mean that when her DIL was upstairs sleeping with her new baby, she just took the baby downstairs without asking and DIL woke up to find the baby gone. That could easily be judged as a malicious thing to do to a vulnerable post-partum mum.

I would imagine that someone who has been badly treated by their MIL would be very aware of the pitfalls when she becomes a MIL herself and will take care not to make the same mistakes that her own MIL did. The 'what goes around comes around' and 'beware of karma' comments are just wishful thinking by the MIL supporters.

Unless the OP does return to respond to the many queries from posters and to fill the gaps with missing information, people in both camps will continue to draw their own conclusions.

On the contrary,I have an acquaintance through work who has a son who went no contact with his mother for a year because she told her dil she thought she suited her hair better when it was longer. Some people are by nature far too easily offended often causing major disruption within families.

You really think someone would cut off a loving mother just for making comments about their weight? Doubtful.

I think there is an awful lot in that 'many other things' comment. And I suspect an awful lot more she has done to the wife.

And some people just can’t help giving their unnecessary opinions - constant unnecessary criticisms and insults add up. There was no need to make the comment about her hair at all / that kind of negativity is draining

I can see why your acquaintances son went no contact

I highly doubt that was the only comment. I imagine it was the last in a long list of backhanded compliments and snide comments. If you haven't got anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. It's never necessary to vocalise that you don't like someone's haircut.

Yes, it’s possible. To use the popular terminology the child may be a ‘narcissist’. I’m being ironic here. After all, wife seems to want to cut off her MIL for quite trivial reasons.
You suspect there may be other things but if what’s mentioned is the worst, they probably don’t stack up to much.
I wonder whether the ‘cut her off’ brigade will feel ready to be cut off themselves when their DC turns 16 and perhaps enters a relationship with a ‘cut her off’ fanatic.
She may misunderstand an instruction, say something unfortunate and bang goes the biggest thing she’s done with her life.

I also know someone whose child has threated NC if they ever mention their weight
And they are clinically obese and medically compromised

I haven't got an answer to that. I do know this woman in general is like an agony aunt in the work place & has never had anything but praise for her son & DIL. She was devastated. Interestingly her DIL ended up agreeing with her. It was one of those shaved at one side styles which she eventually grew out. They're fine now.

I'm not sure being like an agony aunt is the praise you think it is - just tells me she feels qualified to spout lots of opinions on everything. It's really not hard to not say mean things about a haircut.

It’s also really not that hard to ignore.

The problem is people want to stop people saying or thinking anything so we are all supposed to live in these tiny isolated bubbles of sanitised conversation and vetoed opinions, minus all the persona non grata relatives.

I know it’s supposed to be empowering but I worry that long term it isn’t really all that healthy.

🤣🤣🤣

You only have the MILs version. It was likely very different and that was the final straw

Sure, not hard to ignore one comment. But was it one comment, from the "agony aunt"? Doubtful.

To be honest my greatest friend is someone who I know will tell it to me how it is. Kindly, but unflinchingly. I actually WANT my mum to tell me if my haircut looks bad. I may decide otherwise; but I want to know what she thinks.

Normal, healthy relationships are able to handle the occasional bit of disappointing feedback.

There’s nothing that frightens me more than existing in a metaphorical bunker where the light of truth can’t penetrate. I like other people’s opinions. I don’t always agree, but I feel stimulated and alive to other’s thoughts and approaches. People go on about gaslighting but the biggest and scariest gaslight of all is when none of us can state anything for fear of being cut off from them.

I don’t believe in insulting people for things like disability, race or religion. But a haircut hardly falls anywhere near that territory. You have to be proportionate about what’s out of order.

There is ways of saying things.

You want your mum to tell you if your haircut looks bad. How would you like her to do it?

"I think the cut is probably a bit too short for you; you look better with it slightly longer. And it's good that you've experimented with a different colour, but it makes you look a bit pasty"

or as my DH does "your haircut is fine". (yes, damned by faint praise, we laugh about it)

or as my mother would say
"I don't know why you had your hair cut like that, it doesn't suit you at all and I bet you wasted a lot of money on it. You always were stupid about spending money on the wrong things. Let's face it, you are too old to worry about what you look like anyway. It's totally unnecessary. Just as well you're already married already or probably no one would want you.".

I can assure you that a constant succession of the latter type of comment about each and every thing happening in your life gets emotionally draining very quickly.

Yes I do agree the latter goes a lot further!

To be honest, context is relevant too. Even a comment far less derisory than the one you mentioned your mum might make could still be out of order depending on the context. If some bloke volunteered that my haircut didn’t suit me when standing together in the supermarket queue, I’d find that rude and actually slightly intimidating that he was taking so much notice.

But lots of these issues come up where family have said something unvarnished but on topic and, essentially, just really what the op didn’t really want to hear. It’s those situations where I think we get on slippery ground when we start cutting people out of our lives - because we will from time to time offend each other, even unwittingly. The example of your mum is quite different. It’s roaming off topic to deride you quite generally which is entirely different from a challenging opinion.

Make it up people with each other, there’s no ‘team wife’or ‘ team mother in law’, this is ridiculous- you are one family and should respect each other. Don’t leave the old lady alone on Christmas, and tell her to apologise to your wife for whatever wrong she did to her and your wife should apologise to her as well. You have one life, one family. Being miserable and holding gringe on each other is not good for your soul. What example does your wife show to your daughter, she would grow and will do exactly the same thing with her mother in law