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)?

No. You’ve heard the husband’s side.

You have a bond with your mother which started at birth, so naturally you're going to be far more forgiving of your mother's behaviour than your wife is. I'd bear that in mind whenever you think that your wife might be being extreme in her boundaries. From her perspective your mother is probably just like any other person who she would distance herself from if they repeatedly disrespected her and showed little to no self-awareness or desire to change. If your mother's behaviour is really stressful and upsetting for her then I don't think she's being unreasonable to not want to be exposed to it for a whole day. It's basically asking her to sacrifice her own peace and enjoyment in favour of your mother's needs.

That said, understanding works both ways and if spending time with your mum at Christmas is important to you then it sounds like there needs to be some kind of compromise. If your mum visiting is out of the question then would your wife be open to spending a couple of hours at your mum's house on Christmas Day instead? That way you can spend some time with her, exchange presents, have a chat and then leave whenever you like if tempers start to fray. Or if your wife isn't open to that, you could go on your own for a couple of hours.

Just to add, if you're unfamiliar with the concept of emotionally immature parents it might be worth having a google and seeing if any of it resonates. Lindsday C. Gibson has written some excellent books on the subject which might help you and your wife.

@Grannyandmotherinlaw given you have recently hijacked a thread about an MIL doing something that could have caused serious harm to their grandchild to bitch about your own DIL and claim suicidal thoughts when not allowed to get your own way, maybe avoiding threads where people are rightly calling out toxic MILs are not for you.

There is absolute rampant ageism and anti woman sentiment on this thread but it’s not in the direction of older women by a very long shot. The behaviour from grown women with enough life experience behind them to have common sense and basic empathy is staggering.

Man, OP could almost be my DH’s brother. He’s in a similar situation where his wife will not tolerate seeing MIL and has tried to force them to estrange. She won’t allow him to visit and even phone calls have to be on speaker so she can listen to every word.

The truth in our situation is that both MIL and DIL are rather toxic, particularly DIL who is frankly quite nasty, knee jerk, loves drama and loves victimhood.

I doubt that the OP’s situation is as simple as it seems, but it is generally abusive to try to force ultimatums and forbid contact. Wife shouldn’t have to spend time with MIL if she finds her intolerable but OP should be able to see his mother and be allowed to take his child for visits without arbitrary limits. Why can't the wife stay home for 2 hours while they visit?

If a woman posted this, people would be up in arms that a husband had tried to stop her having any relationship with her mother.

Op, let your wife and your mother become none contact. You take your daughter to see your mother for few/ couple of hours.
Plan with your wife when that would be.

That's MN for you though. It's always been the same for as long as I can remember. Sometimes, with threads like these, an OP might say 'I have a problem with my MIL and it's causing problems between me and my partner.' Then people actually ask who is the man and who is the woman in the scenario, because they couldn't possibly form an opinion based on the facts alone. They already know they are on Team Wife no matter what, they just need to know which one is the wife before they formulate their argument defending her.

My MIL was so awful to me to the week before my son was born I can’t stand to be around her. She pretty much implied our house wasn’t ready for a baby and insulted me over many issues. She is intrusive asking questions about my breast feeding and earnings and other topics you do not discuss with your husband’s mother. My husband always takes her side and feels sorry for her. It makes me so angry every day. She moved to be within a mile of us and I fantasise about telling her we are moving away!

I could cope with my MIL if I had the support of my husband but I don’t and so the resentment continues.

If wife doesn't want to host MiL on Christmas day than that's fair enough. (And I wouldn't mind betting that she's the one expected to the cooking, decorating, present-wrapping and all the other labour that comes with Christmas).

Wife can draw her own boundaries around her relationship (or non-relationship) with MiL as she sees fit. OP's disappointment that his wife isn't willing to put in all the work to improve the relationship is not reasonable. It places the full onus of responsibility in the breakdown of that relationship - and for mending it - on his wife. She isn't interested in doing so and if she feels unsupported by her spouse then these things are apt to fester.

I'm not fond of my in-laws, either. This disintegration of relations has now led to a complete breakdown in contact between them and me, at my instigation. This is unfortunate and an outcome I strove to avoid but it was inevitable. It's also about me only: my boundaries and my preservation of my own wellbeing. Children are separate. They have a right to know their families. Fathers have equal say in whether their children should have a relationship with their parents - and in cases of divorce would certainly be granted this by the courts - but if so then the onus is on them to facilitate and maintain that relationship.

This is where I part company with the DW. It's not about MiL and her wants and rights at all. She doesn't have to care about her. Where her responsibilities do lie is in putting the best interests of the child first. Ultimata, attempting to force your spouse into NC with his family (if that's what's happening) and wanting to block contact with the child are not in the child's best interests. If MiL runs true to type and DC has to find out the hard way that she's really not all that, then unfortunately that is one of life's many harsh lessons which none of us have the privilege of avoiding.

In that position, I'd far rather my DC were able to make up their own minds than have a complete schism in their family forced upon them by me. They are individuals; autonomous human beings who have to find their own way and learn their own lessons in life. They're not inanimate belongings and parents do not own our children.

Your wife sounds like a 'right piece of work'! Only allowing nana 'one afternoon, every couple of months' to see new grandchild? What the actual hell? Talk about controlling! Your mother may not be everyone's cup of tea, but she sounds positively angelic compared to your wife, laying demands down left right and centre! Has she not heard of compromise? Your mother has been dealt a terrible blow by the person she loved - imagine finding out, not only has an affair been going on behind your back, but it's gone so far that the 'other woman' is pregnant??? She now has to negotiate her life as a newly single woman, and that will take time. For gods sake, let her lean on you, let the woman in! She is YOUR MOTHER! The supposedly terrible things she has done are really quite innocuous in the grand scheme of things. Your wife sounds like the controlling one, determined to shunt your mother out of your lives for good. Your wife needs to get a bloody grip!

Your DH couldn't almost be OP's brother, because OP's brother has gone no contact with his own mother due to her behaviour towards him.

OP's wife isn't stopping him from seeing his mother. OP is upset that his wife is sticking to the boundaries she has now put up to protect herself and her daughter in response to her MIL's behaviour but he admits that his mother is selfish and inconsiderate and isn't willing to back off when asked.

From what the OP has said, his father left his mother when he was a child. He talks about becoming her emotional support after his father left when he was too young to know any different and refers to himself as a child of divorce. This isn't about her negotiating her life as a newly single woman as she's been single for years.

Putting the words YOUR MOTHER in capitals doesn't make her behaviour any more reasonable.

People gave been cutting off family members for centuries. Certainly for decades. Both men and women marry, move away, or just move away to lessen the control of family members. There is nothing new under the sun.

That's true. My mum cut off my paternal grandmother straight after her second still birth when my granny told her that she hoped she'd give up on this nonsense now. My granny had also made a fuss before my parent's wedding because my mum wasn't Jewish.

There have always been family feuds and relatives not speaking for years.

Exactly, my mother was estranged from her father because he allowed his mother to try play games with his ex wife, my granny. Even though he was the one that ran off and cheated on her with one of their workers while my mother was a young baby.

My granny never said a bad word about her ex husband, she was very sweet (too sweet and was utterly walked over) but my mother had her eyes wide open to her father’s and paternal grandmother’s behaviour and cut them all off once she was a teenager and her mother couldn’t force her to go to her fathers anymore.

My DH granny in her 90’s is estranged from her brother. It happens, just there wasn’t such a song and dance about it there wasn’t social media.

I have zero regret that I didn’t grow up with my grandfather. Unfortunately make crap choices and people may choose to avoid/estrange you.

Same goes for my mil. Made my life misery and one day there was an event that broke the camel’s back and I haven’t seen her in a year. Bliss

Yes they have, and you will always hear a story of it here and there.

But it’s only more recently that it seems to have become so ubiquitous. About every fourth MN thread mentions it - either because the title asks if they should go NC, or the op refers to them having done so, or posters advise it. It’s absolutely everywhere. I know far fewer cases IRL tbh and they are all for much more substantive issues than the sorts of things that get suggested here as a basis for going Nc. It’s one thing if a parent, say, remarried and the new family got favoured. Or abuse, obviously; but the term abuse gets so widely cast on here - helped by terms like narcissistic and passive aggressive being applied in the same fashion - that it could , and does, honestly apply to a mil who doesn’t cook the meal they wanted.

Considering OPs sibling has cut the mother out… for controlling and horrid behaviour.. tells you that maybe his wife is in the right..

@Calliopespa the mil is not alway nice or understanding
at times they forget that their child is a grown adult and they are now the parent with their own life’s and small family as well as extended family. My MIL caused huge problems since I was pregnant I had HG and was extremely ill I was in hospital every two weeks due to extreme vomiting Keatons low blood sugar due to vomiting (I mean blood sugar 1, was almost in a comma several times) MIL used to call me up when I got out of hospital and call me a wimp! I had the worst case of HG drs in Glasgow had seen in 25 years! After having my 1st she kept calling herself mum to my kids and them laugh at me when I put my foot down and say yoh are the gran not the mum! When I allowed her to take my daughter out (this stopped due to her behaviour) and she would strip my daughter down in the middle of the shop to change her clothes (she hadn’t payed for yet would take the label to pay at the till) because she didn’t like what I dressed my child in. I had a no sweets policy untill 5 years old they would give her a full sized sharing bag of harribows when she was 2 years old… she needed up needing fillings by age 3 due to this

As for things being fads? So what? All social change results in the shocking spectacle of…social change. Incidences of left handedness skyrocketed after families and teachers stopped punishing it. We no longer think that children should be forced to be right handed so lefties are left alone to enjoy themselves. Is that a “fad?”

People are no longer forced to live in multigenerational families or share the means of production (aside from farming ir business or aristocratic families) so young families don’t have to tolerate abuse and coercion if they don’t want to. That is a good thing. Happy families will remain happy because they have the gift of pleasing each other.

Your mother has created this not your wife.
She has pushed boundaries, hasn’t learnt her lesson and undermines her. Your wife doesn’t feel your child is safe with her and I think her concerns are valid.
You need to decide if you want to be married to your wife or your mother
You can’t have both.

See your mother on your own terms , if your wife can see she will not undermine her she may change her mind .
But stop pandering to your mother , she has behaved badly and this is the consequence of her own actions

In what respect is the child not "safe"???
I can't recall reading this in the original post!

Oh we're out of the park with this now!
The OP posted a list of fairly benign misdemeanours the MIL has committed and we've accused her of being a narcissist, pps have suggested she doesn't spend any time with the baby and now we've arrived - through a process of Chinese whispers - that the DIL does not feel her child is safe!

If you read the OPs second message he says his mother took the child out of their home without permission to visit a friend whilst his wife was sleeping - in my book that’s a massive breach of trust and safety.

That's not quite correct.
She took the baby downstairs when the wife was sleeping ( maybe out of kindness of wide was tired)

When she was looking after the child, she took him/her to a friend's house BUT the Wife wasn't cross about going to the friend per se, ( ie it had nothing to do with safety), but more because the child didn't have a "quiet nap".

In any event, for how long does MIL have to flagellate herself for these past sins?!

Suprised at everyone’s remarks here. Think it has to be quite extreme to divide a family, people’s MILs piss them off all the time, I know loads of people who’s MILS were bossy and interfering with grandchild, most people just muddle on. Given your current pact of contact I do think xmas day would be too much and another day would be fine. But I recommend your mother and your wife seek a way to find a common peace both listening to each other. Remember it’s important what you want too, it’s good you are listening to your wife’s needs and your mothers, but what do YOU want?-do that! Good luck it’s really hard being part of a family none of us can please everyone all of the time x