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)?

You are not actually solely responsible for your mum's happiness, and it was unfair on you that she put you in that role. This role in the family dynamic has a high cost, and I feel for you. Many people escape it only by moving far away from the parent. You do need to stop dancing to your mum's tune, though. Decide what you want for a change, negotiate within your own relationship, and stick to that. Don't fight mum's corner, fight your own.

Sounds like your mum has relied on you since your dad left, which is very dangerous territory when you then need to focus your time & energy on your new family.
If you keep arguing with your wife about this she will assume that you agree with your mother - though it seems more like you just want an arrangement that will stop her moaning at you all the time. Which isn't really the best reason to make decisions.

When my dh’s db was awful to me one of the worst aspects was dh making excuses for him.
It hurt more than the original comments from his db.
I wanted to be heard and I didn’t want to brush everything under the carpet.
Eventually my dbil did something that affected dh negatively and that’s when dh became supportive.
I finally felt like he truly got it.

Now I am more chilled about the situation and more likely to be polite at least because I don’t feel like I’m on my own.

Acknowledge your dw’s hurt and tell her that you want to work with her and forge a relationship with your dm and dd that your dw is happy with.
If your dw is allowed some say in the relationship and doesn’t feel powerless then she may be more benevolent.

We sometimes end up marrying people who mirror the qualities of our parents OP@Unjeffeson !!! I think if your own brother has gone no contact with his mum then it may be a “her “ issue but you and your wife have to come to a compromise eventually over what is best for your own daughter in terms of her relationship with your mum.

Your wife sounds like a maniac, how could you leave your own mother on her own on Christmas day? What kind of person does that!?

I am in your wife's position. I mean, I don't HATE my inlaws, but they have been very difficult, act like my kids are their own, take over whenever they're here, and have just created problem after problem. Rather than go directly to my inlaws, i spoke to my husband about the issues and asked him to sort it. My husband had been quite weak at addressing the issues, so I've had to. Cue big blow out. Now it's really awkward and unpleasant when they come to visit and they clearly don't like me. I shouldnt have to feel like an outsider in my own home. My husband is beginning to understand things from my perspective now though ... not sure you are quite there yet, OP! A man who chooses to pander to his mother rather than support his wife is not attractive.

Why doesn't the mum have anywhere else to go? What kind of person has no other family or friends?

I guess if you don’t stand up for your wife and prioritise your relationship with her, your mum will get what she wants as you and your mum will have Christmas with your kid every second year when you get divorced.

I had serious issues with my mil until it got to the stage I had to confront her and call her out on her attitude towards me. She admitted she was jealous of me owing to the fact my marriage to her son was out of love when basically she had to get married after becoming pregnant. They had a happy enough life but I don't think she ever really loved her DH.

My point is communication is important and unless you,your wife & your mother are prepared to have a serious heart to heart conversation,without falling out, then I don't see the situation improving. Everyone is at fault here & it's the children who suffer by missing out on very important family relationships.

OP's brother!?

Your perspective is really valid. Family ties were much stronger in previous generations and people definitely felt more obligated to their parents.

I think the difference now is that a positive relationship in adulthood is now more dependent on building a good adult relationship with your grown up child. Previously it was almost seen as pay back for the work out in raising your children. It didn’t really matter if you were pushy, difficult, mean…… your adult children were obliged to spend time with you.

It can catch a lot of parents out once they realise there has been a shift. Some families still operate like this - I still see my mother a couple of times a week even though she is very tricky. Not because we have a good relationship but because I feel obliged and I don’t have a huge problem with this but I know my DH and my SIL would if we did do more family type days

You are kind of right though that your role as the parent of adult children is to provide support and sort of stay in the background. I mean what else should it be. We are not and should not be dominant in our adult children’s lives but we should be part of their lives.

What if the OP's mother is toxic to the child? It appears to be her standard behaviour.

What if she says bad things about the mother to the child?

Doesn't the child deserve to be protected from toxic relatives?

The op and his brother have suffered. Isn't it time to break the cycle?

Did you read OP's update?
If you think the examples are "insensitive" - how do you account for this?

I resent the fact she never made more effort to move on from my dad and I am effectively her emotional support. Perhaps I have enabled this but it's just kind of happened since I was too young to know not to.

From a young child, OP has been his mum's emotional support. While he was doing that, I wonder who was meeting his emotional needs? This one sentence alone makes it pretty clear that OP was emotionally abused as a child, and still is. If his wife was not in the picture, I expect he would be doing exactly as his mother asked, regardless of the impact to himself.

Excellent advice.

Exactly. If she can't be kind to her own son, or her DIL, why should we assume she will have a positive relationship with her grandchild.

I agree with this, OP. Have you ever had therapy? You might find it helpful to unpack what sounds like an emotionally abusive childhood.

You sound like you’re trying your best. And I do have a lot of sympathy for old people left alone. But your mother says “family is everything”, yet continues to verbally abuse hers and still demand the privilege of a relationship with them all.

I hope you all find a way through it.

Team wife, OP.
My mother is a raging narcissist and I would never think about imposing her on my husband at Christmas.
Fortunately, she lives in another country.

As you’re gathering opinions/POV here’s mine:

I’m no contact with my MIL. There’s a very long backstory but the crux of it was that she wanted to control our lives. I felt like I was 13 again with ‘mum’ having a say of where I went, what I did, what I needed to do because she had always been overbearing with DH. When it came to us settling down/wedding planning/falling pregnant she became obsessed with our lives.

Whenever she didn’t get her own way she would become manipulative ‘maybe I shouldn’t care/oh you don’t want to spend time with us/I only want to help/you don’t realise how much you love us until we’ve gone/I don’t know how long I’ve got left/do you not love me/I’m just a family person/everything we did for you and this is the thanks…/if we died tomorrow is this how you’d want our last conversation to be/if I die tonight you know it’s because of a broken heart/I thought you’d care how you’re making me feel…’

It was all small things, when she wouldn’t like a decision we made she’d try to guilt us/manipulate us until we changed our mind - she would cause numerous arguments about it until the next thing came around. It was unfair that we were going on a night out which included my cousin (same age) for NYE/we showed her the venue for our wedding after we had paid the deposit/DH didn’t take her ring shopping with him/that we were going camping for a week/that I was prioritising seeing my friends over her (I have two friends with the same name and they both had birthdays close together) /I didn’t want my mum or MIL on my hen do/ I didn’t want her to go dress shopping with me/ my mum found out I was pregnant three hours before her/ we wanted to hire a camper van and go touring around Europe on our honeymoon/ how much was left on mortgage (the third time I ever met her) / because we didn’t want to spend Xmas day and Boxing Day at their house/ didn’t want to meet up at least once a week.

The amount of big events she ruined with her sour, pouting face or causing a fuss to get the attention back to her. The final straw was when we shared that we were pregnant and she was more focused on when my mum found out. The only reason I had shared the news with my mum was because I was worried I was loosing the baby (and went to get a 8 week scan) and DH knew that MIL had to find out on the same day or she’d ‘never forgive us’.

What should have been a happy moment or at least a moment that we received support, MIL decided that the next few days she’d blow up DH phone with manipulating messages on how upset/hurt she was. We really needed love and support but of course, all about her ‘needs’. She wanted reassurance from me that she would be ‘involved’ (it was my first pregnancy) just how she fondly remembered the involvement of her mum in her pregnancy… she had noticed that I was closer to my mum and that she wanted us to be ‘close’… I was still concerned about loosing the baby.

DH was called over to PIL to mediate what involvement they expected in the pregnancy/our lives as loving grandparents… they basically threatened DH that he either got me on the same page or that they were done with all of us. Then there was so much manipulation for them to be ‘involved’ aka me apologising that we didn’t tell them as soon as we found out and that I’d promise to ‘keep them updated about medical appointments in future…’

I cannot unhear the manipulation comments… ‘If she really loved you she wouldn’t be treating us like this…’ ‘if you loved us you would make her apologise to us’, ‘all you seem to care about it her, you’ve forgotten who’s raised you’.

The moment i’ll never forget is DH begging his mum to drop it as he doesn’t want to risk me leaving by essentially giving me an ultimatum.

There’s other stuff. They ruined some quite big life events that I’ll never get back. MIL makes my blood boil. I hate her. I used to imagine her as a colleague at work, be polite as you can’t avoid her until she caused me trauma (yep, dominating the first few months of my pregnancy caused that as I’ll never get that time back) and her ME ME ME personality I cannot massage anymore.

Sometimes I think I could be getting over it and then her old manipulation/attention tricks starts up again most recently on DD first birthday as DH didn’t FaceTime her at the zoo.

This is the longest post I’ve ever done on MN. Put it this way, if DH went along with his mother’s demands on ruling our life (he can do what he wants, she’s lost all rights to having any control over me) I’d be in the looney bin. Not having freewill as an adult to live our lives (obviously without harming others) feels like a prisoner in your own house.

Your wife deserves to live her life free of control, so do you.

You can choose to go over to your mothers house on Xmas. You could suggest taking your DD over on Xmas eve or Boxing Day. you could even suggest your wife goes elsewhere on Xmas day to host your mother but really you should want to spend it with her. Don’t pressure your wife to be out of her comfort zone especially on Xmas. She doesn’t deserve to be a prisoner in her own house.

Firstly, I agree with your wife.

Secondly, you say in your original post that the reason your mum wants to come over on Christmas Day is so that she isn't alone. So it's not because she wants to spend time with you and her grandchild and your wife, not because it will be a nice day or a nice occasion, but simply because she doesn't want to be alone. You are clearly your mother's emotional crutch. You may be happy to accept that dynamic, but your wife clearly is not. Good for her.

#teamwife

You're framing tactlessness or insensitivity as 'abuse'. It's not. You're projecting.

I feel so sorry for your wife. You're the problem here. Your mum has been bullying your wife and you haven't stuck up for her or your child.

You should have had her back. Had you challenged your mums behaviour the relationship between your wife and mum wouldn't be this bad. Instead you've let your mum bully her and even support her doing it.

If I was your wide I'd be telling you to fuck off and spend Christmas with your mum and not to bother coming back.

I agree completely, and with other posters who find the situation sad. Mumsnet isn't reflective of the majority of people and it is a very unkind and unfeeling place to ask for advice. I'm sure if the OP were to ask for views from friends or work colleagues, they would get a very different response. I've honestly never met anyone in real life who would refuse to spend a few hours on Christmas Day with a mother in law based on the information the OP has given. My MIL did far far worse than this, but I think there are times when you have to be the bigger person.

@Unjeffeson

It sounds to me that you found and married a younger copy of your mother.

And also - that you are completely spineless.

Both your mother and your W are self centred and unwilling to get along with the ‘other woman’. Your W, in addition to that is so selfish and in need to assert het Top Princess position - that she purposefully depriving your child of her own relationship with her grandparent AND you of your relationship with your mother.

So - you either need to give up and fully submit to your W’s whims. Or, maybe, find your backbone?

If your W doesnt want grandma around for Xmas - you go visit with your child, on your own on Boxing day.
The grownup women need to stop behaving like toddlers, IMHO.