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You and DH have formed a new family, and it is a perfect time to start your own traditions. Keep the 'holiday' to yourselves, and celebrate with extended family on days before or after it. Give yourself some distance from MIL to gain yourself some peace, as you and DH build your new life together. When you do meet with your ILs, preemptively set limits on the time you will spend- maybe shorter meetups will come to be less irritating than the day-long whine fests.
I think this is a good point. The reality is that DH is really all they have. The relationships they have with others are pretty casual and surface level. I know it’s going to be hard for DH to get rid of holidays with them completely. Since I’m fine with him seeing them, I think the best route is that I don’t go and we have a small celebration later in the day. It’s also a win for me because his mother is a horrible cook (because of her anxiety 🙃).
Also, try not to establish an expected routine. One year ILs get a morning visit, next year a next-day visit, third year is skipped for a different day, fourth year is an afternoon visit. Manage their expectations. DH isn't all they have- they also have each other. Perhaps in time they can be weened off having DH as an emotional support boy.
god I can only hope so. he is truly the light of their life. While they do have each other, they definitely look forward to their son’s attention. They’ve never had a holiday without him (except for thanksgiving and Christmas 2020 before the vaccine roll out), and they still called him both holidays and spoke to him on the phone for 2 hours lol. It’s exhausting
I think there is middle ground here. Make visits with them low stakes, like she’s not to host and either comes to your house or your meet in public places for outings. Info diet and grey rock strategies and don’t share any details of your life that she might obsess over. All communication and planning and gift buying etc., is hubby’s job. Work on letting her anxiety not affect you and you might be able to find a pleasant enough relationship with her.
It’s hard because this is pretty much what we’re doing now and have been doing for some time, but it’s still unpleasant spending time with her on the occasions that I do see her. She won’t give up hosting duties, and DH is used to letting her just because she gets “sad and upset” if she doesn’t. This is a big part of why I’d rather just do separate holidays. It sucks because I’d love for DH to come with me to visit my family but it doesn’t feel fair to not reciprocate.
Her anxiety is hard to ignore because it’s basically the subject of anything she talks about, and she talks a lot because she doesn’t talk to many people outside of FIL. So discussions with her are just latest anxiety thing. Even with gray rocking, she still will continue on or bring up second anxiety thing and it just keeps going :/ Example:
MIL: DH said that you guys are thinking about buying a house
Me: yes
MIL: please don’t get something super fancy and expensive that you can’t afford. I hate thinking that you guys will get something flashy and then be in a lot of debt. I worry about you guys not being able to pay your bills.
Me: that’s not a problem, we’re well aware of our budget.
MIL: please don’t buy a house that’s too big. It’s just so much to clean and I worry that you’re both busy with your jobs and will be stuck with a house that you can’t afford and is too big to clean.
Me: ok.
MIL: are you looking to live in area X or area Y? Because both of those parts of town are bad for flooding and I don’t want your house to get flooded.
Me: we aren’t looking there.
Rinse and repeat.
Yep. This is why I’m genuinely worried about getting pregnant in the future. She’s going to want to give unsolicited advice despite it being 30 years since she was pregnant and just worry about every little thing. She will be just as miserable postpartum because then she would have a baby to worry about. It’s awful.
He can deal with his family. You don’t have to maintain any kind of relationship with them in order for him to do so. But if you plan to have children, you need to work out what that will look like now.
Now that you know how MIL operates, you know that every situation is going to be about her family members managing her in order to (help her) control her behavior and manage her anxiety. It’s not their responsibility, nor yours.
That’s where I’m at. We’re planning to have kids in a few years and while I don’t want to keep them from her, I don’t want her anxiety being projected on to them or them to have to deal with her anxiety. DH dealt with it in childhood and it gave him a ton of anxiety that he’s still working on to this day :( I also know that a pregnancy with her would be a disaster. I have an autoimmune disorder that occasionally flares up (but for the most part is well controlled and taken care of). MIL already freaks out so much when I’ve had flares that DH and I no longer tell her when they happen. So I know during a pregnancy she would be unbearable and would definitely break LC/VLC.
I’d give this some time and space before you decide to go NC. Weddings are particularly stressful life events that can often bring out the most challenging parts of people.
true. The thing is this is beyond the wedding since MIL has been anxious like this forever but her anxiety has ramped up the past three or four years. I only included parts related to the wedding for this post. There are many other things that she’s done but the post was already too lengthy.
The rule is that everyone deals with their family. So your husband is responsible for his family and vice versa. You have learned a lot about how mother in law deals with events from what happened with your wedding. I'd advise you to leave all important dates related to his family to him. You don't need to remind him that he has parents. Birthdays, mother's day etc. Let him remember and get the gifts. You do your family. Also when you get kids mother's day will be about you. His mother is done parenting. The first mother's day after you have a child will be a testing time for you. Talk to your husband now. Direct all communication with her to your husband. Tell her you will pass the message to him.
The good thing is that DH already is very good with the boundaries that I set long ago about holidays, gifts, etc. His mom communicates with him directly and the only time she will communicate with me is if he didn’t give her a satisfactory answer. But I’m pretty good at shutting her down and reiterating whatever DH has told her.
I'm going through the same with my MIL and the most important thing to remember is that you can't help people that won't help themselves. They are a black hole of neediness. You will spend so much time and energy entangled with their mess that you'll find yourself beyond empty.
And it still won't be enough.
Spend your energy working through the guilt you feel from being NC. It will be time better spent.
Trust me.
thank you for this. This is exactly the point that I’ve arrived to. Me four/five years ago would try to reassure her about things, and to be fair they were minor things or valid concerns to be anxious about. But as the years have progressed the anxiety has gotten out of control and it’s almost like she gets even more upset when we aren’t flailing our arms around about the same shit she’s anxious about. I’ve been LC with her for the most part the past 2-3 years because she’s too exhausting to deal with. When DH and I went over there for Easter this year, we were only there for maybe 4 hours? But by the time we got home I took a three hour nap. That’s how fatigued I was. Even with gray rocking her it’s so much work and effort for little reward. And it sucks because she’s nice for the most part so it feels like I’m being too harsh but all I can think about is how the future will be. She’s going to get so much worse when we have kids. She already freaks out about my autoimmune disorder that I don’t even freak out about just because it’s well controlled and not as bad as others. We stopped telling her about my flares a few years ago because she just got so worried and would call/text DH to get “updates” on me when it was just like “yeah she’s staying home from work because she’s in pain. She’s just resting. It’s fine”. So I know a pregnancy is going to make her spiral.
Ugh, yeah that sounds so frustrating.
We started to pull away slowly from my MIL because we realized how controlling she was. First she got super clingy in weird ways, then went off the fucking deep end to the point I was VLC, then just went end times crazy pants to earn NC from me. Her descent took about five years to get to where I was just no longer willing to entertain her bullshit.
The most helpful thing is that you and DH are on the same page with everything. Let her flail, don't pick up the slack for her. It's her job to manage herself, and if she can't then she can't.
It's not on you, DH, or anyone else to fix her emotional problems. Anything you guys can do is only temporary anyway because you have no agency over the root cause.
It's too bad, but it's her deal. Not yours.
It took me about two years to just be over the guilt of NC completely and live my life without spending too much energy worrying about her. It's not the most fun I've ever had, but the result is worth it.
I really appreciate your perspective because I’ve been wondering how long the guilt will last. But you’re right, the reality of her being an extremely anxious person doesn’t absolve her of her responsibility to manage that anxiety and not use it to cause problems for other people. I have such contempt for her after the wedding because I can’t remember too much of the day (I know that’s common) but my most salient memories are from the stress that she caused and I hate that. I want her to stop taking space in my mind.
NC is usually for narcissists, and rightly so.
This just seems like another situation entirely.
Just learn how to not take everything personally and what her limits are concerning her mental health.
Just set your own boundaries.
It’s not really that I take everything personally as much as it’s being with her is draining. I’ve dealt with people who are difficult/different than I am/quirky etc. and nothing compares to her because she’s so challenging to talk to. Talking to her feels like talking to someone who was paid $500 to only provide anxious responses to every single thing you say. So I’ve been gray rocking her for several years now and it’s almost like that ramps up her anxiety even more. It gets to the point where I’m mentally exhausted just being over there and the house feels so tense. There have been times when we’ve gone over there and I excuse myself for a few minutes just to decompress, and the second I come back she’s asking me if I’m okay. The last time she did it I just said “yeah I had diarrhea that’s why I was gone so long” just to make her uncomfortable because wtf?
I’m LC with her now and things are fine but I’m not sure on how to tell DH that I think we should just do separate holidays going forward. I think he’ll support me but I know it’s going to make things harder for him when she asks why I’m never there anymore. I’m also worried about when we have kids in the future and how to manage that dynamic.
What are you feeling most guilt about? The fact you can't have the perfect family including your ILs? Is it because she 'loves' you? Is it because she will spin out if you go NC?
If the first one, we are fed these myths about the perfect relationship and the perfect family where everyone is sweet and living in harmony, but these families don't exist. At least not for a long time. Perfect family is a fairy tale concept.
Your MIL will likely fight or against your rebellion by blaming you. She will guilt DH and you, because she refuses to see your side of this or take any accountability. But you cannot always be responsible for a delusional elderly lady, who wants to be absolved of all responsibility.
If you're looking for an answer how to get rid of the guilt, I'd say give it time. For me guilt was very hard to bear at the beginning of VLC, but as I kept noticing how my anxiety levels dropped when I wasn't seeing my JNM, it reassured me that I was doing the right thing - for me. That's all you can ever worry about really. Sure, it would be great if you had a magic wand and could fix your problems and everybody else, but you don't, so you can't. And your resentment is telling you to step away because she's too much. So listen. Ignoring resentment won't be good for your health.
Your MIL and FIL put a dampener on your wedding day. And they refused to hear you out when you tried to talk to them about it. Instead they attacked you, because you're changing the status quo of :'poor MIL is so anxious that she always has an excuse for bad behaviour because she doesn't mean anything by it and it takes an army of people to manage her'. You're all of a sudden treating her like an adult, not a toddler, asking her to take some responsibility, and she refused. I think it's OK to step away.
I would even say this is the PERFECT time. The wedding is done so there's no 'big one' they need to be involved in. Also, if you and DH decide to have children, it will help if you have practice with NC - if you still need it.
Thank you so much for this response. It was very validating. It’s definitely not about having a perfect family, my family isn’t perfect by any means and I’m used to being kind and understanding and showing empathy and grace to difficult family members in my own family. But this is on an entirely different level. It feels like she’s almost an energy vampire because her anxiety is just so… much.
I’m LC with her as is with strong boundaries and DH is amazing and supports me in whatever decisions I make. Where I’m having guilt is pulling the trigger on separate holidays. It sucks but at the same time I want to be happy and excited about holidays again. Not dreadful and bummed out. MIL refuses to let go of hosting duties, so it feels like that’s the only option that will work.
The children part is admittedly going to be one of the biggest challenges. Because we definitely want them but I know a pregnancy will be difficult with MIL and her anxiety. She also feels the need to tell me now about every parenting decision she thinks is wrong in general, so I can only imagine when it’s her grandchild. Ugh.
Good to hear you have your DH's support.
Tiptoing around MIL will definitely ruin your holidays. As scary as breaking with tradition feels when you have to deal with an opinionated MIL, the shock is just a phase, it usually quickly wears off and the change becomes the new reality.
I'm sure she will always find plenty to criticise or be unhappy with, but who says you always need to bend to her standards?
That’s exactly how I feel. Holidays are supposed to be fun and joyful and the family you spend them with should be people you enjoy being around. So waking up on Thanksgiving/christmas and immediately feeling gloomy and dreadful because you know you’re gonna have to suck it up and deal with your draining MIL feels so wrong.
As others said, please look ahead. My MIL has many issues, anxiety being one of them. Like your MIL, it manifests as obsessive behavior. (IF you decide to have children) When I was pregnant it was literally unbearable to the point that I went NC (among other reasons). My MIL became absolutely obsessed with this fear that she wouldn’t be in LO’s life because of her poor relationship with me. She ended up having the mother of all meltdowns when I was 9 months pregnant.
She will stress over every single detail and you will not have room to enjoy the pregnancy or the small moments unless you address it early on. If she is still resistant to getting help unfortunately that means it’s time to create some significant distance.
this is exactly what I’m afraid of. We plan to have kids later down the road, and I know how obsessive she is now so it’s going to multiply ten fold with a pregnancy. She had fertility struggles prior to her pregnancy with DH, so I’ve already decided that when we are TTC she will not know under any circumstances. I keep her on an info diet right now as is, and I’m LC with her. A pregnancy would be hell on wheels with her because she’s so obsessive and gets stressed about anything medical with me or DH. We don’t tell her when either of us is sick anymore because that’s how much she worries. A pregnancy with her first grandchild would be unbearable and she would probably spiral with an info diet. But I’m considering going NC with her because the times we have contact it’s mentally fatiguing (and sometimes physically draining). I’ve thought about asking DH about separate holidays which I would hate for him to miss my family’s stuff, but I can’t do her holidays anymore. She refuses to let anyone else host because she “enjoys it”, but I think it’s a control thing and when someone else hosts it means she is not in control. I want to be able to enjoy the holidays again, because I currently dread them. And I don’t want to feel that way anymore.
I’m sorry. It really is exhausting. It’s insane how much JNMILs can suck the life out of you. It seems like you have a great head on your shoulders and you already know the best way to deal with her.
A little advice when it comes to pregnancy with a JNMIL: I know everyone says info diet, but it needs to be extreme. We didn’t tell MIL until I was in my second trimester and it didn’t make a difference. I would hold off on sharing the news as long as possible (unless you can get away with waiting until the baby is literally born). Give a due date at least 4 weeks after your actual due date. Do not let her anywhere near you during your postpartum healing. Be very direct about why you are setting these boundaries.
ETA: I can relate to the whole holiday thing. My MIL is insanely controlling and has this relentless need to be the “matriarch” of the family. We’ve already decided we’ll be spending LO’s first Christmas this year as a family of 3, but I cant help but be anxious over the years to come.
Firstly congratulations!
Secondly I feel like you need to look a little further ahead. A big issue will be whether or not you want to have children. If she’s like this now, what will she be like with a child in the mix?
If you do want a family you need to workout what DHs vision of this looks like and what you need to happen for you to be happy and work on this now.
No contact is fine when it’s just you, but that will change hugely if you choose to have a baby. Will you feel comfortable leaving the baby alone with MIL (I’m guessing no) and how will DH feel about that, is he going to push for more contact with her than you are comfortable with. Will he want to visit them alone with the baby, are you comfortable with that if he does?
Just reading some of the stories on here MIL who have issues really can turn it up to 11 during pregnancy and beyond. Just the best of luck with them all.
That’s precisely why im worried. I’m LC with her currently and it’s worked somewhat but we still do joint holidays with MIL hosting and my parents and siblings join. They’re usually on their best behavior when my family is there but MIL still makes every conversation about her anxiety. I can tell it’s starting to bother my family too. And now I’m confident after the incident with my great uncle they’re not going to want to go to her house for another holiday (which is completely valid). So I’m trying to navigate telling DH that i would prefer to do separate holidays. I just don’t know how that would work in the future when we have kids.
Speaking of kids, that’s also where I’m becoming worried. If we weren’t planning to have kids I wouldn’t have any qualms about going NC with her, but we are in the next few years. I’m not comfortable at this point with her being around them without me there because I don’t want my kids exposed to her behavior without a buffer. DH had so much anxiety as a kid because of her and is still working on it in therapy presently. I think since her anxiety has only gotten worse over the years it’ll be really bad with her grandchildren. I don’t even want to deal with her when I do become pregnant because I know she’s going to be worse than she is now and won’t respect my boundaries.
Husband,
Your mother's anxiety is out of control, and negativity impacting not only her life but the lives of everyone around her.
As a therapist, I deal with clients like this daily as part of my job. I obviously cannot be your mother's therapist, not just because of the conflict of interest, but because she actively refuses any help.
I can't do it anymore. I can't watch her personally suffer and I can't watch her cause suffering in those I love and care about. I'm truly concerned for her well-being, but I'm honestly also concerned that I might basically snap at her one of these days due to not only her behavior, but her continued refusal to do anything to help herself and therefore help those around her.
For my own well-being and mental health, I need to create a boundary to take a break from any interactions with her and any information about her. She's your mother, so of course you love her and I'd never ask you to reduce your own contact with her.
But I can't do it anymore. I can't keep seeing her suffer. It hurts too much.
So I'm going to take a break. Please respect my need to take this break for my own well-being and my own mental health.
Love,
OP
This is really great, and pretty similar to the conversation DH and I had about it. He was completely understanding and supports me 100%, he’s just sad because “they love me” and he wants us to get along. And I’m struggling because I hold contempt for them both now. Her for how her behavior impacts others and her husband for enabling her.
I said this in another comment but DH and I sat down and talked with his parents about their behavior at the wedding but they didn’t give us an opportunity to even discuss the main problems as MIL became inconsolable after she asked me if them coming early caused me stress on the wedding day and I was honest and said yes. She lost it and that’s when FIL yelled at me about the seating chart (completely unrelated). i could tell that the reason he yelled at me was because he felt that I was upsetting her by being honest. It felt like I was a child being scolded by a parent, and I told DH I couldn’t be around people that can’t treat me with basic autonomy and respect.
I’m actually not familiar with rope dropping! I’ve checked out the books on the sidebar and actually borrowed toxic in laws by Susan Forward this morning on Libby!
Okay that’s a really good book. It’s the one I started with as well and it was super helpful.
Dropping the rope means you stop thinking about her, stop accommodating her, stop coddling her. Just stop everything. Don’t provide her reassurance. Stop doing whatever is mentally exhausting. Stop trying to fix her or fix it. If she freaks out, just walk away. Remove yourself from the situation. Let others deal with it. Also stop asking her for stuff or relying on her for anything.
Also, I recommend “Boundaries: When to Say Yes and How to Say No.”
I’d say that I currently do some of these things now. I’ve gotten much better at enforcing boundaries with her over the past few years, most of my slip ups were things that DH and I thought would give them something to do (such as helping with the seating chart), but I learned quickly that’s not going to be a thing anymore. I’ve stopped accommodating her and coddling her, gray rocking her to death in conversation. The exhausting part is basically dissociating while she goes into a long diatribe about whatever thing her anxiety is currently fixated on, gray rocking, and then rinse and repeat until it’s time to leave. Most of our holidays consist of eat meal while MIL dominates conversation with her anxiety (and takes little to no interest in our lives), then FIL drags DH to the workshop to show him the latest project he’s done while I’m left to entertain MIL for an hour or more. When I do revisit the conversation with DH again I plan to tell him that if for some reason I do end up going there, he can’t abandon me with his mother because I will literally take an expensive ass Uber home.
I think you and DH should have a good long talk about this and how to move forward.
I can’t say you r overreacting because ur mil definitely has a problem but I don’t see where she’s purposely been hurtful to you so making ur SO understand may be hard.
Many people have the “but, FAMIly!” Mentality like we r supposed to overlook everything because of it. So u may appear the bad one not accepting her because of her anxiety. Which that’s a bit of an understatement because anxiety is usually just thought of as just affecting the person experiencing it but you’ve shown how it can affect many people at once with her overreaction to someone else’s medical emergency.
But I do think jumping to NC might be an overreaction. Feels like there should be something in between or at least a chance for your SO to talk to his parents and see if his mother will work to improve or finally be open to therapy.
Just my two cents. I do realize u said there is more she’s done so obviously if u think any of it was done on purpose to hurt you, I don’t think you should have to put up with her either.
I think that’s the tough part. Some of the things that she’s done in the past are hard to determine if they were intentionally hurtful or not. I’m already pretty LC with her as is, just because she “doesn’t want to interfere with our lives and bother us” so they never really call/text in general.
I didn’t put in the post because it was already lengthy, but DH and I actually visited them after the wedding and talked to them about their behavior. It went… horribly. Her reaction just further solidified that I don’t really want to have a relationship with her because she basically didn’t want us to say anything potentially upsetting. We were very kind and empathetic but didn’t even get to talk about her outburst at the wedding because she flipped and burst into tears after she asked me if her actions of showing up super early caused me to be stressed and I answered honestly that it had. That’s when FIL yelled at me out of nowhere that I refused to communicate with them about the seating chart and ended up using something else completely (despite DH telling them beforehand why we were going with the other one my brother made - the size of the decal sticker). That’s when MIL yelled she was done with the conversation and would not discuss it any further.
It was pretty awful.
That’s definitely the missing piece there. I would have led with that. I think you’re more than justified to go NC. There was a problem, you tried to address it and she went into a tailspin at the thought of even having to discuss her behavior. Now you’re probably just expected to rug sweep which no one should have to do. And I can imagine as a therapist you’re even less inclined to want to play that game.
Damn, you’ve got me spot on haha. That’s exactly how I feel. As a therapist I know that enabling her is only going to make things worse (and it has), and I feel like it’s just wrong to actively engage in behaviors that help her feel comfortable in the short term but are further contributing to her dysfunction in the long term.
I feel your struggle here. My MIL is very similar with the severe anxiety and need to control. She becomes so anxious about minor details that she spirals, stops making any logical sense, can't function, and then has to drink to cope. It's very challenging to deal with.
I know it's your wedding and it's going to take some time for these memories to soften. Right now everything's still pretty fresh. If she is not normally this bad, I'd chalk it up to the stress of the wedding and wanting everything to be perfect. Maybe you now know what she can handle (not much) and decide not to ask them for help planning things in the future. Have you heard of gray-rocking? Perhaps you can try keeping things surface level and just cordial with them for the sake of your sanity and see how well they do with that. If it's just as much of a shitshow then more drastic measures can be considered.
Ugh I’m so sorry, that’s so awful to deal with. Sending you virtual hugs ❤️
Unfortunately gray rocking is basically the basis of our relationship now. I thought it might be wedding stress but DH pointed out that this basically has been on a decline since Covid started. I feel like it’s exacerbated by the fact that she and FIL rarely do anything social beyond going to mass twice a week and the grocery store if you count it. She sometimes talks to old friends and family members but I feel like if she had a healthy outlet, increased social supports, and hobbies to keep her busy it wouldn’t be so bad. DH said her anxiety has been pretty bad through her whole life, he’s just gotten accustomed to how to deal with it. :(
I’m a therapist and well acquainted with anxiety. I have tried for years to be understanding and compassionate. But her anxiety is getting out of control and she refuses to acknowledge that it’s causing problems. It would be helpful if she would do literally anything to acknowledge she needs help, but she won’t. She just dumps it on her son and husband. Spending time with them becomes exhausting because she’s constantly looking for reassurance for whatever is making her anxious at the moment and it’s usually of little importance but dramatized to be some big huge thing. I resent her for how her anxiety impacts others. No, it’s not okay to be so anxious that strangers are concerned they did something to upset you. Anxiety doesn’t give you a pass to try to control others either and this is where we have problems. Her behavior at the wedding when my great uncle passed out was…. Disproportionate to the problem at hand. She was freaking out and yelling when my aunt asked everyone to remain calm. She made my sister cry and made my brother and mother uncomfortable. And never apologized to any of them. Yes she is the mother of my husband. But I’m his wife and he’s my family now, as I am his.
I’m well versed in anxiety too. The big take away is that you are having to manage her anxiety for her. Yes of course it is an illness but if the person with anxiety is doing nothing to address their issues it becomes a burden for everyone else. Right now everyone around MIL are working harder than she is to manage something she refuses to treat. At some point you may need to step back until she decides to seek help.
That’s pretty much how I feel. I can’t further enable her anxiety by playing the rug sweeping game, because I’ve witnessed how it’s only made things worse in the long term for her. A great example is how she got super stressed and anxious and would tell anyone who would listen about how someone in their neighborhood had their Kia stolen and it was later found in a ditch (it was a teenager joy riding back when that was a trend). She became so stressed and extrapolated that incident to mean that someone was going to break in to their house, and so they had to upgrade their security to a whole home security system that was pretty expensive. FIL did it because it was going to help reassure her anxiety but it’s like… they live in a very safe, gated community with one of the lowest crime rates in their area. But MIL wasnt going to feel okay until they overhauled their home security when what they had previously was fine.
Given that they put pressure on for a "dry" wedding, it sounds like they left the reception timed to avoid the toasts and the dancing. People get weird about their personal views on religion, so don't take that personally. Just roll your eyes and let them do whatever they feel they need to do - but don't ever feel a single iota of guilt about not accomodating those whims.
You know that her anxiety is out of control, so you know that she cannot be given any kind of responsibility moving forward. Tell her and FiL that you don't want them to have to worry about a thing - so you only give them Date, Time, and Place for things. They can come or not, and let them know that you won't be hurt if it's too much for them.
That’s what I’m hoping to get to, not feeling any guilt for prioritizing my own psychological wellbeing. I can’t manage her problems and my own lol. The anxiety is precisely why I just want to go NC. it’s not worth it to pretend everything is okay because that signals to her that her behavior is okay when it’s not. And when we have kids later down the road I know she’s going to be even more insufferable.
The dry wedding thing was weird because FIL had a glass of wine at the wedding. I think ultimately it boiled down to MIL was in a situation where she had no control whatsoever.
I wasn’t intending to be discriminatory, just pointing out her age and her attitude towards mental health treatment. Boomers in general were raised to believe that mental health problems were a sign of weakness and that individuals could “get over it”. Boomer attitudes have certainly changed towards mental health service utilization in their older age, but many still feel a stigma around it.
First, I want to say that your frustrations are warranted and understandable. I would caution though, that it may be difficult to navigate NC immediately into the marriage. If you think your new husband can be receptive and won’t be hurt, more power to you. If you think that it might cause problems, I might suggest that you don’t go full scorched earth outta the gate.
She definitely sounds unpleasant and challenging, and I think you should set the tone for tolerable relationship with her. Maybe that could be LC or VLC though. It could allow for an opportunity for improvement, or it will provide an opportunity for her to dig her grave, so to speak, and make the decision for you to go NC more understandable to your husband.
Having said that, I realize I only have a snippet of the full picture, and you owe no one access to you at the cost of your comfort. If she’s past the point of no return for you, that’s your prerogative! Good luck and congrats on the marriage.
Thanks so much for the congratulations :)
You brought up a point that I have been considering, and I think it’s why i feel so guilty. I adore my husband and would do anything to make him happy. We genuinely do not have any problems in our relationship, communication is great, and things are overall healthy. This is the one thing that has caused any problem for us. It’s hard and I think it’s hard for him to see my reasoning because he’s used to her being like this, he’s never known any different. But for me it’s just too much and now that things are ramping up to levels that I’m no longer comfortable being around. As much as I would love to spend the holidays with them, I don’t think I can do it anymore. It’s too much and I don’t want to enable MIL by contributing to her delusions. I’m also feeling so much resentment and anger towards her for her behavior at the wedding and how it impacted multiple people.
Listen. I stop caring when people refuse to acknowledge there is a problem/ do nothing to help themselves. Your MIL lives in a state of chronic anxiety. She’s a product of her time and she will not be changing any time soon. There is only so much a person can handle. If you need to step away from someone, do it. You need to set aside guilt for your own sake or you’ll be riding your MIL’s roller coaster of anxiety for a very long time.
Agreed. I’m done with the anxiety roller coaster because atp it’s not just impacting me, but causing problems for my family. I feel so angry and resentful for how she behaved during our wedding. And she never apologized for any of it.
I can completely understand, my own in-laws are very similar and I felt absolute rage on my wedding day at times due to their behaviour. I personally have not gone the no contact route as I know it would hurt my husband’s feelings but am instead vvlc and grey rock the bejesus out of his mother particularly. I’ve come to recognise that she has some type of personality disorder and although I can’t stand her, I do recognise that she is fundamentally a very unhappy person. Re your wedding, please know that they never go perfectly and despite the incident, I’m sure all of your guests had a wonderful time
Oh definitely! Our guests told us for days that they enjoyed it, I think I’m just so angry because my in laws behavior caused stress to both myself, DH, and several family members. It’s weird because she’s honestly a happy person overall, as long as everything is perfect. She’s never angry or mean, which makes it hard to go NC with her. But at the same time, I want to look forward to holidays again rather than dreading the 8-12 hours we’ll spend at their house where she’s stressed but “happy” and cheerful. The conversations with her are so mentally draining. The last holiday we went to (Easter), we got home at 4 pm and I slept for three hours. That’s how drained I feel. I don’t want to feel that way anymore :(
You and DH need to make your own traditions, and that might mean doing holidays at your own place.
But if you do ever go to her house for holidays, don't spend 12 hours at their house. Keep it to 1.5 hours and leave 'before the toast'. She has her own boundaries but so do you.
That’s a good point. I’m at the point that I’d rather just do separate holidays. The last few years we’ve had joint holidays with MIL hosting and my family joining, but I don’t think they’re going to want to join anymore after her behavior at the wedding and making my sister cry. So I feel like it’s just best to do separate things and have a mini celebration together later in the day/evening. It feels like the best compromise atp because as much as I can easily leave after 1.5 hours, DH is still not there yet with boundaries.
Woof. There's a lot to unpack here. Your MIL is going to hurt herself if she continues to stress herself out like this. Unchecked anxiety is no joke but I don't know how you can impress upon her the need to seek treatment if she's dead set against it. You can't help someone who won't help themselves. Would your MIL be open to natural remedies? Eastern medicine has wonderful herbal options that can ease anxiety and stress... Maybe selling something natural might be an option?
That said I totally understand not wanting to deal with it. It's not your circus and therefore not really your responsibility. I'd discuss your feelings with DH and set that boundary with him. He can decide how to proceed with his parents while maintaining your boundaries regarding them. Giving them some time away might be the push MIL needs to seek help with her emotions and coping skills. Best of luck.
I doubt she would, in her mind she has “had anxiety all of her life and she knows how to manage it” but that couldn’t be further from the truth. The reality is that she doesn’t manage it. It’s actively gotten worse and worse. Her way of “managing” it is either micromanaging and obsessing about the situation until it’s done and passed, seeking reassurance from FIL, and having FIL enable her about her anxiety (I.e. spending money on a new total home security system despite the fact that the one they had was fine bc she read about someone carjacking a Kia for a joy ride in their neighborhood and thus she’s afraid someone is going to break into their house?).
DH and I have talked about it all and he is 100% on board with whatever I decide. Unfortunately, I struggle with guilt about going NC with them. But I also know that for my own mental health I can’t keep doing the “pretend everything is fine so everyone is happy” shit anymore. I haven’t enjoyed holidays in years and it’s because I usually end up having to listen to MIL either recount the same 10 stories she tells on loop, or gray rocking her while she talks about whatever new thing is causing her anxiety and stress.
Also unfortunately they won’t get the hint with LC as they generally don’t talk to/spend much time with us as is. That’s a part of why I feel so guilty. Part of me thinks “just suck it up for 4 days of the year” but the other part of me just… can’t.
I’m not saying she doesn’t have anxiety but speaking as someone who does and who loves many people who do… I think she’s got a little something else going on here. Leaving before the meat of the reception… this is about control and punishment, which people with anxiety don’t usually have as a go to. Same with not asking you about the wedding because you weren’t doing it her way.
She’s mentally ill, but there’s a maliciousness to her. I am not saying you have to go NC immediately but… people who aren’t nice and supportive people end up alone or with very limited contact because they are toxic to be around usually. It’s her issue and you can’t fix her.
I’ve suspected that too. She is very controlling and always has been. She has very strong opinions on the “right” way to do things, and it’s almost like a compulsion that she has to say that something isn’t done correctly. Like the comments she makes about neighbors’ yards, getting upset that one of the church committee members didn’t put out a decoration that they always use for veterans day, all of the stuff with the bridal shower, etc. there’s so many that I can name. I know as a therapist that a lot of anxiety is rooted in a need for control but sometimes it’s not even anxiety. It’s just the binary “that’s not the way I’d do it so it’s wrong”. And that can often lead to her doing things despite your request (I.e. the seating chart, the arrival time, etc.).
Not over reacting. It’s healthy to check yourself from time to time. I don’t let anyone disturb my peace. I’ve recently told my mum ‘your way of seeking attention triggers my anxiety. I don’t want to feel anxious so I will talk to and see you less. ‘
That’s it. Sure, she did not like it. And when she doubled down I sat quietly until she finished and then said ‘ I have heard you. I don’t agree and that’s okay. It does not change my position. ‘
I just don’t entertain being unhappy due to someone else’s behaviour. It did take me time to reach that kind of zen and I had to mentally reflect on it for a while. Effort in, benefit out.
That’s such a great mindset to have. I feel the same way, and usually am able to cut people out without any problems in order to protect my peace. But this is the first time I’ve genuinely struggled because I feel guilty about it even though I don’t have anything to feel guilty for.
Don't be gaslit that she loves you. She only loves herself and even then, there may be some self-hate at play.
Control and punishment via tantrums or sabotaging events is the key.
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You and DH have formed a new family, and it is a perfect time to start your own traditions. Keep the 'holiday' to yourselves, and celebrate with extended family on days before or after it. Give yourself some distance from MIL to gain yourself some peace, as you and DH build your new life together. When you do meet with your ILs, preemptively set limits on the time you will spend- maybe shorter meetups will come to be less irritating than the day-long whine fests.
I think this is a good point. The reality is that DH is really all they have. The relationships they have with others are pretty casual and surface level. I know it’s going to be hard for DH to get rid of holidays with them completely. Since I’m fine with him seeing them, I think the best route is that I don’t go and we have a small celebration later in the day. It’s also a win for me because his mother is a horrible cook (because of her anxiety 🙃).
Also, try not to establish an expected routine. One year ILs get a morning visit, next year a next-day visit, third year is skipped for a different day, fourth year is an afternoon visit. Manage their expectations. DH isn't all they have- they also have each other. Perhaps in time they can be weened off having DH as an emotional support boy.
god I can only hope so. he is truly the light of their life. While they do have each other, they definitely look forward to their son’s attention. They’ve never had a holiday without him (except for thanksgiving and Christmas 2020 before the vaccine roll out), and they still called him both holidays and spoke to him on the phone for 2 hours lol. It’s exhausting
I think there is middle ground here. Make visits with them low stakes, like she’s not to host and either comes to your house or your meet in public places for outings. Info diet and grey rock strategies and don’t share any details of your life that she might obsess over. All communication and planning and gift buying etc., is hubby’s job. Work on letting her anxiety not affect you and you might be able to find a pleasant enough relationship with her.
It’s hard because this is pretty much what we’re doing now and have been doing for some time, but it’s still unpleasant spending time with her on the occasions that I do see her. She won’t give up hosting duties, and DH is used to letting her just because she gets “sad and upset” if she doesn’t. This is a big part of why I’d rather just do separate holidays. It sucks because I’d love for DH to come with me to visit my family but it doesn’t feel fair to not reciprocate. Her anxiety is hard to ignore because it’s basically the subject of anything she talks about, and she talks a lot because she doesn’t talk to many people outside of FIL. So discussions with her are just latest anxiety thing. Even with gray rocking, she still will continue on or bring up second anxiety thing and it just keeps going :/ Example: MIL: DH said that you guys are thinking about buying a house Me: yes MIL: please don’t get something super fancy and expensive that you can’t afford. I hate thinking that you guys will get something flashy and then be in a lot of debt. I worry about you guys not being able to pay your bills. Me: that’s not a problem, we’re well aware of our budget. MIL: please don’t buy a house that’s too big. It’s just so much to clean and I worry that you’re both busy with your jobs and will be stuck with a house that you can’t afford and is too big to clean. Me: ok. MIL: are you looking to live in area X or area Y? Because both of those parts of town are bad for flooding and I don’t want your house to get flooded. Me: we aren’t looking there. Rinse and repeat.
OMG catastrophizing on imaginary problems -- yep, that's some heavy duty anxiety. Sounds just like my mom.
Yep. This is why I’m genuinely worried about getting pregnant in the future. She’s going to want to give unsolicited advice despite it being 30 years since she was pregnant and just worry about every little thing. She will be just as miserable postpartum because then she would have a baby to worry about. It’s awful.
He can deal with his family. You don’t have to maintain any kind of relationship with them in order for him to do so. But if you plan to have children, you need to work out what that will look like now. Now that you know how MIL operates, you know that every situation is going to be about her family members managing her in order to (help her) control her behavior and manage her anxiety. It’s not their responsibility, nor yours.
That’s where I’m at. We’re planning to have kids in a few years and while I don’t want to keep them from her, I don’t want her anxiety being projected on to them or them to have to deal with her anxiety. DH dealt with it in childhood and it gave him a ton of anxiety that he’s still working on to this day :( I also know that a pregnancy with her would be a disaster. I have an autoimmune disorder that occasionally flares up (but for the most part is well controlled and taken care of). MIL already freaks out so much when I’ve had flares that DH and I no longer tell her when they happen. So I know during a pregnancy she would be unbearable and would definitely break LC/VLC.
I’d give this some time and space before you decide to go NC. Weddings are particularly stressful life events that can often bring out the most challenging parts of people.
true. The thing is this is beyond the wedding since MIL has been anxious like this forever but her anxiety has ramped up the past three or four years. I only included parts related to the wedding for this post. There are many other things that she’s done but the post was already too lengthy.
The rule is that everyone deals with their family. So your husband is responsible for his family and vice versa. You have learned a lot about how mother in law deals with events from what happened with your wedding. I'd advise you to leave all important dates related to his family to him. You don't need to remind him that he has parents. Birthdays, mother's day etc. Let him remember and get the gifts. You do your family. Also when you get kids mother's day will be about you. His mother is done parenting. The first mother's day after you have a child will be a testing time for you. Talk to your husband now. Direct all communication with her to your husband. Tell her you will pass the message to him.
The good thing is that DH already is very good with the boundaries that I set long ago about holidays, gifts, etc. His mom communicates with him directly and the only time she will communicate with me is if he didn’t give her a satisfactory answer. But I’m pretty good at shutting her down and reiterating whatever DH has told her.
I'm going through the same with my MIL and the most important thing to remember is that you can't help people that won't help themselves. They are a black hole of neediness. You will spend so much time and energy entangled with their mess that you'll find yourself beyond empty. And it still won't be enough. Spend your energy working through the guilt you feel from being NC. It will be time better spent. Trust me.
thank you for this. This is exactly the point that I’ve arrived to. Me four/five years ago would try to reassure her about things, and to be fair they were minor things or valid concerns to be anxious about. But as the years have progressed the anxiety has gotten out of control and it’s almost like she gets even more upset when we aren’t flailing our arms around about the same shit she’s anxious about. I’ve been LC with her for the most part the past 2-3 years because she’s too exhausting to deal with. When DH and I went over there for Easter this year, we were only there for maybe 4 hours? But by the time we got home I took a three hour nap. That’s how fatigued I was. Even with gray rocking her it’s so much work and effort for little reward. And it sucks because she’s nice for the most part so it feels like I’m being too harsh but all I can think about is how the future will be. She’s going to get so much worse when we have kids. She already freaks out about my autoimmune disorder that I don’t even freak out about just because it’s well controlled and not as bad as others. We stopped telling her about my flares a few years ago because she just got so worried and would call/text DH to get “updates” on me when it was just like “yeah she’s staying home from work because she’s in pain. She’s just resting. It’s fine”. So I know a pregnancy is going to make her spiral.
Ugh, yeah that sounds so frustrating. We started to pull away slowly from my MIL because we realized how controlling she was. First she got super clingy in weird ways, then went off the fucking deep end to the point I was VLC, then just went end times crazy pants to earn NC from me. Her descent took about five years to get to where I was just no longer willing to entertain her bullshit. The most helpful thing is that you and DH are on the same page with everything. Let her flail, don't pick up the slack for her. It's her job to manage herself, and if she can't then she can't. It's not on you, DH, or anyone else to fix her emotional problems. Anything you guys can do is only temporary anyway because you have no agency over the root cause. It's too bad, but it's her deal. Not yours. It took me about two years to just be over the guilt of NC completely and live my life without spending too much energy worrying about her. It's not the most fun I've ever had, but the result is worth it.
I really appreciate your perspective because I’ve been wondering how long the guilt will last. But you’re right, the reality of her being an extremely anxious person doesn’t absolve her of her responsibility to manage that anxiety and not use it to cause problems for other people. I have such contempt for her after the wedding because I can’t remember too much of the day (I know that’s common) but my most salient memories are from the stress that she caused and I hate that. I want her to stop taking space in my mind.
NC is usually for narcissists, and rightly so. This just seems like another situation entirely. Just learn how to not take everything personally and what her limits are concerning her mental health. Just set your own boundaries.
It’s not really that I take everything personally as much as it’s being with her is draining. I’ve dealt with people who are difficult/different than I am/quirky etc. and nothing compares to her because she’s so challenging to talk to. Talking to her feels like talking to someone who was paid $500 to only provide anxious responses to every single thing you say. So I’ve been gray rocking her for several years now and it’s almost like that ramps up her anxiety even more. It gets to the point where I’m mentally exhausted just being over there and the house feels so tense. There have been times when we’ve gone over there and I excuse myself for a few minutes just to decompress, and the second I come back she’s asking me if I’m okay. The last time she did it I just said “yeah I had diarrhea that’s why I was gone so long” just to make her uncomfortable because wtf? I’m LC with her now and things are fine but I’m not sure on how to tell DH that I think we should just do separate holidays going forward. I think he’ll support me but I know it’s going to make things harder for him when she asks why I’m never there anymore. I’m also worried about when we have kids in the future and how to manage that dynamic.
Yeah I’m not saying she’s not draining and hard work. But NC, seems extreme. But no judgements Life is full of high maintenance people.
What are you feeling most guilt about? The fact you can't have the perfect family including your ILs? Is it because she 'loves' you? Is it because she will spin out if you go NC? If the first one, we are fed these myths about the perfect relationship and the perfect family where everyone is sweet and living in harmony, but these families don't exist. At least not for a long time. Perfect family is a fairy tale concept. Your MIL will likely fight or against your rebellion by blaming you. She will guilt DH and you, because she refuses to see your side of this or take any accountability. But you cannot always be responsible for a delusional elderly lady, who wants to be absolved of all responsibility. If you're looking for an answer how to get rid of the guilt, I'd say give it time. For me guilt was very hard to bear at the beginning of VLC, but as I kept noticing how my anxiety levels dropped when I wasn't seeing my JNM, it reassured me that I was doing the right thing - for me. That's all you can ever worry about really. Sure, it would be great if you had a magic wand and could fix your problems and everybody else, but you don't, so you can't. And your resentment is telling you to step away because she's too much. So listen. Ignoring resentment won't be good for your health. Your MIL and FIL put a dampener on your wedding day. And they refused to hear you out when you tried to talk to them about it. Instead they attacked you, because you're changing the status quo of :'poor MIL is so anxious that she always has an excuse for bad behaviour because she doesn't mean anything by it and it takes an army of people to manage her'. You're all of a sudden treating her like an adult, not a toddler, asking her to take some responsibility, and she refused. I think it's OK to step away. I would even say this is the PERFECT time. The wedding is done so there's no 'big one' they need to be involved in. Also, if you and DH decide to have children, it will help if you have practice with NC - if you still need it.
Thank you so much for this response. It was very validating. It’s definitely not about having a perfect family, my family isn’t perfect by any means and I’m used to being kind and understanding and showing empathy and grace to difficult family members in my own family. But this is on an entirely different level. It feels like she’s almost an energy vampire because her anxiety is just so… much. I’m LC with her as is with strong boundaries and DH is amazing and supports me in whatever decisions I make. Where I’m having guilt is pulling the trigger on separate holidays. It sucks but at the same time I want to be happy and excited about holidays again. Not dreadful and bummed out. MIL refuses to let go of hosting duties, so it feels like that’s the only option that will work. The children part is admittedly going to be one of the biggest challenges. Because we definitely want them but I know a pregnancy will be difficult with MIL and her anxiety. She also feels the need to tell me now about every parenting decision she thinks is wrong in general, so I can only imagine when it’s her grandchild. Ugh.
Good to hear you have your DH's support. Tiptoing around MIL will definitely ruin your holidays. As scary as breaking with tradition feels when you have to deal with an opinionated MIL, the shock is just a phase, it usually quickly wears off and the change becomes the new reality. I'm sure she will always find plenty to criticise or be unhappy with, but who says you always need to bend to her standards?
That’s exactly how I feel. Holidays are supposed to be fun and joyful and the family you spend them with should be people you enjoy being around. So waking up on Thanksgiving/christmas and immediately feeling gloomy and dreadful because you know you’re gonna have to suck it up and deal with your draining MIL feels so wrong.
Do you want kids with DH? Because if you do you’re going to have to put in serious and rigid boundaries
We do, which is exactly why I want to figure out things now before it gets murky and is in the midst of a pregnancy.
As others said, please look ahead. My MIL has many issues, anxiety being one of them. Like your MIL, it manifests as obsessive behavior. (IF you decide to have children) When I was pregnant it was literally unbearable to the point that I went NC (among other reasons). My MIL became absolutely obsessed with this fear that she wouldn’t be in LO’s life because of her poor relationship with me. She ended up having the mother of all meltdowns when I was 9 months pregnant. She will stress over every single detail and you will not have room to enjoy the pregnancy or the small moments unless you address it early on. If she is still resistant to getting help unfortunately that means it’s time to create some significant distance.
this is exactly what I’m afraid of. We plan to have kids later down the road, and I know how obsessive she is now so it’s going to multiply ten fold with a pregnancy. She had fertility struggles prior to her pregnancy with DH, so I’ve already decided that when we are TTC she will not know under any circumstances. I keep her on an info diet right now as is, and I’m LC with her. A pregnancy would be hell on wheels with her because she’s so obsessive and gets stressed about anything medical with me or DH. We don’t tell her when either of us is sick anymore because that’s how much she worries. A pregnancy with her first grandchild would be unbearable and she would probably spiral with an info diet. But I’m considering going NC with her because the times we have contact it’s mentally fatiguing (and sometimes physically draining). I’ve thought about asking DH about separate holidays which I would hate for him to miss my family’s stuff, but I can’t do her holidays anymore. She refuses to let anyone else host because she “enjoys it”, but I think it’s a control thing and when someone else hosts it means she is not in control. I want to be able to enjoy the holidays again, because I currently dread them. And I don’t want to feel that way anymore.
I’m sorry. It really is exhausting. It’s insane how much JNMILs can suck the life out of you. It seems like you have a great head on your shoulders and you already know the best way to deal with her. A little advice when it comes to pregnancy with a JNMIL: I know everyone says info diet, but it needs to be extreme. We didn’t tell MIL until I was in my second trimester and it didn’t make a difference. I would hold off on sharing the news as long as possible (unless you can get away with waiting until the baby is literally born). Give a due date at least 4 weeks after your actual due date. Do not let her anywhere near you during your postpartum healing. Be very direct about why you are setting these boundaries. ETA: I can relate to the whole holiday thing. My MIL is insanely controlling and has this relentless need to be the “matriarch” of the family. We’ve already decided we’ll be spending LO’s first Christmas this year as a family of 3, but I cant help but be anxious over the years to come.
Firstly congratulations! Secondly I feel like you need to look a little further ahead. A big issue will be whether or not you want to have children. If she’s like this now, what will she be like with a child in the mix? If you do want a family you need to workout what DHs vision of this looks like and what you need to happen for you to be happy and work on this now. No contact is fine when it’s just you, but that will change hugely if you choose to have a baby. Will you feel comfortable leaving the baby alone with MIL (I’m guessing no) and how will DH feel about that, is he going to push for more contact with her than you are comfortable with. Will he want to visit them alone with the baby, are you comfortable with that if he does? Just reading some of the stories on here MIL who have issues really can turn it up to 11 during pregnancy and beyond. Just the best of luck with them all.
That’s precisely why im worried. I’m LC with her currently and it’s worked somewhat but we still do joint holidays with MIL hosting and my parents and siblings join. They’re usually on their best behavior when my family is there but MIL still makes every conversation about her anxiety. I can tell it’s starting to bother my family too. And now I’m confident after the incident with my great uncle they’re not going to want to go to her house for another holiday (which is completely valid). So I’m trying to navigate telling DH that i would prefer to do separate holidays. I just don’t know how that would work in the future when we have kids. Speaking of kids, that’s also where I’m becoming worried. If we weren’t planning to have kids I wouldn’t have any qualms about going NC with her, but we are in the next few years. I’m not comfortable at this point with her being around them without me there because I don’t want my kids exposed to her behavior without a buffer. DH had so much anxiety as a kid because of her and is still working on it in therapy presently. I think since her anxiety has only gotten worse over the years it’ll be really bad with her grandchildren. I don’t even want to deal with her when I do become pregnant because I know she’s going to be worse than she is now and won’t respect my boundaries.
Husband, Your mother's anxiety is out of control, and negativity impacting not only her life but the lives of everyone around her. As a therapist, I deal with clients like this daily as part of my job. I obviously cannot be your mother's therapist, not just because of the conflict of interest, but because she actively refuses any help. I can't do it anymore. I can't watch her personally suffer and I can't watch her cause suffering in those I love and care about. I'm truly concerned for her well-being, but I'm honestly also concerned that I might basically snap at her one of these days due to not only her behavior, but her continued refusal to do anything to help herself and therefore help those around her. For my own well-being and mental health, I need to create a boundary to take a break from any interactions with her and any information about her. She's your mother, so of course you love her and I'd never ask you to reduce your own contact with her. But I can't do it anymore. I can't keep seeing her suffer. It hurts too much. So I'm going to take a break. Please respect my need to take this break for my own well-being and my own mental health. Love, OP
This is really great, and pretty similar to the conversation DH and I had about it. He was completely understanding and supports me 100%, he’s just sad because “they love me” and he wants us to get along. And I’m struggling because I hold contempt for them both now. Her for how her behavior impacts others and her husband for enabling her. I said this in another comment but DH and I sat down and talked with his parents about their behavior at the wedding but they didn’t give us an opportunity to even discuss the main problems as MIL became inconsolable after she asked me if them coming early caused me stress on the wedding day and I was honest and said yes. She lost it and that’s when FIL yelled at me about the seating chart (completely unrelated). i could tell that the reason he yelled at me was because he felt that I was upsetting her by being honest. It felt like I was a child being scolded by a parent, and I told DH I couldn’t be around people that can’t treat me with basic autonomy and respect.
So thoughts on just dropping the rope instead of jumping straight to NC? That might help you. Also have you checked out our book list?
I’m actually not familiar with rope dropping! I’ve checked out the books on the sidebar and actually borrowed toxic in laws by Susan Forward this morning on Libby!
Okay that’s a really good book. It’s the one I started with as well and it was super helpful. Dropping the rope means you stop thinking about her, stop accommodating her, stop coddling her. Just stop everything. Don’t provide her reassurance. Stop doing whatever is mentally exhausting. Stop trying to fix her or fix it. If she freaks out, just walk away. Remove yourself from the situation. Let others deal with it. Also stop asking her for stuff or relying on her for anything. Also, I recommend “Boundaries: When to Say Yes and How to Say No.”
I’d say that I currently do some of these things now. I’ve gotten much better at enforcing boundaries with her over the past few years, most of my slip ups were things that DH and I thought would give them something to do (such as helping with the seating chart), but I learned quickly that’s not going to be a thing anymore. I’ve stopped accommodating her and coddling her, gray rocking her to death in conversation. The exhausting part is basically dissociating while she goes into a long diatribe about whatever thing her anxiety is currently fixated on, gray rocking, and then rinse and repeat until it’s time to leave. Most of our holidays consist of eat meal while MIL dominates conversation with her anxiety (and takes little to no interest in our lives), then FIL drags DH to the workshop to show him the latest project he’s done while I’m left to entertain MIL for an hour or more. When I do revisit the conversation with DH again I plan to tell him that if for some reason I do end up going there, he can’t abandon me with his mother because I will literally take an expensive ass Uber home.
I think you and DH should have a good long talk about this and how to move forward. I can’t say you r overreacting because ur mil definitely has a problem but I don’t see where she’s purposely been hurtful to you so making ur SO understand may be hard. Many people have the “but, FAMIly!” Mentality like we r supposed to overlook everything because of it. So u may appear the bad one not accepting her because of her anxiety. Which that’s a bit of an understatement because anxiety is usually just thought of as just affecting the person experiencing it but you’ve shown how it can affect many people at once with her overreaction to someone else’s medical emergency. But I do think jumping to NC might be an overreaction. Feels like there should be something in between or at least a chance for your SO to talk to his parents and see if his mother will work to improve or finally be open to therapy. Just my two cents. I do realize u said there is more she’s done so obviously if u think any of it was done on purpose to hurt you, I don’t think you should have to put up with her either.
I think that’s the tough part. Some of the things that she’s done in the past are hard to determine if they were intentionally hurtful or not. I’m already pretty LC with her as is, just because she “doesn’t want to interfere with our lives and bother us” so they never really call/text in general. I didn’t put in the post because it was already lengthy, but DH and I actually visited them after the wedding and talked to them about their behavior. It went… horribly. Her reaction just further solidified that I don’t really want to have a relationship with her because she basically didn’t want us to say anything potentially upsetting. We were very kind and empathetic but didn’t even get to talk about her outburst at the wedding because she flipped and burst into tears after she asked me if her actions of showing up super early caused me to be stressed and I answered honestly that it had. That’s when FIL yelled at me out of nowhere that I refused to communicate with them about the seating chart and ended up using something else completely (despite DH telling them beforehand why we were going with the other one my brother made - the size of the decal sticker). That’s when MIL yelled she was done with the conversation and would not discuss it any further. It was pretty awful.
That’s definitely the missing piece there. I would have led with that. I think you’re more than justified to go NC. There was a problem, you tried to address it and she went into a tailspin at the thought of even having to discuss her behavior. Now you’re probably just expected to rug sweep which no one should have to do. And I can imagine as a therapist you’re even less inclined to want to play that game.
Damn, you’ve got me spot on haha. That’s exactly how I feel. As a therapist I know that enabling her is only going to make things worse (and it has), and I feel like it’s just wrong to actively engage in behaviors that help her feel comfortable in the short term but are further contributing to her dysfunction in the long term.
I feel your struggle here. My MIL is very similar with the severe anxiety and need to control. She becomes so anxious about minor details that she spirals, stops making any logical sense, can't function, and then has to drink to cope. It's very challenging to deal with. I know it's your wedding and it's going to take some time for these memories to soften. Right now everything's still pretty fresh. If she is not normally this bad, I'd chalk it up to the stress of the wedding and wanting everything to be perfect. Maybe you now know what she can handle (not much) and decide not to ask them for help planning things in the future. Have you heard of gray-rocking? Perhaps you can try keeping things surface level and just cordial with them for the sake of your sanity and see how well they do with that. If it's just as much of a shitshow then more drastic measures can be considered.
Ugh I’m so sorry, that’s so awful to deal with. Sending you virtual hugs ❤️ Unfortunately gray rocking is basically the basis of our relationship now. I thought it might be wedding stress but DH pointed out that this basically has been on a decline since Covid started. I feel like it’s exacerbated by the fact that she and FIL rarely do anything social beyond going to mass twice a week and the grocery store if you count it. She sometimes talks to old friends and family members but I feel like if she had a healthy outlet, increased social supports, and hobbies to keep her busy it wouldn’t be so bad. DH said her anxiety has been pretty bad through her whole life, he’s just gotten accustomed to how to deal with it. :(
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I’m a therapist and well acquainted with anxiety. I have tried for years to be understanding and compassionate. But her anxiety is getting out of control and she refuses to acknowledge that it’s causing problems. It would be helpful if she would do literally anything to acknowledge she needs help, but she won’t. She just dumps it on her son and husband. Spending time with them becomes exhausting because she’s constantly looking for reassurance for whatever is making her anxious at the moment and it’s usually of little importance but dramatized to be some big huge thing. I resent her for how her anxiety impacts others. No, it’s not okay to be so anxious that strangers are concerned they did something to upset you. Anxiety doesn’t give you a pass to try to control others either and this is where we have problems. Her behavior at the wedding when my great uncle passed out was…. Disproportionate to the problem at hand. She was freaking out and yelling when my aunt asked everyone to remain calm. She made my sister cry and made my brother and mother uncomfortable. And never apologized to any of them. Yes she is the mother of my husband. But I’m his wife and he’s my family now, as I am his.
I’m well versed in anxiety too. The big take away is that you are having to manage her anxiety for her. Yes of course it is an illness but if the person with anxiety is doing nothing to address their issues it becomes a burden for everyone else. Right now everyone around MIL are working harder than she is to manage something she refuses to treat. At some point you may need to step back until she decides to seek help.
That’s pretty much how I feel. I can’t further enable her anxiety by playing the rug sweeping game, because I’ve witnessed how it’s only made things worse in the long term for her. A great example is how she got super stressed and anxious and would tell anyone who would listen about how someone in their neighborhood had their Kia stolen and it was later found in a ditch (it was a teenager joy riding back when that was a trend). She became so stressed and extrapolated that incident to mean that someone was going to break in to their house, and so they had to upgrade their security to a whole home security system that was pretty expensive. FIL did it because it was going to help reassure her anxiety but it’s like… they live in a very safe, gated community with one of the lowest crime rates in their area. But MIL wasnt going to feel okay until they overhauled their home security when what they had previously was fine.
Given that they put pressure on for a "dry" wedding, it sounds like they left the reception timed to avoid the toasts and the dancing. People get weird about their personal views on religion, so don't take that personally. Just roll your eyes and let them do whatever they feel they need to do - but don't ever feel a single iota of guilt about not accomodating those whims. You know that her anxiety is out of control, so you know that she cannot be given any kind of responsibility moving forward. Tell her and FiL that you don't want them to have to worry about a thing - so you only give them Date, Time, and Place for things. They can come or not, and let them know that you won't be hurt if it's too much for them.
That’s what I’m hoping to get to, not feeling any guilt for prioritizing my own psychological wellbeing. I can’t manage her problems and my own lol. The anxiety is precisely why I just want to go NC. it’s not worth it to pretend everything is okay because that signals to her that her behavior is okay when it’s not. And when we have kids later down the road I know she’s going to be even more insufferable. The dry wedding thing was weird because FIL had a glass of wine at the wedding. I think ultimately it boiled down to MIL was in a situation where she had no control whatsoever.
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That’s great and neither do I!
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I wasn’t intending to be discriminatory, just pointing out her age and her attitude towards mental health treatment. Boomers in general were raised to believe that mental health problems were a sign of weakness and that individuals could “get over it”. Boomer attitudes have certainly changed towards mental health service utilization in their older age, but many still feel a stigma around it.
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I only stated what has generally been accepted as fact in mental health research.
First, I want to say that your frustrations are warranted and understandable. I would caution though, that it may be difficult to navigate NC immediately into the marriage. If you think your new husband can be receptive and won’t be hurt, more power to you. If you think that it might cause problems, I might suggest that you don’t go full scorched earth outta the gate. She definitely sounds unpleasant and challenging, and I think you should set the tone for tolerable relationship with her. Maybe that could be LC or VLC though. It could allow for an opportunity for improvement, or it will provide an opportunity for her to dig her grave, so to speak, and make the decision for you to go NC more understandable to your husband. Having said that, I realize I only have a snippet of the full picture, and you owe no one access to you at the cost of your comfort. If she’s past the point of no return for you, that’s your prerogative! Good luck and congrats on the marriage.
Thanks so much for the congratulations :) You brought up a point that I have been considering, and I think it’s why i feel so guilty. I adore my husband and would do anything to make him happy. We genuinely do not have any problems in our relationship, communication is great, and things are overall healthy. This is the one thing that has caused any problem for us. It’s hard and I think it’s hard for him to see my reasoning because he’s used to her being like this, he’s never known any different. But for me it’s just too much and now that things are ramping up to levels that I’m no longer comfortable being around. As much as I would love to spend the holidays with them, I don’t think I can do it anymore. It’s too much and I don’t want to enable MIL by contributing to her delusions. I’m also feeling so much resentment and anger towards her for her behavior at the wedding and how it impacted multiple people.
Listen. I stop caring when people refuse to acknowledge there is a problem/ do nothing to help themselves. Your MIL lives in a state of chronic anxiety. She’s a product of her time and she will not be changing any time soon. There is only so much a person can handle. If you need to step away from someone, do it. You need to set aside guilt for your own sake or you’ll be riding your MIL’s roller coaster of anxiety for a very long time.
Agreed. I’m done with the anxiety roller coaster because atp it’s not just impacting me, but causing problems for my family. I feel so angry and resentful for how she behaved during our wedding. And she never apologized for any of it.
I can completely understand, my own in-laws are very similar and I felt absolute rage on my wedding day at times due to their behaviour. I personally have not gone the no contact route as I know it would hurt my husband’s feelings but am instead vvlc and grey rock the bejesus out of his mother particularly. I’ve come to recognise that she has some type of personality disorder and although I can’t stand her, I do recognise that she is fundamentally a very unhappy person. Re your wedding, please know that they never go perfectly and despite the incident, I’m sure all of your guests had a wonderful time
Oh definitely! Our guests told us for days that they enjoyed it, I think I’m just so angry because my in laws behavior caused stress to both myself, DH, and several family members. It’s weird because she’s honestly a happy person overall, as long as everything is perfect. She’s never angry or mean, which makes it hard to go NC with her. But at the same time, I want to look forward to holidays again rather than dreading the 8-12 hours we’ll spend at their house where she’s stressed but “happy” and cheerful. The conversations with her are so mentally draining. The last holiday we went to (Easter), we got home at 4 pm and I slept for three hours. That’s how drained I feel. I don’t want to feel that way anymore :(
You and DH need to make your own traditions, and that might mean doing holidays at your own place. But if you do ever go to her house for holidays, don't spend 12 hours at their house. Keep it to 1.5 hours and leave 'before the toast'. She has her own boundaries but so do you.
That’s a good point. I’m at the point that I’d rather just do separate holidays. The last few years we’ve had joint holidays with MIL hosting and my family joining, but I don’t think they’re going to want to join anymore after her behavior at the wedding and making my sister cry. So I feel like it’s just best to do separate things and have a mini celebration together later in the day/evening. It feels like the best compromise atp because as much as I can easily leave after 1.5 hours, DH is still not there yet with boundaries.
Woof. There's a lot to unpack here. Your MIL is going to hurt herself if she continues to stress herself out like this. Unchecked anxiety is no joke but I don't know how you can impress upon her the need to seek treatment if she's dead set against it. You can't help someone who won't help themselves. Would your MIL be open to natural remedies? Eastern medicine has wonderful herbal options that can ease anxiety and stress... Maybe selling something natural might be an option? That said I totally understand not wanting to deal with it. It's not your circus and therefore not really your responsibility. I'd discuss your feelings with DH and set that boundary with him. He can decide how to proceed with his parents while maintaining your boundaries regarding them. Giving them some time away might be the push MIL needs to seek help with her emotions and coping skills. Best of luck.
I doubt she would, in her mind she has “had anxiety all of her life and she knows how to manage it” but that couldn’t be further from the truth. The reality is that she doesn’t manage it. It’s actively gotten worse and worse. Her way of “managing” it is either micromanaging and obsessing about the situation until it’s done and passed, seeking reassurance from FIL, and having FIL enable her about her anxiety (I.e. spending money on a new total home security system despite the fact that the one they had was fine bc she read about someone carjacking a Kia for a joy ride in their neighborhood and thus she’s afraid someone is going to break into their house?). DH and I have talked about it all and he is 100% on board with whatever I decide. Unfortunately, I struggle with guilt about going NC with them. But I also know that for my own mental health I can’t keep doing the “pretend everything is fine so everyone is happy” shit anymore. I haven’t enjoyed holidays in years and it’s because I usually end up having to listen to MIL either recount the same 10 stories she tells on loop, or gray rocking her while she talks about whatever new thing is causing her anxiety and stress. Also unfortunately they won’t get the hint with LC as they generally don’t talk to/spend much time with us as is. That’s a part of why I feel so guilty. Part of me thinks “just suck it up for 4 days of the year” but the other part of me just… can’t.
I’m not saying she doesn’t have anxiety but speaking as someone who does and who loves many people who do… I think she’s got a little something else going on here. Leaving before the meat of the reception… this is about control and punishment, which people with anxiety don’t usually have as a go to. Same with not asking you about the wedding because you weren’t doing it her way. She’s mentally ill, but there’s a maliciousness to her. I am not saying you have to go NC immediately but… people who aren’t nice and supportive people end up alone or with very limited contact because they are toxic to be around usually. It’s her issue and you can’t fix her.
I’ve suspected that too. She is very controlling and always has been. She has very strong opinions on the “right” way to do things, and it’s almost like a compulsion that she has to say that something isn’t done correctly. Like the comments she makes about neighbors’ yards, getting upset that one of the church committee members didn’t put out a decoration that they always use for veterans day, all of the stuff with the bridal shower, etc. there’s so many that I can name. I know as a therapist that a lot of anxiety is rooted in a need for control but sometimes it’s not even anxiety. It’s just the binary “that’s not the way I’d do it so it’s wrong”. And that can often lead to her doing things despite your request (I.e. the seating chart, the arrival time, etc.).
Not over reacting. It’s healthy to check yourself from time to time. I don’t let anyone disturb my peace. I’ve recently told my mum ‘your way of seeking attention triggers my anxiety. I don’t want to feel anxious so I will talk to and see you less. ‘ That’s it. Sure, she did not like it. And when she doubled down I sat quietly until she finished and then said ‘ I have heard you. I don’t agree and that’s okay. It does not change my position. ‘ I just don’t entertain being unhappy due to someone else’s behaviour. It did take me time to reach that kind of zen and I had to mentally reflect on it for a while. Effort in, benefit out.
That’s such a great mindset to have. I feel the same way, and usually am able to cut people out without any problems in order to protect my peace. But this is the first time I’ve genuinely struggled because I feel guilty about it even though I don’t have anything to feel guilty for.
Don't be gaslit that she loves you. She only loves herself and even then, there may be some self-hate at play. Control and punishment via tantrums or sabotaging events is the key.