I find my mother-in-law completely infuriating. She really isn’t a bad person, nor has she done anything particularly terrible. In fact I think a lot of people would love to have her in their lives. She is thoughtful and sweet-natured.
However, she has a way of turning any situation into a negative story about her. This is particularly apparent with my son. Whenever we discuss him she will conclude with a story about how she was hard done by as a child. She always sees herself as the victim and this is extremely draining.
When she comes to stay she won’t do anything around the house for fear of getting it wrong. She feels unable to leave the house for fear of getting lost, although she is not elderly and has never got lost. Occasionally she asks if she can help, but if I do ask her to do something, she will say she doesn’t know how to. I end up running around like a headless chicken trying to do all the housework, childcare and host, in such a rage I can hardly speak to her after a week together. My husband is sympathetic and very helpful, sharing housework and childcare – but won’t broach the subject with her as he feels it will just upset her (it will).
I no longer want her to come and stay, but feel sad this will lead to her having less time with my son. I know I should grin and bear it and be grateful she comes to stay at all, but I just can’t. What should I do?
Eleanor says: When someone becomes your in-law, you get thrust into quite an intimate relationship. They’re in your house, your family, your parenting, your holidays, your life decisions, your emotional moments – but you didn’t get to test drive your compatibility in handling those things together.
Often, you also didn’t get many of the quotidian one-on-one moments that build closeness. Our other intimate relationships get built up slowly, over time, with lots of little demonstrations of each other’s trustworthiness and interest in continuing the relationship. With in-laws, often, people skip that bit. Especially if you live in different places, it’s easy to go straight to the structure and expectations of “forever family”.
So you wind up with this fantastic cocktail of stressors: massive enmeshment, quite quickly, with few low-cost exit options, and the expectation of intimacy without the candor or shared history that usually makes it possible. No wonder so many people find tension in this particular dyad!
Keeping this in mind might help you feel what you’re feeling, without reproach. You’re not just being mean, or taking an irrational dislike of a perfectly pleasant person. You’re feeling that this relationship isn’t strong enough for the tests it’s being put through – and in a way, why would it be?
You asked what you should do. You sound strikingly clear about how you feel: you can’t bear it any more, you feel rage, you want her not to come and stay. These don’t sound like the kind of feelings you should be expected to endure indefinitely.
If it feels too villainous to insist on a break from visits, could you insist to your husband that visits at least need to change? Perhaps he could help tightly structure them, so Mum isn’t at home underfoot the whole time. Museums, walks, parks, kids’ events or playtime – strictly regimenting the time, including chunks of alone time for you, might stop every moment feeling like a decision void it falls on you to fill. If it’s available to you, trips together to a third neutral place can break the deadlock of one person feeling like the responsible-for-everything host and the other feeling stiff and worried about being an imposition.
Given the inevitability of interacting with her long term, it might also help to think about how you can tolerate these feelings when you can’t change the situation.
One way to get some emotional distance from people’s irritating choices is to see them as the upshots of slightly more sympathetic procedures. For instance, it sounds like your mother-in-law has a lot of identity wrapped up with her feelings about her own childhood. If you think of her returning to that well-worn topic as deliberately making a selfish and draining choice, of course it makes you angry. If you think of her as just enacting a habit, borne of feelings she hasn’t processed, the red-hot frustration might mellow to predictable disappointment. Reframing people’s annoying choices helps make them feel a little more bad weather – annoying and taxing, yes, but not personal or insulting.
And one final note: however you decide to manage this relationship, try not to see it as simply your problem. It’s considerate of your husband not to want to upset his family – but you’re his family too. Your wellbeing needs to count in the inventory of feelings worth protecting.
This letter has been edited for length.
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