Not everybody is going to like you all the time

Here's an awakening for me, as a Mother in Law. This comes out of work I'm doing in a non-MIL book, the not so big life, by Sarah Susanka (author of the not so big house).

The Big News from my self to me is, my DIL's do not have to and may not like me. May be they'll like me some of the time. Maybe they won't like me at all. Maybe they'll like me sometimes, and sometimes my welcome will wear thin on them. Maybe they don't want to spend their free time with me.

Holy crap.

And so? So what? What does that mean? Are they evil? Am I evil? I don't think so - I think it just means what it says. It is what it is.

From the reading and work I've done on the not so big life book came an epiphany - not everyone is going to like me. Not only that, even those that do like me aren't going to like me all the time or want to be with me as much as I want to be with them.

That may not be news to you, but it's news to me. I've always thought that if I worked hard enough, did everything right (even if I wasn't always "nice" -- i.e., if I was at least honest) I would be liked and admired for my goodness and other wonderful personality traits. But of course, that's not so.

This epiphany also turned on a light in the MIL - DIL portion of my brain. A while ago I came to realize that the reason my first MIL stayed in touch with me was not because I was someone she just couldn't get enough of (though she was really a kind and caring person, along with being funny, practical and keen), but because as the custodial parent for most of the time my son was growing up, I was the contact person. Staying in touch with me, being nice, remembering birthdays and including me in her yearly Christmas newsletter was also smart. This didn't stop after my son and his dad started spending more time together, because she didn't do that as a manipulative ploy. She also, I think, was trying to like me despite myself.

In any case, what now comes to me, as the light brightens or spreads out, is the realization that just because you or I are MIL's doesn't mean our DIL's necessarily like us. That was a shocker to me -- I'd always assumed my son's girlfriends, and then later their wives, just thought I was the most wonderful mother and potential mother in law around. Surely they enjoyed my wit and humor! They found my housekeeping methods amusing, if a bit unorthodox. I'd always thought if we hadn't met through my sons but through work, we might have been friendly co-workers.

Now, with this newly shed light, I'm not so sure. Because after a few years of the newness of it all have worn off, as a wife becomes confident that they are indeed the main woman in their husband's life, perhaps it isn't so necessary to try so hard to force herself to put up with a MIL's odd behavior, to her too personal or too impersonal behavior, to forcing herself to like someone who seems a bit.. incompatible.. to her.

As I roam around the boards and read books and listen to other MIL's, I do hear comments along the lines of "she isn't who I would have chosen for him, but..." or "I am trying to like her because my son loves her but..."


You can pick your fleas by Nanas_Alley

Guess what? The reverse may also be true. Just as we don't choose our children's spouses, they don't choose their spouses' parents. And yet most of our children's mates are going to start of trying to like us -- after all, we're the ones that spawned the person they fell in love with. There must be something about us that is related to the aspects of their partner that they love? And maybe they would like us, if we gave them enough reason and space. I have to ask myself - how much would I like any woman who seemed to be a constant presence in my life with my husband?

After awhile, wouldn't her welcome wear thin? And wouldn't it be possible that welcome would grow even thinner if I had to present on the outside some kind of externally glowing smile, in order to not upset my husband? Good God, I think I'd grow weary of it sooner rather than later!

In the midst of all this, my 2nd son had invited me to go to dinner and a movie one Friday night with his wife and himself. Keen, I thought - I had just dropped off my youngest at school and had no date, hadn't seen them in a month - they'd just been away spending their vacation with his dad and step-mom.

Then I read her post on Facebook, posted before he'd sent me the e-mail invite. "Looking forward to going a movie with my hubby Friday night" she'd written.

My new light flashed urgently, much as I wanted to ignore it. "Read that!!!" it shrieked.

"I read it, she's looking forward to the movie," I told myself.

"Read that, read that, read that!!!" it shrieked again.

I read it and sighed. "So?"

"Think!!!!" it screamed at me. "Remember the last movie you went to with them?"

A dim older light flickered off and on - yes, I recalled. My DIL had seemed distant and grumpy that night. I'd written it off to her being tired from a long work week, or maybe she and he had had some kind of argument. Whatever -- I shrugged it off.

"Seeeeeee?????" my bright new light flashed brightly at me.

"Hmmmm". I had to admit -- if I looked at this from a DIL standpoint - after spending two weeks with my husband's other parents (much as I enjoyed that), how would I feel sharing our first Friday night back home going out for a romantic dinner and movie with.... my Mother in Law.

So, I e-mailed my son and backed out -- you know, there are a lot of other things I can do. And we can get together another time - it doesn't have to be on their Friday night date night!

I thought back to my last conversation with that same DIL, in which she kept asking me about my social life -- did I enjoy being single, was I ever going to date again? Hmmmmm. Maybe she was trying to tell me something!

This insight certainly has given me something to think about and also some relief. I don't have to pretend to myself to like them all the time. If I can accept that they don't have to love me, then I can forgive myself for not auto-loving them. I can do my best because they married my children, but if I don't love someone my child picked as a spouse as much as I love my child, that doesn't make me the MIL from hell. What would make me that is if I thought I had to love my child's spouse, couldn't and then put the blame on him or her for not being lovable by my standards.

That aside, perhaps we can begin relate to each other as people.

Arguing with a Mother In Law isn't All Bad

I'm not kidding. The current situation with my DIL #1 is getting worse because she now maybe someday soon might be willing to talk to me as long as it's not about the issue we had. She doesn't want to argue, that's my guess. I have to guess, because she won't talk to me about it. She won't acknowledge the apology letter I sent. Which only makes the situation worse and pushes us further apart than we already are.

She claims what happened (which we haven't even had a chance to sit down and talk about - and believe me, there are at least two versions of it) has changed her feelings for me.

I think it has revealed how new our 7 year relationship is, how untested, virginal and fairy tale it is. If she doesn't want to take the time or energy to talk to me, I figure, she's just not that into me.

Or it may be something else. If you don't want to talk further about a conflict you had with someone you are supposedly close to, it could be for many reasons.

Perhaps there's little depth in the relationship, and you aren't willing to take it any further. Maybe you're afraid to risk the relationship's ability to withstand a disagreement. It might be you really don't like the person that much and this is a good excuse to dive. Or you maybe thought the other person was perfect and the conflict shocked you into seeing their flaws. Or worse -- you hoped they thought that you were perfect and you're afraid they'll point out your flaws. The reasons for avoiding conflict with someone are complex - sometimes even the avoider doesn't know why (I speak from my own experience).

But...conflicts and disappointments can be used as stepping stones to a better relationship instead of bitter endings. Arguing with a mother in law doesn't have to be a bad thing. If I could talk to my DIL about this, I would love to share my thoughts.

The message I am getting from her (which may not be the message she means to send) is that she does not wish to have a relationship with me of any depth.

I've seen her argue with many people - of course, I couldn't understand the content of the arguments because I don't speak her native language, but you can understand tones of speech and body language. In addition, she's told me about arguments in a very heated and passionate way, on issues large and small, and usually very personal to her. I want to ask her - "What, I'm not good enough, I'm not family?"

In my own family of origin, arguing was not allowed. If you had a disagreement with a family superior member, you got sent to your room. You didn't talk back. Consequently, my family of origin was not very close. And I know that's why I feel this is a punishment, when that might not be what she means at all. But in my therapy educated opinion... having disagreements with others is one way we become closer to others.

This is something I learned the expensive way, and then the hard way, first through group therapy and then with run ins with friends. The former way was frightening, but it laid the groundwork for the latter, in which I messed up often since I used to think arguments with loved ones were some kind of death to the relationship. But I have come to find that the opposite is often true. It's through these less than perfect mess ups with each other, if tended to rather than left to rot and fester, that we can become closer.

My DIL, I am sure, is not remaining silent on this issue. I know her, and unless she's had a radical personality change, then like me, she's talked to the very people she does have arguments and conflict with about this. I feel left out. I would like to talk to her about it, too.

My son assures me I'm still welcome in their home, as long as I don't bring up this issue. The real issue, to me, is that I feel as though my DIL doesn't care enough about me to talk to me about this. I don't mean to beat the proverbial dead horse -- the horse hasn't even been let out of the stall, in fact, I think she's looking at one horse and I'm looking at another. What I'm hearing is that we aren't supposed to even mention there ever was a horse, just pretend everything is fine, though our relationship is breaking down.

So, no -- I wouldn't feel welcome in their house under those conditions. Before, I wasn't walking on eggshells. Now, I wonder - if she won't talk to me about this, what other things have gone, or will go unspoken? In the back of my mind, I'll be wondering what she thinks I said, what she thinks I meant. I'll wonder what her family and friends think - I am suddenly the evil Mother In Law, intrusive and controlling, when that wasn't my intent at all. She's making assumptions about me, I'm sure I'm making assumptions about her. We are talking about each other to anyone but each other. What do I know? I just know, whatever the surface "welcome" is, I don't feel at all welcome under those conditions. And so I told my son, I cannot visit like this.

Arguing with a Mother in Law isn't all bad because you can put things out there, look at them, talk about them and see if you're even talking about the same things. You still might not agree, but at least you've "aired" your differences.

As it stands now, we are both feeling hurt and wounded. I am welcome and yet I am not. My feeling is I've been judged and then sent to my room for something I'm not clear on, at best treated like a child, at worst treated like a non family member. She may feel the same. I have no idea and my apology, meant to open a door to communication, has been ignored.

Arguing - disagreeing -- with a member of your family is not always a bad thing.It's a lot better than silence. It just needs to be done with some caring and openness, which of course is easier said than done.

Happy Birthing Day...

So, here it is, the 18th birthday of my youngest son - the only one not yet married. Though of course this is his day, I do find it amusing that on the birthday of anyone, our mothers are set aside, though they were the ones who carried us for 9 months and labored us into the world.

That, I suppose, is what Mother's Day is supposed to make up for. Still, on any one of my own sons' birthdays, I find myself remembering little bits of the day of delivery -- I don't mention it to them, but their birthday is the one day that still connects me to them, at least in my mind.

I find my recent experience - the one wherein I came to realize, I'm a Mother-in-Law, (shudder) has made me somewhat wiser but cynical about being a mother, as well as a mother in law. As I watch my youngest become an adult, I start to think, "why bother?" and "what's the point?"

His girlfriend (also 18) and I are on fairly good terms. But now, with the vast smarts cast upon me by visiting countless MIL hater websites and reading posts by DIL's, reflecting on my own minor wounds and happenings with my own DIL's (not to mention the major blow up with DIL #1), I raise one eyebrow as I view my son's GF and think -- mmm hmmm... it's just a matter of time.

What kind of an attitude is that, I ask only half laughing at myself!

Oh, probably realistic.

This all seems to me somewhat unrelated to being a MIL and DIL -- it's just what happens when our children grow up, leave home and marry. Or marry, leave home and grow up. In whatever order they do it. The key words though, are not "marry" or "grow up". It's "leave home" -- read "leave us".

It's what they are supposed to do, but it is difficult to accept. And we really are now just backdrop in their lives. It could be far worse, if we were some other species. I'm too lazy to do the research, but I wonder what happens in the animal kingdom when offspring grow up and have their own families. Do apes and gorillas invite their parents over every week-end? Do chimpanzee MIL's and DIL's fight? Maybe so, or maybe we can still argue we're not apes, gorillas, chimpanzees.

Still -- I do not like this feeling, I will admit it, that I am no longer a part of my married sons' lives except as needed for money, childcare, or obligatory visits on holidays. But there isn't really much I can do about it. And right now, I am struggling not to take this sad awareness out on my youngest son and his girlfriend/future fiancee -- at the moment I feel prone to snarl and snap at whoever she may be, to turn into the MIL from hell proclaiming, "Don't think you're gonna get rid of me that easy, Missy."

So, maybe now I'm coming to realize from whence the stereotypical MIL is born.

Winning the Prize

DIL card by Nana's Alley

I keep seeing comments where a MIL may say a DIL took away her son, or a DIL says her MIL is angry at her because "I took away her son". On both parts, I think this is an unfortunate way to look at the relationships involved. The son becomes an inanimate prized possession - the two women become competitors, rather than two people sharing the love of the same man, who can still be loved, though not owned, by two women.

My mind flies around, looking for an old Kahil Gibran quote, which both women would do well to remember , especially if the DIL has any children of her own -- something along the lines of "Your children are not your children, They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you."

And then my mind wanders to King Solomon and the two women who are claiming ownership of a baby -- you know the story. It's the one who is willing to give him up who is recognized as the true mother. That's what we MIL's are -- we're the mothers, and we're giving up our children -- difficult though it might be. But that doesn't mean we're giving up ownership of one person to another, or giving up our position as our child's mother or relinquishing our love.

It should simply mean we're done with parenting, and welcoming our son's or daughter's new spouse into our family, and recognizing that our child is also part of their family, and that they also have a family of their own. We need to be the one who understands the bigger picture, that this is a good thing, and that love is not a competition with winners and losers.

For those who aren't aware, our children leave several times during our relationship with them. The first time, I think, is when they take that first step of independence. Of course they come back again, but parenting really is about raising children and getting them reading to leave us. If we really thought about that, maybe we wouldn't so willingly give our hearts to our babies - but this is what all creatures do. We make babies, we love them, we raise them and we let them go.

Would that it were that simple, of course. For them or for us. They come back, we let them. They need help, we give it. Eventually, though, they are on their own. This can happen at 18 or somewhere in their 30's, when they and we finally let go. They may be the ones who find it most difficult, or it may be us. But if we are healthy, eventually, we are done with our parenting role with each child.

And so, regardless of who is saying it - parent, child, daughter-in-law, son-in-law, it seems revealing when someone says they "took away" someone. The person who got "taken away" is the passive prize, the one who "took" them, the "winner", the other one the loser. No wonder, with this attitude, there is friction between a mother-in-law and daughter-or son-in-law.

Someone needs to remind them, this isn't a competition, or shouldn't be. There should be enough love to go around..

Wouldn't it be nice if the view of a marriage - by the parents of bride and groom, by the new husband and wife too - would be an expansion of the family, not a loss to someone, not a win-lose situation?

Perhaps the in-laws could start it off by letting their offsprings new spouse know "In my view, you aren't taking my son away, you're expanding the family. Welcome to ours, I hope we're welcome to yours..."

The prize should be a larger, healthier family.

Some Thoughts about Mother in Laws

I've been astonished about how many Mother In Law haters there are around -- and how the feelings often expand from one's own mother in law to anyone who identifies herself to them as a Mother In Law.

I never really identified myself as "A Mother In Law" until recently, when I suddenly realized that's now a role of mine.

My own two MIL's were lovely people -- I never categorized them as bad by the title. I still don't understand the animosity - it saddens me to be included, if I've overstepped my bounds by accident or if I'm just being packaged in with all MIL's.

Here are just some thoughts I'd like to pass along...

• Mother in laws didn't grow up wanting to be a mother in law, let alone your mother in law. A mother yes, a grandmother -- maybe -- but not a mother in law





• Mother in laws started out as a mother. They still refer to themselves as a mother and to your spouse as one of their children.
• This isn't going to change. (How many parents who love their children ever stop referring to them as "my son" or "my daughter"?)
• Mother in Laws are going through a "role change" - from being one of the main advisor's in a child's life to "backdrop".
• Mother in Laws don't receive any warning or formal training to do this.
• There's also no handbook or manual.
• Mother in Laws were daughter in laws once (a new daughter in law could get her new MIL to talk about her own experiences with her MIL)
• Mother in Laws - most anyway - do not want to alienate their children's spouses, cause problems in their children's marriages and be unwelcome in their children's homes.
• Nobody - even in fairy tales - gets to pick who their mother in law will be -- sometimes you just have to deal with the hand you're dealt.
• Ditto for daughter and son in laws -- at least in Western cultures, mother in laws don't get to select who their children marry -- deal with it.

On the bright side

All of this ... conflict, unresolved though it may be.... has been helpful. It made me stop and think about what it means to be a Mother in Law... and what it doesn't mean.

I came across some interesting posts that are somewhat related, more about the new state of grandparents in America these days. In my mind, being a mother in law and a grandmother are tied together. I mean, you can be a grandmother without being a mother in law... and you can be a mother in law without being a grandmother. But in my mind, or my life, they are somewhat intertwined.

Let me try and unthread the two. If I'm only a mother in law, if there are no children involved, that would make life somewhat simpler in defining my role. There would be little place for me -- Mother In Law would just be the title for describing or introducing me to others. It only defines how I am related to my children's spouses. Simple. I do wish the definition went further than just saying that -- it should have rules with it to.

Mother In Law -- n. the female parent of a spouse. v. One who minds her own business.

Add to that the grandmother title, and you're adding more of a function. Most of the posts I saw were commenting on the "fact" that grandparents these days are different from grandparents of days gone by because they have more to do with taking care of their grandchildren. They are called upon as childcare because both of the parents work, or because there's a divorce and one of the parents needs help or has moved back home. Or they may have taken over child care because of drug or alcohol problems with the grandchildren's parents.

This doesn't sound like anything new to me -- grandparents if they so wish and are asked have always been available to help with the grandkids. The difference from my view is that many of us are choosing not to be supplemental parents.

The grandparenting issue is one that can cause problems with a Mother In Law, where there were no problems before... or exacerbate existing problems. It can be a problem for a MIL who wants to offer feedback on how to raise kids -- worse if she's one who wants to "tell" how it should be done. (Key advise -- unless your grandchildren are being abused, stay out of the child-rearing wisdom).

It can also be a problem if the MIL doesn't want to be a babysitter -- or if that's the only time she's contacted. Some of us have been parenting for a long time (myself - it will be 42 years of parenting done when my youngest graduates from high school). We at least need a break before and if we continue on babysitting (because we shouldn't be parenting). Some of us may have things we want to do that we've put off - and we may be realizing we have limited times. Other MIL's may be young enough to still be working and have their own lives.

In any case, I'm thankful in some ways for the silence I'm receiving because it's making me reflect on many things I might have not examined. I was pretty much trundling along, thinking I was doing what needed to be done. More later on what a DIL perhaps needs to say to her MIL, rather than making assumptions. We cannot read your minds.

Long Distance Mother In Lawing

Being a Long Distance Mother in Law might be seen as something that could be a plus to making the Mother in Law relationship a bit less stressful for all. But, you know, there are disadvantages too.

I have one set of in-laws (guess what-- my sons and their wives are my in-laws too!) who live 50 miles away - and another who live 3,914 miles away.

In both cases, you won't find me "dropping in" - a plus there. My mother once "dropped in" on my husband and myself while we were in the shower together..not just showering... so I know how nice it is not to have an in-law (or parent) just drop in.

For my long long distance family, though, this means visits have to be planned and budgeted, and when I come for a visit, they are stuck with me for long periods of time. Neither have seemed to mind - my daughter in law is Turkish and she seems to enjoy having family around for long periods of time -- her parents have stayed for 3 months, while I usually only stay for a week or two.

Still... you know what they say - "after 3 days, fish and visitors stink". And despite what we new in laws think, that applies to us, too.

The other disadvantage of long distance in-lawing that comes to me is the inability to resolve issues - especially if one party is not talking to another. You can't arrange a tea to talk, you can't 'run into' someone at a common place -- the distance becomes distance.

You'd think the internet and Skype would help - and in some cases, perhaps they do. But there is nothing like a face to face sit down to resolve a conflict, even if that were to mean it started out with a good yelling fit first.

In my particular case, nothing is helping so I'm to the point where I'm losing any concern about writing things down in here -- one of the other things I'm learning about being a mother in law is that one's own children don't really have the time to read what you're writing. Nor do they care. And I'm not being sarcastic or full of pity here. I'm finding this somewhat humbling, and somewhat amusing.

My kids (and by that I include my DIL's) just don't have time. They have their own lives. This could go down in the Lessons for Mother in Laws which I'm slowly accumulating. This isn't something personal, they are just busy busy busy... as I was at their age.

Evidently this is the real reason holidays started (before Hallmark and others realized how profitable they were). Holidays are a way to force families to make time for each other. Although, I can already assure you there will be more writings in the coming holidays about Mother in Laws and holidays -- especially since modern families can have as many as 4 Mother In Laws, perhaps more, in one family. What a scene -- not a Norman Rockwell moment, and one I'm glad I missed out on.

In any case -- long distance, while a plus to the DIL or SIL who cannot stand the in-laws, is a disadvantage for a MIL who wants to resolve a family conflict.

At this moment, ours has gone from bad to worse.

Our conflict started the week-end of July 11th during a stateside visit for a funeral. My bad for the way I handled something, though I believe it was a relatively minor event that has gotten blown up and escalated for reasons I'm not entirely clear on.

It's not been a month but to me it feels like it's been years. My DIL is not speaking to me so I wrote a letter of apology. I'd told my son I would do that - though I don't believe what I actually did was wrong, the way I presented it to her, the timing, was very wrong and put her in an awkward situation. So I wrote and told her I loved her and apologized for that and didn't go into why I'd said what I did, or argue dead points.

I'd told my son, too, that he and I don't need to talk about this -- she would feel like we were ganging up on her - she's his wife, and this is between she and I...it seemed like something she and I (who have known each other, though not as well as I'd like, for nearly 8 years with never a problem) could work out - that it could even have brought us together as we worked through this, by talking about it.

But there's been no reply.

It may be that she's just busy - she has other things in her life, and this may not seem as big to her now as it does to me. Or she's still angry. Or this is a build up from those visits of two weeks long visits and the way I did this or that really irritated her. Or she has a specific time set for this -- a month, perhaps two, of silent punishment. I'm not certain.

Mind you, I'm not expecting a reply of acceptance and some sweet and happy ending. What I was expecting was some acknowledgement that my message was heard -- even if the reply was "and I don't want to talk about it now", that would be a reply.

Silence is a cold shoulder. Silence is rude. I'm somewhat stunned by it. What has happened now is that the problem is escalating and taking on a life of its own. Because I love my son and grandson, because I value their happiness and support their family, there will be no vindictive or hateful contra punishments. But there's a natural reaction I just can't help.

I blame much of this on the long distance. The mistake I made was in not talking directly to her about something that concerned me when it happened, and I did not do it because we live so far apart, I waited until we were together again in a short period of time. That's due to the long distance.

The long distance means I have to sit and wait, it means not even an invitation to tea can be made or turned down. As I wait , my own feelings build up and as I said to a friend today, the silence at the other end now added to whatever my DIL thinks I did to her is creating even more of another kind of distance. We will have a lot of work to do to rebuild this, because the small wound - or perhaps large to her, I do not know for sure -- is growing. It surely isn't healing. Still, there is nothing I can do further - I can only sit and wait.

Thankfully, there are books out about Mother in laws --they give me something to read, something to lean on. I've got little reviews of them up on my Mother In Law Training page. They don't give me any solutions to this, but I am learning a lot about being a Mother in Law from them. Which of course is all my training page is about ... me... being trained as a mother in law through the things I do...and the things I read. (I'm the first in my little group to be a mother in law.. lucky me...)

It did sneak up on me, this MIL stuff...it was a piece of cake, I really was unaware of the power and danger that can be there until this happened...because of this mishap with my DIL, suddenly I woke up and realized I'm a MIL...