I'm having too much fun trying to find some humor in this MIL-ing. If given my choice, I'd hand in my resignation and just be Nana or a friend of the family -- which might be more than I'm currently being offered.

Some of the keys to being a "good" MIL I think have to do with knowing when to keep your mouth shut, which is most of the time.


Mother in Law Christmas Card by Nanas_Alley



We need lives and interests of our own, and to let our Children Go.

With my youngest now 18, but still in high school -- I still am practicing this. It's still painful and difficult and joyful to watch him grow up and go out on his own. We visited his girlfriend on her college campus and I had to remind myself then that it wasn't really "we" visiting her.

It was "me" taking him there to visit her. If he could have driven himself, my company wouldn't have been needed (we were on the way back to his boarding school -- so my transportation was necessary).

The important thing for me to hold onto is that when the two of them walked off alone, leaving me to wander around by myself, it was not a case of me being "left out". It wasn't the beginning of some vicious plot by "her" to take him away from me. From the readings of some other MIL's, and from my own feelings, I realize we often feel this way. But it just isn't so.

They are a young couple -- and my company isn't needed. This is true of the young couple setting up a family of their own. This is the second bit of wisdom from wise MIL's -- don't take it personally, which flows right into the third bit -- have a life of your own!

Talkin' to myself

I'm talkin' to myself. Which is fine, I don't usually take the time to write in a journal and when I do, I have entries written in different places - and I certainly don't have a journal focusing on one topic. It had been my hope to get conversation going with other MIL's but from what I see, most of that's happening in other places. That's fine, I can scribble thoughts to myself.

Ha, my dark thoughts today. On a forum a DIL wrote in response to something I'd said that "he is not the man you sleep next to at night," and "he is not the man you have to raise a child with." Now, of course this is taken a bit out of context -- she was trying to make the point that I don't know what's going on with them but the choice of the wording made me cringe.

When speaking to a man's mother, I think I would go in a different direction. Like, I'd say, "you don't understand what goes on behind closed doors," or words to that effect. If talking to "another woman", one who seemed to think she could replace the wife, I might let her know she wasn't in the wife's position, and I would use those words, to let her know she was not competition because she was not the one who slept in the same bed with him or was raising children with him.

So, I start to wonder -- on some unconscious level, do DIL's see MIL's as "competition" in that way? What Oedipal forces are at work here?

We are not competition. We have different roles in the man in question's life. A husband's love for his mother is not competition -- he's not cheating on the wife if he spends time with his mother. And yet, when he forsakes all others, that doesn't mean he abandons his parents.

I'm the mother, you are the wife. I don't want to sleep with him, that's not what this is about. Regardless of what Freudian undertones there are to any relationship, IMHO no woman in her right mind would want to sleep with her son. Yeee gads. Nor do I want to raise his children. I already raised him, thank you very much. Perhaps this is why some DIL's seem to go haywire, not wanting their husband's mother around her own grandchildren. Somewhere there lurks a subconscious fear that there is a competitor in the midst. In that case, I would have to suggest therapy would be helpful.

So, here's what I would like to clarify to the DIL's.

I am still his mother, though he's no longer a child and he is now your husband.
That doesn't mean I'm giving him up, or that you are taking him away.
We can both love him - you as the wife, me as the mother.
You did not love him like I do and never can because I'm the mother.
I cannot love him like you do because you're the wife.
If that doesn't make the point, let me add a few more things.

You did not birth him.
You did not raise him.
I have loved him while he was bald and his pants were full of pee and poop. If you're lucky, your day will come.
I have loved him even when he threw up on me, even when he threw himself on the floor and screamed "I don't wuv you!", even when he slammed his door and said, "None of your business!"
I loved him before he was born, I loved him the second I saw him, I learned what unconditional love meant from him.
And now I get to love him unconditionally, without having to nag him about picking up his room, getting up on time, or taking out the trash. You can do all that now.
I will never believe he's cheating on me. Even if I did, I'd never divorce him.
He and I are truly "til death do we part."

So, nope, I cannot love him like you do, you're the wife.