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.