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Why do our sons "obey" princess wives?!

Started by justanoldgrandma, August 18, 2011, 09:17:00 PM

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Pen

Thanks Pam, it's an interesting article. I'm about up to here with being empathetic, LOL.
Respect ... is appreciation of the separateness of the other person, of the ways in which he or she is unique.
-- Annie Gottlieb

Rose799

Quote from: pam1 on August 19, 2011, 03:53:24 PM
Thanks, Rose :)  Yes, she was diagnosed with BPD and depression.  I try to think she doesn't know any better but there are large parts of me that really do think she knows what she is doing is wrong, otherwise she wouldn't lie when she was caught.  Or she'd be more willing to say these things to me or DH directly rather than saying them to the other or other people entirely.  For all her issues, it has never been clear that she doesn't know what she is doing, she is very good at manipulation.

I think there might be an element that she doesn't know the reaction she is getting now.  Up until recently she as able to get away with this kind of stuff, people will drop it b/c it was too much effort in talking to her.  DH and I haven't recently and I think she just doesn't realize that neither of us are in the mood or right frame of mind to put up with this stuff.

As the commercials relay, depression hurts everyone.  That's a tough one in itself, Pam.  When you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel, it's so easy to blame your lot on others.  "If only..."  Even so, it doesn't make life any easier for you & dh either.  I'm so sorry, Pam. 

Nana

Smiles...I love your post.....You are very honest with your feelings and like the way you feel....As Belle.says....... We (parents) have to accept not being #1 in our son/daughter's live anymore....we have to step back and let them  be.  Yet, we as parents also have the right to have a happy-healthy life. 

Belle...I loved to hear the dil's perspective....because we are probably old (I am 60) but still have a lot to learn.  I am now having a good relationship with dil but I had to worked very hard because she married my son with an anticipating plan of not letting us get close (thinking that we would be nosey, intrusive, controlling, etc) ...didnt give us a chance...... It took time for her to see that we were not that kind of people... She was not a princess lol...but she was very mean to my family (specially me).   My son ... told me that when she was mean...they would then fight at home.....and that he did not visit dil's parents anymore.....to get even with her.  She resented it because my son loved his mil and fil a lot..... and now he had distanced himself from her foo.
t was the way, he was honoring his parents (us).
   
Thinks are real good now.... But I had to step back.. call it a day.. and find my peace and balance.....until then.....she realized that we had done nothing wrong....on the contrary we were there to help....without conditions, interference, opinions,  NADA.

iT IS UP to us and/or our sons to accept this treatment.  Men owe loyalty to their spouse....but they can still speak....if a love one is being unfairly treated.    I think
Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove:
Shakespeare

Pooh

Smiles, you handled everything great!  You even recognized what they didn't do well and what you didn't do well without blame.  That's great and I'm glad you are already prepared to apologize for something you said that had good intentions, but you recognize it wasn't something you should have said.  We are human.  I think one of the hardest things for me to get my thick brain through sometimes is the feelings I have that if DS/DIL decided to mend the relationship and move on, would they truly recognize that I am human and although I can learn, there would be something I was going to say something that they didn't like or agree with in the future.  It's going to happen.  It's not anyone's fault, we are human.  Would we be right back here? Or would they have learned that things get said by everyone.  I've called my BFF a choice name or two when she's made a comment.  I don't get mad, I just kind of go, "Seriously, did you just tell me that I am...."  and we laugh and go on.  I think it takes a big recognition on both sides that people are not perfect.  You did great!

Pam, I have no doubt you have done your best.  Does your MIL acknowledge she has BPD?  I'm asking because if she doesn't, then she probably doesn't believe she is that way.  She may know what she is saying or doing but because she will not acknowledge that she had an issue, doesn't know why she does it or even think she's doing it.  I think many of our problems come back to "self-awareness".  I know I'm going to be a crabby butt this next two weeks because of my medicine.  I know it, acknowledge it and am aware of it.  Doesn't mean I will not slip up, but by having that awareness it will make me do better because I will try harder to recognize that I'm in a foul mood and not take it out on anyone.  I've already apologized to my DH, my co-workers and here because I KNOW what's going to happen and am asking for patience.  That makes it so much easier for people to cut me some slack if I do something because they know that I know.  I know your MIL is a pill (to say the least) and you have tried.  I think I said the same thing the other day.  I think much of our relationship problems are like dealing with an alcoholic that refuses to see they have a problem.  We will always have a problem with them until they come out of denial and start helping themselves first.
We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us. -
Joseph Campbell

Pen

Quote from: Nana on August 20, 2011, 02:36:38 AM
Smiles...I love your post.....You are very honest with your feelings and like the way you feel....As Belle.says....... We (parents) have to accept not being #1 in our son/daughter's live anymore....we have to step back and let them  be.  Yet, we as parents also have the right to have a happy-healthy life. 

Belle...I loved to hear the dil's perspective....because we are probably old (I am 60) but still have a lot to learn.  I am now having a good relationship with dil but I had to worked very hard because she married my son with an anticipating plan of not letting us get close (thinking that we would be nosey, intrusive, controlling, etc) ...didnt give us a chance...... It took time for her to see that we were not that kind of people... She was not a princess lol...but she was very mean to my family (specially me).   My son ... told me that when she was mean...they would then fight at home.....and that he did not visit dil's parents anymore.....to get even with her.  She resented it because my son loved his mil and fil a lot..... and now he had distanced himself from her foo.
t was the way, he was honoring his parents (us).
   
Thinks are real good now.... But I had to step back.. call it a day.. and find my peace and balance.....until then.....she realized that we had done nothing wrong....on the contrary we were there to help....without conditions, interference, opinions,  NADA.

iT IS UP to us and/or our sons to accept this treatment.  Men owe loyalty to their spouse....but they can still speak....if a love one is being unfairly treated.    I think

Good post, Nana!
Respect ... is appreciation of the separateness of the other person, of the ways in which he or she is unique.
-- Annie Gottlieb

Smilesback@u

Quote from: Nana on August 20, 2011, 02:36:38 AM
Smiles...I love your post.....You are very honest with your feelings and like the way you feel....As Belle.says....... We (parents) have to accept not being #1 in our son/daughter's live anymore....we have to step back and let them  be.  Yet, we as parents also have the right to have a happy-healthy life. 

Belle...I loved to hear the dil's perspective....because we are probably old (I am 60) but still have a lot to learn.  I am now having a good relationship with dil but I had to worked very hard because she married my son with an anticipating plan of not letting us get close (thinking that we would be nosey, intrusive, controlling, etc) ...didnt give us a chance...... It took time for her to see that we were not that kind of people... She was not a princess lol...but she was very mean to my family (specially me).   My son ... told me that when she was mean...they would then fight at home.....and that he did not visit dil's parents anymore.....to get even with her.  She resented it because my son loved his mil and fil a lot..... and now he had distanced himself from her foo.
t was the way, he was honoring his parents (us).
   
Thinks are real good now.... But I had to step back.. call it a day.. and find my peace and balance.....until then.....she realized that we had done nothing wrong....on the contrary we were there to help....without conditions, interference, opinions,  NADA.

iT IS UP to us and/or our sons to accept this treatment.  Men owe loyalty to their spouse....but they can still speak....if a love one is being unfairly treated.    I think
Step back and let them be - and I believe in second chances too, cuz i have given unsolicited opinions and interfered some and that doesn't help DIL/son -- but cause some problems.  Nothing they can't deal with thought.  Thanks Nana for your positive outlook and experience. 

Also, I can really relate to your feeling that DIL is pushing us aside and the meanness AND the possible consequences between Son and DIL.  Little things get blown up out of proportion by me I suspect (just one example is I noticed that big wall photos of her family, while little photos on lower shelf of son's - kinda petty on my part).  Have you any idea how your DIL acts with her own family?  I ask you because sometimes we get a glimmer that DIL is bossy with her own family - with the consequence being they don't visit much (of course, money is a huge issue for them).  My son told me once that he just wanted me to know that her family decides when they will babysit too.  I pay attention to everything and later connect the dots.  Any mental problems she has are well understood by her family, and longstanding -- and they love her anyways.  So now, she is part of my family, and I am learning to understand her problems -- and well, they definitely are longstanding 10 years running, but learning to honor her as she is my son's wife and wish him and her well.  My son has his own problems that are also well understood by us, and he is no prince charming either -- he has his bossiness, strong minded, wilfulness side to deal with too.  In the end, I didn't cause any of their problems, can't cure it, and can't control it.  (Favorite Al-Anon saying).  But I certainly can contribute to the problem.  So I am responsible to check myself, my intentions, which are not pure believe me - I have a mean side like the next person to rein in.      Thanks for caring,

Nana

Dear Smiles

I also believe in second chances....I have had a few of them during my lifetimes and I am grateful for that.  Dil, son and also ourselves can change..... I hate to hear...I am this way and cant change....we all can change when we have to change....when not changing bring uneasiness and problems into our lives.

I relate also to your post when you said about dil's family pictures in their wall,,,it happened to me too.  I would feel awful when I saw many pictures of her family in her walls and a small picture, if any, of us.  I felt I was ridiculous for feeling this way because its a small issue, but it truly hurt me.   Sometimes small things in marriage/relationships all put together amount to something big. 

My dil is sometimes rude with her own mother.....but always include her in everything.  Her mother takes it all, or fights back but still they are very close.  Dil's mother told me once that when I was having problems with her daughter...because she was mean and disrespectful to me, she told her daughter "Remember you also have a son" (my gs) and this could happen to you too when your son grows up.  So even dil's mother even acknowledge that her daughter was treating us poorly. 

Now that things are good between all of us, dil is getting much more from us -- more baby-sitting and financial help when they need it.  Like Pen said....it is true that also with money "dancing the dog"...even if dil didnt seem to care when she was rejecting us.  Now she is enjoying all this help, as well as my son. 
Sometimes I wonder, would it be the same if we didnt have anything to offer them...gues I'll never know lol.  But I always gtive the benefit of a doubt. 

Any how, I loved this post because there are many perspectives and or opinions and we learn more reading about different ways of seeing things that sometimes we do not consider.


Thanks for being here.

Love
Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove:
Shakespeare

Smilesback@u

Thank you Pooh for everything.  And the money is an issue...it can be the silent partner/ negotiator.  I used to give DIL/son a lot when they were struggling through college, and then with the babies...but with the bad treatment/ feelings I had, I stopped.  Now I give personal gifts, no money.  We will put aside money for college educations.  We don't announce that we won't give them money, but I am sure they wonder wha' happened?  Why no more gravy train?  I say - good, for them to think they fell out of favor and maybe should check themselves.  Anyways, we live and learn to be and let be.  love back ;)

Belle

I've thought a lot about this thread over the past few days.  The talk of "unequal" treatment of the FOOs really hit home for me, its another one of my MIL's thousand complaints.  And she is right, I will give her that.  She isn't treated equally. 

LOL - its funny that the issue of "smaller portraits" came up, because that was one of the very first of my MIL's snide and uneccessary comments.  DH and I had just moved in together (this was years ago), and we barely had furniture to sit on.  But we combined our two apartments into our home.  One of my most valued possessions is a 16x20 family wall portrait we had made with my grandmother before she passed away.  That, some family photo albums, and an antique tea set were all I took from her house before the estate sale.  We hung it in the hallway, along with numerous other pictures to form "the family wall."

The only picture hanging in the hallway of his family are an 8x10 of DH and his sisters (an OLD picture), some 5x7's of his nieces & nephews, and a 4x6 snapshot of his mom & dad taken years ago before DH was even born.  It was special to DH, still is.  We didn't have any other pictures of MIL or FIL to hang up, but that was THE first comment out of MIL's mouth when she walked down the hallway to the restroom:  "Why doesn't ooooooooour family get a big wall portrait?  (huff, puff) We are just as important (hand on hip, more huff puff)!!!" 

It caught me so off-guard, the only thing I could muster up was "well, did you provide one???  I'll hang it as soon as you send it down."

To this day, I've never received even one picture/portrait of them.  We haven't had contact with them in a very long time, but DH still kept their snapshot on the wall.

QuietStorm

My MIL is always complaining about things being uneven.  I don't know if I can ever make things even.  Thing I believe should be fair but even is another story.  If my family provides us with more love and support we spend more time with them.

One big thing MIL complained about was gift giving being even.  I've always done my best to make gifts fair for everyone and not to over gift to one family or the other but MIL wants everything to be exactly the same or the same dollar amount or whatever...

I think that families have to understand that everything won't always be exactly the same between the two families because you have to take into account how people are being treated, the amount of time spent, the distance to travel etc.

Scoop

The thing *I* don't understand is all of this money flowing down to "the kids".  I will admit that my parents supported me when I was in University, but I was careful to not ask for "too much".  My Dad used to ask to 'borrow' money, just to find out how much I had in my wallet, and then he would grumble when I didn't even have 5$ to "lend" him, as he handed over a $20.

Once I moved out and got a job, my parents didn't give me any money.  I was on my own.  They helped me of course, but not in paying bills or handing over cash.  It was more that I didn't have a car and they would drive me to get a load of groceries or whatever.

My parents would give my brother 'gas money' whenever they came home to visit, but it's because they didn't want them to NOT come, because money was tight.  My Mom was so worried about her DS, DIL & DGD that she would always ask if they needed money, one time, when my Mom asked what they were up to that day, my DB answered that he had taken the baby downtown to do some begging.  Well, that stopped the money offers, because they were handling it just fine.

Neither my DH nor my SIL ever got money from their parents (after they were out of the house).  Again, help was offered in terms of hand-me-downs or sweat-equity at our house, but not actual outlays of cash.

Could it be generational already?  My SIL is in her mid-30's, so it would seem that she would be lumped in with these "kids" but really, who are these people who expect their parents to 'keep' them into their adulthood?

AND even then, even THEN, I am totally working hard to "pay it back" to my Mom, for all the money she HAS put out for me/us.  And because she's stubborn, I've had to be sneaky!  I actually had to tell her not to worry about an "accounting" between us, that she in fact doesn't owe us any money, because she's always been generous, and now it's our turn to be generous with her.

Pooh

I don't get it either Scoop.  Mine were allowed to live at home as long as they attended college and I would pay basic utilites, food, house payment.  Anything else they wanted as far as "fun money" required a job.  Two choices, attend school or get a job and get out on your own.  Youngest didn't and worked, but after about a year of him not seeming to interested in moving out, it became "It's time for you to do something with your life.  I don't care what you decided to make your goal.  If your goal is to be the Manager at McDonalds, then get on it, but you need to move forward."  He joined the military!  Lol.  Works for me.

Belle and Quietstorm, I agree that I don't think you can ever keep things even in families.  It's unrealistic and makes sense that the family you are closer to would have more pictures or easier to shop for.  I think as an MIL my problem would be when pictures were provided and you walked in and only the DILs family was displayed.  When I was on my DILs FB, she removed all the pictures that had any of my family in there from her wedding shots, only putting those that had her family on there.  When I remarried, and she was in our wedding, along with my OS, YS and SD, I tagged her with all the photos that she was in.  She removed them.  In that case, a missing picture is worth a thousand words!
We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us. -
Joseph Campbell

Belle

Wouldn't it be wonderful if everyone "got" that?

I don't know, my FOO has its issues too.  We have family "snits."  There's always someone who's not doing what they should be doing, and so on.  But at the end of the day, we love one another, and its unconditional.  That doesn't mean we let one another treat us badly, we just don't treat eachother that way.  If my mom were to say something out of line (it happens), she apologizes immediately...otherwise she feels horrible.  I'm like that too.

But DH's FOO....wow.  Constant family drama.  One person's peril is family business, if MIL is mad, then SIL will call you to tell you about it, and nothing is sacred.  And then you have those "oh-I'm-the-PEACE-maker" people in his family that put themselves in the middle, and all they do is keep the pot stirred.  Someone is always stabbing someone in the back, and thre is NO neutral territory in those situations...you MUST pick a side and if you pick the wrong one, you are ousted for at least 5-10 years.  Its too much for me to deal with.  DH told me from the very beginning, even before I met his parents, how his family is and that I didn't have to participate.  We live far enough away that we don't have to.  DH moved away from all that madness before he ever met me. 

But that drama, the constant whirlwind of daytime soap opera-like madness is why certain members of his FOO don't get equal treatment.  They're not  loving and supportive of us, our marriage, or our children.  Shoot, they're hardly even civil, some of them are barely tolerable for 10 minutes.  Even when we were on "civil" terms, his mother hardly ever called, asked about the children, anything.  She'd call only if she needed a place to crash for a few days on her way to somewhere else, or she'd write a nasty letter to us when she was feeling slighted.  And then at Christmas she'd want us there, pronto, because that was hhhhhhhher holiday tradition.  Psssssht, yeah right! 

Pooh

Wouldn't it be nice if everyone got that?  All families have tiffs and say things wrong sometimes.  Everybody's human and it's easy to say, "I'm sorry."
We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us. -
Joseph Campbell

pam1

Scoop, I have similar thoughts.  My background was similar, my parents helped me out some with college but most of it was paid through the military.  Other than that, there was no real need for their monetary help.  I don't understand this epidemic of young adults and (haha, ok adults in their 30's, is that still considered young?) needing parental money support. 

I didn't realize until this year that DHs parents were supporting two of his sisters b/c they don't live within their means and apparently MIL doesn't feel they should have to.  To me, that's entitlement the parents taught them.  They will probably never fully support themselves but they are also paying for it, heavily.  They don't do anything without their parents and what MIL says, you better believe it's gonna go.  Ick, no amount of money could keep me in that but since it works for them, who am I to say anything? lol
People throw rocks at things that shine - Taylor Swift