Not On My Own Blog I Don’t

History has proven over and over again that many women don’t get along swimmingly with their mothers-in-law. It might be moreso with women who marry an only child who is the prodigal son.  I can only surmise that it stems from time and affection once being bestowed on the mother being transferred to the life partner and that must cause extreme angst on the part of the now lonely mother.

I have been boggled over and again how a woman can go from being the nurturing mother of children, to the overbearing, hideous beast known as the Mother-In-Law.   It’s even more peculiar how that woman who has hated her own mother-in-law since the day she set eyes on her nigh on 40 years ago, and forced her own husband to sever all but the most basic ties to his family, could then turn around and become such an unbearable mother-in-law herself.

But then again, if one’s personality has always been an unbearable, controlling narcissist, I suppose the family surrounding her has just become accustomed to her behavior and the new partner/wife just stumbles into the snake’s nest of the family dichotomy.

Or maybe that’s just how it happened in my case.

My mother-in-law had earned herself the nickname of *Miss Abrasive* by her friends and family, two decades before I even met her son.  Nevertheless, I have spent the past 14+ years being blamed for the ongoing conflict between she and I.  I have been accused of being “hateful”, “relishing being pissed off” at my MIL and a multitude of other adjectives that I refuse to claim.

My MIL has no good friends.  Her “best friends” live a state away and see her 3 times a year.  Even they haven’t spoken to her in 10 months.  She has a way of driving people away with her I Am Always Right demeanor.

And yet, I am forever at the defense for being “unable to get along”.  I have spent thousands of dollars on therapy trying to rewire my brain to stop being so “hateful” toward her.  Countless dollars and countless hours later, I am confident that I am not the culprit, and yet am no better off, since I still am unable to get along with her.

I am a relatively easy-going person.  I can have a disagreement that involves honest and open discussion and my relationships move forward.  All relationships need communications for growth.

I didn’t start out not liking my MIL.  The controlling, overbearing, intrusive behavior was clear before I was engaged to her son, but the second the engagement ring was firmly planted on my hand (which I later learned she had chosen!), she became unbearable.  She immediately felt entitled to control my life.  Her sense of entitlement is suffocating.  Telling her ‘no’ is not heard.  You can tell her ‘no’ a dozen times, and she’ll still insist you do as she wants.  My wedding was eventually cancelled 4 months prior to the event, the deposits returned and an ultimatum given to my future husband:  We elope to a far off island, or there is no marriage.  His mother was extremely upset  when my future husband broke the news to his parents that there would be no Dog and Pony Show at my expense, but she insisted she go with us to elope.  I laughed in his face when he told me that.  It equated to her wanting to be on our honeymoon.    If she had kept her mouth shut and her nose out of my wedding planning (which was to be in summer, and she insisted I wear the gown she wore at her December 21st winter wedding), she would have been at her son’s wedding.   She should have learned then that she shouldn’t bully.

My mother-in-law does not allow open discussion of anything that might involve criticism of her or her behavior. Even if you have what you think is an open and honest discussion with her, months (and years!) later I will learn that she had her husband reprimand their son (my husband), who had refused to bring home the reprimand to me because MIL had been upset by the discussion.  Over and over.

And yet she is entitled to insult me at every turn.   Entitled to interject her opinions and ideals, insist I raise my children with a certain religion–a religion she doesn’t even believe in.

At one point I told my husband to stop telling me that she had called upset and ranting at him, that her upsettedness had nothing to do with me and that if he wanted to continue allowing her to bully him, that was fine, but I wanted no part in it.

My husband is afraid of his mother.  There is an actual psychological analysis called Child of Narcissist, that he displays every characteristic of.

Everybody is required to keep her happy at all cost.   Any discussion of a transgression against somebody else by her, becomes a crying fit by her, and the discussion turns into how that person has now upset her!  The audacity of somebody to stand up to her!

I used to naively believe that she wasn’t smart enough to be manipulative.  I was so wrong.  I have noted over the years how she acts in the presence of her son versus how she treats me when he isn’t looking.  He has never really witnessed her true evilness towards me, and it’s always a fight to get him to believe my side or to believe that she meant anything negative with her words.

I think it’s a nod toward my grace in the fact that after 14 years, I haven’t completely severed ties to this hideous woman. Instead, I sulk for a week or two, can’t sleep for a  month, then get over it and move forward with an open heart, allowing her into my life– where she immediately sucker punches me in the gut.  Again.  And again.

But the time is coming.  She is now fucking with my children.  She’s not mean to my kids. NO.  My kids are her grandchildren. She owns them, you see.  She manipulates them with gifts.  Big, sparkly, pretty, inappropriate gifts.  She has bought my children’s love and manipulates them with things.   She now buys my children the things I was going to get them for their birthday or Christmas… but she buys it for them because it’s Tuesday.   She’ll do this for a while… but I see the writing on the wall.  I see how she’ll use these gifts as a way to control them and control their little emotions.

The time is coming.

I’m gathering my power.

I am the teacher, not the student.

I am proving to be a bigger bitch than this woman has ever seen the likes of.

Watch out *Miss Abrasive*… nobody messes with Mama’s Babies.

My husband and I have known each other since college in the mid-90s. We have been married ten years.

I apologize in advance for the random thoughts I’ve put together. I’m trying to consolidate 14 years of rage into a single stream of consciousness.
~~~~~~~~

I grew up working from the age of 8. I’ve worked hard my whole life. It wasn’t an option for poor people to not work hard. In college, I often worked 2 jobs in addition to putting myself through school, paying rent and maintaining good grades. I incurred student loans that I worked extremely hard to pay off when I was 27. When I gave birth to my first child at the age of 31, I had 23 years work experience behind me. I was exhausted. When my job was liquidated when my newborn daughter was 5 weeks old, I chose not to apply for the new position (60+ hours a week) that was offered. I chose, instead, to allow somebody else to worry about the bills…for once.

My husband grew up the only child in a family of wealth. My MIL likes to pretend that the early years of her marriage were “poor”. I don’t see “poor” as having parents with millions of dollars. My MIL never worried that her mortgage wouldn’t get paid. Never worried that her child would go hungry. I’m sure it might have been tight, considering that her parents’ money was not hers, but she has held countless shares of stock in the “family company” that she made quarterly dividends from (the company is no longer owned by the family, but each family member holds tens of thousands of shares of stock). At one point when my daughter (now 5) was a baby, my MIL told the story of how in 1972, her husband (a banker) only brought home $524 every two weeks and that covered their expenses and a few extra dollars for a few necessities. I laughed in her face because at that time in 2004, my husband made almost exactly that same amount every 2 weeks and our cost of living was 5 times what theirs was in 1972.
My husband’s college was paid for by his parents. In addition to them paying for his college, and providing him with rent-free living and several vehicles he didn’t pay for or insure, they also kept him stocked in beer. For the last 2 years of college, he did work weekends for a small company that was associated with his career path and he hoped it would help advance his “career” (in the event he decided to get off his butt and pursue it!).

2 years after graduation from college, at the age of 25, still living with his parents, he was still working his part-time weekend gig for that small company. He was still spending his weeks trekking off on hunting and fishing trips, or big family trips with his parents; still spending his money blindly and not saving any. He grew up with the notion that any money he made was disposable income. The only reason he found new employment was because in 1997 that company relocated out of state.

From the time that I had been dating him for a few months, his parents started inviting me to join them on their vacations and get-aways (the 3 of them continued to vacation together until I put a stop to it when our daughter was 2 or 3). It was during these little trips (the few that I was able to go on, since I worked full time) that it was drilled into my head, by his mother, that anybody who gets greedy and tries to “get at” the money before the generation before them has died and left the money behind… will be cut out of the will or severely punished for their greed.

Grooming of the potential future daughter-in-law. Nice.

The sad part is that my husband believes he lives his life without ever considering “the money”. He believes he just lives his life and someday it’ll be an issue, but not today.

I call bullshit.

My husband has zero work ethic or career drive. ZERO. That tells me that in the back of that giant head of his is the notion that no matter how he underachieves, “the money” will be there to save him.

He spent his twenties and early thirties pissing away his youth NOT getting where he needed to be in his career. Instead of interviewing for jobs in his career path, he was concerned that any job he might get would “interfere” with the upcoming hunting, fishing and camping seasons, followed by holiday season travel plans he had with his family.

He made a lifestyle out of allowing others to foot his financial bill.

To my utter shock, this continued after we were married.

The first 5 years of our marriage, I supported him and our home by a 2/3 ratio with my well paying job. Obviously, had I realized his lack of motivation and put the pieces together earlier, we never would have gotten married. He has always maintained that he had a career plan, and that it takes years to acquire certificates, hours of experience, etc to forge ahead. I believed he was working toward that plan.

In December 2003, when our daughter was 2 months old and I was recently unemployed, my husband landed a job in his field. He turned 32 the day he left for training. His taxable income the first year: $8256. His income increased roughly $5000 per year after that. We blew through my savings by my daughter’s first birthday. Who do you suppose has supported this family and our home all this time?

His mother has supported us.

It turns me inside out.

The annual “gifting” of the small portions of inheritance money comes at Christmas with a huge display and “presentation” where we are required to get all teary-eyed and grateful with hand-over-heart and mouthed “thank you”s, and there are so many strings and innuendo, and CONTROL that it strangles me and suffocates me to the point of wanting to run away screaming.

At one point when my daughter was a toddler, I was telling my MIL that my daughter had gotten into my bathroom and had smeared my $21 bottle of face cream all over the place. My MIL immediately said “TWENTY ONE DOLLAR BOTTLE OF FACE CREAM?” That year, we got half as much money. I assume she thought if I could afford a $21 bottle of face cream, I didn’t need her money.

I learned my lesson: Never speak to my MIL.

So you ask why don’t I get a job and stop all this? I have, too. Mostly because in my field, it requires long hours, 50 or more hours a week I’d be away from home. I’ve done the research and found that in my area, quality childcare costs $1000 per month, per child. I’d have to make $2000 a month, just to pay for my children to be “warehoused” while I’m away. My husband is away from home for his job, for days on end. I cannot imagine what my kids would think if they only saw Mommy from 5-6 am and from 6:30-7:30pm. And then saw Daddy that 1 day a week he’s home. At that point, why did I have children?

I continue to let my MIL support us because she raised a son who has no drive in life. She supported him when he wanted to work weekends and not get a real job because it would interfere with his play time, even at the age of 25 or 26. She raised him to be the way he is, she can support his family when he can’t.

What is grating me is that at the age of 37, during layoffs last year, my husband didn’t have the seniority to keep his job. Instead, he’s back at a position and pay scale along side 27 year-olds. My MIL keeps saying “He didn’t deserve losing his job. This just isn’t fair.”

I disagree.

The people who got to keep their jobs are the people who spent their twenties and early thirties working hard, EARNING seniority. EARNING their position.

All those hunting and fishing trips with his father really paid off, didn’t they?

If one more person says to me “Oh, you’re so lucky that your husband can support you so you don’t have to work like the rest of us!” I’ll scream. He doesn’t deserve to get credit for something that monumental.

I feel an extreme amount of guilt for being ungrateful for the opportunity my in-laws are granting me. It’s been thrown in my face numerous times that I’m nothing but ungrateful and if I don’t keep my mouth shut, I’ll get us “cut off”.

So I leave my ungrateful rant to the anonymity and facelessness of the internet.

Please don’t judge me harshly. There is nothing you can judge me about that I haven’t already done to myself.