Family Matters
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Husband having mom problems
My husband is extremely angry with his mother. When he was 16, she moved 600 miles away to be with the man she cheated on his father with. He did not know about it in advance. She moved back last year and has been bugging us constantly to go see her. She has never apologized for abandoning him and his brother, rather she came back and wanted everything to be as though she never left. He refuses to pick up the phone when she calls and he won't respond to her texts. He won't be around that side of the family by himself because he feels so uncomfortable. All of this leaves me to be the go between. The second she hears his voicemail, she hangs up and calls me. I don't mind her calling me or wanting to talk to me, but I don't like him being so evasive of her. When she asks me if we want to go over for dinner I feel as though I have to say yes or else she will get upset and blame me. I know she blames me for the lack of visiting when it's really her son who doesn't want to see her. He broke down a few days ago and told me that if he talks to her again it's going to be to tell her never to contact him again. I want to support him and encourage him but I feel he needs to give her a chance to at least try to redeem herself. I don't think she feels she did anything wrong and I don't think she will feel sorry, but I still think she deserves to know that he is angry with her. I don't want to tell him what to do, but I also know that if he continues to be passive, it will affect our relationship more than it already has. I feel a good bit of resentment towards him sometimes because I feel like I am being put in a very difficult position.
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Re: Husband having mom problems
What he really needs is some sort of closure for what's happened with her and perhaps speak to a therapist about the issue. This isn't good for him; this will only eat him up inside)
And you got in the middle of all of this. You shouldn't be in the middle of this and he shouldn't be getting you embroiled in what's happening. It is not fair to you.
If he doesn't want to speak to her anymore, this will have to be his decision. She should get the message and cease contact with him. All he needs to say is "Mom, your calls and contact are no longer welcome here. You know how I feel about what happened with you and Dad. I am sorry" and leave it at that.
You don't have to be the go-between. You really don't.
Your husband is obviously very hurt, and you pushing him to contact his mother isn't going to do any good. I think you need to support him on this.
NO, IT DOES NOT.
You are *choosing* to take her calls. You are *choosing* to feel that you need to have dinner with her. You are *choosing* to feel that him making an adult decision is affecting your relationship in a negative way.
Stop all of this right now. Support your H and his right to not speak to someone that abandoned him. Stop taking her calls, block her phone number, email address, etc.
She left her son and you care about what SHE thinks? More so than how your spouse feels?
And, don't give me this "oh she left years ago and I just realized that he was upset 2 days ago because it never came up before in conversation". Not buying it.
Never said I agreed with what she did. You don't have to believe me, he never told me he was this upset. All this time, he has appeared indifferent. Many people deal with these things in different ways, he happens to suppress them for a long time. Even if I had known how he felt beforehand what does this have to do with anything? I get the feeling you're trying to pick a fight here and that's not why I came here. I came for peaceful, helpful advice, not rudeness.
Then he is out of luck until he verbally informs her -- and calmly and politely -- that she is not to contact him anymore.
And in the interim, don't you get the phone, answer her snail mail nor reply to any of her other communiques. And you tell him you will not.
If you keep this up, you're indulging in the theatricals. Methinks you like it.
I would follow your husband's lead on this and do what he says. IT is his mother afterall.
I also wouldn't worry about what she thinks or says about you. She sounds like a horrible person.
The advice YOU DID get was to MYOB. Let him deal with his mother...or ignore her if it is HIS choice. Stop answering her calls and stop trying to get your H to do something he doesnt want to do.
Why do you give a flying fucck what she thinks of you?
Your husband said he wants nothing to do with her. He does not want a relationship with her. YOU NEED TO RESPECT HIS WISHES.
How would you feel if a family member did something awful to you, then showed up in your life years later and expected you to just forgive and forget? If you wanted to never see or speak to them again, how would you feel if your husband was taking their calls and urging you to reconcile with them? I know I would be extremely angry and hurt by my husband if he didn't just butt out and respect my wishes. That's a pretty big deal in my book.
You need to put your husband first in this situation. Right now you are more worried with his mother's feelings than his. THAT is what will affect your relationship with him, not the question of whether he's going to speak to his mother again or not. It absolutely does not matter what you think about his relationship with his mother, or whether she did anything wrong, or whether she deserves a second chance. It is NOT YOUR DECISION. Your job here is to support your husband and follow his wishes ... and if his wish is not to speak to her again, then you need to stop taking her calls and stop worrying about "offending" her.
You're 100% wrong for getting involved in this and acting like a go-between, and you are 100% wrong for putting this woman ahead of your husband. Fix it by LISTENING to him and not meddling in their business.
]You are not his counselor or his conscience - stop pretending that you are.
With that, I'm officially done taking her calls. Trust me, I disliked doing it, but I felt I had no other choice. That's over now. Thanks
Has he asked you to take her calls, answer her emails?
Why do you care what she thinks? I could understand wanting her to like you if they had a good relationship, but since he wants nothing to do with her, why does her opinion matter to you?
I'm glad this is starting to sink in with you.
I didn't know he didn't want contact with her up until two days ago. Before that, he seemed indifferent to her. I figured that if he hated her that much, he wouldn't have danced with her at our wedding two months ago, amongst other things. As to why I care about what she thinks? I guess I just wanted her to like me.
He needs to decide whether she stays or goes and decide pretty quickly.
Well I can certainly see why you are getting conflicting messages from him ( unless you pushed him into doing the wedding dance); however, he seems to have made up his mind now about not seeing her anymore. Again, that is his right and I wouldn't blame him. Like PP said, he is your husband and his feelings on htis matter are more important than hers.
I also understand wanting her to like you , but again she is a bad person who has to deal with the consequences of her bad decision. I used to be terrified of the thought of someone not liking me but the older I got the better I became accustomed to the idea. Now I am proud of the fact that horrible people don't like me. I wouldn't want them too.
OK, then, I can understand the mixed messages if he spoke to her at your wedding two months ago.
Still, stop acting as the go-between. If she calls, let it go to voicemail and let your H figure out what to do. Let him handle it.
With the dance, I told him that it was entirely up to him, as I refused to dance with my father bc he's an assshole. I thought that after our wedding when he consented to the dance, that he was going to stop being so indifferent. I worry about stupid things and really shouldn't let it get in the way of the important stuff. She really isn't a good person and she's been disrespectful to me quite a few times. Agh my feelings make no sense.
Yeah sweetie, just let her go. She made her bed and now she has to lie in it. Focus on you and your husband and making a happy family together. Just because she ( and your father) have a genetic link with you guys, that doesn't mean they get the honor and priviledge of being in your lives. Just let them go.
Oh, the irony.
So, if your H fielded calls from your dad, accepted dinner invitations and put his feelings above yours, how would you feel about that?
I don't know why you're pursuing this so much. Like I have said at least three times, I didn't know he didn't want contact with her until two days ago. Normally if a person feels that way about someone, they don't dance with them in front of a crowd of people. If he knew my feelings and then did those things, yes I would be angry. However, that isn't the situation here. Any time we went to dinner with her, he was asked beforehand if he wanted to go. If he said no, we didn't go. If he said yes, we went. So this entire time when she has invited us over and we went, it was because he said we could go. Are you done?
Perfectly said.
Well, you either omitted major details or you are backpedaling now.
Even you had admitted that your own feelings made no sense. Maybe he feels the same way. There is a lot of guilt associated with hating your own parents. And there are a lot of expectations from a huge crowd of your family and friends for you to have a "normal" and "happy" relationship with your mother, ie dancing with her at your wedding. He probably feels a lot of pressure, both internal and external to act like everything is normal. He probably even wishes that things WERE normal.
You said that she just recently moved back into the area and back into his life -- maybe he is just trying to sort through how he feels, and is slowly coming to the realization that he can't forgive her for what she's done. Even people who are sexually abused by their parents can have conflicting feelings and guilt about cutting them out of their lives.
It probably doesn't help to have you taking calls from her and playing the middle man. Just try to be supportive of him in this thoroughly confusing process of ridding himself of a toxic influence. And for god's sake stop answering her calls. She sounds like a manipulative cvnt.
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