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MIL just won't take a hint! Help!
df and i are finally getting married in a few more after four crazy years, but we stuck together through everything the four month road to planning the wedding has been even wilder between planning an out of town and recovering from an unexpected surgery that happened last week.
through all of this mil has done nothing but be passive agressive victim. i could write a novel on things shes done just while planning our wedding (not to mention this done before this). my relationship with her got rocky with right before df got deployed for a year . she would always say or do something to upset me, i'd ignore her, and she would reach out to me just to repeat the cycle. i have tried making things better, but it just won't work. df has been wonderful telling her to stay out our business
she lied to fsil about how she knew nothing about my bridal shower. i saw the invitation on her fridge the week before. i have made it a habbit to text everything she sends me to df. i have kept her out of the planning loop the whole time. she sent me over the edge at a kitchen party when she informed me the that single skillet cake topper would come in handy in a few years. it made me mad, but i kept my cool around her. i did tell df what was said. as usual, she played victim and told him the comment was intended for when we had kids. my mother was mortified when she said it. later, i asked my friends if i had taken it the wrong way, and they thought the same thing i did when she said it. she sent me a text that night saying she was sorry for whatever she did that hurt me (i never responded. i knew better) and a week later she accused me of telling someone that she would not be at the wedding. i never told anyone that (her response card said she was leaving after the ceremony...she never told df that either) .
i havent contacted her in about three months, but she will still send me random messages. she tells df she doesnt know why i won't talk to her and is "heartbroken". df and i plan to confront her about the issues after the wedding when the timing is right,but i just want her to leave me alone, and not pull me into her own personal drama (things got worse when df had the boundaries talk with her). how do i tell her to leave me alone in a nice way? df knows i dont want this to come in between them, and is standing up for me. all i want is a nice way to say that i only see her on holidays!
Re: MIL just won't take a hint! Help!
I missed it. Why was this offensive?
First, I'm w/ livinitup on that one example. I'm not getting what was so offensive.
Past that, I agree w/ the first person - YOU can't cut her out of your life if your FI isn't on the same page.
Also, establishing boundaries actually isn't about talking to the person and just TELLING them the boundaries. It's not on them to follow your boundaries. It's on YOU to set them and enforce them. I dont' know what boundaries you supposedly "set", but for example - if a boundary is that she has to call before she comes over, it's ON YOU to not answer the door when she comes knocking. It's on YOU to say "Call before you come then you can come in".
~Benjamin Franklin
DS dx with celiac disease 5/28/10
What does this even mean?
I'm not getting this either. She's I'm assuming saying "hey you can use this for your wedding" why is that a bad thing? Couldn't you just take it as "thanks, I think I have soemthing for the top already but I appreciate the thought?"
to me it just sounds like she's trying to take part in your and her sons life and you're not having any of it. Any time she tries you sound like you're offended.
This, all the way. I might have more reasonable in-laws than a lot of people on this board, but it took just ONE time of sticking to our guns to fix an issue we were having where they would tell us the day before that they were coming and crashing at our house for the weekend. Now they ask and can take "sorry this weekend won't work" for an answer.
Re: the wedding... you mentioned that you have kept her out of the planning loop entirely. Maybe she's lashing out about that but won't outright say it? I don't know your MIL obviously but isn't there something she could do to feel a part of the wedding? One of the biggest regrets I have about my wedding is cutting my MIL out of the planning... it really hurt our relationship for a long time. I started off the planning by including her..then let myself get dragged into tensions between her, my sister and my mom that didn't even involve me and ended up treating her like crap and cutting her out of the planning entirely based on my family's opinions of her. (She can come across harsh and a bit BSC, which can really throw someone for a loop, but really is a genuinely nice person who just wanted to help and be included... but her way of communicating her frustration and hurt was, let's just say "less than ideal".)
I know I don't know your MIL and maybe there's a valid reason to keep her out of the planning, but I'm of the school of thought where unless she's truly a hurtful spiteful and toxic person, that there has to be something she can do. Just extending a bit of an olive branch in that regard may really work wonders. My olive branch to my MIL was extended after DD was born, and I can't even begin to tell you how much our relationship has improved... by including her, she's actually backed off...which makes me solicit and respect her opinion even more. Maybe I just got lucky and have a more reasonable MIL than you, but might be worth a shot!
Good luck!
Has anyone suggested that you contact her on own terms, instead of just ignoring her? You want her to get some kind of "hint" that you want nothing to do with her, but that's a little unreasonable for someone joining the family. Why would she want to share her holidays with you when you ignore her the rest of the year?
She'll be a lot less of a victim if you call her for 5 minutes every other week, and meet for lunch once a month and keep the conversation light and brief. So, she's a looney tune who puts her foot in her mouth a lot. You seem very angry and resenting a comment none of us understands and that she APOLOGIZED for seems really small and petty. Why fan the flames of a horrible relationship with this woman?? Go ahead and resolve it.
Add me to the list of people not understanding the cake topper thing. The single skillet cake topper? I'm thinking of a cake topper of only one skillet. Which makes absolutely no sense.
How old are you? I'm guessing.....21. Yep, definitely 21. In which case this sounds like immature wife battling the unwilling to let go mommy.
You need to be the bigger person here. Just be cordial. It doesn't sound like you gave any examples of truly egregious behavior. So be cordial, return her calls or messages in the manner you prefer, and just ignore all her drama.
Yeah, what the hell is a single skillet cake topper?
I assume a one-egg type skillet was on top of a cake because it was a kitchen themed-shower. She took MIL's comment to mean that she would be single again in a few years. MIL is saying that she meant it is a child-sized skillet and future kids could play with it.
And I think that you and your friends took it wrong because they know you don't like her. And that made you all think that she meant something mean. Let it go.
Take a deep breath. Put the past behind you. Pretend it was a series of miscommunications. Put on your big girl panties.
Now, in the future, if she says anything that isn't true or is inaccurate, politely correct her or tell her "you are confused" (which is a polite way to say "I've caught you saying something wrong, here's a chance to correct yourself and fix it without looking like a complete b!tch").... so you say something like - "fMIL, I'm confused. SIL says you didn't know about the shower, but I saw the invitation on your fridge last week. What's going on?"
A few thoughts...
Your FMIL might be passive aggressive, especially if she is communicating about your wedding through the RSVP instead of a phone call. But you don't sound very receptive to talking and getting to know her either. Adults communicate through discussions and talking to get to know someone else, texting is not an effective form of communication - espeically when tone is lost..
I think the skillet comment was about having kids, not being single. Kids like little things and it makes sense to me. But you could only know by asking/talking directly to her, not by stewing about it with friends and assuming she wants you to be single.
I think we need more examples of what she does to upset you so much? I'm seeing the drama-seeking as a two-way-street right now.
Are you united with the CCOKCs?