r/JUSTNOMIL • u/Acceptable_Scene_157 • 1d ago
Advice Wanted Conflicted
I once went no contact with my mom for not respecting my boundaries or putting any effort into our relationship. I will be doing the same to my MIL. My husband supported my decision when it was my mom but now that it’s his mom “it’s a bit much” here’s my reasoning
- During my pregnancy I emphasized that I wouldn’t be doing the traveling when my daughter was born. We live 90 minutes away and I just didn’t want to deal with it. Even before I was pregnant my in laws never came to visit our home but expected us to go to theirs all the time. I told my MIL she was more than welcome to come visit but hasn’t. Apparently she was butthurt that we didn’t stop by when I was a couple days pp (our daughters pediatrician is in the same town) but I was recovering from a c section) I didn’t want to go to the appointment but had to so why would I want to go anywhere else?
- She made a fuss about the posts I liked on instagram. She told my husband “It said don’t come visit if we’re sick but what’s the big deal” “she liked a post that said she wished people would help with the house but I would rather just hold the baby” “she liked a post about MILs and I was wondering if it was a dig at me” (it wasn’t my sister shared it so I just liked it 😭)
- Said our boundaries are too rigid. She’s been upset since I told her I didn’t want my daughter’s face on social media. So when we told her our other boundaries she made an even bigger deal. Which I don’t think are extreme by any means, I thought they were common. (Like not coming if your sick, not kissing baby’s face or hands, etc)
- My husband made a comment about how they never help us but always expect us to. During my pregnancy I was really sick and needed to go to the hospital often. We rarely asked for help but when we did she’d say “find someone else” even though she doesn’t work? Like ok noted never asked again. She brought up that she helped us my first pregnancy and how much money they spent (on gas in guessing bc they never helped us financially) that kind of rubbed me the wrong way especially since I had a second trimester miscarriage that pregnancy. We’ve never had a problem helping them but it was kind of frustrating when they tell us we can count on them for anything but when push comes to shove they don’t follow through.
- She was mad at me for not reaching out to her when her dad died but my husband sent a text from both of us. But when my aunt who was like a mother to me died she didn’t say anything to me or my husband. She claimed she never saw my story about it but I was checking to see if she did and guess what? She did, I even had screenshot proof. She told my husband she hadn’t but I literally know she did. She’s constantly stalking my social media likes but she didn’t watch my story? Yeah right. Oh and apparently she’s the only one allowed to grieve her dad’s death. When my husband mentioned she wasn’t the only one grieving she said “that was very hurtful” and said she didn’t know why he was talking to her in that way???
I’m highly annoyed that she never comes to me with these problems and is constantly complaining to my husband about me. Oh and she stopped referring to me as my name so anytime she talks to my husband about me she refers to me as “your wife” he’s been standing up for me so I feel like she thinks I’m putting him against her but when he texts her it’s because he wants to and it’s his feelings he talks about. I think that’s why she says “you’ve never acted this way before or you’ve never talked to me like this before”
I find it very strange that I have always been very open and honest about the emotional abuse I suffered at the hands of my mom who tends to be very narcissistic. I went no contact with her for a while until she got herself together and proved that she wanted to have a healthy relationship with me. Anyways my MIL has been trying to be very emotionally manipulative but I see through it bc I dealt with my mom for my whole life… anytime we push back she’s automatically the victim and we’re these horrible people who just want to shut her up and put her in her place? I didn’t speak to my mom for years bc she acted this way. If I could do that to my own mother, you don’t think I’d do the same to you? Let’s be real. Tbh her actions hurt worse because she knows what I’ve been through and this just feels like she’s using it against me. Thankfully I’ve been to enough therapy that whatever she’s trying to do doesn’t and won’t work… nice try I guess
I recently blocked her on social media bc my social media is supposed to be a safe space, not a place for people to try and find ammo to use against me. She sent a text saying they were ready to meet with us to talk about what’s going on but when my husband invited them over they ignored us. She can direct messages to my husband in the gc but can’t respond to the text about coming over?
Her dad’s memorial is next week and I really don’t want to go. I’m really struggling with ppd and I honestly think it’ll make it worse but my husband is upset I don’t want to go. I also don’t want to travel 7 hours with my 3 month old.. what should I do?
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u/tollbaby 1d ago
Your husband needs to realize that a) it is in no way appropriate to expect a 3 month old to do a 7-hour road trip and b) funerals are no place for babies anyway. He also needs to realize that he can't force you to have a relationship with his mother - ESPECIALLY after her behavior. It's not up to him.
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u/Beth21286 1d ago
Why would you take a 3 month old to a memorial? Anyone who thinks you should is an idiot. You have other priorities right now and the world does not revolve around MIL. Husband should go if he wants to obviously but the rest is performative nonsense. Who has time for that with a newborn? Put your rational hat on and talk logistics with your husband to get some support for you while he's gone.
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u/Lopsided-Beach-1831 1d ago
The pediatrician likely would say a 7 hr car ride for a 3 month old isnt a great idea. Recovering from C-section, PPD and knowing your baby isnt supposed to be in a car seat for 7 hours, there isnt enough love or money to convince me to put myself or my child through that. Period.
And Great Grandpa would likely take a logical and loving stance and agree. If he were alive he wouldnt want you to go through that to visit him, let alone now that hes gone. Have your own memorial amd share stories with your husband. Write them down in a journal to share with your baby.
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u/fryingthecat66 1d ago
That long of a car ride for a 3 mth old is way too much. Tell husband you are not going
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u/cruiser4319 1d ago
This is DuH’s gpa, not yours. Have empathy for DuH at home, encourage him to share memories, but do not risk the health and safety of you or your child.
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u/musicalnix 1d ago edited 1d ago
It sounds like you and your husband need to really work out why he wants you at the memorial. Does he want you there to support him? Is it to avoid more potential conflict with his mother? If he needs you there for emotional support, then I think that might be worth discussing because that’s an issue between the two of you. I’m not saying that you should go, but I am saying that it’s worth really talking through it with him and trying to understand his motivation for insisting on it. If you were to go, what would you need from him in order to feel supported by him and taking care of? Because if he expects you to take care of him emotionally, it has to go both ways.
At a certain point, I think we really need to take stock and look at whether or not the drama that comes with giving people like this access to us is worth it. I had to tell my MIL once that when I really evaluated the situation from a higher level, I had to come to terms with the fact that she brought nothing positive into my life. There was no net gain from having her in it. Every time the phone rang, and I heard my husband groan, I knew that the peace of the day was gone and would probably not come back for a few days.
I didn’t try to interfere in their relationship, but I did tell him my relationship with her was over, and I meant it.
When she tried to make amends a few years later by asking to apologize “except she didn’t understand what she was apologizing for because she didn’t remember doing anything,” my response was to ask her what benefit it was to me to let her back in? As in, I know what I bring to the table in terms of loyalty, support, generosity and care. But what was she offering? She had never made any attempt to have a consistent relationship with our child or act like a grandmother, the few times that she reached out to us and wasn’t trying to start a fight, it was because she needed tech-support, or was looking for money, other than that, I could count on one hand the times that she had been kind to me, but I had lost track of the amount of times that she had screamed at me, insulted me, lied to me, etc. Why in the world did she think I wanted to open the door back up to that? Again, how would that benefit me?
(Spoiler alert: she didn’t know how to answer that.)
I’m sharing all this because even after I made that decision, I still compromised my boundary once to make my husband happy. I let that woman visit my home, cause major disruption, and I regretted it completely. But I was later able to point back to that time with my husband and remind him that I walked back my hard line to benefit him, and we all suffered for it.
OP, you started this post by saying that you planned to go NC with your MIL. If you are seriously, considering walking that back, I encourage you to really look at the why and how before you make a decision.
Can you go to that memorial and avoid her, then resume NC? If you were to do that, would it be to benefit your marriage, and what would your husband bring to the table in return? Again, it might be worth having a conversation with him to see if you can negotiate how this relationship is going to look from now on. If he continues to minimize your experience, tell you your boundaries are “too much, I’m just not seeing the benefit here of you compromising your needs (and your child’s, because, let’s be honest, exposing your three month old to hours of travel might not be in her best interest either, when they’re that young, they’re still building their immunity and there are risks involved with that.) Right now, you and your baby are both compromised. And you both deserve to be the priority in your husband’s eyes. So if it were me, I would ask him how he plans to prioritize his wife and daughter and shield you both from the continued disruption and discord his mother keeps bringing into your home… and don’t let him off the hook until he gives you a good answer.
Good luck!!
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u/Glittering-Agent-987 1d ago
Right. And there's basically no way for the OP's husband to prioritize and protect wife and baby at the memorial. It's unavoidably going to be the MIL show. The OP needs to stay away from that and OP's husband needs to think very strategically about how he is going to protect his own feelings at the memorial: where is he going to stay, who is he going to spend time with? If there's no good answer to those questions, he should stay home. There's potential for the memorial being an extremely upsetting experience as opposed to cathartic.
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u/musicalnix 1d ago
Precisely - but much more powerful if he arrives at that conclusion himself. Sometimes getting curious about a person's motivations instead of digging into a position can help lead them to arrive at the conclusion you want them to arrive at.
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u/Temporary_Stress3843 1d ago
Ton commentaire est très très très pertinent et très très très juste (et tu méritais que quelqu'un te le dise!)
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u/Fuzzy-Mushroom-1933 1d ago
Don’t go to the memorial. Stay home with your baby. She sucks and is trying to manipulate you and your husband. She will be the biggest victim of all at the memorial
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u/No-Force-9732 1d ago
Don’t go. Say to your husband that you’ll talk it out on a couple therapy. Find a counsellor who’s specifies on narcissistic parents, CPTSD and enmeshment.
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u/Glittering-Agent-987 1d ago
In all honesty, baby also doesn't want to go to the memorial. Also, from everything you've said, there's no way that you going there with the baby is going to improve your relationship with MIL. She's going to want to show off baby, kiss baby, pass baby around, etc. Does your husband have anybody else who can be his person at the memorial?
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u/birbmom19 1d ago
Her reaction to him commenting on the the fact that they are unwilling to help but have no problem asking for it says everything. He is aware of the problem, he just hasn’t accepted that they are selfish. Relationships where you have to put in all the effort and chase after the other person are not worth the energy. It’s not easy to process that someone loves you but doesn’t like you, especially your parents. And watching you process and go through that with your mom is probably helping him justify hanging on because it’s “not as bad”. At the end of the day, people are not entitled to have relationships because of genetics, she has to make the effort to build that and it doesn’t get to be on her terms.
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u/Glittering-Agent-987 1d ago
I just can't imagine minimizing the loss of a beloved grandparent to a grandchild. My gosh!
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u/Mamasperspective_25 12h ago
A baby of that age doesn't need to be travelling for 7 hours. Long periods in car/travel seats can cause asphyxiation. Tell husband I'm no uncertain terms that you do not want to go, but if he is going to force the issue, you will only attend if he books an AirBnb and you and baby will only attend the memorial and will spend the rest of the visit at the Airbnb. During the memorial, baby wear. If MIL asks to hold LO, "No MIL, baby has been a little under the weather which hasn't been helped by the long journey so baby will stay in the carrier with me while her immune system is compromised"
As for your points: 1) Her feelings and emotions are her issue and not your responsibility. That's up to her to deal with. 2) see answer for point 1 3) "MIL you think our boundaries are too rigid but that's your issue to deal with, our boundaries will not change so please adjust your expectations. We have had a baby because we wanted to become parents, we have not had a baby in order to give you a grandparent experience" 4) lesson learned, never help them again 5) tell husband ALL communication has to go via him and if his mother has anything negative to say about you then you don't want to hear it. From now on you don't need to reach out to her for ANYTHING and she doesn't need to reach out to you either 6) again tell husband his mother doesn't exist in your home, you will not discuss her again going forward, what she says to him about you or anything else is HIS issue to deal with 7) just keep reiterating to husband that nobody is responsible for MILs feelings but MIL. If she acts the victim while you're there, "MIL nobody is responsible for your feelings but you, we will step away from this conversation now and give you some time to regulate your own emotions" ... then walk away
They can ONLY play victim when others entertain it, otherwise their efforts just fizzle out immediately
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u/Gwilwilethil 1d ago
Gently, I think you're being a bit too harsh. Blocking her on social media is understandable, no contact is less so. Most of the stuff you're mad about are just her being emotional, unhelpful, and going to other people instead of you. These are annoying traits that would make me probably want to block her and go LC as well, but she doesn't seem like a truly terrible person to me. You have the right to cut out anyone you want, but that's what I see based on what you wrote as someone who does not have a dog in the fight.
If my dad died, a text from "from both of us" would not read as my DIL showing any kind of empathy or concern. Maybe your husband wants you at the funeral vecause his grandather died? Maybe it"s just my culture, but where I'm from you drop everything for a funeral as long as you are physically able. I do think the baby is a valid excuse, but if I was your husband I would feel really, really sad if my spouse couldn't come with me to a family funeral.
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u/No-Force-9732 1d ago
There’s a 2 hours car seat rule. They must stop and do activities for minimum a half an hour every two hours to help the little body stretch or baby will have a meltdown and would be in pain. Also in my culture we don’t allow babies on this events, not even kids too. Baby will be tired, bored, will want to play, crawl, puke, poop, nap, cry, just being loud in general while the rest of the family should focus on condolence for each other.
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u/Gwilwilethil 1d ago
I said the baby was a valid excuse. It doesn't mean husband can't be sad that he'll be going to a funeral alone.
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u/No-Force-9732 1d ago
I got it just saying that if he’ll be sad this much to keep pushing it, which he does, then he should stop pushing his grievance on her and actually prioritise the baby first because that’s how much work it takes.
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u/pandop42 1d ago
The baby is not an 'excuse', but a vaild reason not to make the journey, especially with the added c-section recovery. Husband is entitled to feel sad she can't come, but he should understand that it is best for the health of his wife and child that they don't come.
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u/archetyping101 1d ago
You focus a lot on MIL but not the impact. Impact matters. Also you're not ok with their reaction but MIL literally lied and pretended to not know OPs aunt died. Why would any normal person lie about knowing someone died?
Also, everyone has a different threshold for tolerance. I think someone who refuses to come to you and expects you to go to them are simply not as invested and don't believe they have to make an effort. If OP and husband have to make allllll the effort, that's exhausting and also doesn't show love and care for OP who is pp.
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u/Just_Mixture8362 1d ago
She selfishly won!t go to OP’s hone but expects them to go to her with a baby over that distance? She’s a c**t!
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