My (33) husband (42) and I have been married for 7 years, and dated a couple years before that. We have two toddlers ages 2 and 4. My MIL and I used to be super close. We would hang out with my MIL and FIL (my husband’s step dad. His bio dad passed 20 years ago) all the time. We traveled with them, they’d take us out to nice dinners, we’d even go to their house and party with them on the weekends pretty frequently. They were more like friends than parents.
Fast forward to when I had my first daughter. I realized how much trauma I had from my childhood/relationship with my mother. I started going to therapy, listening to podcasts, books, reading Reddit forums, and anything else I could to learn, grow, heal, and break the cycle for my daughters. The unintended consequence was that I discovered that my husband and MIL are enmeshed and her behavior is unhealthy and not normal. It’s ironic because in the beginning of our relationship (me coming from being completely neglected by my parents) I saw his closeness with his mother as such a strength! I realize now that their dynamic might be equally as unhealthy as mine with my mother, just on the opposite side of the spectrum.
My husband has no boundaries with his mom. They text and talk on the phone most days. She vents to him about her relationship issues with my FIL. She also complains constantly about her (non existent) health issues and is always going to the doctor. She makes it sound like she’s dying for a few weeks and then suddenly the problem just disappears and is never spoken of again. These big dramatic “health scares”have been happening at least 3-4 times a year since I’ve known her. Once she convinced everyone she only had 2 years to live. It was devastating and emotional for months and then she got a second opinion and discovered it was actually nothing at all.
I’ve gotten pretty good at setting boundaries for myself and our daughters in regard to not allowing her to control what we do with our time as a family. My husband knows how I feel, so I don’t try to push him to set boundaries with her. I’ve excepted that it has to be his decision, and it might not ever happen. After me setting boundaries though, I feel like she’s latched on to him in a much more intense way. He seems a lot more irritable in general and has way less patience for our kids and normal marriage conflicts. He started drinking a lot more and has become much more reactive/easily triggered.
He has been in a family business with his mom and step dad for years. We are in the middle of a transition period as he is preparing to take over 100% of the company next year. His mom retired like 6 or 7 years ago and they hired someone to replace her, but now she is suddenly going into the office multiple days a week. I’ve seen texts on his phone from her asking if she can bring him lunch, asking him to take a break and go on a walk with her so she can talk to him, asking him to come to her house for lunch (in kind of a flirty way I might add) it really gives me major ICK! It is also uncomfortable for me because as his WIFE, I want to support him in the business and it’s difficult for me to figure out when and how to do that when his mom is going in and doing it all. He becomes shutdown when I try to talk to him about it, so I’m trying to be patient and give everyone the benefit of the doubt. I have a bad feeling about this though. I feel like I’ve been totally sidelined and she’s become like his work wife. I’m anxious about it because if she’s still doing this when he takes 100% ownership it’s going to really bother me and I’m not sure how to deal with it!
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