My fiancé and I are high school sweethearts. We have been through almost everything together. I definitely got bad vibes from his family, especially his mother when I would see things in high school like them not allowing him to go to friends parties or stay later at school to watch a volleyball game, his mother just seems super protective and very overbearing. My family is quite the opposite. They love to see us, go out and make friends and be social and thrive. There’s also deeper issues because his mom never felt loved and cared for by her husband, (his dad) so I think she leans and relies heavily on her son. It’s extremely toxic and I’m just seeing the jealousy come out more and more as we get closer to the wedding. I am thankful in a way where my fiancé sees where I’m coming from and definitely agrees with me on a lot of these points that I bring up to him, but he is definitely hesitant to bring it up to his mom because he is avoidant of conflict. She has manipulated him All through throughout growing up, which I won’t get too much into the childhood trauma. I am always respectful and I am super fake nice around her. She royally pissed me off over the weekend because they visited us and so many times she made comments I was just internally screaming. I wanted to say something back so bad. I’m sure a lot of people can relate to what I’m going through. I don’t know if I should open up the door and say how I really feel or if I should just keep it quiet until after the wedding.
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Your fiancé may need therapy to deal with his mother, and he definitely needs to deal with her. Good luck, sincerely
“definitely agrees with me on a lot of these points that I bring up to him, but he is definitely hesitant to bring it up to his mom because he is avoidant of conflict.”
—All the signs are there. Joint counseling now or he will cave and let her bulldoze in to your lives and, this will be nothing compared to having any children. Spend some time in these threads. The writing is on the wall.
I was in a similar situation. I had to tell my husband he can address the comments his mom makes to/about me or I can and he can deal with the aftermath (victim mentality- she always cries when called out). Like your fiancé, my husband is super avoidant. The next time we saw her after that, he heard her say something snarky about me and he called her out, it wasn’t anything wild he just said “that sounds like sarcasm.” She was very surprised and of course “didn’t mean it that way.” If you do want to say something, you could try “what a weird thing to say out loud” or “could you repeat yourself? I didn’t hear you” or if your fiancé is present when she makes a comment just turn to him and say “did you hear what she just said about me?” let her know you hear her but you aren’t going to react negatively… yet
Oh the snarky comments. I’ve heard them. I had 26 years of them.
I’ll tell you what I did.
There were certain ones. For example I don’t like raw tomatoes but I’ll eat tomato sauce etc. I grew tomatoes for others, and put them on top of a salad for my family.
Can’t tell you how many times she would say “ oh that’s right you don’t like tomatoes” when there was a salad on the table whether she made it or we were out in a restaurant.
My husband actually laughed because we made it our own little secret joke. So she didn’t know why we were looking like the cat that ate the canary trying to stifle our laughter. She’d be “what? What?”
We’d say “hmm? Nothing Nothing”
The moment we were away from her one of us would say “so I guess I don’t like tomatoes “ Because the comment was just so ridiculous to have said it for literally years to me.
But really what I did with most comments was to completely act like I didn’t hear her. Once, we had a few relatives at the table so there were conversations going on and the woman repeatedly said the same stupid snarky comment 3 times while I didn’t look at her and pretended I was paying attention to something else. My husband noticed.
Another way to deal is to look at her and look puzzled and say “what” making her repeat it. Continue to look perplexed after she repeats it.
A similar approach is to say can you repeat that? And if your fiancé isn’t in earshot call him in and tell her to say it again because you’re not understanding her.
You can also say that you don’t get what she said and ask her to explain it in another way.