They can stifle their love, turn on the hyper-control and manipulation, weave intrigues, and are unwilling to let their sons go into adulthood. “They” are mother-in-laws.
We talked to women who have had their husbands’ mothers break up their marriages. They tried to answer the question at what point the point of no return begins, after which there is a sharp choice: either wife or mother.
Tatiana Savostina, pharmacist
Maria Viktorovna did not like me when we met, it was clear at once. She somehow imperceptibly began to patronize me in a conversation, and when my future husband and I were about to leave, said that I had wide ankles. Apparently, that’s why I wear boots with a voluminous cuff. Of course, they didn’t have women like that in their family, but since “Ilyusha chose you, Tanya, then so be it.
I kept silent, and in vain, because after that she realized that I am not a conflicted person, and started a massive attack. Now, every meeting with my mother-in-law revolved around the fact that I might get even fatter after pregnancy, that it was for me, she made a salad without mayonnaise, and bread was replaced by bread rolls. When I said that I would decide for myself what to eat and when, my mother-in-law turned to my husband with a pitiful look, saying, “Aren’t you planning to defend your mother? And he took her side. I was dumbfounded.
I had read a lot about such manipulations, but I never thought I would be the heroine of such a story. After the baby was born the situation worsened, and I found myself dependent on my husband for money, which meant that, according to Maria Viktorovna, I was no longer entitled to my opinion.
“You have elephant’s legs”, “you eat for three”, “the baby has diathesis because you eat everything” – I have not heard anything but what I have heard from “momo” for three years of maternity leave. There was a period when I finished breastfeeding and lost 5 kg, to which my mother-in-law said: “But it will not last long, soon you will be fat again!
The last straw was when she told my son that if he will not sit on the potty as long as necessary, the monsters will come out of there and bite his ass. At this point it became clear that the woman was clearly not in her right mind, and I did not want a neurotic child. I suggested that my husband part ways with this creepy woman, he started mumbling that there was no money, mumbling about the fact that now the financial situation is not right. I packed my things and went to my mother. I don’t regret the divorce. Why do I need a mumble? Let his mother decide everything for him.
Remember the movie “Duplex” and the sweet old lady who almost shot the main characters with a shotgun? She looked just like my ex-mother-in-law, though when I first met her, she seemed like a dandelion. But then she turned out to be a pure monster!
My husband and I together since college, there were different times: we collected 5 rubles each for the subway, and we went into business together. It was because of our mutual business, and we came to the situation that most of his property should be written on the mother-in-law. You know, we live in Russia. We reasoned logically: what can this man of God do with our assets? At that time no one would have guessed that she would use them to manipulate us however she wanted. First she said that her youngest son also needs an apartment, and we are rich, we must help a relative, then she began to hint that she would clean up the land at the cottage, another hundred acres to buy. And all sorts of trifles: pay for her therapeutic massage or buy a trip to the Thermae in Italy. Appreciate the appetite? Not to Kislovodsk, but to a European resort. Where did such bourgeois habits come from in our proletarian family?
As the play progressed, it turned out that Nina Grigorievna is far from being a poor sheep, she has so much money stashed away since Soviet times, enough for us and her grandchildren, but for some reason we are obliged to provide for her and her relatives. When she was working as a shift worker in the North, she sent my husband, then an 8-year-old child, to a boarding school. She was just the mother of the year!
This whole story of extorting money from us went on for several years, and we have a business, all the money in turnover, but the appetite of the “duplex” kept growing and growing. Then the story came out that my husband had a mistress, and it destroyed me morally. Not only were we grooming his mother, but we were also supporting his mistress with our money. By the way, guess who knew my husband was cheating and why he was so easily manipulated? My mother-in-law, of course. Nina Grigorievna and blackmailed him, and sucked money out of me. Good for you, aunt! Divorce was hard for me, but now I realize that it was the price of my health. Otherwise they would have taken me to the hospital.
“There are two empty chairs in heaven: one for the good mother-in-law and one for the good daughter-in-law,” says an oriental proverb. My husband is Jewish, and my mother is sacred to him. But when he and I got married, she had already been living in Israel for 10 years and we were in Moscow. Then my husband was offered a good contract in Raanan, and we moved to our historical homeland. Mom was not going to leave us unfortunate immigrants to our fate and almost immediately began to do us good.
We woke up in the morning, she was already on the doorstep with pancakes, we drove to the sea, immediately throwing a tantrum that we would get lost and had to take her with us, because she knows the best places. Once she brought from somewhere a second-hand closet, which “just need to paint and it will be like new. Whether we needed that furniture, no one asked.
Plus these endless Sunday get-togethers with relatives just wore me out. I had to cook for a horde of essentially strangers with whom I had nothing in common. Once my mother-in-law demanded that my husband collect all the receipts; she would count our expenses because I was a “simpleton” and not a thrifty hostess. The worst thing is that her second son still lives with her, and Sara Josephovna’s second main goal in life was to marry him off to a nice girl
So my friends, who came to visit me, she would interrogate me aggressively: where she lived, how much she earned, and even whether she had abortions. It was embarrassing. At some point I realized I couldn’t take it anymore, we didn’t have a husband and wife couple, but a family where my mother-in-law was third all the time. We even started to lose some partner intimacy because we were always waiting for my mother to yell from the next room. Realizing that the family was on the verge of divorce, we rented an apartment in another city, saying that the child needed to live closer to the sea. I think that was the only way we could keep the family together.
My husband-to-be brought me to meet my mother when we were still in our third year at university. They have a dynasty of doctors, all of them are medical experts, Alla Borisovna, after examining me critically, right in front of me asked my husband: “She is so thin, surely a girl can give birth to us?
My husband put her down at the time, but at each new meeting with my future mother-in-law this topic came up in conversation in one way or another. Alla Borisovna did not come to the wedding, she had a bad angina, and her husband could not come, as he had to take care of her. Though I’m sure my mother-in-law didn’t have any soreness, she was just terribly jealous of her only son, and I was the bitch who decided to “make love to him with my skinny ass” – that’s a quote.
Shortly after we got married I got pregnant and I was put on maternity leave. Alla Borisovna was beside herself with joy: she had told me that I was frail, and lo! Without seeing the tests, she immediately gave me a bunch of chronic diagnoses and started hinting to my husband that maybe it was not too late to get an abortion. Can you imagine? He made a terrible scandal and stopped communicating with my mother. After realizing what a mistake she had made, Alla Borsovna came to make peace with me and her husband, begged them not to deprive her of her grandchildren, and we forgave her. A grandmother, after all.
However, when Kolenka was born, Alla Borisovna again pulled out the old pipe and started singing in her son’s ears that Kolya was not like him. She even found a picture of our course in my social networks and figured out who could be the father of our child. It got even cooler, she took the hair of the child and the father and took it to DNA testing. I don’t know how she did it, apparently she forged documents, I still don’t understand, but the DNA showed that Kolya’s father was not my husband. But I know that I didn’t have any other men. The scream, the scandal, the tears – my husband packed his things and left. Where do you think? To my mother, of course. She got her way. But God is not Timoschka, he sees a little, and her husband left her almost at the same time.
It seems he guessed that his spouse was playing some kind of foul game, and decided not to participate in this farce.
I could have had a second genetic test to prove that she had lied, but I was so deeply offended that my husband had so easily fallen for this provocation that I decided God was their judge. Three years later I remarried, and I live quite happily. And my husband still lives with my mother. Just as Alla Borisovna had dreamed.
Olga Savostyanova, family psychologist:
Most women who come to me with complaints about the problems in the relationship with mother-in-law, noted primarily jealousy, which they feel in relation to them. And this feeling is generally a healthy human reaction. The mother-in-law gave birth to her son, the future man, who for a long time only loved her, adored her, was dependent on her, and then there was another woman, whom he now loves no less. It’s hard for any mother to go through this separation from her son and let him go to a new family. After all, he will leave to build a new one, and she will be left with nothing.
And then mother-in-law, sometimes even unconsciously, begins to play out scenarios that may lead to the breakup of a young family and the return of her beloved son in the paternal home. And she may pay lip service to the fact that she always wanted her son to build his own personal happiness, but all his actions contradict this.
Here are two important points:
- Do not engage in direct confrontation with her mother-in-law, she is not your girlfriend, with whom you make up and forget the old insults, any open conflict with her husband’s mother can escalate into a chronic one. Over the years of such a feud it will seriously wear out your nerves.
- Try as soon as possible to move out of her territory, where she is a priori the main thing. Believe me, it is better to spend your last money to rent an apartment than to lose your beloved family.