Dear Love100%:

My advice to you is to choose your husband over your mother. Reason: you wrote, “I had always tried to help her, communicate with her, but nothing works. This is 0% success of all your efforts over your lifetime. On the other hand, you had good success following your efforts with your husband, “we have gone through ups and downs in our relationship but always chosen to stick together and growth from any situation”-

And so, why put more efforts where you had no success for so long, and neglect the person with whom you did have success?

Besides, your mother is wrong and your husband is right. Stand by the person who is right and not by the person who is wrong.

Your husband needs your support. You owe him that support.

I believe that your job is not to be neutral, not when the well being of your husband and child and your own is dependent on you taking the side of your chosen family (husband and child).

anita

Hi Love100%,

You have to set boundaries with your mother. First of all, your DH married you, not your mother. Don’t force them or have them be in the same room as each other. They are like territorial cats now.

My suggestion is to see your mother once a month and talk to her no more than once a week, and then for only, say, fifteen minutes. And don’t communicate via technology/cell phones at all.

She may chafe at the boundaries. Say, “Every first Sunday of the month (or whenever) I’m all yours.” She may want to come over or have you guys go over to her. Say, “I’m/We’re busy. See you in X weeks!”

Tell her truthfully that it’s more peaceful when she and your DH are separated.

Your priorities are now: Child, Husband, and Mother distant third.

Good Luck!

Inky

Dear Love100%:

You are welcome. A few comments regarding your two posts:

A child naturally feels guilty when a parent is unhappy, distressed. As if the child is the cause and it is her job to fix what she has done wrong (make the mother unhappy). Many adult children keep believing the same thing they believed as children. Keep reminding yourself the truth: you did not cause her unhappiness. It was never your job to fix it, neither is it possible (as you found out).

Your husband’s complaint that your mother is imposing, that she”wants whatever she wants now, if not she gets mad” is congruent with your statements that she “has always been very demanding of me” and that “she manipulates me”. Her message: my way or I get mad at you! is manipulative, demanding, unloving.

It was your husband’s right to not have her in the room, changing his baby, during the family reunion. She ignored him and came into the room. Her behavior there was clearly disrespectful to your husband.

You wrote: “I put myself on both sides”- please put yourself on the loving side. Your user name is Love 100%- I believe the 100% should go to the loving side. If you put yourself on the side of the unloving side, the manipulative, demanding, playing victim side, and accommodate that side, you are harming the loving side, causing anger and resentment there. The latter is not loving at all.

anita