The relationship is between my husband, our child and his mother. I do not see the woman. She has no opportunity to criticize me or say a word to me. They have managed to form a relationship where I am not a player and I am fine with that. I have no insecurities about “loyalty” and I certainly don’t feel my husband is betraying me by seeing his mother. We do not like each other. I do not feel the need to intrude upon the relationship between my daughter and her grandmother. I do not have to be involved in every relationship my husband and daughter have and I feel no need to pretend to make nice so we could all hang out together as phonies. What would be the point of that?
My MIL does not bad mouth me, I do not bad mouth her and everyone is happy. Now, if OPs mother can not manage to do this, that is her loss but it seems to me, no one is willing to give her the opportunity. Now would be the time to do it. When the child is young enough to forget if grandma can’t be civil.
While I don’t know the OP, I can say that Italian parents are rarely emotionally distant. His mother is probably very affectionate and would likely be the same towards his daughter. She does not like his wife. She doesn’t want to play nice with his wife.
I have read the opinions and still maintain that the OPs therapist is absolutely correct in encouraging them to have a relationship as long as the MIL can manage to not say anything negative about the DIL in either the son’s or granddaughter’s presence.
I also maintain that if the MIL can prove she can do this after several visits and the DIL still doesn’t allow the relationship, she is being spiteful simply because she isn’t liked.
I think you’re missing the point that 13 years is a long time to be actively taking abuse from someone every time you see them. Maybe it’s the fact that your MIL can be civil with you despite not liking you that’s making you ignore it.
I asked a friend of mine, who happens to be Italian, about this, and his response was the same as mine. Grandmother has shown she has no regard for the feelings of anyone other than her own. If she can’t be civil to her daughter in law, I see no reason to believe she would be civil to her granddaughter if things didn’t go exactly how she wanted them to.
There is a vast, gaping chasm between not liking someone and being unable to even be civil to someone who is dear to your family members. Unless the OP is leaving off the part where the OP’s wife cackled maniacally while repeatedly running over Grandma’s dog, Grandma has some issues.
Most of you must have come from picture perfect Leave it to Beaver families. My family and most everyone I know, have certain members of their family that are difficult to be around…that’s just part of the human experience. The OP’s description of his mother and her relationship with his wife, while stressful and difficult for him and his wife, doesn’t sound that abhorrent…at least not enough to keep the granddaughter away.
The number of arm-chair psychologists we have on this board is staggering.
That’s because my parents limited my exposure to the family members that were giant jerks. Amazingly, this has left me with quite a few relatives, and a “picture perfect, Leave it to Beaver” family among those that remain. That shit isn’t always luck; it can be a choice, unless your family is entirely populated with jerks.
For example, the misogynistic grandma that I mentioned upthread? We saw her once a year or so, at most. My awesome grandmother? Every six weeks or so my entire childhood. It worked out well for us. Maybe it wouldn’t for everyone.
It seems to me that no one is thinking ahead to the time that the twenty-month-old toddler will be a 13-15 year old girl, and if she is anything like most girls (including me) at that age, a rebellious little bitch regardless of however wonderful her parents are. If she has never had contact with her grandmother at that point, it will be grandma’s perfect opportunity to be a tempting, forbidden fruit who will spoil her rotten and tell her what a terrible person her mother is when little daughter skips her piano/ballet/soccer/whatever and sneaks off to visit grandma instead. Or perhaps instead they will secretly correspond and grandma will send her inappropriately large checks, or something along those lines.
My point here is that keeping grandma totally away from her granddaughter is begging for trouble in the future. When the child goes through her “blame my parents for everything” stage (and she almost certainly will, for a little while at least), grandma sounds insidious enough to pounce. Expose her to grandma, and she’ll probably grow up thinking grandma is OK, but a bit boring or overly doting or something similar, or that grandma is a nasty woman who is mean to her mother. Keep her away from grandma, and when she wants to rebel, grandma will be only to willing to step in with indugence and toxicity.
If I were the OP’s wife, I’d go along with the visits. That way I could enforce the “don’t trash the girl’s mother in front of the girl” rule in case my husband couldn’t bring himself to stand up to his mother, and I’d forestall the likelihood of the daughter looking to grandma as a refuge when she wants to act out.
Of course, I am not a parent, my in-laws (when I had them) liked me, and my own grandmothers died before I was five, so what do I know?
No. This quote by the OP shows me that he has given over a decade not of chances, but of inconsistent methods by not cutting her off firmly when she shows any sign of reverting back to her old behavior. I am betting there are scenes and recrimination and all sorts of DRAMA, and that thirteen years has done none of them any good and if anything has entrenched bad habits in the grandma. He needs to set firm boundaries: “look, one word that my wife interprets as negative and we are OUT, no hard feelings by me, but no discussion either.”
Of course, if the OP is not able to do that, that’s fine, but then he needs to cut her off entirely.
You… have a point here. My mother would be only too happy to play the role of the wronged secret toxic indulgent grandparent if only I would let her. As it is, my daughter sees her often enough to understand her character, I think. (Again, my mom isn’t a bad person at all, but she is definitely more controlling than is perhaps ideal for an American parent or grandparent.)
I’ve never disliked someone so much I was chronically incapable of keeping a civil tongue in my head to their face, though I have to confess my brother’s narcissistic, emotionally abusive first wife pushed the limit pretty damn hard. I hated her. I hated her a lot. People who were totally outside the situation heard quite a bit about how much I hated her. But even at that I never pulled the kind of shit the OP is talking about.
You don’t have to like someone to not be an asshole to them, you just have to have not been raised by wolves.
OP, it sounds to me as if your mother might well be a lifelong drama bomb. I think that life is too short to let someone who is supposed to love you disrupt your life. Cut the cord.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church (I’m assuming that, because she’s Italian, she’s very likely Catholic) quotes this, too:
“Holy Scripture affirms that man and woman were created for one another: “It is not good that the man should be alone.”[92] The woman, “flesh of his flesh,” i.e., his counterpart, his equal, his nearest in all things, is given to him by God as a “helpmate”; she thus represents God from whom comes our help.[93] “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.”[94] The Lord himself shows that this signifies an unbreakable union of their two lives by recalling what the plan of the Creator had been “in the beginning”: “So they are no longer two, but one flesh.”[95]”
Personally I feel that you should really work it out with your mother. You will only have one mother. I think stopping her from seeing your child is ridiculous. She would spoil your grandchild. Your family riff would be probably be solved when she sees the baby and becomes part of the baby’s life. Spending time with you, your wife and your new baby will set a new start. Don’t use the child as a pawn.
One day you will not have a mother, and you will regret that your mother did not share your family with you. I am a Italian mother too, and being so stubborn will not make things get better. Work It Out Before It Is Too Late!!!
My first question would be. Does your mother have a valid reason for not liking or accepting your wife? If not your mother is disrespecting you by not accepting your wife, it is her own doing. I am also Italian and have gone through similar situations, if the wife was wrong she had to make it right, if mom was wrong it was on her. You do not need to be held hostage by your mom.
Well, since this has already been ressurected I just want to give a shout out to my late MIL. She always treated me like a daughter, even better than my own mother did. She taught me how to cook and make my husband’s favorite dessert, chocolate cherry cake.
She and my husband always had a close relationship, and she wanted nothing more than for him to be happy. That she accepted he was happy with me was a blessing. She died in 2002 and I still miss her, as does her son.
As for the OP, I hope things got better, cause Mom sounds like a douche.
One thing, a crappy parent can become a great grandparent (at least some of the time). I agree with most of the above that ground rules, and sticking to them, are non-negotiable for what you think the best is for your child. I would also say that your wife should be an equal voice in setting what those ground rules should be.