Mother wound

[Pepin]

I have been researching recently the Mother Wound as it applies to my DH - and even his siblings.  In particular, as the enmeshed GC, DH seems to have it the hardest.  When I question him about DPD MIL he likes to make excuses that all seem to reference the fact that she has done so much for him and his siblings (not true as he was heavily parentified and his siblings somewhat parentified!).  In turn, he is loyal to her because it would be selfish not to and she would think less of him.  By being enmeshed he is allowing her to control him to a certain extent -- but for the most part is free to be who he wants to be when she isn't needing a visit. 

The other thing that I noticed is that as DH is on the homestretch toward retirement, that he has struggled to fulfill his career potential.  He did his best when we lived in another state.  When we moved closer to DPD MIL, he definitely struggled because he suddenly had to find more time for her.  He essentially told a white lie about why we needed to move closer to her when really it was because he was going to be the the assigned caretaker.  This was a devastating discovery on my part and one that he would never admit until possibly after she passes.

Also, these years living near her have left DH spinning his wheels trying to help her in just about everything.  He believes that his loyalty toward her involves attending to her to do list and also being her emotional support.  As his wife, this has been confusing to me.  We don't and have never required this of our kids.  But for DH, he has been doing this since he was young -- but did have a break and some relief when he left for college.  But the guilt must have been overwhelming to him with her demands and hence drove him back to her.

Deep inside I feel that DPD MIL is angry with the hand she was dealt.  She wanted what her children have.  She wants what her children can give to their spouses.  She wants to have her grown children back.  She deliberately ignores what she doesn't have rather than reconciling why it is that way. 

In turn, DPD MIL demands that the entire family bow down to her because she is the eldest female.  She doesn't want to relinquish anything that she used to do before and despite being a "proud grandmother", doesn't really care for being a grandmother. 

DH has had a hard time setting boundaries with her and also voicing his frustrations -- and he realistically cannot see some of what the problem is because he is so enmeshed with her.  His life and our marriage has been somewhat arranged around her.

It saddens me that I have spent so much time dealing with my MIL and her behavior throughout the course of my marriage.  I essentially have had to study her, her family, DH and his siblings to understand what the h--- is going on with all of them.  Never would have occurred to anyone that something was seemingly off with her until much later after all her kids married and had kids.  It is like she was thrown off her pedestal since she wasn't receiving the bulk of attention anymore.  She thought she would only be a mother forever -- and also a grandmother -- but never a MIL.  She couldn't deem it possible that her own adult children would also be respectable parents that had to parent their own offspring.  Her children were only meant to serve her.

Does anyone else see this being exhibited within the dynamics of your unhealthy in-laws?  My wish is for DPD MIL to take accountability for her shortcomings -- or in the very least, have DH validate them rather than make excuses for them.  His siblings are kind of no nonsense around DPD MIL but it is only DH that seems to pity her... 

[Hilltop]

I feel I could have written a lot of this.  DH is the GC, enmeshed, the responsible one who completes all the to do lists by MIL but also gives emotional support.  BIL is estranged.  DH often says he wishes BIL was still there to help share the load, he openly says he feels responsible.  I think he also gets along with his parents but there is also a sense of duty to them.  I believe MIL would have been happy for her life to remain when she was younger as a mother and she has said this was her happiest time in life.  MIL has made it blatantly obvious to me that she didn't like me coming along and expected me to stay silent and let her make all the life decisions in her son's life.  The competition from day one was so obvious.  MIL would create endless situations where DH had to choose her way or mine, I sometimes even changed my mind so there was no choice to be made.  I think out of everything she did it was this that ruined the chance of us ever having a relationship.  Seeing DH pick her way over mine time and time again, still hurts.  It seemed to make MIL feel important and loved and made me feel ignored and unloved.  I doubt I will ever fully forgive her for that.

In the beginning I studied her a lot to try to understand the situation, now I don't want to think about her that much.  I use to look forward to the day she died but now I dread it.  I feel DH will fall apart and he will be half the person he should be.  I also dread the day FIL dies, I feel I will lose a husband and be left on my own as MIL drains DH's time even more.  I doubt DH will notice and I'm not sure anymore if our marriage will survive this if it pans out how I think it will.  MIL will not care about the impact on our marriage, in fact with me gone she will be happy, she will finally have her son to herself.

MIL will never see her shortcomings or take accountability for them.  I doubt DH will ever acknowledge it.  I gave up wanting this a long time ago.  I enjoy the good times in our marriage and try to ignore MIL as much as possible.  We have moved 3 hours away from her and I am hoping given a little more time that it gives us some breathing space.  At this stage DH comes back to see her every weekend.  They have a Saturday night date night where she cooks him enough food for a village.  I feel I have lost my weekends.  I'm hoping with more time he grows tired and goes back every other weekend which would be normal.

DH also cannot see he is enmeshed.  He thinks its all normal.   I sometimes wish I had not married into their family and married someone else.  I hear about friends who have good inlaw relationships and they all get together for dinner and its pleasant.  I envy that now.  I go to the inlaws for dinner and they don't even sit at the table with me.  They are simply not worth it, life should be surrounded by pleasant, warm, loving, kind people and I do feel I have missed out on that. 

So no, I am not expecting any validation from MIL, DH or FIL.  They are happy with what they have created.  I am mostly happy however I do look at MIL and think its such a wasted life.  I wouldn't want her life or the family she created.  She has one son.  Her other son, her two DIL's and four grandchildren don't want to be around her.  I see MIL as a failure.  I see her life as a failure.  I don't think MIL expects her children to bow down to her, I think she is so focused on her own fears, her own needs, she is entirely selfish and so she needs to do what she has to do to feel needed and loved.  If she hurts other people I doubt she sees that, she simply needs to feel loved by her son, she needs to know he is around and there for her.  If she does see that it hurts our marriage I really don't think she cares because her needs come first.  At the end of the day I really believe MIL does what she does purely because she is so needy and selfish.  Even her motherly love is selfish, its about how it makes her feel rather than being unconditional and her caring how it affects her son's marriage and therefore his happiness.  Everything is to resolve her fears and her needs.  Even her generosity is done with guilt and manipulation to ensure it is she who gets her way for her needs.

So no my MIL will never fully see herself or take accountability, she will die as useless as she is now.

[Alexmom]

I also married into a family similar to Pepin's and Hilltop's  My DH is a first born American - IL's come from a European country.  They immigrated to the US before DH was born.  They never fully acclimated to the US mostly because they could heavily relied on DH to take care of adult responsibilities.  My FIL spent long hours at work, and my MIL was very needy and dependent on DH - to drive her places, be her confidante, take care of business, co parent his younger brother and have a shoulder to cry on.  She trusted very few people and never made friends.  She referred to DH as her 'best friend'.  So, in sum, DH was parentified, not allowed to be a child and raised to be responsible for his entire family.  I did not come from this culture or religion and had a completely different upbringing from parents who were preoccupied with their own problems and let me do whatever I wanted.   

My MIL described our wedding day as the 'worst day of her life" as she lost her son (my DH) to me, which she viewed as a taking.  She spent the next two decades interfering, competing, trying to win DH's loyalty and freezing me out of conversations by refusing to speak English.   I grew to really dislike her as she was an interloper, and a negative presence in my marriage and life. I cut her off a few months before she was diagnosed with terminal cancer and kept her out of my life the almost 5 years she lived with cancer until she died in 2018.   During that time, my DH was fairly involved in helping out with my MIL's care, and multiple requests were made from MIL, FIL and BIL (who is almost 50 and still lives at home) for DH to move back into my IL's home as they believed DH owed loyalty to them over me and our 3 kids. 

My FIL is still alive, and routinely tries to rope DH into helping out, spending excessive time with him and even traveling with him to FIL's native country which DH says No to anything beyond 2 visits a month with my FIL.  MY FIL is selfish and has little regard or respect for DH as a married man with his own family.  I have nothing to do with FIL or BIL.  I told DH to keep them away from me as their attitudes about us and our marriage are disgusting and the thought of them in my presence makes me sick.  Our kids want little to do with them as well.

I don't think my DH will ever see just how much he has been used by his family as this is how he was groomed since he was a little boy.    At times he talks about it and understands how unfair it was to be groomed to be responsible for this parents and brother, but he stops there.  Fortunately, this did not continue with our own three kids.  They are young adults raised to be responsible for themselves and free to live their lives.   I try to focus on that instead of the nightmare experience with the IL's...

[roughdiamonds1]

My ex was absolutely enmeshed to his mother. It's really at the heart of so many problems that we faced as a couple. So much manipulative behaviour, and text book traumatic childhood and divorce for her that led to her enmeshing with her sons, particularly my ex, who is definitely the GC. He is absolutely and totally unaware of this dynamic and how it effects the energy and space that he has for other relationships in his life. It's like he carries around a heavy sack on his shoulder all the time, and he also has real issues setting boundaries with other people, and let's them treat him like crap.

She seemed to see me as a direct threat to her connection or control over my ex-husband. When she felt most threatened, she would tell me that she was going to cut me out of her life, which she usually did for between 6-12 months at a time.

After the fourth time she did it, which happened just before our separation, I stopped trying to fight it, fix it or change it, and I just accepted it. In fact, I took that opportunity to block her from my phone etc and stay away from all family events.

interestingly, she then got very upset and kept calling my ex crying and asking why I was treating her this way and what she had done to deserve it. Classic fear of abandonment, even though she'd hit the eject button herself. As my therapist said, she always had this flavour of 'I can't bear you being near me, but don't you dare leave me'.

After months of her crying to my ex, and him starting to get cloudy about the fact that it was actually her who had said she wanted to cut contact, I ended up writing her a letter... a pretty kind, gentle and straight to the point note, wishing her well but identifying each period of exclusion by date, and trying to let her know that the pattern of behaviour between us and was too damaging for me to participate in any longer and that I needed to look after my health.

She wrote back eventually and gaslight the heck out of the previous 10 years... In a seriously unhinged way actually. But it didn't have an effect on me because I could see it for exactly what it was and it was soooo far away from any shred of truth that it actually just reinforced that I had made the right decision. I felt zero need to reply and set the record straight. I had already said my bit and there was some relief in that, especially because at that point I really had nothing else to lose by being honest.

In my letter I expressed my hope that we could be kind and at ease when we saw each other at the occasional family event, and that's actually exactly how it's been. It felt really good. Like it was all finally over and the cycle was broken. I will see her once every now and again I'm sure, but she doesn't have the same power over me. My ex however is still very much in the fog, but I guess that's now his issue to deal with.

[Alexmom]

IMO mother enmeshment is a form of child abuse, and I had no clue it even existed until I married DH, and experienced first hand the results of a mother/son enmeshed relationship.   I think these women are deeply troubled and flawed, and they are just bad for your marriage.  I regret not putting very firm parameters in place early on to keep my MIL out of our home and for the most part out of my life except for maybe a visit once or twice a year in which I gray rocked it and really rewarded myself after going through with the visit. 

To answer another poster's question, when my MIL passed, I felt a sense of relief and I felt lighter knowing that she would never pull another antic or try to meddle or try to insert herself in my marriage or my family.  I think the passage of time - when you are free of any involvement with these troubled relationships - is a great healer.  My MIL has been passed for almost 3 years now, and I think about her less and less.