navigating uNPD MIL’s relationship with our older teenage children

[Looking For Peace]

 
Advice needed: navigating uNPD MIL's relationship with our older teenage children

Has anyone been in a similar situation and found a way to navigate it?

I could write an essay with the backstory, but in a nutshell, we've been no contact with my MIL for years because she showed herself to be very unsafe and toxic around our children. My husband had also been very unwell and needed time to heal without his mother's toxic interference.

In more recent years, he's gradually resumed contact with her on special occasions, so they now have a low-contact relationship.

Fast-forward a few years, and our eldest, who was always the golden grandchild, is approaching adulthood. He knows why he hasn't had a relationship with his grandma and says he understands. I felt it was time to let him make up his own mind about whether he wanted a relationship with her. I didn't want him to feel that we were denying him that choice.

He started attending family gatherings with my husband, sometimes accompanied by his younger brother. Then MIL began offering him work at her house, doing cleaning and odd jobs, and he's spent quite a lot of time there this summer.

Now she's invited him on holiday with just her and my other nephew, who has also had very little contact with the family for the same reasons.

My SIL and I are both horrified by the idea. We don't trust MIL at all, and although our boys are older now, they're still vulnerable to manipulation. We're worried about them being drawn into the family dynamic without fully understanding what lies beneath the surface.

This is causing huge issues between my husband and me. We've just had a massive row about it. He says I'm stuck in fear and paranoia, projecting negatively onto the future rather than giving people a chance. He says he's choosing love and living in the moment instead of looking backwards.

I feel as though he's gone straight back into the FOG, and here I am, years later, having the same circular arguments all over again.

Our children are older teenagers now, approaching adulthood. I understand that things have to change as they get older, and that we can't make all their decisions for them. I genuinely want them to have the freedom to make their own informed choices. But with my husband showing so little concern about the potential risks, I'm really uncomfortable with how this is unfolding.

There's also another layer to this. In the last few years, my husband's brother has been accused of sexually abusing his daughter. MIL and the rest of the siblings have closed ranks around him and supported him. During our argument today, my husband shouted that I didn't know what had happened and that his brothers family was broken. He also hinted that his brothers wife was unstable. I know this has been used in the family to undermine the allegations.

That's true: I don't know exactly what happened. But neither does he, and I'm deeply uncomfortable with the family's response to such serious allegations.

The family has a history of abuse and toxicity that seems to be masked by big, fun family gatherings. From the outside, everything can look happy and normal. That's precisely what worries me: that our boys will see the fun, loving surface and be drawn in without recognising the deeper dynamics that led us to go no contact in the first place.

I don't want to control my children or make decisions for them indefinitely. But I also don't want to stand by and watch them become entangled in something we worked so hard to protect them from.

Has anyone navigated this successfully when their children became older teenagers? How do you balance respecting their autonomy with protecting them from manipulation and potentially unsafe family members? And how do you handle it when your partner seems to have forgotten, or minimised, the very things that led to no contact in the first place?

I'd really appreciate hearing from anyone who has been through something similar, especially if you've found a way to manage it without it destroying your relationship with your partner or your children.

[square]

Hello,

I have experienced an NPD MIL, and have a child who is now a young adult. However, other parts of the dynamic are different. My child was not a golden grandchild (and in fact has now been excommunicated from that part of the family). But the biggest difference is your husband is protecting the family system. Mine rebelled and protected our daughter. (We are all NC with MIL.)

So I would like to suggest that this is actually about your husband, not your MIL. If your husband was prioritizing his child and his family over his mother, there would be no issue. You and SIL would both politely decline the trip and that would be that.

The thing is, it's a very, very tricky thing to get a spouse to see the light when they are set on protecting their personality disordered family of origin.

I don't know how to get your husband to see this, but I do know that people get more entrenched in defending Mommy Dearest when they feel Mommy Dearest is being attacked. It's kind of like a cult, criticizing the leader triggers certain ideas that the leader have implanted into the followers to protect themselves: "Unholy people attack me because they are demons," "Outsiders want to end our peace" and so on. So unfortunately, trying to "get them to see" often fails because it triggers the defenses that have been programmed into the NPD's enablers. Often there is a story where the NPD is victimized, and "attacks" on the NPD trigger the idea that they are actually victims and need to be protected.

It's no guarantee, but often the approach of being very gently on your husband's side when MIL hurts him can help - carefully, over time. Not criticizing her, but just saying quietly "oh, you must feel hurt, you were just trying to help her" and similar can help. But this is a process that takes a long time, and success is not guaranteed. And you cannot come in too strong, you have to find the line where you can be on his side without triggering his need to defend her.

Obviously for this particular situation, it's already a very sore spot. But maybe it could help a little bit to switch away from "MIL is doing these horrible things" to "I just don't think Son is ready for this kind of thing." Even if you imply problems with MIL, better to focus on "I don't want Son to get hurt" than "MIL might do XYZ." The subject should be your son, not MIL, even if it sounds like you're saying the same thing. This is not likely to make your husband change his mind, but I wonder if this strategy could just shift things a teeny bit.

You can also point out that SIL is also worried about her son. Same thing, focus on the nephew and SIL, and not directly on attacking MIL.