I Call Bullshit
It has been said that the hardest thing about turning a hot relationship into a successful marriage is being able to live with one another.
I call bullshit on that. The hardest part is dealing with somebody else's crazy-ass family.
I realize that everybody's family has its quirks, and mine is no exception. By quirks I mean those attitudes and behaviors that you would not tolerate for a minute from anyone else, but when they come from your mother, you sigh and resign yourself to the fact that "That's just mom." Family quirks are essentially those battles that experience has taught us are not worth fighting.
Everybody has their own strategy for dealing with this insanity. Mine is to keep my familial interactions infrequent enough so that the "long time, no see" goodwill outlasts the duration of the visit. It is true that familiarity breeds contempt. Especially when it comes to other people's families.
My mother-in-law is evil.
Yes, I know; this belief hardly makes me unique. To be honest, I have only myself to blame. My warning did not appear as handwriting on the wall, but more as a giant flashing neon sign that you might see in the seedier sections of town.
My wife and I got married shortly after her parents filed bankruptcy so they were not going to assist us with wedding expenses. No problem. I was grown, working, and not owed a thing by these people. It did not bother me a bit. My wife and I planned all of the details of the wedding - the catering, flowers invitations, etc. At the time, I was living in a house by myself, and she was there most of the time as well. We did not live together, but when we ordered the invitations we used my address as the RSVP address.
That's when things got ugly.
I walked into the house a few days later to find my soon-to-be wife on the phone and in tears. On the other end were both of her parents, going ape-shit over the invitations. They were furious that the invitations were not worded as coming from them and that their address was not the one we used for responses.
I was stunned.
These people actually felt justified in bringing their daughter to tears for not making it appear as if they were hosting a $10,000 party – a party to which they had not contributed a dime. I was ready to grab the phone and describe their psychosis to them in detail, but my wife begged me to let her handle it. In the end, her mother bullied her into hand-writing the envelopes for all of the people invited from her side so that her parents' address would show.
I could not comprehend how my wife could allow this crazy bitch to get away with that shit, but as time passed things became clearer. I realized the dynamic of my wife's family was carefully controlled by her mother. My wife and her sister - both grown women - would fight through their mother. She would act as moderator as they took turns arguing their side to her over the phone.
The phone. The virtual umbilical cord that remained uncut. My wife would talk to her mother 3 to 5 times a day. Initially, I found this amusing. The woman lives 5 minutes away. What could they possibly have to talk about which would require so many phone calls? I call my mother maybe 5 times a year.
Why would her mother want to subject herself to this? Most parents have no desire to be put in the middle of every petty squabble between their kids. The reason is that it kept her in control.
It was not long before my mother-in-law decided to see how far she could extend her control into my household. It began with her insistence that she be allowed to drop by unannounced. Nevermind that we were newlyweds or that our friends did not even drop by without calling. It took my promise to my wife that I would answer the door naked to get that line drawn.
When we brought our oldest child home, my sister happened to be in town for the first time in years and knew it would be a few more years before she returned. She had burned all of her vacation, but took additional unpaid time off from work so that she could meet our son on the day that she had to leave town. My in-laws came over the night we got back and my sister was to come by the next day. By this time, my family had had enough interactions with my wife's mother to warrant keeping them separated. The next day, my wife ended up on the phone with her parents screaming at her because they "were not being treated fairly" and had spent less time at our house since we got back than my sister.
No need to adjust your computer screen. The people who lived 5 minutes from us begrudged my sister, who lives across the country, one afternoon visit to meet her nephew, and felt fully self-righteous screaming at their daughter for over an hour on the phone.
My wife realizes that the bitch is insane, but she is her mother, regardless. I have learned to avoid discussing her mother with her. It's one thing to beat up your kid brother, but another thing entirely to see somebody else beating up your kid brother. Although I understand this, I am always left speechless when my wife gets angry with me for agreeing too enthusiastically that her mother is out of her mind.
I would like to be able to tell you that these incidents were anomalies produced by stressful times and that my mother-in-law and I get along fine these days. I would also like to be able to say that she is mellowing with age, but that would be bullshit. These are just a few highlights in an ongoing pattern of narcissistic control-freak neurosis.
And it’s only getting worse.
My mother-in-law was an atheist for most of her adult life, and she made sure her kids knew what she thought of the Catholic Church. At the same time, she sent them to parochial school because it was an affordable private school. Nice mindfuck for the kids, but lots of people who aren’t devout Catholics do the same. When her finances went to pot and she hit the age of the change, however, she suddenly found God and became a self-appointed Super-Catholic.
Few things are as annoying as a reformed smoker who can’t resist harping on anybody who still smokes. A reformed atheist, however is one of those annoying things. She now criticizes her children for not being as “devout” as she is, as if she does not know who shaped their religious views.
Oh, and she believes that she is psychic now. She receives visions from God. I couldn’t make this shit up.
I have friends whose mothers-in-law have done a heinous thing or other, which has caused a rift in the family, and they claim that theirs is the worst. That’s crap. At least they don’t have to deal with theirs on an ongoing basis. Mine has struck a perfect balance: she consistently strives to make those around her as miserable as she is, but never quite pushes it to the point of being cut off. She’s like a misery pusher who knows that the money is in the comeback.
My wife's mother is the one person I can count on to piss on her daughter's parade every time. Don’t even get me started on her sister.
by
Stretch
