Tell her. Tell her now. She needs to know ASAP.
Dear Prudence,
My father-in-law died last year, and my mother-in-law, “Bev,” was struggling on her own before the pandemic hit, so things have only gotten worse in the past seven months. Her children have been helping out where they can but are planning a virtual meeting to talk about longer-term strategies to care for her (she’s in her mid-60s). I know one possible option they’ve discussed is her coming to live with my wife and me. It makes sense, since we have a large house, no kids, and enough disposable income to afford it. The only problem is that I will never live with, or spend more than an afternoon with, my mother-in-law. It is a marriage-ending situation for me. She is a good person, and she raised people that I either love or like, but she’s so aggressively negative and nerve-wracking. If you say you like her hat, she’ll make snide comments for days about how you must not have liked her coat (“I guess if I made as much money as you, I’d buy new coats all the time” or “I’d love to go, but I have to wear my red coat, and I’d hate to embarrass you”). Everyone is out to get her. If a cashier wishes her a nice day, they must have meant it sarcastically. It must be exhausting to be her, and I’m sympathetic, but I can’t live with her. I feel so on edge around her that I get panic attacks. I grew up in a violent home, and the tension I feel around her reminds me of what it felt like there.
I know ultimatums are bad, but I don’t want my wife to go through this whole conversation with her siblings and then surprise her. My wife is a wonderful woman, but she loves her mother and thinks me comparing her to my abusive dad is cruel. I understand that, but even though I don’t fear Bev’s violence, the need to watch every word just puts me back in that fight-or-flight state. What do I do?
—Ultimatum Uncertainty
Re: Tell her. Tell her now. She needs to know ASAP.
So I say all that to say that DH and I have been having conversations about future care for his dad and how far we're willing to extend ourselves. Living with FIL would be marriage ending for me. My mental health would not be able to handle it. I'd also be worried about DefConn and he doesn't need to be in that situation. Thankfully, DH is on the same page as me. IDK where his siblings would fall, but they have no leg to stand on since they don't live here and probably wouldn't transplant FIL to their home.
I think it's terrible of LW's wife to be discussing/offering their home as a haven for MIL if she needs to move in with someone with her siblings without first having a conversation with LW. I also think it's awfully dismissive of her to not take LW's feelings/concerns about how her mother's behavior affects LW.
There is some serious lack of communication here, that LW needs to fix right now. LW needs to tell Wife, I cannot live with MIL, here's why, and we as a couple cannot consider the option of MIL living with us. And Wife needs to absolutely respect that.
How does he know? Why didn't he interject and say, "That's not an option for me" when she said they'd be talking about it? Why didn't she ask how he felt?
LW absolutely NOW needs to talk to the wife. They need to be clear NOW that this is a non starter.
DH and I have had this discussion briefly but haven't had it large scale yet. Either way it's something we'd have to align on and my marriage needs to come first. If something is a deal breaker for DH then we need to come up with an ideal alternative. Walking on eggshells is not something that works.
Regardless I've had ex-bf's family not like me much {or basically just tolerate me} and it's not fun.
LW needs to tell their wife. If you can't live with someone, you can't live with someone.
K and I make the attempt to always say, "That's a very attractive human" when we notice someone and not assume gender based on physical appearance for anyone we don't know.
Once you really work on it, it becomes a lot easier to separate gender and genitalia and to be a trans ally, I think.
And that being said, I actually know someone who is gay and looks more feminine than masculine and just always thought of them as "him" {at the time they identified as male, and could be different now}
Having someone, even family, move into one's home is a major discussion. A potentially dealbreaking, huge major discussion. So I just don't get how people find themselves in this situation.
At any rate, the LW need to let their wife know their feelings and most certainly before this sibling/MIL Zoom meeting. There's nothing to feel bad about or apologize for. The LW is not being unreasonable and they need to put their foot down that this cannot be an option.
I think the best way to handle the discussion is to avoid as much as possible talking about the things they don't like about their MIL. It should be enough to just say their privacy is important to them and they don't want another adult living with them.
Since the LW talks about disposable income, that's something else they should talk about with their wife if they haven't already. It might soften the blow if they show they are amenable to financially helping with mom's future care.
So yeah, how TF you go from married with no kids to your difficult MIL moving in with you permanently without intense discussion, negotiation, and boundary-setting is mind-bottling. And even then, you still may end up choosing your marriage over your parent. Or if you don't do that, your spouse may choose themselves over a shitty living situation.
Truth be told, we'll probably have to have the discussion again. If it's my mom that has to live with someone, hubby is fine. If it's my dad ... my dad can be really negative.
If there's anything I'm seeing it's that 2020 tells me that nothing can be planned.
On other weird accidents. I had a friend of a friend who got in a small fender bender. But it set her airbags off. One of her thumbs got caught by the airbag and she needed surgery to fix it. She was so pissed. While she understands how crucial air bags can be, this particular accident was almost nothing and the only thing that caused her a lot of pain and hassle was the injury from the air bag.
Actually the convo came up assuming we won the Cheo Dream of a Lifetime Lottery house lmao! My mum would move in and take care of BK during the day. She would be able to retire {she's going part time next spring} and not have to worry about bills at least.
Parent or no parent, you shouldn't be forced to live with someone who you find it that hard to be around (has your wife noticed how agitated you get around her?). It's your home too and you have a right to be comfortable in it.
It doesn't sound from your letter like Bev is physically unable to live alone or care for herself. If it's just a matter of having trouble taking care of a house on her own or an emotional/loneliness issue, what if you chipped in for an apartment or smaller house nearby where your wife could check in and help her with stuff regularly, and you didn't have to be any more involved than you wanted to be?
I'm thinking about this from a culture perspective. H's family comes from generational living - his grandmother's house currently houses 4 generations, while his grandfather lives with his mom. Right or wrong, there's an assumption that aging parents end up living with the kids. I wonder if there's some assumption like that fueling why the wife isn't talking to LW. Either way, this seems to be the week for married people who don't talk to each other.
We witnessed this with SIL and BIL. On SIL's side the aging family lives with the children. It's clear that was the thought process that they had when they purchased their home in the last couple years because there is a bedroom with a bathroom in their basement. According to MIL (and I do take some of her stories with a grain of salt) SIL's dad said, "Well in OUR family we take in the aging family." And MIL's response was, "I'll go where you tell me." She dealt with that with her mom and they were VERY clear that moving her mom to live with MIL and FIL was a non starter.
Side note: I giggle at the above situation because when MIL and FIL were considering moving to live close to BIL his answer was, "Well, sure but maybe no closer than 45 minutes away."
At first I was thinking one option could be if the LW and wife got help from the other siblings to build an ADU (Accessory Dwelling Unit) on their property, aka small second unit that shares walls, but not entrances with the main house. However, the MIL sounds meddling, so I could see this being almost as bad.
Oh my goodness, I have a tenant who reminds me of the Bev description! She is a lot younger than Bev, but I can see her growing into the more advanced negativity and paranoia as she gets older, lol. I like her and the negativity isn't usually directed at me. But she is a talker and I've often heard stories of this person or that person staring at her. Looking at her weird. Including cashier stories like what the LW described! And, while I'm sure a story here or there is true, she's really sensitive and seems to LOOK for the smallest reason to be offended and also assumes the worst in people. I'm sometimes amazed that she seems to like me! Not that I'm unlikeable, lol. But I would be a natural target for her vitriol, so I'm surprised I'm not.
Edited because one of my sentences was missing.
I think if you're looking to move that close to one of your kids/grandkids it would be nice to at least have a conversation about it. Not that we can tell anyone where to move, but you'd think they would at least want to know how we all thought about it.
FIL also said, "Dude I'll buy a house where I want to." It was also a point to BIL to say that he can't tell his parents what to do. That said, BIL/SIL clearly are incongruous in that approach and it's left a salty taste in the mouths of MIL and FIL. MIL is definitely negative and high maintenance and manipulative but she's loving, means well and is their mom. It's just clear that when BIL and SIL say, "This is our approach to parents they didn't insert the (SIL's name) between to and parents." It's something that hasn't been lost on MIL and FIL.
MIL and FIL did ask what we thought about them moving close to us and we were for it. They now live in town and they're part of our "bubble" but not part of our dwelling.