My Fiance Hates My Mother
“I can’t believe this is happening,” says Christina, 26, who has been living with her fiance, Ari, for six months. “Last night, we had a huge fight and Ari says he wants to cancel our wedding plans.” He’s afraid, she explains, that their relationship will be a carbon copy of her parents’ - and, to be honest, even Christina is beginning to wonder if he may be right.
“Mother despises the man I love and he despises her,” she says softly. Her mother and Ari fight over issues large and small: Do we have Sunday dinner at mother’s house or Ari’s brother’s house? How much time should we spend with her?” They even argued over which radio station to listen to in the car, she recalls. Once, when her mother berated her for forgetting to fill her car with gas, Ari lost it. “He kicked over a chair and even called my mother a bitch,” Christina says.
Most distressing is how the battles have spilled over into her relationship with Ari. “He can be as overbearing, critical and demanding as my mother,” Christina reports. “And if he doesn’t get all my attention, he explodes with a ferocious temper that reminds me of both my parents.”
Christina still has difficulty standing up to her mother, who makes excessive claims on her free time. “Ari likes to think of himself as my knight in shining armor,” Christina adds. “Can’t he see that when he argues with her it only makes the problem worse?”
Ari, a 26-year-old attorney, doesn’t see it that way. “Christina has knuckled under to her mother’s outrageous demands her whole life - someone has to stand up for her now, or we’ll both be crushed by that woman,” he announces. “When Christina gets upset, I get upset, and I’m constantly cleaning up the messes between them.”
Ari loves Christina, but he’s sure he won’t just be marrying her - he’ll be marrying his mother-in-law, too.
Dealing with difficult relatives
“Relatives - particularly parents - are adept at pushing our emotional hot buttons,” says Evelyn Moschetta, a marriage and family therapist in Huntington, N.Y. One reason is that we care so deeply about what they think. Christina feels like a pawn between her mother and fiance, and she’s paralyzed by a situation she thinks she’s powerless to change. At the bottom of her fear and confusion is the fact that she has never been able to find her own voice - or to believe she has the right and the ability to control her fate.
For Ari, dealing with a mother-in-law is fraught with tension: It’s easier to accept the demands and idiosyncrasies of your own parents, who you know genuinely care about you, than those of an in-law.
The key to lessening the impact of another person’s interference in your marriage is to recognize and change the behavior that sets you up for an emotional hit. If you or your spouse feels like someone else is pulling the strings, consider these tips, which helped Christina and Ari set reasonable boundaries:
1. Realize you can’t change another person, but you can control your reaction to him or her. To do this, you need to refocus your thinking. Take the time to think about what you want and need to do, so you are more confident in your decisions and better able to stand firm in the face of someone else’s demands.
2. Know when to go to the mat and when to let things slide. Picking your battles is as crucial to good relations with in-laws as it is with children. Consider the long-range impact: Is this issue worth a fight?
3. Set limits. A tactful confrontation - in person, on the phone or in a letter - is your best strategy, though most people avoid it at all costs. Christina took a giant step when she called her mother and told her, lovingly but firmly, that she wanted some changes in their relationship. Now, when her mother calls with a request, Christina knows she has a choice and will say, “Mother, I can’t take you today, but I’ll be free Saturday morning.”
4. Form an alliance with your spouse. You must work together when outsiders interfere. Agreeing to support each other is one way, but so, too, is allowing your partner to fight his own battles.
Though well-intentioned, Ari didn’t realize that he was impeding Christina’s progress by leaping to her defense. He’ll boost her confidence more, and help their marriage in the long run, by giving her the chance to test her own abilities.