Granny's Advice

For the past eight years, my husband's parents and siblings have been very active in our lives. I found this a little inconvenient but decided that they meant well, so I tried to make the most of it. We'd spend every holiday with them, to the exclusion of my own family. They'd also call us over nearly every weekend to visit them.

I thought that I had a good relationship with his mother. I respect her, she's very bright and compassionate. It seemed as though she tried to include me, and my daughter from a previous marriage, in family functions. For over six years, I admired her positive outlook on life.

About two years ago, her attitude seemed to change. This was about the time that her husband contemplated retiring. It was also about the time when her son and I had her first grandchild. She began to complain about how my husband's sibling were stealing her money. She complained that my brother-in-law borrowed her car when it was inconvenient for her. She gossiped incessantly about her niece (my old friend from high school who introduced me to my husband). This was difficult to hear and I told her that I was "uncomfortable" hearing these things. First, I felt a kinship towards the people that she was complaining about. Second, my mother-in-law seemed to be experiencing a lot more stress than usual. This was not the person that I had known my mother-in-law to be, she was never this negative.

One day last year, I learned that I had won a sum of money. That same day, I found a wonderful car at a great price and purchased it. That evening, my mother-in-law called to complain that her son had not returned her car. I told her that I had an extra car and wouldn't mind giving it to her son and offered to help with the insurance payments for a short time. Her response was unexpected. She yelled at me and told me that I wasn't welcome in her home. It was close to Thanksgiving. So, I made plans to volunteer at a homeless shelter. My husband and the children would spend Thanksgiving with his mother.

In the days following this event, I had received numerous e-mails and telephone calls from members of my husband's family. My sister-in-law stated that I told my mother-in-law that the "homeless were more family than my in-laws". My husband's aunts and uncles called to chide me about the evil things that I said about his family. (Later, I found out that she told everyone that I had said hurtful things about them. Many of the things that she said about her family and my friends she told them came from me. Furthermore, she told her family that I said that her family made me uncomfortable, not the gossip about these people. On some level, I can see where the misunderstanding occurred. This explains why his brother never speaks to me. As late as last week, I received a phone call from his aunt telling me that I've got my husband "mesmerized". ) Last year, a few days after my mother and I had the fateful conversation, my sister-in-law left a voice message stating that I was to make the Thanksgiving meal for my husband's family and drop it off at my in-laws home. Unfortunately, my husband intercepted this message and became quite angry. Needless to say, none of us spent Thanksgiving at his parent's house.

In the past year, things have become worse. I've tried to correct the misunderstanding with my mother-in-law on several occasions to no avail. She simply refuses to speak to me. My husband has been to their house several times and she tells him that I have him under some type of spell. This hurts him because he considers that an insult to his character. Worse, my husband claims that he is continually catching them lying about the things that I have said and done. Luckily, for me, my husband has been present during most of my conversations with his mother. Unfortunately, he is very hurt.

My husband claims that they expect us to resume holiday and weekend visits. He wants to wait until they explain why they have said and done the things that they have. There is a lot of tension in their home and he doesn't want to subject the children to that. (Our eldest daughter has been heard repeating the bad things about her uncle stealing money from Grandma.. We needed that to stop.) Also, they expect all of our children at their home on the weekends but my eldest daughter spends the weekends with her biological father, another change that occurred about the time that things blew up between my mother-in-law and myself.

It gets worse, the calls from my sister-in-law had become so frequent (at one point, 30 calls within a one hour period) that my husband had put a call block on the phone. I took it off, but began to receive phone calls from my father-in-law in which he was noticeably intoxicated. After my husband fielded such a call, he put the call block back on. Its been this way for six months. (My sister-in-law still lives with her parents, so the call block is only on that phone number.)

Now, I recently found out that I am pregnant with our second child together. I asked my husband to try to talk to his mother one more time and make sure that she is the first to know about the baby because I felt that she would be hurt if she found out "through the grapevine". He did so, but his mother refused to speak to him. I'm not sure what was said when he visited her but my husband now states that he wants nothing more to do with his family. He wants to cut them off completely.

On some level, I fear that there is something more to the picture. I'm not sure what it is but something doesn't make sense. I feel that its mostly about hurt feelings and perhaps the stress that has accompanied the many changes that both of our families (his family of origin and family of creation) have experienced within the past year. I know that life is short and someday he may have regrets about his relationship with his mother.

Is there anything that I can do to try to correct the situation? Or do I just continue to pray that eventually my mother-in-law and her son will find common ground?

Any advice would be helpful.
Sincerely.