Direct Answers Column for the week of February 27, 2006
Direct Answers from Wayne and Tamara
Standing Alone
My mother-in-law of 17 years is a nasty, difficult European woman who has been in America for 45 years. I don't know if we're having a culture clash, a personality clash, or both. For starters, in the beginning when my husband and I lived together she called me a whore, then the day after the wedding she asked me to call her mom. I refused.
We've been having loud arguments ever since. This upsets my children, so three years ago I stopped talking to her. It took her two and a half years to figure out that's what I was doing. She causes major marital problems as my husband refuses to protect me from her. He says she's always been that way, so tune her out. That's what he's done since high school.
Well, I can't tune people out. She criticizes my cooking, states I shouldn't have married her son, then denies it all when I confront her. I am considering a divorce over this as I can't live with someone who doesn't support me. Yet I don't want to break up the family.
Marianne
Marianne, G.K. Chesterton wrote, "There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematician that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one."
Sometimes a man doesn't realize a woman values him for his ability to protect her from harm. If the man won't stand up for her, she will lose respect for him. When your husband was growing up, he treated his mother like annoying music on the radio. He couldn't turn her off, so he learned to tune her out.
It's not that he disagrees with you. He knows she's a problem. The dispute is how to react to her bad behavior. A book we recommend is Susan Forward's "Emotional Blackmail." It is a primer on how to handle annoying people like your mother-in-law.
In countries where women are free to initiate divorce, divorces are usually initiated by women. When a woman gets to the end of her rope, it no longer matters if her husband is finally ready to act. It is as if a switch has been thrown, and there is no turning back.
If your husband doesn't deal with this problem, then he's left the choice up to you. He needs to realize this. The Susan Forward book can help you both, but if he won't confront his mother, then in six months we may get another letter from you. That letter will begin, "I met this man
."
Wayne & Tamara
Thorny Consequences
What do you think about a woman who has children, remarries, and still keeps her ex-husband's name while married to a new man? Is it for the sake of the children? I don't see that is the case with my fiancι's ex because she has no problem abusing him or me or both of us in front of the children. She's even driven down the road in a fit of rage screaming profanity about us with the children in the car. How do we know that? Because we heard it over the cell phone.
Giovanna
Giovanna, her decision about her name is neither here nor there. It is a decision totally within her control and totally beyond yours. If she wants to call herself Elvis Presley, Mother Goose, or Punxsutawney Phil, she can. Since this is something you can do nothing about, let it go.
You are faced with more serious problems. Your life is about to be linked with a woman whose behavior is out of control. How are you going to deal with her? How are you going to protect the children from her rage? These are the questions you need to answer. Once again, we recommend Susan Forward's book "Emotional Blackmail."
Wayne & Tamara
Authors and columnists
Wayne and Tamara Mitchell can be reached at
www.WayneAndTamara.com
Send letters to: Direct Answers, PO Box 964, Springfield, MO 65801 or email:
DirectAnswers@WayneAndTamara.com
