When newcomer “wife” comes to stay in the new house with husband who is already with other male members, becomes favorable atmosphere for her. Tendency of males to attract females facilitates her to take advantage to establish own atmosphere that matches her identity. This facilitates her to run the home as she wants. On the other hand, if there is already an adult female member (mainly mother-in-law) who controlled the house, turn out to be problems for her and her. Her survival is by surrendering to adjust into the existing environment or fight to gain control to establish own environment. It is a war between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, most popular of any war. It is egoistic war to establish own superiority.
A home adorned by woman is her entity. Her own values are involved in making a home that reflects her qualities. Each house interior is different from other is because her deep involvement to decorate that suits her taste. We can observe in a house purchased or hired, woman takes special interest and involve her feeling to decorate and arrange interiors that makes her comfortable. Woman modifies her house to suit her taste is the environment she makes that suits her.
The mother who is already in control of her house would not easily leave, is the same case as of politicians who hates to leave legislation membership or seat whatever we may call. This is her house as she has been involved to nurture the house since the beginning. Any challenge is the challenge to her emotions, sense of worth, identity, fondness and finally her control for own security. Thus, she would never wish newcomer to have control on what she amassed for long-long time. This is the psychological behavior with every individual/ any life form. Who creates own territory by involving sentimentally and marks psychologically or physically to declare. Depends how species behave as human declare with flags and animals with other methods. Declaring territory is the sense of security. Similarly, mother too has marked her territory and would resist to any challenge.
A son for the mother is the outgrowth of her efforts and emotional involvement. Mainly when she has one son, she expects her son to become security for the family and the old age. Honestly, no aged man or woman would wish to go to old age houses for rest of the life as long as the son is alive. Differences of new generations, old generations, and psychological war between in-laws force to leave the house.
When she hands over her son to a new woman, she is cautious that her influence on the son is not disconnected. Her influence on him is the sense of security as he obeys, cares, and respects are his attachment. The new woman (WIFE) cannot tolerate because her sense of security expects 100% involvement from her husband. Wife needs him for her and children’s safety, security, comfort and sensual attachment. The diversion of her husband’s attention would minimize her expected desires. Therefore, she declares a war against her mother-in-law aggressively to thwart the weakening realm. However, the outcome depends on how psychologically strong the son/ husband is. How much his attraction or submission to the influence is? How strong the religious influence is? How he handles the situation? Who of two women are more influential is?
99.99 % mothers win over daughter-in-laws in the countries where religious dominance rule. All religious scripts direct the son to follow, respect, care and worship mothers. Therefore, aged are still safe and living with their children. However, in the urban and advanced countries it is the opposite. In such cases, the mothers are psychologically weaker and get defeated to daughter-in-laws.
In most cases, wife’s inclination is towards her own parents above the husband’s parents. She would prefer her mother-father to stay with her provided she wins her husband’s mind to agree. The reason of this is that she lived for long-long time, made her involve and attached emotionally with the parents and mixed up intensely to understand the needs of parents and parents understand her needs subsides only when she bears her own children.
One thing I would wish to stress that even wife loves and has respect for the mother-in-law; only psychological issues disconnect them. It is not any personal conflict rather is the personality conflict. They involve in the conflict to gain/retain the status and claim rights on the son/husband’s attention. So, can retain their say and pull major attention of son/husband towards them.
o Daughter-in-law should also realize that she too would meet her daughter-in-law in her future when she becomes the mother-in-law. On the other hand, mother-in-law should realize the same way.
o Wife need to understand that mother-in-law is now aged. The behavior developed from the very beginning, some times is not easy to change. Thus becomes responsibility to understand the situation and act to drag mother-in-law towards her by affection. This technique is an influence to convince mother-in-law that “I care her more than even her son.”
o Do not hurt any one’s sentiment. Sentiment is the personal value and ego. If you hurt, you become enemy. Besides, putting your own values in front of her, listen to her too and tell to agree which ever is best. Forcing opinions and values is a root to clash.
o It is a conflict between the new and old generation. Thinking and behavior differ generation to generation. Present generation is more open, free, and demanding than the old. Mother-in-law need to know it is not her era.
o Opinion and ideological differences lead to misunderstanding.
o Psychological feelings and horrifying stories about mother-in-law create misunderstanding.
o Besides, understanding each other’s stand and responsibilities should work to eliminate feeling of insecurity.
o Egoistic approach is the root cause that I am the one who is responsible for him. Now he is an adult man can take care himself and your both.
o Exchange the affection, views, chat, good moments of your life, gifts etc to get closer.
Two different identities of different ideologies fight each other to gain control on one man. These two beloved women crush this man in their skirmishes. They do not realize the affect on the man they are fighting-for. In most cases, mother gets defeated in this episode and ends up rest of her life in the old age homes. If wife looses the war, she ends up in marriage failure. Finally, who is the looser?
Link to this article:
http://www.sadashivan.com/marriagedreamswhenfails/id10.html
By: Sadashivan Nair
Mother-in-law AND Daughter-in-law Conflict
Escaping Your In-Laws
Living next door to toxic in-laws can undermine your self-confidence, your close relationships and your marriage…
“If you’ve ever wondered whether you are the only one to have experienced problems with your in-laws, you will find that you are not,” says Faith Powers, during a recent interview with Inside Success.
Faith’s expertise in the subject came from 21 years of personal experience. “When you marry someone, you marry their whole family.” says Faith, a fact that most newlyweds don’t realize.
Here are strategies to maintain your self-confidence and avoid letting your in-laws take over your life:
Keep your sense of humor: You can use laughter to ‘fit in’ to a family who doesn’t readily welcome outsiders. Laughter is a great way to keep up your own health as you deal with stressful situations. When you want to cry, try to see the humor in your dilemma. Look at it from an outsider’s point of view. Dealing with toxic in-laws is emotionally draining, and laughter recharges your batteries. You can’t beat a humorous moment for releasing the hormones that make you feel better.
Set boundaries: We all need privacy in our relationships. One of the major problems with meddling in-laws is that they barge in at all hours of your life, and expect to be treated as honored guests. Faith’s experience has been that even when she bent over backwards to please her in-laws, they had nothing but complaints for her. Faith advocates setting limits with in-laws right after the wedding – if not before, as bad habits are hard to change.
Be observant: In the early stages of a marriage, it is easy to ignore the red flags of future problems. Pay close attention to how your date, fiance, or spouse interacts with family members, and vice versa. Advance warning about how intrusive the new in-laws want to be can make all the difference. For example, a mother-in-law’s dependence on her son for emotional or financial support is warnings of trouble down the road. So is excessive criticism of her child’s new spouse.
Defend your boundaries: We all push boundaries. Your in-laws are probably going to push yours and you need to be ready. Faith reached a point where she would anticipate visits from her in-laws, and refuse to allow them into her home when she felt too stressed to deal with them. Ask your spouse for help as a mediator. If you can’t trust your spouse to stand up for you, then you have a much bigger problem than in-laws.
Make a plan: If you have decided to get out of an irresolvable abusive marriage, quietly make a plan and treat it like your business. Most victims of domestic violence live in survival mode, constantly fearful of what their spouse may do to them or their children. A plan and a goal can get you a lot farther a lot faster than just running.
Your plan should include the following three things.
First, find a sanctuary. It is so important to arrange for safe places to go in emergencies. Having a sanctuary is like insurance for you and your children. Second, keep in mind that while you’re still married, you have access to legal documents that will be unavailable after you leave. Take the opportunity to make copies of deeds, assets, and income records. Third, get proof if you can. Don’t forget to keep a journal of abusive incidents as well.
Moving on: The final advice is don’t let the past rob you of your future. We all have regrets about past events; it’s part of being human. The key is to accept what has happened and move on. Depression likes to strike when you are at your weakest and years of abuse can rob you of your objectivity when it comes to your self worth.
Set new goals and stay focused on the future for inspiration to keep going. Make friends with your future and tell your past to get lost. “You can do anything your set your mind to”, says Faith. “Just look at me!”
Try these techniques out and you’ll better be able to focus on the overall goal of getting along with your in-laws.
By: Randy Gilbert
Mother In Law Abuse – What You Can Do About It
Maya had the dream life. She had a career she loved. She married when she was mature enough to pick a partner for the right reasons. She had a partner, a son, a daughter and a lovely puppy. Add the picket fence and you could say she had it all. On the surface of course…
Beneath the surface she was struggling with the demise of a marriage due to the malicious interactions of a verbally and emotionally abusive mother in law who was going unstopped in the family. This women had such control over the men in her family, that she could say and do as she pleased, and no one would stop her from viscious behavior. Maya became the victim of emotional and verbal abuse, first from her mother in law, then her extended family members, and then ultimately from her husband. She was a highly educated women, so how could anything so serious be happening in her life?
The walls came crashing down upon Maya, when her mother in law crossed the line to not only verbally and emotionally abuse her, she repeatedly hurt her infant son too. The saddest thing about this situation, is that her mother in law “did not intentionally” verbally and emotionally abuse anyone. Even though she was the former manager of a pre-school, she did not consider that flying into a mad rage directed at Maya in front of her 2 month old son, would ultimately harm the baby.
When Maya tried to rationalize with her mother in law not to shout in front of the baby and even set a limit with her mad rages that were in hearing distance of her two month old son, she exploded into an enormous shouting attack of unbelievable proportions. Maya’s then 2 month old son, was quivering in her arms with fear. Maya had one gift as a mother, in that she had enormous mother’s intuition- and she knew my mother in law’s shouting verbally abusive comments at her had resulted in sheer terror and fear for her son- from his perspective, he had done something to cause such anger. An infant of this age does not have the capacity to handle hearing an abusive adult. As adults- parents or grandparents- we owe it to our children not to expose them to such emotional abuse.
Maya’s son suffered from the most intense “colic” at that time. He was crying in pain throughout the day, and no one else had the patience to sit with hours of screaming agony from him. Maya knew that her son was a very empathic, emotionally gifted child that was picking up the emotionally abusive nature of her mother in law, and it was manifesting itself physically as “colic”. Colic is an interesting term for “we don’t know what is going on, there are no physical problems, good luck, we could over medicate the baby with addictive drugs to make us all feel better.”
During this time, Maya’s husband refused to see the connection between Maya’s mother in law’s abusive behavior and the grandchild’s sickness. Maya had one advantage in that she was highly educated and could read like a demon when need be. So Maya read everything about the brain gut axis in the infant, and the link between exposure to emotional abuse and infant physical problems. Maya fortunately had the strength to walk away from the situation, with a two month old infant and two puppies, and take back her life even when her family was not being protected by her husband.
Interestingly, after Maya’s son was removed from Maya’s mother in law’s house, all the extreme physical symptoms Maya’s son had disappeared. And yet to this day, although Maya’s husband and Maya have worked on staying married and communicating through the struggle, as a victim of infant abuse himself, the husband is very unwilling to ever see his mother with the lense of reality. It’s a sick situation.
However, it’s important for women with abusive mother in laws to know you are not alone. You sometimes have to be the strong one to protect your family. In Maya’s case, Maya’s mother in law had a pattern of abusively force feeding babies. She force fed Maya’s husband as an infant with a spoon, by holding her thighs over his torso as he screamed and cried in protest. This lady actually tried to force feed Maya’s son in her home while Maya was on a business call. Fortunately, Maya was present and able to intervene. The lady never took responsibility for her abusive behavior with Maya’s son. And interestingly, the entire family, Maya’s father-in-law and husband tried to emotionally and verbally attack Maya in defense of this sick behavior. However, over time with compassion, I understand a family with a narcissistic and abusive mother without self awareness, learns to cover up what really happens. They try to make the person who stands up against abuse as the crazy one.
After experiencing from Maya how bad abuse can get from an intimate family member, I have committed my life’s work to spiritually healing abuse survivors, so you become the mothers, lovers, and the professionals you deserve to be. I will be publishing a series of articles called, “You’re the First”, that will be about how women and men have turned around difficult situations, and become highly successful in their own right. Believe in yourself, you can get anything you dream of…
By: Neera Puri