Originally posted by Airhead
Look, I'm not trying to be harsh with Muck, and he's right, I don't know all the stuff he does around the house or how strong his marriage is. But two out of three marriages end in divorce, and one way to start the wheels turning for an eventual divorce is to be openly hostile to your mother-in-law. It's common sense.
I couldn't dis-agree more with this part of your post.
if you want to kill a marriage, just let the partners lose respect for each other.
having it become common in her family for them to talk trash about you is a nice seed to start killing any respect your wife has for you. it wasn't just the mother in-law who thought this was OK, there was someone on the other end of the conversation too.
in any relationship, from your marriage to your dealings with the kid at the drive-up window, you teach people how to treat you. every single time you allow people treating you like crap, you're teaching them and anyone who observes it (including your wife and kids) that either -
1. it's OK to treat people this way
2. it's OK to allow people to treat you this way
3. that the gossip must be true because you don't confront it
4. that you won't do anything if abused, so it's OK to be dis-respectful, abusive, rude or inconsiderate to you
which one (or more) of those messages do you want to send to your wife and kids?
how long before your wife and kids make the transition from overhearing this sort of thing, to having people do it in front of them, to them joining in, to providing ammo for the in-laws, to your kids thinking you are a joke, to your wife losing respect for you and looking for a husband she can respect.
maybe you could just put up with it for awhile. just let it go while you put up with it. at least until the day you can't take it any more and have a nice and usually public melt-down. that way talking trash about you won't just be fun for the gossips in the family. the people who know about the family gossips, and don't put much weight behind what the gossips say about others, get to join in the fun. because when you finally can't take it anymore and lose control, you will prove the gossips right and demonstrate what a clown you can be.
it is way better to deal with this sort of thing early on when it is just annoying and unacceptable. wait until you are mad to act and you will likely do or say something you regret, making you the unreasonable one.
it is not unreasonable or hostile to demand people to treat you with respect. this goes double in your own home. triple if these people have any contact with your wife and children.
what is unreasonable is to repeatedly let people treat you badly and then, after you've spent all that time teaching them that you find that sort of treatment acceptable, one day decide you've had enough and suddenly change the rules on them.
Muck, you know this is unacceptable. if you didn't you wouldn't have written the first post.
so let me ask you this- do you think it will be easier or harder to take when you deal with this for the 10th time? the 50th? the 200th? when your wife and kids start joining in?
if it gets easier to take- is this the guy you want to be? do you want to desensitize yourself, train yourself over time to be a doormat? eventually get to a place in your life where even you find it normal and maybe even deserved for people (including your family) to treat you like a punk?
or
if it gets harder to take with each instance- wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that if it continues you will eventually reach a point were you can no longer tolerate it? would that be easier to do when you at the end of your rope or would you handle it better if you did it while you still had some patience left?
would it be easier to put a stop to this now when it just your mother in-law, and maybe a follow-up with who-ever was on the other end of the call (if they pass on what she said), or when it becomes a common topic of amusement when your in-laws get together?
I'm not saying you need to pick a fight with her, or scream and yell and throw a tantrum. I'd just tell her what you over-heard, and that if she can't help but use her stay with you to dis-respect you, then you will have to put a stop to it by ending her visit. explain to her that your home is private, and as a guest in your home you need her to respect your privacy or remove herself from your home.
keep in mind, she is not your mother and you are not in her house. she has or deserves no authority over you. you are the one who decides what is acceptable in your home and have a right (and obligation, in providing an example to your kids) to remove anyone from your home who can't behave properly.
