Le marriage wreckers
Ultra-critical, outrageously rude and sex mad. French mother-in-laws are hell on earth say these fed-up British wives ...
OVERBEARING, nitpicking and outrageously rude. A French mother-in-law is the scourge of any British woman who dares to marry her son. Recent reports point to an ‘epidemic’ of cross-Channel divorces — and the typically Anglophobic maman m is said to be the culprit.
Here, five battle- scarred British wives abroad share their stories . . .
I won’t pay for the divorce, she said at our engagement
Sarah Syvinté, 46, is married to yannick, 41. they live in Lot-et-Garonne, south-west France, with their children, tom, 12, and Emilie, nine, and run a wine business. YOUR engagement party is meant to be one of those treasured occasions where everyone wishes you y well. As Yannick stood up to announce we were getting married, his mother piped up: ‘Well, don’t expect me to come.’
As if that wasn’t bad enough, she continued: ‘And I certainly won’t be paying for the divorce either.’
An awkward silence fell on the room. They are a French Catholic family and Yannick is the eldest child and only son. I am not French and I’m not Catholic. Two black marks against me.
I met Yannick on holiday in 1999. He ticked all the boxes: his looks, his character and outlook on life. And I loved the fact he was foreign.
He didn’t warn me about his mother, so it was a shock when we were introduced weeks later. We had dinner and she made me feel very uncomfortable.
When I offered to help with the washing up, she declined, only to later criticise me for not doing so. I couldn’t — and I still can’t — win.
After ruining our engagement, she tried to commandeer our wedding arrangements. She told us we would marry in the village church. When I said it would take place in England, she was horrified. She tried to muscle in on choosing my wedding dress, but I told her that honour was reserved for my mother.
At the wedding in April 2002, she and the rest of the French party couldn’t stop complaining about the cold — despite it being warm enough for me to wear short sleeves.
When we went on to have our two children, she knew best. It’s a case of tolerating her.
These days we live a three-and-a-half-hour drive away. It wasn’t deliberate, but it’s great not having her on our doorstep.
The fact is my mother-in-law is a selfish woman who puts her own happiness first. If it wasn’t for the fact Yannick agrees — he spent most of his childhood with his grandparents — our marriage would be in serious trouble.
I vacuum, cook and clean for her, but it’s not enough
REBECCA BARKER, 34, and Jean-Marc, 52, met a couple of years ago and she moved into the family farm in vienne, western France, in October. THE first time I met my mother-in-law, Ginette, now 78, at a village dinner, she reluctantly said ‘bonjour’ and that was it. She warmly greeted her son Jean-Marc and then went to sit on the other side of the room — and spent the night avoiding all eye contact with me.
I was really shocked and asked Jean-Marc if I should talk to her. But he told me to leave her and that she’d come around eventually.
When eventually she addressed me she insisted — and still does — on calling me ‘Betty’ rather than ‘Becky’, as Becky isn’t a French name.
I moved to France in 2005 to join my mum and start a new life. So I was well established when I met Jean-Marc through friends.
A farmer, Jean-Marc’s life was hard and at times lonely. Not many French women are interested in a man for whom the farm must always come first. That’s quite apart from the smell, the mud and the non-stop work. Yet it seemed Ginette viewed her son as a catch and me as not good enough.
As for the family farm, she is reluctant to let me step into her shoes, even though she and her husband are due to retire into a bungalow nearby.
This Christmas, Ginette fell over and broke her arm. Jean-Marc suggested: ‘Why don’t you offer to help her?’ I, too, thought that might help. So I go to her house twice a day to vacuum, cook and clean.
But, apparently, she goes over everything again when I’ve gone. I even overheard her husband saying: ‘Just tell her what she’s doing wrong and smack her bottom if it’s not good enough.’
I try to laugh it off, but it does get to me. JeanM arc is convinced she’ll come round. I do wonder if she’ll ever learn to love me.
She made me so miserable that I saw a psychiatrist
HELEN LaziOu-rOGEr, 36, lived with Damien for four years. She has two children, Freddy, 16, and Maxence, six, and lives in normandy. DAMIEN’S two previous relationships ended because of his mother Annick’s constant interfering. I can’t say I wasn’t warned, but she was particularly brutal. When I had a miscarriage at 12 weeks,
she told me to ‘get over it’ because it ‘wasn’t even a pregnancy’.
She was especially brutal when our relationship fell apart, blaming me entirely.
I met Damien when I was 28 and he 36 in 2007, a year after my first marriage ended. We had moved to France — my son Freddy, my ex and I — in 2000 and I was working as a language teacher.
Damien, who ran his family cattle farm and was single, had advertised in a lonely hearts column. He chose me out of 20 replies.
Caught up in the romance, I moved in with him within weeks. But it was a hard life. Damien would be up at first light, milking the 50-strong herd. A fluent French speaker, I combined my part-time job with overseeing farm admin and evening milking.
I could cope with juggling childcare with two jobs, not to mention the housework — but not with Annick. She had retired from the farm, but would still pop in, making remarks about my cleaning.
When our son Maxence was born in March 2009, things went from bad to worse. She tried to tell me how to raise him, even giving him Nutella at three months against my wishes. I was furious.
My nerves were shredded and I went to a psychiatrist because I was so miserable. Damien came to a session and was told that unless he cut the close ties with his mother, our relationship was doomed.
It was in 2010 that I had the miscarriage — and my relationship with Damien didn’t survive. He eventually told me to pack my bags, and I felt so relieved to go.
Later that year, though, I found out Annick had been diagnosed with breast cancer, which spread to her brain. A month before she died, she asked her sister-inlaw to apologise to me for making my life so difficult. She wanted me to know I wasn’t such a bad daughter-in-law after all.
Thankfully, it didn’t put me off French in-laws. I’ve been married to Thibault for two years and had a great relationship with his mother, Camille, before she died in 2014. She was a mother to five sons and told me on her deathbed I was the daughter she never had.
Her X-rated sex life makes me cringe
Victoria capon Bowen, 46, is married to cedric, 43. they live in Lodève in the South of France, with their children Hugo, ten, Luke, seven, and Mia, five. cedric runs a kitchen and bathroom shop with his mother irène. ONE afternoon, I was at home when I heard a wailing noise over the garden wall. My mother-in-law lives next door, so my first thought was that she’d hurt herself. I dashed over, letting myself in, only to realise that far from being injured she was having the time of her life — with a man. Mortified, I scurried away and went out for the rest of the afternoon.
When I told my husband, he just laughed. His father had walked out when he was a child and he was used to his mother’s lovers. He thought I was being ‘too British’.
That’s the thing about Irène. There’s no nagging and she’s a brilliant grandmother to our children — I couldn’t cope without her babysitting — but she’s just, well, so French about sex. Even at 64. If she’s not having it, she’s talking about it . . . it’s just too much!
Fluent in French, I had recently settled in Toulouse when I met Cedric in 2002 — he was the first customer in the new bar I was managing. We started dating and I met Irène soon after. They’re very close and he was living at home. When we settled into our own home, Irène moved next door.
She’s quirky and typically French in that she’s a hypochondriac. Last year I had a brain haemorrhage. For months she was convinced she had all the symptoms of one, too.
And then there’s her seemingly indefatigable libido. I’ve not dared ask Irène to keep the noise down. What could I say? If that’s not bad enough, afterwards she’d swan in — still in her lacy pink negligee — gushing about her ‘fabulous’ lover. ‘He’s quite a man!’ she’d gasp or ‘That was fantastic!’ Cringe! I’ve asked Cedric to say something to her, but he thinks I’m inhibited. These days, she is single, and recently asked whether I thought she should take a female lover. Is she doing it just to shock me? I can’t be sure.
She held my new baby before me
NICOLE HAMMOND, 46, is an internet entrepreneur from cambridge. She moved to espondeilhan, Languedocroussillon, in 2002, and met Mickael. they have a daughter, isabelle, nine, but separated in 2006. THE one thing that gets you through the agonies of childbirth is the thought of holding your precious baby for the very first time. So imagine my distress when my newborn was whisked away into the arms of another woman: my mother-in-law, Martine. While her enthusiasm for ‘the daughter she never had’ was touching, it was also exasperating. Martine had come to the hospital because my waters had broken a week early when Mickael was out with his friends for the night. When I couldn’t reach him, I was left with no choice but to ask his mother to accompany me. She immediately took over. When Mickael finally reached the hospital, he fell asleep in a chair and let his mother take charge, leaving me incensed. I’d moved to France at 34 to help my cousin set up a business because I was fluent in French. Weeks later, I met Mickael, then 24, in a local restaurant when he sent a drink to my table.
Martine lived in the next village and was soon a regular presence in my life. She found it hard to come to terms with the fact I was British and that I worked for a living. The work became even less acceptable after I gave birth.
Martine even influenced the choice of name: I knew she wouldn’t be able to make sense of an English name, so I chose the French Isabelle.
When it comes to child-rearing, there are numerous cultural differences. Isabelle was just a few weeks old when Martine tried to feed her lemon meringue pie. Thankfully, I was able to remove it discreetly.
Martine also refused to grasp I could earn money by ‘playing on a computer’ (her words) and nurse a newborn at the same time. I’d gone back to work quicker than she’d have liked.
Unfortunately, my relationship with Mickael broke down when Isabelle was six months. We were running a bar and there was too much pressure on us as new parents.
I don’t blame Martine for the relationship ending, but she hadn’t made our lives any easier. She was a good grandmother and we reached an entente cordiale — the pressure was off when I was no longer her son’s wife. She died three years ago and I attended her funeral.