Surprise! Awful mother-in-law raised love child as husband’s
DEAR CAROLYN: I just found out my spouse’s sibling is a half sibling. Their mother slept with another man while married to my spouse’s father, and either my father-in-law didn’t know or they stayed together “until death do us part.” Both are now deceased.
The siblings have come to grips with this information, but it has stirred up issues and feelings I had toward my mother-in-law for over 35 years. She was a cunning, meddlesome, overbearing, manipulative person. A bane to my existence. She actively sought to sabotage our relationship and did not accept me until she saw my spouse was not budging. Even then, it was clearly forced. I was young and felt our love was all that mattered, which ultimately proved true, but she added layers of trouble that, in retrospect, I would never put up with again.
I am highly upset because I compromised myself to appease this lady. To know this huge lie was out there while she was so sanctimonious toward me truly bothers me. How dare you act like I was not good enough!
I don’t know what to do. I’m tired of taking the higher road, censoring my comments for someone undeserving. Is this a senseless, petty grudge? Is the issue really with me?
— Can’t Get Over It
DEAR READER: You did not compromise yourself “to appease this lady.” You chose your path for your spouse and your marriage, and thus for yourself. Those were your priorities.
This reframing might not feel any better, but it’s more accurate. Without your spouse, she wouldn’t have existed to you.
And consider: You still love your partner, still believe you made the right bet on the right person half a lifetime ago — so learning of your mother-in-law’s duplicity really just changes the flavor of your distaste. And, you must admit, vindicates you a smidge.
I don’t know. There’s always a fine line between offering suggestions to help neutralize a person’s anger and invalidating their feelings from legitimate harm done. So I don’t want to suggest your mother-in-law’s transgressions were minor for you, any of them. One lousy relative can turn family from an engine of support and advancement to an expensive, exhausting chore.
But you lose perspective on your mother-in-law at your peril. She was always undeserving of your efforts on behalf of your (beloved, therefore deserving) spouse. Adding a betrayal and a lie to her inventory of horrors, which already featured “cunning, meddlesome, overbearing, manipulative” powers all turned toward sabotaging you, is just two more pieces of luggage on the Queen Mary.
I expect, in fact, that if you felt empowered to discuss her honestly with your partner, then you wouldn’t feel so consumed by frustration now. Having to dance around her for your marriage, around someone who somehow managed to get worse in death — that is the weight.
It’s a problem to talk about, not reframe. Admit to your spouse this news was obviously much bigger for the siblings (of course), but for you it dredged up how hard it was to self-censor through your own difficult relationship with her.
I hope you feel you can say this. I hope you feel heard. I hope your spouse makes even a baseline effort to put it to rest for you. Thanking you, for example. Apologizing for playing a part in your feeling so beholden.
But if these don’t happen, then consider running it by a therapist. Wait times for appointments trend long, so you might find your own peace (or the Ark of the Covenant, Atlantis or the Holy Grail) before you get there — but 35 years say it’s time to unpack those bags.