Validate mom’s feelings, but hold your own ground
Dear Carolyn: My motherin-law is currently battling cancer, and has lately been making passive-aggressive comments to my husband about how she’s so disappointed she’ll never see our kids ...
I don’t want kids! Even if I did, the endometriosis and ovarian cysts have rendered me about as fecund as the lunar surface.
I hate trying to dance around this topic when she’s not feeling well, but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth that she’d use her current frailty to try to guilt us into something we’ve already said we’re not interested in.
Is there a tasteful (or less hostile) way to tell her to mind her own uterus? — Happily Barren Dear Happily Barren: You could give her the benefit of the doubt, and take her comments not as passive aggression or guilt-tripping, but instead as honest expressions of grief at not having grandchildren.
Maybe there is no doubt for you to work with and you know from history that she’s working the guilt levers hard — but that still leaves you with some options besides pushing back.
The most appealing of them, from where I sit, is to give her what you’re so annoyed about not getting from her: respect for her position.
However, while she’s obviously not entitled to a grandchild, she is entitled to her feelings. And, the absence in her life also happens to be real: I hope I will have the maturity, flexibility and forbearance not to pester them like an untrained puppy, but I do so want to be a gramma when my kids are grown. It’s not a fringe sentiment.
For a woman wrestling with her own mortality who lets that sentiment fly, I think the best response isn’t “Get out of my uterus,” it’s “I know you’re disappointed, and I’m sorry about that.” You can validate her feelings while not budging an inch.
Dear Carolyn: Long story short: One lovely husband and two adult kids. Both children live away from us. Over the years, we have been extremely generous, both in terms of our time and our resources.
Our problem is that they have come to expect our generosity as something they are due. I will fully admit we created these monsters, but my husband and I have had enough. We feel used and irrelevant except for what we can give them.
Our plan is to make sure they understand there will be changes soon in our household. (We will be retiring.) The result of our “new normal” will mean cutting back on monetary gifts. Is there any good way to accomplish this and keep everyone happy? — Feeling Irrelevant Dear Feeling Irrelevant: “Keep everyone happy”? The goal that launched a thousand monsters.
If you present your “new normal” as if it’s unexploded ordnance, then you’re all but leading them to conclude it’s a terrible thing. Why not treat them as deeper than that? Present your news as part of a natural progression and they might well receive it that way.
Unless they’ve conquered mortality, they’ve known this day was coming. Don’t be afraid to plant a few empathy seeds — “We’ve looked forward to this for years, as I’m sure you will someday” — and to deflect any backlash with this gentle doorcloser: “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”