| Dear Carolyn: My mother-in-law just left after a humdinger of a week at our house, which started with her buying tickets without asking us (“On sale! You can just tell me not to come”); got ugly in the middle with her umpteenth crossing of boundaries about buying our 2-year-old toys (“A two-gift limit? But you didn’t mean forever, obviously”); and ended with her gleefully snarling, “I’m bigger than you in this relationship, and I’ve been around a lot longer,” as well as informing me that if I set boundaries, she’d just go to her son because he’s an equal parent. I’m no paragon. I got so frustrated and angry over my husband’s umpteenth “I talked to her, she didn’t mean it” that I went straight to the source for a good clean fight. But what haunts me is that he didn’t take my side. He defended her and accused me of “breaking” the family. He moderated, he refereed, but at no time did he make it clear he was on Team Wife. He’s still angry at me for losing my temper. I’ve tried to communicate the years of her passive-aggressive digs and diva behavior, like leaving poopy onesies on the changing table because she “didn’t know where the laundry was,” leaving my house salted with her tchotchkes because “there was too much of your wife here,” having new mugs delivered here because she didn’t like mine — but he doesn’t register the woman warfare or his mother’s trampling of my home and family autonomy, only the fact that I shouted, so it’s all my fault. He insists the fact that she sees the baby only a few times a year is consequence enough. Help! I don’t know what to do. — Tied in Knots |
