My [30F] mother [60F] had pushed my husband [28M] to a point where he doesn’t want to see her again.

Some back story. I married my husband two years ago and since we got married things have been tense with my mother. My in-laws are a very social/warm household while my parents are more reserved. They all live in the same city about 3 hours from us. My in-laws would invite us to their house often to celebrate a birthday, throw a party etc so we visited them more during our first year of marriage. My parents never asked us to come over, we always had to take the initiative. But no matter who we came into town to see, we made sure to see both families. My parents were often invited to the same party at my in-laws. We would split holiday time between the two homes evenly.

 

The first big incident was a small party at my in laws to which my parents were invited to. We were all having what I thought was a good time until later on in the evening when my mom started talking to me about getting to see us more often, she was talking calmly at first but then she said “I feel like I don’t see you enough” in a more tense way. I knew she was tipsy so I said let’s not talk now, let’s talk later about this. She exploded at my husband in front of everyone, yelling at him why he hates her and how I love my in-laws more than my own family. My in-laws got involved, asking her to calm down and my dad had to drive my mom home while I was in tears.

 

We tried to talk things through the next day. She refused to apologize to my husband for yelling at him in front of his family and was adamant that we never wanted to stay at their house. We tried to explain, that my husband’s family likes to host events and that’s why we visited often and since in-laws house is his childhood home he feels very comfortable there. The conversion ended without a very good resolution but we did a better job at dividing what house we stayed at going forward and didn’t hear anything else from my mom so thought the issue was solved. She treated my husband different after this, mostly small things such as roll her eyes at things he said or not laugh at any jokes he made.

 

Obviously this year was a little different. My in-laws moved out of country and then Covid hit. So for a few months we did not see any family.

 

We hadn’t seen my parents or my husband’s sister for a long time so we decided to visit them around Labor Day. Later in the night myself, my mom and husband sat outside and were chatting. We had been enjoying some wine and things turned political and then things got ugly very fast from here. My mom kept blaming my husband for changing my viewpoints. (I didn’t really keep up with politics until recently but I’m an adult now and care more about that kind of stuff.) It didn’t matter if I was speaking, my mom only saw red at my husband. Saying husband had changed me into a terrible person and how husband hates her and telling him he needs to control his wife. At this point it was an ugly yelling match with lots of cussing and I had enough. My husband had been pretty calm throughout this, but even he towards the end told her to shut up. We left in the middle of the night to go to my husband’s sisters house instead.

 

After a few days I texted my mom. I couldn’t handle speaking on the phone and wanted to lay things out clearly. I apologized for how the night went and for what was said. But I also asked her to be honest with me. I do not know why she has such hatred for my husband and that he needs a big apology and she needs to tell us why she feels this way. She refused. She apologized for saying some “things in the moment” and said the quickest way to heal is to move on with a clean slate. I pushed again, that her saying “husband had changed me into a terrible person” was unacceptable and I need to know why she said that. But again she refused and only wanted to move on and she said she won’t say these things in the future but doesn’t really think she treats him badly.

 

My husband has now been maliciously yelled at twice by my mom about hating her and changing me with no real apology or remorse. We also found out from my husband’s mom that my mom would bad mouth about him constantly to his own mother. Husband’s mom also told us that my mom has had anger and depression issues in the past, none of which she has told me about. I feel sad that she hasn’t talked to me about any of these things and has hidden so many of her feelings especially since I gave her an opportunity to talk to me and be honest and she refused.

 

As holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas come up, I asked my husband does he think he would be open to seeing them and he has said no. He understands it’s a horrible position to put me in, but he is tired of “being around someone who hates him especially during holidays.” I think this is totally reasonable, but I’m so torn. I don’t want to never see my family again and my dad has been a good in-law to my husband. I think seeing my family by myself would essentially be letting my mom “win”. How do we move past this, if my mom refuses to change her ways do I just never see my family again?

 

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tl;dr: My mom has said some horrible things to my husband and refuses to apologize. Now husband doesn’t want to be around her, how do I handle this situation? Husband is in the right, but I don’t want to disown my family.

Submitted October 26, 2020 at 01:56PM by twicetorn https://ift.tt/3ovPwZL