My MIL Hates Me

I held the platter aloft.  If I passed it to my husband on my right, my mother-in-law would be insulted because she would get last pick of the steaks.  If I passed the platter to my mother-in-law on my left, she would be mad because Emily Post says that the only proper way to pass a dish at table is to the right.

The Beef Wellington was beginning to congeal.  So I passed it to my left.  I always figure that people trump rules.  Wrong answer.   My mother-in-law always thinks that rules…well, rule.  Not only had I just sinned by passing the dish in the wrong direction, somehow I was suddenly aware that I was seated in the wrong place at the table.   At my own table.

You’d think after more than 20 years of a military marriage, my MIL would be singing my praises instead of silently critiquing my manners.  You’d think that after that same 20 years I would have given up seeking her approval.  By now we should certainly be laughing over our own personality quirks and quietly appreciating each other’s remarkable strengths.  In a perfect world, I would give her credit for always remembering me at Christmas and being kind to the children.  She would appreciate me for carrying on through all the deployments and the 16 moves and loving her crazy son.

Not so much. 

Why can’t women get along with their mothers-in-law?  Men never seem to have this problem.  As long as a guy has a job, remains faithful, and doesn’t hurt anybody, he is pretty much accepted and appreciated by his in-laws.  My own family runs out on the lawn with beers outstretched trying to get to my husband first.   I get to carry his luggage.

I’m good with that.  I actually think that my husband and my brothers-in-law deserve that kind of treatment.  They married into our nutjob family willingly, and thus deserve a medal.  Or at least a Pabst Blue Ribbon.

I just want to know this one thing:   Why can’t I get that kind of blanket acceptance from my in-laws?  Why is it so hard for so many women?  Research about the daughter-in-law mother-in-law bond is kind of thin on the ground.  It isn’t that MILs are not an interesting topic, or that the relationship isn’t complex, it may be that in-laws are just a difficult group to study.

When Deborah M. Merrill, a sociology professor at Clark University was studying MILs and DILs, she wanted to interview both parties.  She reported that many women were happy to talk to her, but they didn’t want their mothers-in-law interviewed because it was a sensitive area.  In Merrill’s research, she ended up finding that a higher than expected percentage of mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law who described relationships that were “high in affection and low in conflict.”

That probably wasn’t because we’re all getting along peachy keen with our in-laws.   Nor are we all collecting heinous stories for www.ihatemyinlaws.com.  Instead, it probably means that MILs and DILs with easy relationships were more likely to talk about it openly together with a researcher.  The rest of us are churning over all those sensitivities and blunders.  We’re spending our time huffing to our friends and relations  about why “she” doesn’t like me.  We’re ruminating about the ambiguities about which direction to pass a platter.

Sometimes I wish I could put a list together of what my mother-in-law really needs to know.  I wish we could get a few things out in the open and then she would see things my way.   Other times I fear that she would put together a far more crucifying list for me.  Instead we both sit politely at the table, loving and being loved by the same people, secretly seething.

Do you think it would help to get a few things off your chest with your MIL?  With your DIL?  What would that be?  Put your suggestions in the Comments section below.