In the eyes of the (in)law

A girlfriend called me this week and when I inquired as to how she was, her response was, "Oh I’ve never been better. My mother-in-law has stopped speaking to me and we’re all so much happier."
"Uh? So your mother-in-law is no longer talking to you and that's a good thing?" I quizzed.
"Hell yes. She drove us all crazy with her constant meddling and judging and criticising. Bill* and I just came to the conclusion she was never going to accept me as his choice of partner, so we decided it was best to remove ourselves from the pressure of never meeting her expectations."

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In all fairness, my friend’s decision to distance her family from the drama, was not an easy one, nor a spur of the moment choice.
It had come after almost two decades of constant conflict with little prospect of making any headway.
During this time the unpleasantries exchanged between them was, well, unpleasant to say the least. The mother-in-law’s tactics were intimidating, manipulative, condemning and critical.
Nothing her daughter-in-law did was ever right.
Consequently, her son, now caught in the middle of two warring women, both of whom he loved, had also grown weary of his mother’s antics and rejected her company in order to be rid of the ridicule.
My friend had married an only son and, while the controversies between older matriarchs and what they may view as younger "competition" have been well versed, I found myself re-evaluating the relationships around me that displayed similar tensions.
Why does our society not place the same judgements on father-in-laws? When a father defends his daughter it is a beautiful symbol of his protective, caring nature. He is simply displaying his need as the alpha male to ensure her wellbeing and her best interests.
On the other hand, when a mother sets foot in the marital domain of her offspring it is fraught with danger.
Is this power-play a female-only flaw? Some innate characteristic of the jealousy gene embedded deep in the female DNA that sees the mothering instincts overrule all sense of common decency?
Or is it in fact part of Freud’s sinister Oedipal myth that would have the son secretly craving the affections of his mother, creating a complex web of mixed loyalties among this psychoanalytical minefield?
"It must be so liberating to be single," my girlfriend declared. "You don’t have to compromise anything about yourself for the sake of someone else’s family or someone else’s ideals."
Well it is “My Year of Liberation” after all, but life is about compromise. Without it we ALL fail.
Compromise only fails if it is one-sided. This gives birth to what is otherwise known as a dictatorship – a divorce-prone relationship, headed by a control freak, with mummy issues and abusive tendencies. Or in the case of this mother-in-law: rejection and loneliness.
Compromise is letting your mother-in-law have the last word… because you’ll always have the last laugh.
*No Bills were injured in the writing of this blog.