My wife (54) and her mother (76) have had a difficult relationship since she was 13 and her stepfather moved in. Suddenly her husband, a stranger to my wife, was number one and set new rules for the child, like no more cuddling and breakfast in pyjamas on Saturday mornings. The loving relationship between my wife and her mother suddenly ended.
I’ve known my wife for 10 years now and have met her mother twice. Her new husband made clear that he didn’t want to meet his stepdaughter’s new partner and she basically thinks the same. They both emphasise that they are not homophobic and that they love their (step)daughter. Since then I have witnessed my wife fighting for her mother’s love. Her mother’s view is different. She says that my wife suddenly stopped being nice and that she rejects her. She often says that her daughter was the best thing that happened to her. But then she lists all the things she couldn’t do in life because of her.
After my wife hadn’t heard from her mother for a few months, I received a misdirected message yesterday, saying that she has Alzheimer’s disease and that she “will soon have forgotten her evil letters and that she let her [mother] down”. My wife never wrote evil letters. The message will devastate her.
I will soon have to tell my wife that her mother texted, and that she has Alzheimer’s. Do I also have to tell her about the part with the letters? Or, for the sake of peace, can I skip that part? I don’t feel comfortable with it, but I don’t want my wife to be hurt again.
Eleanor says: You’re in a particularly terrible version of a problem we all will face: what should you do with hurtful information that you didn’t mean to acquire? A secret gets lobbed into your lap and you have to decide whether to pass it on.
It can feel like that’s a choice about wrecking someone’s world. If you tell them, you’ll induct them into the harsh reality. If you don’t, you’ll spare them. But it’s worth remembering that it isn’t actually up to you whether their world is cruel or not. You didn’t create the harshness you inform them of, and holding it back doesn’t always spare them. You get to decide what to do with the information – you can’t save them from the facts themselves.
You’re clearly right that your wife needs to know about the Alzheimer’s diagnosis.
And as you think through whether to pass on the insult, I think it’s important to keep that diagnosis in mind. Alzheimer’s can unravel a person’s edges and can make them say horrendously cruel things.
It’s possible your mother in law did not mean or fully understand what she was saying, even with their history of conflict. Especially if you think she was talking about letters that don’t exist, it’s possible this was just a symptom, not genuine sentiment. In that case, she might not even remember saying it. Making your wife the only person in their relationship who does remember this insult might not help.
Another useful test for whether to pass on upsetting information is to ask what would change if the person knew. Not “would they want to know”, because people want to know all kinds of things. Would keeping quiet mean you were helping sustain something that shouldn’t be sustained?
For things like affairs or betrayals the answer can be yes: holding back what you know makes you a cog in the machinery of a bad status quo.
In this case, though, I think it’s less clear.
Your wife already knows that her relationship with her mother is strained. If it were a relationship of absolute trust and adoration, and while fully compos mentis her mother had said unexpectedly terrible things, your wife’s life might change a lot if she knew what her mother really thought. But in this case, knowing the exact details of what her mother said doesn’t sound like it would be a massive reversal. It would be one more painful piece of proof of what she already knows.
And sometimes we don’t need to have every painful piece of proof. You don’t need to tell your vegetarian friend what you learned about how abattoirs work, you don’t need to tell an abuse survivor the next five bad things their abuser did. If someone already knows the conclusion, sometimes you can spare them the upsetting details.
In telling your wife about the diagnosis, I would, however, make serious effort to help steel her for the possibility of more insults in the future. There are care workers and support groups who can help her deal with the concept-mashed, ragged insults she might have to hear.
As she faces this difficult news and chapter in her life, there will be pain you can’t protect her from. But you can help make sure she doesn’t have to face it alone.
This letter has been edited for length.
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