The tiny things left unspoken in a marriage can often lead to bigger problems later. Sometimes, couples skirt around issues because they know talking about them will lead to conflict. But this kind of tiptoeing does more harm than good.
This is exactly what happened between a wife and her husband, who don’t seem to understand each other’s perspective and haven’t been communicating about it either. Instead of talking to her spouse, the woman reached out to online strangers for advice.
More info: Mumsnet
Wife feels husband is jealous his mother-in-law is rich and can spend so much time with grandkid, because he keeps trying to overcompensate for his parents
The woman said she has a 2.5-year-old kid, and her wealthy mom spends a lot of time with the child and also invites their family on fully paid holidays 3-4 times a year
In contrast, the woman’s in-laws come around much less and don’t have money to take everyone on holidays, plus she finds their visits to be “tedious and exhausting”
Due to all these factors, the woman feels her husband has been trying to compete and overcompensate for his poorer parents
Image credits: hmhwd
The poster also has begun feeling like her husband is resentful of his mother-in-law and wants his parents to be able to spend the same amount of time with their grandkid
The first thing you might have observed in this post is that the woman does not seem to like her in-laws that much. Netizens picked up on the fact that she looks down on their financial circumstances and that she doesn’t enjoy their company. These issues, coupled with the lack of communication between her and her husband, definitely signal some trouble in the relationship.
That’s why Bored Panda reached out to Julia Woods, a Transformational Couples Coach who helps couples turn the loneliness they feel in their marriages into the connection they long for through coaching, retreats, and online courses. Her passion for marriage began as a child, witnessing her parents’ struggles, and then magnified as she faced the loneliness growing in her marriage. She and her husband Jeff transformed their loneliness into connection, which began her work of helping other couples do the same.
We asked Julia why so many couples are not on good terms with their in-laws. She said, “we can easily blame our spouse’s parents for the things that frustrate us. This can build a subconscious bitterness that couples don’t talk about, yet lurks under the surface as an irritation that gets triggered in conversations and interactions with in-laws. Another example is spouses often have unspoken relationship tensions with their parents before they got married.”
“Those tensions still sit between them; sometimes, they may try to overcompensate for them, which may be some of the reality for this couple in this post. For example, if the husband hasn’t developed the ability to have open and honest conversations with his parents, he will try to read what his parents are feeling and devise a plan that will ‘fix’ the problem,” Julia explained.
The husband does seem insecure about how much time his mother-in-law has been spending with his kid and also probably how wealthy she is. His own parents are not able to take them on fancy trips or visit his child as much, and this must have pushed him to overcompensate. Instead of communicating about his insecurities to his wife, he decided to devise ways to bridge the gap between his parents and his child.
It does seem tough to try and repair these fragile relationships between family members. That’s why we asked Julia for techniques families could use to bridge the gap between them and their in-laws. She said, “in this post, there is a lot of unspoken communication between this couple and their in-laws. The unspoken conversations I sense between the husband and wife are things like what kind of relationship they want with their in-laws.”
Julia explained that “in the post, [the woman] talks about transactional aspects, like the comfort of accommodations, as though that is the relationship. However, she is wrestling with the emotional aspects, like jealousy, bitterness, and comparison. Those are the actual ingredients of relationships that need to be talked about. They are the ‘unspoken’ conversations we as humans like to avoid, yet they are what create tension and divide families.”
“The couple in the post needs to talk about the jealousy, bitterness, and resentment and partner together to work through them. Having a united vision of the relationships they want with their parents as a couple and for their child will make talking and working through these deeper issues much easier. The sooner we address the real tensions, the easier it is. The longer we wait, the more challenging it becomes,” Julia added.
Another glaring issue with the post is how biased the woman seems toward her in-laws. That itself might be putting pressure on their relationship and leading to the husband ultimately feeling the strain. Julia added that the “wife mentioned that she feels like they (she and her ILs) ‘run out of conversations fast and then fake agreeing on topics.’ There are a lot of biases hidden in that statement.”
“Biases aren’t right or wrong; they are the judgments that block us from connection. If you want to connect, you will need to get honest about your biases so you can get curious about whether or not they are true and what could be just as true or more true.” That’s exactly what many netizens advised the poster to do as well.
It’s not always easy to get along with one’s in-laws or be extremely good at communicating your thoughts and feelings, but it’s important to try. People observed that the woman didn’t seem to be making any effort at all and they pointed that out to her. Hopefully the comments will serve as a wake-up call for her, and she’ll work with her husband instead of working against him.
Most netizens felt that the husband was not wrong to want his parents to form a better connection with his child, they called out the woman for not making as much of an effort
