Marriage to a wife or Mother in law?

[macgyverbw]

In the context of my first year and a little of my marriage, I have found my wife to be heavily influeced by her mother. This has caused great conflict. How do you steer a marriage away from such an obstacle?

[Liz]

The first few years of marriage (http://www.2-in-2-1.co.uk/healthclub/healthearly/) can involve a lot of adjustment. One way to look at what is going on is that your wife hasn't taken on board the need to "leave and cleave", to move on from her relationship with her family of origin as being the most important one to create a new family with you. However that leaving is not about leaving behind, but about changing the sort of relationship we have with our parents. It may be that she thinks she has done this. Have you had the opportunity to share some of the expectations you have of marriage and in particular how you see your relationship with your families. Your wife may have different expectations or model of closeness in family. Different doesn't have to be wrong, but it needs to be understood.

It's difficult to grasp from what you've written what the real issues are that you are contending with and what is causing the conflict. Are you feeling left out and ignored by your wife, or do you strongly disagree with the advice your mother-in law is giving her. It is important not to force your wife into a situation where she feels she has to "lose" her relationship with her mother, but at the same time for the health of your marriage your relationship with each other must be the priority.
I would suggest that you do the best you can to build up your relationship with your wife to draw her to you. The challenge from the scriptures in Ephesians chapter 5 is a huge one for the husband. He is asked to love his wife as his own body, to love his wife as Christ loves the church, whom He gave his life for. That sort of love is powerful. You could ask God to give you that sort of love for your wife.

You might like to look at some of the articles on conflict (http://www.2-in-2-1.co.uk/healthclub/healthconflict/fightwork/) and communication (http://www.2-in-2-1.co.uk/healthclub/healthcomm/) and in particular in our Relationship Basics (http://www.2-in-2-1.co.uk/healthclub/relbasictopic/) section. Conflict is not necessarily damaging to your relationship. Some issues do need to be worked through, but you both need to be clear what the issue is you are trying to sort out and not just be pulled down into hurt and accusation.

There are a number of books and programmes you can use to build up your marriage. David and I found Marriage Encounter (http://www.2-in-2-1.co.uk/healthclub/servprov/marenhres/meang/) really helped us to draw close and understand each other, but there are lots of other excellent programmes (http://www.2-in-2-1.co.uk/healthclub/servprov/).

As you strengthen the bond between you, the bond with her mother will become less of an issue.

[This message has been edited by Liz (edited 25 April 2001).]

[us marriage]

My wife and I have been together for three years now and we've got a two year old daughter and I have a seven year old son from a previous relationship. My mother-in-law was fine until my daughter was born - from that point onwards my wife and her became abnormally close - they would phone/sms each other 5 to 10 times a day, my mother-in-law would drive three hours to spend the day at our house every Wednesday and my wife would spend at least one long-weekend at my parents-in-law's house per month. My wife even invited her parents to attend our first wedding anniversary dinner!

During this period my mother-in-law started interfering in our marriage – some examples; she would continually criticize me about small things, keep track of every detail of our marriage, didn't respect privacy and just generally tried to take control of our household. I initially mentioned to my wife in a gentle manner that I wasn't happy about this, but she did nothing to stop it. In parallel to this, my wife started to become very cold towards my son with her parents almost ignoring him while lavishing attention on their granddaughter. My previous wife passed away from cancer about five years ago, and my son has bonded with my wife, this rejection is doing him a lot of harm and it’s showing in his behaviour, school performance, etc.

Eventually this escalated into several direct confrontations between my mother-in-law and me with my wife siding with her mother. This had a major impact on my relationship with my wife, to the extent that our love live collapsed and that our relationship became very acrimonious. The end result is that my wife moved out to go and live with her parents, she’s asking for a divorce and there’s little chance of reconciliation due to her mother poisoning her against me while she lives there. What I don’t understand is why my wife’s relationship with her mother became so abnormally intense after our daughter was born? I never experienced this during my first marriage, is this normal? Any suggestions on what I can do to try and save the marriage?

[Raymond]

Briefly it is pretty obvious that your mother in law excercises a control spirit over her daughter. This is quite powerful as you have discovered. Probably the apron strings have never been severed. It's because the mother has never let her go and is hanging on to her as a child. This will stunt the growth of your wife and she will never be free until she stands up herself against this wrong control. At the moment the mother is succeeding and believe it or not sees you as competition for her daughter.

Control is a really ugly thing underneath it all and will stop at nothing to get it's way. You did well to stand up against it. I believe the mother will be playing on the daughters guilt and will be very clever at it. If you get a chance you need to live as far as possible away from the mother. Does the father see any sense or is he under her control?

It's the daughter who needs to free herself as the mother will never release her voluntarily. Does your wife even know what's going on.

Raymond