Dear Bel,
My mother-in-law was strict with her three sons and never held back opinions on their lives and partners. My husband (the middle child) responded with minimal contact.
From a very warm family, I try to accept her cold, critical attitude, but I don’t enjoy her company. She takes pleasure in belittling me.
My husband and I (both 44) have been together nine years, married for three, and are truly happy.
After unhappy first marriages, we feel united, run a business and raise five children between us.
His children from his first marriage stay more days a week than I’d expected — which I’ve found hard. No sympathy from his mother, who crows how well her friends have managed stepfamilies.
When I told her my mother gets lonely and would love to meet a nice man, she said her widowed friend ‘just got on a plane to teach street children in Africa’ — implying that my mother’s a bit pathetic.
She just always misses the point and can’t show the slightest bit of empathy.
At our wedding, she and her husband ignored Mum — on her own, while my father was there with the woman he had left her for. That Christmas, M-i-L sent my husband theatre tickets for him and his ‘first’ children, writing: ‘Precious time for you and your three.’
Yet we have a child together — left out, like my son and I.
She’s full of how everyone should behave, but falls short when it applies to her own family. And yet she’s a Relate counsellor who spends her days giving other people relationship advice!
Last year, she implied something critical about my parenting — and I lost my cool. I told her I’d had enough of her patronising me and my husband.
He wrote a kind, but honest, email saying she doesn’t seem to want him to be happy and he’s fed up with her attitude.
After eight weeks came a typed reply marked private — saying the bad feeling was all from me and there’s clearly something wrong with me.
Now it’s an impasse. I am so offended and don’t know how we can build bridges. If it were not for the children, I doubt I’d want to speak to her again.
My husband says he doesn’t know if he wants a relationship with her or his father. What would you do?
BETH
This week Bel advises a woman who is torn over whether to cut off her monstrous mother-in-law who is ‘cold and critical’
That last direct question ends a much longer email and puts me on the spot — because I know you and others will not like my reply.
On the one hand, I understand the ‘Kick toxic people out of your life’ theory. On the other hand, I am a natural conciliator who detests family splits.
Therefore, my natural impulse is always to forgive and get on with life, knowing we’re all flawed, but we have to do the best we can while alive because we are dead for ever.
So my personal answer to that last question is: I would break the impasse by whatever means possible.
My gut tells me (studying your whole email) that I’m on your side. We’ve all met people like your M-in-L — holding firm views about how others should behave while hurting those others by their own actions.
The fact she’s a Relate counsellor should have shocked me (as a patron of that charity), and yet I know the world is full of blind hypocrites, heavy on moralising and light on empathy. And I’m afraid that some of those limited folk do become teachers, therapists, medical practitioners, and so on . . . and no doubt do damage.
More from Bel Mooney for the Daily Mail…
That mean trick with the theatre tickets was just disgraceful. I’m sure your M-in-L would drive me mad. Yet my mind suspects you have glossed over certain things. You clearly have a problem with those stepchildren, yet don’t explain it.
Was your relationship the reason your husband’s first marriage ended? Was your M-in-L fond of the first wife?
You give plenty of detail about the present, but not much about the past. It’s clear (edited detail) you feel rather superior to this lady and maybe she responds to that by being more critical of you than ever.
What was her own upbringing like? Perhaps you and your husband could talk about that.
One thing is clear: a woman who has succeeded in alienating her own sons is the last person to be capable of seeing the hurt she has done, saying sorry and making things workable again.
So the choice is never to see her again — or wave a white flag. The longer you leave it, the harder it will be.
So this is for your husband and father to facilitate. Those men need to talk first because this war is between the women.
Then I would invite his parents over, as if nothing had happened. Perhaps the occasion could be a child’s birthday — a noisy family occasion when there is enough going on for you to be able lose yourself in generalised pleasantry.
Yes, I know it will be damnably difficult — and I do sympathise. But when this lady is on her deathbed, your husband and the children may want to say goodbye — and so therefore the door needs to be kept open.
My lover left our home to his daughter
Dear Bel,
My partner and I had been together 30 years when he died after a short illness in January.
You always think that you will be together for ever, but sadly it wasn’t to be. I have always known that he was leaving the house (his property, not mine) to his daughter and was OK with that decision.
In fact, he probably did the right thing considering inheritance tax. I am allowed to live in the house until I want to move, but I have to wait for the inheritance he has left me to afford my own property.
I am so miserable here, and feel that I am just the caretaker of the house we shared.
I can’t make any changes to the property, but just have to live in it as it is. I try to keep busy and keep things clean and tidy, but my heart isn’t in it any more.
I have two dogs — one we had when we were together and one that I have got since as companion to my other dog.
I feel utterly trapped and desperate to move back to my home town. I have even thought about trying to get a mortgage so I can leave here.
Since I am 66, I am not sure if this is even possible — but feel I need to do something.
I am drinking every evening and eating too much, too. I just feel so miserable and don’t know what to do next.
LINDA
First, let me say how sorry I am to hear of your bereavement. Although at first glance your email looks as if it might be about the property, the real subject is grief.
When you write ‘You always think that you will be together for ever, but sadly it wasn’t to be’, you sum up, with poignant simplicity, the central fact of loss: that its full agony can never be anticipated.
Many people put off thinking about wills and plans, because the reality of death is too unbearable.
But your partner did think, and chose (with your knowledge) to leave his property to his daughter/heir — as many people would feel to be right. Others will take an opposite view, believing that after 30 years you were surely entitled to own your home, not merely to live in it.
I have a friend whose husband made a similar will; she had no choice but to accept it philosophically, even though it ties her to a house bequeathed to her stepson. Her way of dealing with this situation has been gradually to titivate the house in her own taste, and to broaden her horizons with new interests and friendships.
That story offers thoughts about the future. At the moment, it’s vital to understand that since your grief is fresh, nothing will appeal to you.
How can it? You have lost your life partner and everything in the home you shared must remind you of him. Perhaps your dogs add to your feeling of being trapped, but I hope not. Taking them for walks will be excellent therapy.
Drinking and over-eating are common products of unhappiness, grief and loneliness — but you shouldn’t need me to tell you these bad habits make everything worse.
Now the nights are lighter, you must take your dogs out at the time when you’d pour a drink. Make yourself notice something on every walk and write it down. Please do this for me without fail each day.
What next? It may be a good thing that probate takes time, so you can’t rush into anything you may regret. Surely you have friends and interests you shared with a partner of 30 years?
Don’t let your current mood prevent you from sustaining them. You say nothing about your relationship with his daughter, or whether you’d like to alter the house, so all I can do is assure you that these dark feelings will not last. In time, you will be able (I hope) to talk things through with others, including your stepdaughter.
Take each day at a time. Think of yourself as ‘caretaker’ if you must — but I would prefer you to buy some new cushions, light some candles and think of yourself as a loving custodian.
And finally… Unlocking the stories of the bridge of love
I’m sorry for last Saturday’s absence — when some of you contacted me through Facebook to say you miss me!
You came into my mind as I examined the vast wall of Love Padlocks on the Hohenzollernbrucke bridge in Cologne — where about 40,000 couples have cast their magic spells.
Buy a padlock, write on it or (classier) have it engraved, attach it to the 409 metre long railing, then throw the little key into the Rhine below. Hey presto! Lasting love . . .
It’s not romantic — the bridge has more than 1,200 trains passing over it daily, the wall is a mess and, of course, nothing lasts for ever. The padlocks have added more than two tonnes to the bridge, causing local officials to shake their heads.
In a couple of places vandals have spray-painted to obliterate names, which strikes me as mean, but just as typical of human behaviour as the ritual of attaching the locks in the first place. All human life is there.
What happened to Mehtap and Hakan after 2008? And ‘David and Larissa Forever’ after they left here in 2014? Kiki and Rob didn’t bother with a date, nor did Julia and Benni, but Sven and Lena threw away their key in 2012.
Among all the padlocks you see different sorts of love such as Marc, Bianca and Lena (2007) and Maria and Lilly BFF (best friends forever) in 2015.
I was touched by one I spotted among the thousands — ‘Josephine 23 Oktober 2012’ — and hoped her padlock symbolised self-sufficiency.
How many of those couples stayed true? How many were like a long-married woman I know who forced her self-conscious husband to give her a kiss and join in? How many broke up soon after and remember the padlock moment with bitterness?
So many unknown stories, so many hopes and dreams — and tens of thousands of tiny keys rusting on the bed of the mighty river below. As Philip Larkin wrote wryly: ‘What will survive of us is love.’