<p>Love yourself. Please. Don’t let someone even further into your life who has stomped all over you by trying to control you. </p>
<p>You can establish boundaries with your MIL (e.g. not FB friending her) while being pleasant to her in those situations in which you have to be around her. </p>
<p>Don’t add more stress and unhappiness to your life by FB friending someone who treats you badly.</p>
<p>nightchef, you are right. That’s the kind of steamroller she is. Aside from the other stuff I detailed, there’s just other run-of-the-mill things that have always bugged me. Ex: She would cuss like a sailor in front of my kids, even when they were young, even though she knows we didn’t like it. Even my ornery cuss father would mind his mouth around children.</p>
<p>She no longer insinuates herself into our daily lives, one reason it’s easy to maintain a cordial relationship with her. That’s partly because she’s quit trying as she knows she’ll get nowhere but mostly because dh has really stepped up and quit letting her drive the bus (at my urging). She lives more than three hours away so we only see her a few times a year.</p>
<p>I’ve decided to continue to ignore the FB requests and to be warmer to her when I see her next week. Who knows? Maybe the time will come when I’d welcome her on my FB account.</p>
<p>I agree that in most cases it is best to leave behind people who are very negative and controlling, but she is old, she is your husband’s mother and I would just not worry about it. Now, granted, if you are a frequent poster on Facebook, with constant pictures and revealing every activity you are up to then I can see a problem. If you are like me that rarely posts anything personal and only has a few pictures, then I don’t see the problem.</p>
<p>Now if you did befriend her and she used it as a tool to be a pain then end the Facebook friendship and be honest with her why you did it. And maybe, she doesn’t actually use Facebook much. I set my mom up and she can never remember her log-in information, but she does seem to be able to remember to access her online Yahoo bridge games. :)</p>
<p>How many ‘friends’ does she have? If she has many, she wouldn’t notice whatever you allowed her to see all that much.</p>
<p>I tell most people that I don’t use my fb very often so that I rarely see friend requests. If you do nothing with the friend request it will just sit there and it won’t be clear that you’ve ignored (which in facebook terms means reject). When someone ignores a facebook friend request, the opportunity to friend request becomes available to the requester again. If you do nothing, that opportunity doesn’t become available to that person. It’s kind of a passive way of getting around the issue.</p>
<p>The bigger issue is the relationship. I too get stressed just hearing my MIL speak - which usually involves some sort of a critique of something I am doing wrong. Last year she told me my SIL (her stepson’s wife) works 3x as hard as I do. I won’t even go into a comparison of work ethic - but it was rude nonetheless. I’ve decided to do my best to ignore her and let her say whatever it is she says, but let it go in one ear and out the other. I am super polite in my email communications out of respect for her relationship with her son. It’s too late to change her now and I do not want conflict. We’re visiting her in a few days - so I hope this plan will work. I just try and walk away or ignore.</p>
<p>Lauren, I didn’t know that! I’ll just let it sit there then instead of deleting it as I have in the past. Thanks!</p>
<p>Oh, Youdon’tsay, you should be so proud of yourself for stepping outside your comfort zone to make positive changes in your relationships and your life! I hope your efforts continue to reap dividends for you!</p>
<p>Sounds like you have made a terrific choice: Skip the Facebook friending but be warmer to her next time you see her. That is a good idea.</p>
<p>For a period in my life, every time my mother said something, it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Anyone else could say the same thing, and it would have been OK; but when she said it, I was mad, offended, or incredulous that she could say something that dumb/demeaning/controlling. Eventually – before she died, thankfully – I started seeing her as a person and not just my mother and not taking everything she said personally.</p>
<p>Your MIL sounds like quite a character – as my mother was. Opinionated, bossy, fiesty. Next time you spend time with her, focus on remembering the “uniquely-her” things she does and says, as a observer, rather than as a target of her actions and words. Do this so that you can talk to your kids, your husband, and the in-laws down the road (after MIL has died) about what a unique individual their mother and grandmother was! She was no bland, cookie-cutter grandma; she could cuss like a sailor and minced no words calling things the way she saw them. Rather than letting things happen, she jumped in to make things go the way she wanted. Yes, her actions and words did not always go over smoothly, but she was unafraid to be the person she wanted to be. (If you were LaurenTheMom, one anecdote would be the fact that this character had the guts to say to your face that a SIL works three times as hard as you!)</p>
<p>Our son recently gave his Dad the book “S h * t My Dad Says.” (And yes, that asterisk is in the title.) In his late 20s, the author had to move in with his parents, and came to appreciate and laugh at the blunt, no-nonsense comments that his father made – and then got a book offer to write about them. Rather than take offense at the stuff his father said, the author came to simply enjoy and appreciate the colorful character his father was.</p>
<p>It should also help you view your MIL a little more objectively and charitably knowing that she no longer has the “power” to hurt you, since your husband has limited her influence in your lives. So sit back and just watch this unique woman at work, knowing there will never be another person quite like her in your lives.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s healthy to hold onto anger, so I will say that I don’t think it’s good to do so. My mom recently passed away, and while I was staying with my dad afterwards, I got a very rare glimpse into his mind. He shared some things with me that blew me away … he has been holding onto anger for MANY, MANY years … and it has made his life pretty miserable, if you ask me. In turn, that has made the lives of those of us around him miserable, too. I have finally reached a point where I can understand how he views things, and I feel bad that he is so miserable. I try really hard to just keep my mouth shut & not make waves. I let him talk, and if I don’t agree, I just don’t say anything. It’s not worth it. I know that truth, and me telling him he’s wrong isn’t going to change his mind. </p>
<p>However, I also don’t think that letting go of anger & trying to heal relationships means that you have to do whatever the other person wants you to do. For example, I do love me dad, but there is no way on God’s green earth that he will ever live with my family. I will put him in a nearby home, and I will visit him often. But he will NOT bring the dark cloud he lives under into my home.</p>
<p>YDS, I don’t see you so much as harboring anger as just not liking the woman. Let’s say she had done something really bad at your wedding oh so many years ago. If she had otherwise been great through the years, then yes, the advice should be to let go of the anger from one event 20+ years ago and let yourself have a good relationship with her.</p>
<p>But it sounds like that isn’t the case. It sounds like she just isn’t likable. That’s how I feel about my inlaws. I could tell stories about their behavior that would cast them in a bad light, but the same stories could be endearing if I *liked *them. I just don’t enjoy either of their personalities … and I don’t think they enjoy mine either. (There is a cousin who is a smart but quiet person…they refer to her as “a dud.” I’m smart and quiet, so I assume they think I’m a dud, too. [A dud who supports their son very nicely I might add…but don’t get me started…])</p>
<p>Here’s my advice: Proceed in whatever manner takes the least emotional energy on your part. If it would lift an emotional weight, then by all means, let go. But if you don’t expend much energy, let things stand.</p>
<p>Also, how will you feel when she passes on? If you think that you will have pangs of regret, then change the way you relate to her. But if you know that when her time comes, you will feel fine about the way you responded to her, then let things be as they are.</p>
<p>It sounds like your MIL was the inspiration for “Marie” on Everybody Loves Raymond.</p>
<p>wnp, funny you should say that. It’s one of my family’s favorite shows. I absolutely would NOT live across the street from my MIL. Seriously, one of us would be dead. She is like Marie (and my mom is much like Debra’s!) She did try to talk ds into moving back “home,” and I would have NONE of it. And it’s not just his family either; I don’t want to get so entangled in my family either, at this point.</p>
<p>Speaking of … missy, you could do me a favor and have lunch with me next Saturday while I’m up in your neck of the woods visiting her! lol</p>
<p>So try to view your MIL with the same sort of detached bemusement as you give Marie on that TV show or Michael Scott on “The Office.” None are someone you agree with, and all would drive you crazy quickly if you had to deal with them much at all. But if you consider them dispassionately as characters, it’s both fascinating and funny to observe how these people’s minds work. (Kind of like I did when I still went to scary movies, keep telling yourself: "It’s only a movie, it’s only a movie …)</p>
<p>Recently I decided to stop spending emotional energy on one of my adult stepdaughters. It felt like a weight had lifted. But I’m such a wimp: I caved in to her FB friend request! I don’t know why, especially since she has a habit of writing personal messages on people’s FB walls IN ALL CAPS LIKE THIS about matters that she should be discussing in private e-mails. In my wimp-like fashion, I’ll just un-friend her if something like that appears on my wall. I thought I knew how to be honest and direct, but with some people–your MIL seems like one of them–it’s just pointless. Good luck!</p>
<p>I would LOVE to steal you away but we’ll be at one of Pitt’s all day Saturday visit events…of course, you could say you’re meeting me for lunch…</p>
<p>When I was first on Facebook, I posted a question asking if I should accept SIL’s friend request. I didn’t want her in my life. LOL, I finally caved and accepted her request and in about 15 months since then, she’s never sent me a message or posted on my wall.</p>
<p>YDS, I think should just friend her but set the controls so she doesn’t get your status updates or see your photos. You can set things before you accept the friend request so that X is visible to all friends except MIL.</p>
<p>The likelihood that an 82-year-old will recognize that you are an unusually quiet facebook user who never posts or gets tagged in pictures, and suspect that the apparent quietness is really aggressive use of privacy settings, is effectively nil. Since she hasn’t seen your profile before, it will look like a skeletal profile to her, not like you have a bunch of stuff that you’re hiding from her.</p>
<p>If you post anything relevant to her, like an album with pics of her grandkids, you can make that visible to all friends.</p>
<p>Let’s just say that I have some experience with this kind of uncomfortable friend request.</p>
<p>Here’s my answer:</p>
<p>It’s probably best that you let go of the anger, for your own sake… I find that anger, even when it’s suppressed, drains me over a long period of time. I get exhausted from holding on to past anger; I find that the only person that my anger really affects is me-- it bounces right off the people who consistently irritate me, or if I’m being polite, then I hold it in and it just eats away at me. Letting go of anger, even righteous anger, was very freeing, but only when I didn’t need it anymore. I had to really work on not needing my anger anymore, though.</p>
<p>That being said… Hold to the boundaries that you feel comfortable with. There’s no need to open up your life to everyone; they don’t have the right to have full access to you if you don’t want to let them in. There are people I don’t friend on Facebook, even though they try to friend me, because I simply don’t feel like they need access to that facet of my life. Just keep clicking that “ignore” button.</p>
<p>Four years ago, an old enemy from high school–a woman who actively made my life miserable (40 years ago!)–asked to friend me on Facebook. Rather than deal with it, I shut down my Facebook account… Time passed, and I reinstated it because a group of friends was active and I wanted to keep in touch. Old Enemy immediately reappeared. I sent her a note saying “why on earth do you want to be friends? you made my life miserable in HS” and got back a vaguely conciliatory reply. I decided to let go of my fury with her, and accepted the “friend” request. </p>
<p>I saw her status updates every day and realized that her life was pretty empty and shallow, and then I realized it really didn’t matter any more, and it’s just so much easier now. I now accept ALL friends requests and keep things private and off the web if they’re private, and consider the web my public persona… The one who isn’t angry, who welcomes all friends, who tries to keep it polite.</p>
<p>It is, after all, a very public place, the web.</p>
<p>re Facebook: has your MIL been friended by any other family members you have friended? If so, you need to check your own settings to make sure you aren’t allowing any friend-of-a-friend stuff. Otherwise she may get to see some things you don’t want her to.</p>
<p>re toxic MIL’s: I always thought mine was pretty bad, especially in the beginning, because we are different religions and it was a big deal (her brother called her “little Hitler” because by marrying outside the religion it was equivalent to committing genocide. That was a fun episode). Then I found this site called Mother-in-Law Stories ([Mother-In-Law</a> Stories and Mother-In-Law Jokes](<a href=“http://www.motherinlawstories.com%5DMother-In-Law”>http://www.motherinlawstories.com) ). After spending some time reading about some of the worst wastes of oxygen I’ve ever seen, I didn’t feel so bad about my MIL. OMG, some of those stories are just ridiculous.</p>
<p>I’m at the point where I just find her amusing, but she still bugs the heck out of DW.</p>
<p>Here is an illustration I use with clients when the issue of forgiveness/anger/dealing with people comes up. Everyone seems to be familiar with how Lucy would set up Charlie Brown with the football and yank it away every time as he came running toward it. Charlie Brown can forgive Lucy. He can understand that this is who she is in the world and that she’s unlikely to change. But he doesn’t have to keep running toward the football.</p>
<p>UPDATE:</p>
<p>Just got back from the visit with MIL. I hadn’t been there a day before she was asking about my not friending her on FB. I told her I wouldn’t as I don’t cross-generationally friend and that I’m not friends with my kids either. The annoying SIL jumps in with “But you’re friends with me!” So I remind her, duh, we’re the same generation (I didn’t really say duh). Later, she offered me some of her old clothes. I didn’t need them but agreed to take one shirt, just to keep the peace. Later, she put another in my room. I left it there. :)</p>