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A.
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Stay or Leave?
You’re feeling pushed out
of your own house, you might lose your marriage, split your children’s’
parents… and you don’t want to upset your husband? Is he that fragile?
I always have mixed feelings about helping someone to have an acceptable
mood in an unacceptable situation. Stress and irritability could be looked
at as a useful signal, like fear, or pain. If it is indicating there is a
problem that needs to be rectified, you don't necessarily want to just
relieve it while the problem persists or grows.
Having your husband’s mother move out could be one solution, but every
problem should have more than one. Here are some things I'll suggest. You
might sit down with a friend and draw up a brainstorm list of all
conceivable solutions, from the most obvious (including no action), to the
overly-exotic (build a bigger house), and so on. Hopefully, by going at some
length, resisting the temptation to begin evaluating ideas, you could come
up with creative directions. For instance, there could be multiple ways your
boyfriend’s mother could give you more space besides moving out, perhaps.
There could be changes to scheduling, communication, physical arrangements,
ground rules and so on.
Second, it could be that your quarrel is not so much with your mother-in-law
as with your husband. If she is asked to move out, wouldn’t he have to be
the one to convey the news? And, if he is giving her signals that contradict
yours, you may never feel she is hearing you. So, you could be so blunt as
to tell him you will not accept the current arrangement, and that it is up
to him to fix it. Hopefully, you won't have to be quite that stark, and
there would be a productive process between the two of you. But, if he is
not hearing you, not picking up on just how important this is, it would be
natural that you would amp up in order to get the message across.
Irritability can be pretty useful in putting some intensity into a message,
so that it is not ignored. However, it can backfire. When there is a little
too much, the receiver begins to block it out and to shut down. This will
give rise to a vicious cycle: more anger bringing on more resistance,
bringing on more anger. We have all these cultural images of the
communicative one, who needs to agitate for change (maybe more often the
female), getting nasty labels like shrew, nag, and worse, while Mr. Brick
Wall, protecting the status quo, hides behind the newspaper (and two of the
classic insults for him actually apply to his mother!). It is not anyone's
fault, just a pattern we can naturally fall into. So, you might pay
attention to what kind of approach is going to be the most effective with
him. Consider a careful choice of timing, a soft and gentle voice, and as
powerful a statement about your misery as you can compose.
Other than this, I just don’t know how you can find some kind of solution
without your boyfriend having to make some tough choices, which doesn’t come
without disturbance. You can help him with the upset but I’m not sure you
want to protect him from it.
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