So, your man finally got his act together and pulled off the Proposal of your dreams.
Whilst you’re super excited to Marry your best friend and embark on your Happily Ever After, you cannot help but be a little concerned about the prospect of having your controlling fiancé’s mother in your life forever.
After all, nothing you ever do measures up to your future mother-in-law’s standards. She made up her mind that you were not good enough for her son from the moment you first met and despite your best efforts to treat her like a queen and love her son with all of your heart, her opinion of you has remained the same.
But unlike a horrible boss, you can’t rid her from your life because that would mean giving up your handsome hubby-to-be. So, as terrifying as it may be to embrace her as your future mother-in-law, you know that you have to think of a lifelong strategy to deal with her overbearing, demanding and needy nature.
That’s where we can help. We want to take the difficult out of your relationship with your future mother-in-law to be for good.
Here are our three tips to mend the rift between you both:
We cannot emphasise this enough. Asking your hubby-to-be to choose between both of you is putting him in an impossible position. She gave him life and you are his soul mate. And before you say it, of course, his mother knows how to play him – she raised him. Go easy on your man. He loves you more than anything, that’s why he wants to make you his Bride.
We know she is making your life into a living misery and we know you believe that she does not deserve your empathy but hear us out: loneliness can be a killer. It makes you act out of character and crave human contact when you are unsure of what to do when you actually get it. Use any occasion (birthdays, Christmas, Name Days, Valentines Day, Mothers Day) to treat her to activities where she can actually meet new people (cooking classes, pilates, book clubs), without you there. Her sense of purpose will be renewed and it will get her off your man’s back to hang out 24/7: win-win.
By sitting down with your mother-in-law to be, you can set definite boundaries of when she can see you and your hubby-to-be each week. For example, saying something like ‘Our schedules are jam packed but we want to spend as much time with you as we can. How about we lock in Sunday night dinners as our family time?’ may ease her fears about ‘losing her son to marriage’. When boundaries are set, it will ensure that there will be no unannounced drop-bys.
Images from Creatrix Photography.
