Mother-In-Law Vent

Mother-In-Law Visits: Predicting the Worst

When I started grad school, we had a useful seminar about stress reduction. The Dr. said that two major stressors we could learn to avoid were “Negative Prediction” and “All or Nothing Thinking." Obviously, this translates to obsessing about potential negative outcomes, and imagining that everything is terrible if one small thing goes wrong.

As I get ready for another Mother-In-Law visit, I can’t help but reflect on these stressors in relation to Mothers-in-Law. When I was getting ready to deliver my daughter, I spent many hormonal moments stressed about my Mother-In-Law’s pending visit. Where she would sleep? How long she would stay? What would I do when my husband was at work and I had to spend the whole day with her hearing about how I should feed, bathe, and care for my newborn? The anticipation of her visit was (almost) as bad as the reality.

Not to blame shift, as she was a bit of a nightmare, but I made the whole situation so much worse for myself by spending waaaay too much time focusing on a potential negative situation. We’ve all done it. Had arguments in our head with our spouse/boss/mother/sister/in-laws. What a waste of precious time.

I can’t imagine I can eliminate all of this thinking. But I’m sure going to try. Because if I spend a week stressing and imagining a terrible visit with my Mother-In-Law, before she arrives, I’ve doubled my pain. For no reason!

Surviving Dinner at the In-Laws

I am such a big fan of PostSecret.com, this surviving dinner at the In-Law card posted today is a riot. I personally struggle with the amount of butter and salt and dessert at my in-law meals.  You?

MIL Invades

OK, so we are living very very (conveniently) far away from the MIL. But she missed her grandchildren, and she had expiring frequent flier points. So she did the right thing and called my hubby first to see if it was ok for her to fly in and visit us for a week. He (wonderful man) did the right thing and said, I'll check with my wife. Which he did about 5 hours later when he came home from work. Apparently this was not fast enough for the monster-in-law, as she booked NON-REFUNDABLE tickets for a week visit without ok'ing it with us, just a few hours after phoning. I want to become seriously ill and spend the week in the hospital, is that wrong?
Posted by:  | February 15, 2007 at 04:33 PM

My mil keeps nagging about when she can come stay with us for 2 weeks... how about never?! She also seems to think that because she's all alone we have to spend every holiday with her. I haven't spent one holiday with my parents since Thanksgiving 2005 because of her. When my husband tells her that we won't be spending Easter with her, she starts crying and saying that she's all alone and she almost died last year (which is true, she was given a 10% chance of surviving pneumonia last April)... but she's fine now and keeps using her near-death experience against us when she's not getting her way.
Posted by: | February 21, 2007 at 10:26 AM

My MIL wants the whole family to go to Florida together. We only get 2 weeks of vacation a year. One of them is for Christmas usually. So if we go to Florida we spend our ONLY vacation time, all of it with her! I'm going to pull my hair out. How do I tell my husband I don't want to go???
Posted by: I don't want to go to Florida! | February 15, 2007 at 04:33 PM