Titania

We have talked about asking his brother to come live with us, but we aren't sure if that will cause more contention or not. Right now, since he is working EFY, he is not at home, so things are good for him. I will be interested to see what happens when he goes to return to school. If things seem to get too hard for him at home, my husband and I want to invite him to come live with us, but we'll see. He may have something of his own worked out then. There is some good news for my husband's two little brothers (the twins)! They really pushed to get their papers started, and things are slowly moving. We just all hope they continue to move forward.

I'm curious in the "teaching children how to cope with a toxic grandparent" bit. What have you done for your kids that has helped? If you're okay sharing, that is. I would like ideas for the future. Again, thank you to everyone who has posted. This has been giving us a lot more to think about and consider.

This is so interesting! I was thinking about the book earlier and talking about how my mother-in-law's love language might work. I don't think this is coincidence, so I'll have to check it out. You are all giving us a lot of ideas here. Thank you!

Hello all. Thank you so much for the responses and suggestions. I figure to help answer some of my other questions, I will answer the ones I have seen here. Hopefully we can all get some better insight. I just worry about going on for too long. So please continue to bear with me! I'll try to go in order of what I saw that may need to be addressed. I do want to add here that his mother does have some wonderful points and qualities. We do love her and the rest of the family (even when she is hard to deal with); we just don't know how to handle the situations as they approach.Distance may end up needing to be just the thing, but I admit, we are hoping for better/more because we want to be with his family. So hopefully by this we can find a few more alternatives. My husband and I agree that he needs to be the one to address his mother, and he has. The problem is she either will not listen or will cut him off and begin yelling at him. We both feel bad because neither of us enjoy conflict and would rather see the issues resolved, but she is unwilling to listen or talk about why we feel hurt. Neither of us know how to approach her. We want to be in on this as husband and wife as well, and I support him in his decisions and agree with him. We know the relationship is toxic, but she IS his mother, and I do respect her for the man she raised my husband to be. However, neither of us can respect the way she treats him, or us, or even the rest of the family (more on that in a bit). We are also concerned with the idea that, yes, families are meant to be eternal. We don't want to cut her or anyone else out of that if we can help it. But again, we know how damaging she can be. That's why we are so torn on what to do. Cutting her out doesn't feel right in an eternal perspective, but talking to her has not helped or changed the situation. Walking away is usually our best response, but we haven't always had the option. She once cornered us in her house to berate us over something she didn't agree with. It got to the point where my husband put himself in front of me and had to move her to the side so we could pass. There was another time, just recently, where in our own home, she blocked the front door so we couldn't leave. We were lucky a neighbor came by. She finally left after our insisting and out of wanting to save face in front of someone else. We both want to try to avoid these situations and the problems, yet we still want to be involved with the family, especially since he still has younger siblings at home. (Again, I'll tackle the siblings bit later so I try to answer all the questions chronologically). As far as the distance, we live relatively close. It's about a 20 minute drive to her home. My husband and I have seriously considered moving, but he is still going to college and close to getting his degree, and I have a job that I love that I would be very sad to leave. My family is also close, and we wouldn't want to be far from them. We also love our community and the friends we have here. We love the location as it is close to both school and work and family for us as well as many other places we like to go. We're rather active. We also don't want her to influence our lives to the point where we feel we have to move. That just doesn't feel right to us. This brings us to the question of how can we honor and love her while still drawing the line? She takes any form of "disobedience" as hating her and the rest of the family. If we don't agree with her on certain points, we have been yelled at, given the silent treatment, denied being with the family, and much more. Yet my husband and I are still our own family and need to do what is best for us, so in doing what we feel is right and not always doing as she wishes (especially when it is wrong) not honoring and loving her? How can we balance loving her and being our own family? Is keeping away from her going against showing love to her? The question was also asked how long she has been like this. Honestly, it is as long as my husband can remember. He remembers some of his friends not wanting to come over because of the way his mom acted. She is sunshine, roses, and perfection from a distance, but if you get too close, she is the complete opposite. My husband's close friends were able to pick up on this quickly. His father (so my father-in-law) attributes her behavior to a time when she was "let go" from a women's choir and given a book on self improvement.(To add to this, my father-in-law is not supportive of us. We would rather talk to him than her any time, but he has been known to turn his back on his kids to make his wife happy. Now, I get that a husband and wife should work together, but I don't think that means one should betray the trust of a child). From my perspective, if she was given a book on how to be kind and a better person from the choir she was in, that tells me she has had issues before that. But I don't know. I only know what I've witnessed while dating my husband and while I have been married to him. However, my husband feels the same way I do. This makes us think that it is likely she will not be changing her behavior anytime in the near future, so it is our behavior that will matter. But again, we're trapped between that balance of respecting her while also respecting ourselves and our decisions. We also aren't positive what we want or need to do to hopefully get appropriate responses from her. We are hoping that by leaving or not being around her when she is being unkind that she will realize that in order to have us with her, she will need to be kind. That, I suppose, is part of the irony. She wants her family with her, but she is very controlling and abusive, which pushes us (and them) away. It's very sad. Switching topics just a bit again back to how close we are to her, I do worry about our future children. We don't have any children as of yet, but we know we want them sometime soon in the future. I worry about how they will be treated the most. I don't know what I will do if she hurts our children. I can't stand it when she hurts my husband. If she says something awful to me, I can more or less get over it. I can forgive, but there is often still hurt left behind. When she hurts my husband however, I can't handle that. There have been times where I can't stand how she is treating him or talking to him and have had to step in and say it's time to walk away. With this, I can only imagine what would happen if she hurt our children. The other part I worry about concerns us. Having children is a very personal decision between husband and wife and God. However, my mother-in-law does not seem to feel the same. She has told us having children "is NOT in our plans." PERIOD. We can't even joke about kids without her getting angry. As a wife and future mother, I won't lie, that hurts. And it makes me scared how she will respond when we do announce we are having kids. My husband and I are terrified to tell her and have talked about not even telling her but just letting her find out. I also don't know what we will do at the hospital. She all but barged in on my sister-in-law when she was giving birth. (Somehow, it is fine for her to have kids. I don't understand it, and I probably won't get into it here because there is a lot of back story and speculation). Anyway, we simply can't have that. We have sadly looked into how to mark on a birth plan how to keep guests out until we are ready. That's the one solution we have to far for that situation, but it only covers part of it. As far as his other siblings, we can see how her behavior has effected them. The oldest refuses to come over (unless he sees some kind of benefit :\), and he often will not talk with the siblings because he is worried we are all spying on him for his mom. Next is my husband and me, then there is my husband's sister and brother-in-law. They often stay at his family's home more than they visit her's. This is the interesting couple mentioned above. My mother-in-law basically lives vicariously through them and hand-picked my sister-in-law's husband, so they can do no wrong. I have seen her upset with them, but she won't come after them like she does the other siblings. In fact, when she's upset with them because they haven't done what she has wanted, she takes it out on the rest of the family. After the sister is a younger brother. He has expressed a wish to move out, but he doesn't think he could afford rent on his own. From what we know, he wants to find some room mates after his summer job ends. He works at EFY over the summer--this was clever on his end because it gets him away from the problems and his mom can't say "no" because it is a church program. The two youngest siblings are twins, and they are waiting eagerly for their mission calls. They want to leave as soon as they can, but they are worried because their mom wants them to wait. She has told them that they are not ready and that their older brother was not mature enough to go, so they should obviously wait because they can't handle it. Needless to say, they are upset and pushing for mission papers, which is hard considering they need parental help to get all of their check-ups and etc. in order before they go. It is sad because we can see that her actions are pushing her family away from her. Sadly, she cannot or refuses to see that. My father-in-law does try to help relations and keep everyone together, but more often than not, he will turn against his kids to keep his wife happy. My husband is very disheartened over this. He is also worried about his parents. He doesn't know how they have managed to stay together so long because there have been times when he has wondered if his mom even loves his dad. It's heartbreaking. So, I suppose, to end with, we have a lot of concerns. Our main one is still trying to figure out how to handle his mom and try to stay together with his siblings. I hope this adds some extra insight and maybe will spark some ideas of solutions we could try or actions to take. Again, thank you all so much for your time and help and for reading the giant posts. My husband and I are grateful.

Duuuude!!! This sounds like a short people problem, and I am a short person. I may be wrong, but I can feel for you with the "garments being too large" bit. Something I learned when I was first ordering garments is you can actually place custom orders. Neat, eh!? That has helped me a lot and will likely help more in the future. I have also found I like the caranessa style. They fit me much better than any other. Anyway, that's just what had worked for me. It may work for you. If you're curious about the custom sizing, just ask one of the kindly ladies at the place you buy garments at for more information. ❤️

I will admit this upfront: I feel awkward posting here. And scared. And a whole lot of other emotions. However, I have had a feeling for a very long time now that I should find a help forum, specifically one where I can ask others from my faith for advice. So, now that you all know I am asking for help, here is the problem. My husband's mother is emotionally and mentally abusive. I know what this must look like coming from the daughter-in-law, but I don't know how else to say it as I am very serious. I could make an endless list of examples and scenarios to show how unstable she is and how dangerous and hurtful it is to be around her. My husband also recognizes her behavior as unhealthy. We have been to a counselor over our situation, and he has offered tremendous help and ideas, one being to read Walking on Eggshells. The book has helped a lot, but we feel we need more help, specifically Heavenly and Spiritual help, but don't know where to turn next. We have also prayed and studied scriptures. We have tried talking with her and walking away and not being around her when her personality has turned toxic. But we can't seem to find a balance where we are kept safe from the pain she causes and being with her to try to stay together as a family. There is no topic to research in the topical guide for our situation, and LDS.org also offers next to nothing on what a child can or should do when faced with an abusive parent, especially when that child is older. What we are specifically worried about is how to handle her while still keeping a relationship with her and the rest of her family. She is still my husband's mother, and I respect her for raising him to be so wonderful. However, I do not respect the way she treats him. No mother should treat a child the way I have seen her treat my husband. So I ask, what more can we do? We constantly pray for help and answers and often inspiration will help, but her behavior is still toxic. She is a daughter of God, and we are an eternal family, so how do we balance loving her while keeping ourselves safe as our own family unit? I realize that without providing many more details I may not have given you all enough to go on, but I want to try to avoid that as I don't want to become too angry, gossip, or write something I will regret. If more detail helps, I am willing to give examples and the like for better advice. We simply don't know where else to turn.