‘My daughter-in-law hates me because I am a strong woman’

Recently my mother told me my daughter-in-law hates me because I am strong. This news shouldn’t come as a surprise to me — she is forever trying to drive a wedge between me and my son — but it feels wrong that others are aware of it.

It does not matter what I may think. It does not matter if I am a wealth of knowledge and life experience. It does not matter if I know so many old ways that would work better on anything at all. I know to keep my opinions to myself and my mouth remains firmly shut when I am around her.

When I attended events for my grandchildren of any sort I didn’t wear colourful clothing. If I did wear what I wanted everything would be ‘wrong’, so I wore boring beige just to try and fit the ‘acceptable’ grandmother mould.

I gave up buying gifts because they were always wrong. Gift cards were the way too go, but I made sure there were those EFTPOS cards that can be used anywhere. If I gave a gift card for a particular shop I’d be promptly informed by my daughter-in-law that it was the wrong shop.

I never assume I will see the grandchildren on a regular basis. I have to be content with whatever time I get. I had to accept that I will always be at the bottom of the daughter-in-law’s totem pole.

When I was asked to babysit — often at the most inconvenient times — I always obliged. I even cancelled appointments I had been waiting to get for three months, because the desire to spend a little time with my grandchildren was more important.

When I left a message, I learned that I could not trust it would be passed on in the same context in which I first said it. Adjectives and verbs were added and/or subtracted. This girl would do anything to make me appear foolish.

There were definitely times when I felt like yelling “for heaven’s sake! Stop with the jealousy and the hate. I am not the enemy, I am his Mum!” but I knew it would only make the situation worse.

However, after an age of not being true to oneself, I got so very tired. I realised nothing I do will ever be good enough and I made the decision to be genuine regardless of the consequences. I now wear what I want when I want (the beige clothes went to goodwill).

My attitude now is take me as I am or leave me alone. Consequently I get left alone a lot, but I am happy.

Do you have a difficult relationship with your in-laws? How have you handled it?

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