The past affects each of us, but is not “a sentence that must be carried out.” It is not at all required to break through a closed door and strive to be accepted by the mother-in-law in order to be on good terms with her husband.
“My husband and I have been together for 3 years, of which one and a half are officially married, our daughter is 1 year old. From the outside it seems that everything is fine, but I still feel that my husband’s mother is against me. They never talk to me (his mother-in-law always takes him aside, calls only when I’m not around). She does not come to her granddaughter, although we live in the same city and very close, she is always busy. Yes, I don’t need her help, I just want to feel like part of the family. We communicate normally with her, I call her, ask how she is, I invite her to visit, but my mother-in-law comes to us only on holidays, and even then not always. I have a feeling that she and her husband can turn against me, although he, of course, denies everything.
Daria, 25 years
Lucy Mikaelyan, family psychologist:
“I think that your husband suffers from the same thing as you: from closed borders in relations with his mother. “Paradise for two” in parent-child relationships, if these are not the first months of a baby’s life, is experienced as a restriction of freedom, it hinders the development of the child’s independence. It’s like a trap that you can’t get out of without feeling guilty, and you can’t stay because there’s nothing to breathe in such cramped quarters. The only difference in your position is that you are outside and your husband is inside. Both the pain of exclusion and the severity of super closeness are an echo of past relationships, and not your “project” with your husband, for the sake of which you got married. Of course, the past affects each of us, but it is not a “sentence” that must be carried out. You do not need to break through a closed door and strive to be accepted by your mother-in-law in order to be on good terms with your husband. It is more important that both of you want to build something of your own, where closeness and distance are experienced as a natural state of affairs and do not threaten the reliability of your connection.