My husband likes to keep stuff stirred up between me and my mother-in-law. It was suggested to me that he’s just being thoughtless. I can understand his being a little thoughtless for a year or so, but we’ve been together since 1996. 9 frigging years!! He should have caught on by now, eh? He has her same communication style which has caused arguments between us until I learned the trick of how to talk to/with him, so he thinks that I get into it with her because I’m so ‘confrontational’. I swear, he thinks just answering a simple yes or no question with, well, yes or no is confrontational!! He could say, Hey Trula, do you want Chinese food tonight? If I just say No he’ll get offended. I have learned through the years that he not only wants the answer but why I don’t want it, the history of Chinese food in America, the best restaurant to get Chinese food from, and when in the future I might possibly want Chinese food and then say No. Ok I exaggerate but dang it for the life of me I am stumped sometimes as to what the fuck he wants me to say or how my answer could possibly be deemed too abrupt or confrontational.

Also his family does not like you to say things face to face. I have said stuff to his mother and she would turn to Brian in amazement and say in utter horror, Did you hear what she said to me? Like who am I supposed to say it to?? I have a problem with you I’m going to say it to your face. I have learned various things about members of his family from other people within the family, and I know stuff about members of his family that he didn’t even know just because I asked them directly. But they don’t ask stuff like, Why did you get a divorce? Are you ok? Or whatever. My family, not only will people ask you they will straight up grill you and commiserate along with you, LOL.

She gets so dramatic and angry and it upsets Brian so, they have trained me over the years to filter my communication through him because she just can’t bear to hear it directly or whatever. So we pass messages back and forth through Brian – could you please tell your mother not to say bad shit about me to the kids – could you please tell your wife not to walk across my lawn when visiting her friends (one of my best friends lives right next door to her) – could you please tell your mom to make the boys wear their bike helmets when they are over her house – could you please tell your wife I meant no harm signing their homework sheets – and so on. It’s ridiculous. Brian is tired of it, I’m tired of it, I bet she’s tired of it.

I’d like us to be friends and close and all but right now I’d settle for just talking. When we first moved here Todd and I would go over her house in the early afternoons and visit and sit and have tea until time for Scott and Iyende to come home from school. I miss that, I really do, just being able to sit and talk with her. Sometimes she’d tell me stories about when my Brian was little. I know she loves her son deeply. I have a lot of respect for her for her career and her mothering. I just wish she’d let up on me, give me a chance. I used to think she hated me but Brian says No, she thinks I hated her. I don’t, I used to dislike her but upon deeper reflection I am afraid of her. It’s like a wound to my soul that my MIL doesn’t like me.

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