{"id":682,"date":"2006-09-27T16:04:57","date_gmt":"2006-09-27T20:04:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patg.com\/Divorce\/the-mother-in-law-from-hell.htm"},"modified":"2016-05-02T11:37:15","modified_gmt":"2016-05-02T15:37:15","slug":"the-mother-in-law-from-hell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/patg.com\/articles\/the-mother-in-law-from-hell.htm","title":{"rendered":"The Mother-In-Law From Hell"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When most of us think of the &#8220;other woman&#8221; in a relationship, typically we think of a girlfriend. Unfortunately, girlfriends are but one of several &#8220;other women&#8221; who may have an unpleasant hold on the man you love or a man you&#8217;d like to know much better.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nWe could assume that a mother would want her son to get married and raise a family of his own. But, some mothers just don&#8217;t want to let go and they view the girlfriend as a threat to the relationship they have with their son. Some will go to great lengths to keep their sons single and living at home.<\/p>\n<p>Karen describes her ex&#8217;s mother as the &#8220;mother-in-law from hell.&#8221; She said the first time her ex referred to his mother as &#8220;mommy&#8221; she should have taken the clue that their attachment might be hazardous to any serious dating relationships.<\/p>\n<p>Karen said Joey&#8217;s mother encouraged him to go out with other women, even after they were engaged. &#8220;It was the girlfriends serving him coffee in bed that I objected to,&#8221; she says, &#8220;but that stopped when I threatened to give him back his ring and let him stay with his mother. It seemed as though all the sabotage stopped when I showed some backbone.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Rather than deal with the complications of blending two families who didn&#8217;t care for each other, both his and mine, we eloped. That seemed to suit his mother, even if mine had a fit. About a month after we got married we had our first fight &#8212; the kind newlyweds have, I suppose. Joey came unglued and said his mother had been right that the day he married me was the worst day of his life! I was ready to leave him when I heard that.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A few hours later he apologized and, never, from that day on did the word &#8216;divorce&#8217; come up in any argument. I don&#8217;t contribute his mother&#8217;s attitude to the breakup of our marriage but I do think it added more straws to an already heavy load.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Karen came to grips with her mother-in-law by being firm and not bowing to the emotional abuse the woman tried to direct toward her. She learned to anticipate the critical remarks and turn a deaf ear or respond with calm answers. During the 20 years of their marriage, she and her mother-in-law stayed at arms&#8217; length and Joey stayed out of the way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When most of us think of the &#8220;other woman&#8221; in a relationship, typically we think of a girlfriend. Unfortunately, girlfriends are but one of several &#8220;other women&#8221; who may have an unpleasant hold on the man you love or a man you&#8217;d like to know much better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/patg.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/patg.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/patg.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patg.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patg.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=682"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/patg.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3239,"href":"https:\/\/patg.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682\/revisions\/3239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/patg.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patg.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/patg.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}