Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

regarding #81281

While I don't completely disagree with the responses that the mom is "out of line" and just needs to "deal with it," I think the son is ignoring the fact that who he marries can transfer good/bad/neutral emotional consequences to his family. I think the alternative is that maybe the mother sees something the son just can't due to his love goggles. It could be more than her just being overprotective due to past divorce situations with her children.

Yes, we are adults, but most parents only want the best for us and maybe they just aren't perfect enough to know how to make that known. Maybe this mother and son are just not communicating effectively due to their defenses being up.

When I was going through the marriage decision with Mr. November (hehe), I discussed it with my mother in depth. I saw this as one of the last big life choices that I could really talk openly about with my mom before getting married and having my husband become my main sounding board.

My situation was very different from this guy's, because my mom thought Mr. November was great despite me having a sibling who went through a nasty divorce. After badgering her to do so, my mom did point out a few things about him to me that she saw as potential challenges such as his time consuming career, that we'd likely have to move far away, and that due to this it may be hard for me to have the career I wanted. We then discussed if I could cope with those challenges should they arise. It was nice to have that "final" discussion before making a decision.

I didn't discuss my decision to marry with my parents, although they did meet him and his family before we got married.

Whistler wrote:I didn't discuss my decision to marry with my parents, although they did meet him and his family before we got married.

Ditto. Even before he proposed, my mom was discussing how she imagined my reception, and everything. When he asked their blessing my mom's response was, "Yes! But you'd better ask her quick or I'm going to spill the beans!" and my dad's response was, "Are you getting married in the temple? Ok then."

Overall it wasn't a big deal, but my husband was kind of scared of asking my dad. He is an intimidating guy, bishop, pretty strait-laced, etc.

I'm gonna be that jerk who points out that the plural of "mother in law" is "mothers in law."

I'm also another person who didn't consult with my parents at all before I decided to marry my fiance. He also didn't ask for my parents' permission/blessing before he proposed. We both have very good relationships with our parents but are highly independent, so that's what worked for us. YMMV.

I thought about suggesting this article in a comment, but figured it wouldn't get posted because that site contains some, um, grown-up words. But I think it has really good advice on how to handle situations like the one the questioner is in.

That article is everything I wanted to say, said so much better than how I said it.

My mom is dead, so I wish I had this guy's problem. I'd rather have a temporarily strained relationship than none. (Count your blessings?)

Amity wrote:I'm gonna be that jerk who points out that the plural of "mother in law" is "mothers in law."

I'm going to be that descriptive linguist who points out that (1) if you're going to be a pedant, it's "mothers-in-law" (with hyphens) and (2) while there may be a stylistic preference for "mothers-in-law" as a plural, if you say that "mother-in-laws" is grammatically incorrect, then there is an entire class of nouns that you cannot pluralize at all, because they lack a head noun. E.g., "merry-go-round" ("merrys-go-round"?), "free-for all" ("frees-for all"?), "good-for-nothing" ("goods-for-nothing"?), not to mention "in-law" ("ins-law"?).

Matt Meese is the collective noun for one Matt Moose.

People also get huffy about "doctor's appointment" & "driver's license."

My friends have had problems like this with their mothers-in-law(s). One got so bad that her doctor told her to stop spending time with the mother-in-law. it was stressing her out so much that she was losing weight, getting high blood pressure, and losing her hair. She was about to divorce her husband because his mother is a straight up witch with a b who was purposely trying to break them up because reasons. Even I don't like her, and I barely know her. But she's insane. The final straw for her son was when she told him, "Don't have children with your wife. Have them with someone else." Now neither one of them talks to her.

My other friend doesn't have issues quite as bad as that, but her in-laws are a DISASTER, and it really stresses her out when that disaster impacts her life. Her husband is great though, so that helps a lot.