Phonies

After my last post, something Kara said got me thinking more about my anger towards my MIL.   What exactly it is that pisses me off.

I've said before how much I dislike phoniness in people.  I spoke before of my BIL (her son and "mini-me", a term I hate, but actually feel is apt here) and how fake and superficial he is.  How he is all surface and, in my opinion, has little depth.

MIL is a bunch of window dressing too.  In all honesty,  I really know very little about what MIL really likes or cares about.  She projects being a devout Christian.  She projects being very connected to her family.  She loves when people envy her "close" family and point out how wonderful we all are.  She likes the "best" of things.  Not necessarily the most expensive or fanciest things.  But she likes to be "in the know".  She likes to be trendy and be the first one to know about things.  She loves to recommend restaurants and wines and resorts.  She is easily swayed by other's opinions.  If someone she respects (or even someone she feels is knowledgeable  says something, she believes it and adopts their opinion for herself.   She rarely questions something.  It doesn't matter if how she personally feels about something.  If someone tells her a wine is awesome, she will say it is awesome too.  I've seen her quickly take on my husband's opinions about all kinds of things.  If he likes a wine or a beer, she likes it.  If he is eating a food, she has to try it and proclaim how much  she LOVES it (she is often overly extreme in her descriptions of things.  Things are THE BEST.  Or she LOVES something.)  She wants to fit in.  She does very little thinking for herself.   DH and I have often joked that he could hand her a glass of rancid wine, and if he talked it up enough, she too would proclaim it to be wonderful.  She has been spoon fed her beliefs on religion by her parents and never questions.  In fact, I rarely see her question anything from certain people in her life.  She is easily swayed by those she deems authorities.   However, if someone (often me) expresses an alternative opinion, she has to prove I'm wrong.  She does not have an ability to allow for multiple opinions to be "right".  She is very, very black and white.  I used to blame a lot of this on, what I believe to be ADHD.  But it just kept being more than that.   MIL is flighty.  She flits from interest to interest (and is always, coincidentally involved in anything her kids are involved in: sports, travel, wine.  Their interests are now her interests).  I've never seen her stick with anything except church, and even then she has waffled in her "convictions" as her preacher son expressed doubts.  She even has moved churches recently, with little explanation, despite being very devoted to her church several years back.  She loves get rich quick schemes and is a dreamer.  And talent of mine she notices, she instantly proclaims that I should do that for a profession.  I know of not one single interest, hobby, or idea that she has come to in her own way.  And consequently, nothing sticks.  Nothing has been a constant in her life.

When I first met her, she was very self assured in her way being the right way.  She badgered me.  She pushed me.  In my opinion, she bullied me.  Subtly.  She has a keen ability to undercut people's character or appearance in an extremely subtle way.  She bossed me around relentlessly.  DH used to say it's because she was the mom of four boys and just was used to being in charge.  So, she just took charge of me too.  She expected me to just do what she wanted.  I was desperate to please her and tried hard to be respectful.  She didn't raise children but directed them on paths she found to be right.  She had an opinion about everything I did and did not allow for much dissent.  She wanted me to be married in the same month as she, she pushed for the god-awful veil that she wanted me to wear and then criticized the one I wanted.  She pushed relentlessly for grand children.  Despite me continued attempts to explain why I wasn't ready, she pushed.  Once, she even told me that she wanted grand children because all her friends had grand children.  Oh, well then, I'll get right on that.  Because there is no better reason to have kids than for their grandmother to "fit in" with her friends.  And she told me I was expected to have the first grandchild and told SIL she had to wait for me and DH to have that child before they could have one.  I never understood why, except that that was the way MIL wanted it to be.  Or God told her that was the way it should be.  Such crap.  She decided who was ready and who wasn't to have kids.  She pushed me to create a home and life for my kids that was the same as the one she had created for DH.  It was like she wanted to recreate DH's childhood through me and DH.   She bought all DH's work wardrobe when he graduated college.  She called him to regulate his brothers.  She put family decisions on DH's shoulders, so to avoid blame herself should it back fire.  She manipulated in whispers behind my back and DH's back.  She tried to create a hierarchy with DH in charge of the family, something that caused extreme resentment from my SIL.

It would've been easier at this time to stand up to her.  I wish, desperately at times, that I could go back and stand up to her.  Put my foot down.  But any sort of dissent on my part got her angry.  And I didn't want to get her angry.  I wanted her to like me.    I felt at the time such a strong tearing inside of me.  I was trying so hard to be myself, but I knew the more I tried to be myself, the more upset she got.  Anything I said that she didn't like was met with a snarky laugh that came off like she was teasing me, but was meant to express her anger at me.  But in a way no one could call her on.  She huffed a lot.  And most of that was lost on DH.  He didn't see then (and still struggles to see) her subtle expressions of disdain or anger.  How her huffs and eye rolls and quiet, sneaky secret whispers just out of ear shot got to me.  He told me to just let it go and ignore it like he did.  But I couldn't.

After awhile, she realized she couldn't control me.   I also believe she felt DH's loyalty starting to shift.  So, she seemed to adopt the policy of becoming like me.  Because, after all, if DH thought so highly of me, there must be something to that.  So, she started adopting my tastes, my hobbies, my talents for herself.  And that's where the phoniness came in.  She started complimenting me all the damn time.  But the thing is, the compliments where never really about me, but rather something she coveted in me.  I've never heard the woman say "Jessie, you are a really good..."  All her compliments, to everyone, begin with "I think you are good at."  Every, single one begins with the "I think" statement.  It is all in relation to her opinions on things.  Even when she's told me she is bragging to someone else about me, she says "MY DIL, is so good at...".  It drives me crazy.  She's attempting to control me by winning me over now.  She thinks that by telling me she likes my toe nail polish or the color I picked for my walls or some other trivial piece of crap, I'll think she is a nice person.  This is also how she tries to get to my kids.  She tells them "grammy thinks you are so smart.  Grammy thinks you are so athletic."   She's trying to make them think she is being complimentary to them and make them like her more.  But she's still setting them up to cater to her opinions of things.  If "grammy" likes something you do, then you get a compliment.    She compliments my shoes or my earrings, while at the same time proclaiming she's going to get some for herself.  Instead of trying to make me her, she is trying to be me.  I guess, she assumes that I'll then like her more?  It seems so stupid to me.  But I'm not a narc.

But the part that makes me angry is that she has be in a bind.  She never insults me directly.  She's never been out and out rude (although I think she's been rude a million times, it's just easy for other's to explain away.  "She didn't mean it like that") or called me names or spoke negatively about me without couching it in "I'm concerned" terms.    She compliments me.  And, although I know these compliments are fake and phony, and an attempt to control my feelings towards her, how the hell do you call someone on that?  How do you say, when you told me my toe nail polish was nice, you were being an ass?  I would sound like a loon.  And she knows that.

I can't not be the bad DIL, because there is nothing to point to.  What I can point to seems petty.  My NM and NSis are obviously bitchy at times.  I have clear evidence of them being assholes.  MIL hides her asshole-ery amongst "love" and "concern" and fake bullshit compliments.  She hides her controlling nature behind wanting to help.  On the rare occasion that she still snarks, it comes so far out of left field that I don't see it coming (not too very long ago, my husband was talking to her and FIL about her babysitting my niece and how my BIL and SIL had become overly-dependent on grandparents to help them care for their kids.  MIL snapped "well, I'd do babysit for you too, but you don't want me to."  We all knew the comment was directed at me.  It was accusatory and made her out to be a victim of sorts.  She also knew that I couldn't get into a discussion about her babysitting without getting into a discussion about the deeper issues in our relationship.  We were in her house, she had DH and FIL to (in her mind) back her up.  She was looking for a fight, or at the least to put me in my place and express her anger at me in a way that I wasn't prepared to discuss.  She was also looking to deflect any guilt she felt about being overly involved with my niece back on to me.  These situations come up a lot.  She turns any sort of "attack" that she feels back onto me being somehow wrong.  It makes it extremely difficult to discuss anything.  And for what it's worth, she had never once discussed being upset about not babysitting to me before this comment nor in the three years since -in which I still haven't let her babysit.  She has never, once, confronted me directly about anything.  It's either behind my back, in a snarky passive-aggressive way to my face, or she pretends that she is not upset.)  She is always shucking and jiving, to borrow a phrase from some other bloggers.  You can not pin her down on anything without her turning it back on me, stomping off and getting defensive, or ignoring it all together.  I can't confront her, but she won't confront me either.  And she also has an amazing ability to do these things when no one else is around to see it.  It's hard to prove something that no one else sees.

What makes me angriest is to see her perpetuating this phoniness onto my kids.  She has a certain enraptured smile, with half closed eyes as she rocks and hums and holds my kids (or my niece and nephew) that makes me want to slap her.  I can clearly see it isn't because she is making a connection with the kids or feeling love, but rather because she is pulling off the narc supply they provide her.  They make her feel love, they make her feel special.  She is getting her physical attention needs met.  It is not about providing loving, physical contact to the kids (hence, she often misses the cues that the kids are over it.)  Although she isn't malignant or nasty to the kids, she does try to control the relationships.  She has pushed for my son and my niece to be super close.  She labels my son as "all boy" despite knowing little about who he is.   She doesn't send him little cards or stickers in the mail the way the other grandmas do.  In fact, when she is not with him (and often when she is) she pays him little to no attention.  She can not have meaningful interactions with him.  When he was a young baby, she literally held his fingers and pushed the buttons on a toy in order to "teach" him how it worked.  She had no concern for him learning how to do it, or giving him an experience, or working within his abilities to experience something with him.   Recently, she wanted to start up a conversation with him (about something she had heard about through FIL.  DH rarely talks to MIL.  And it was clear that she didn't know what the hell she was talking about because of the way she refrenced this thing.)  I should give her credit for starting a conversation because, mostly, she talks at him or about him to us, never to him.   So, we were all in the swimming pool, my son floats by and she tries to start this indepth conversation about this toy with him.  He just said "yeah" (because all of her questions are yes/no and never open ended or asking about his opinions, shocker) and kept going.    Luckily, I don't think she's doing any harm to him, because she is such a non-entity.  My brilliant, with a remarkable memory, son often calls her the wrong name.  He sees her most often and he has NO trouble with any other grandparents' names (even ones he rarely sees) but he frequently calls her another grandmother's name.  But I'm keeping my eye out.  I'm waiting.  I'm sure it won't take long for her negativity to pop out and I'm waiting.

But the thing is, everyone else sees a loving grandmother.  A grandmother who is being denied the "right" to babysit her grand kids. (For new readers, not only do I keep her from watching my kids because I don't think she will listen at ALL to the instructions I give her, but she struggles seriously with safety issues.  She's very unfocused (ADD) and does not think ahead for risks.  I've seen it time and again with my niece and nephew.  She also has no ability to read emotional cues in my sensitive and subtle children.  She also gets defensive if I suggest how to do something or "miss-hears" me.  She struggles to listen to me in the first place and when I have asked her to do things in the past, she rarely does things the way I ask.  I'm not a control freak, but I do have some ways of doing things that I would expect her to follow.).  I believe I am seen as controlling, unwilling to let go of my kids, and bitter by others.  It has created some serious frustration for me.

She's just slippery, I guess, and I'm frustrated.  This is a woman who offers to help me clean up a party that I've cleaned up (while she sat and watched).  A woman who apologizes to my husband when she's wronged me.  A woman who loves to look like a loving grandmother, but it is all loving in one direction: towards her.  Everything she does with the kids is to get them to love and care for her.  She compliments me on phony things and when I credit someone else for the things the thing she complimented me on, she suddenly looses interest in washing me with her praise.  She appears good and kind and thoughtful and helpful.  I appear mean and bitchy and grudge-holding.  I appear to be bitter and holding onto typical DIL bullshit.  I appear to be denying her her grand kids, her son, and the close family.  I am to blame for the turmoil in the family because I insist on being different (or difficult, depending on who you ask).  I am the one choosing to not be in the family, rather than her pushing me out as punishment for not conforming.

Not seeing her is not an option.  DH is not willing to lose his relationship with his father or extended family.  Calling her out right on shit causes a scene.  Although that's where I am at with her (and even then I think she senses this and has started "tiptoeing" around me like I am some ticking time bomb).  Any suggestions?  Any thoughts?  How do you pin a snake down?  How do you deal with such underhanded passive-aggressiveness?  How do I maintain my sanity?  How do I not deck her when she gets that smarmy, "serene", ah look my whole family is together look?

And as an after note:  When I first met MIL, I thought she was a bit rude and mean.  I thought she was thoughtless and flaky and unfocused.  I chalked it up to her having ADHD.  Clearly, she just misses social cues, I thought.  She speaks before she thinks.   She is unfocused and doesn't mean to be thoughtless.  I bought DH's excuse that, as the mom of four boys, she just had a more "masculine" approach to things (despite being raised with four girls and the fact that my grandmother, who also raised four boys wasn't like this).  The teasing and making fun of people and the family picking on people was "normal" with boys.  That's just how they were.  I bought the family excuse that she was just scattered and having to corral four wild (and ADHD) boys made her controlling and bossy.  I kept assuming she didn't mean to hurt my feelings.

But things never fully added up.  When she was told she hurt someone's feelings, she didn't apologize.  She didn't change her ways (and thanks Kara for recently pointing this out on your blog).  She just kept doing it.   And so many, many things couldn't be explained away by ADHD and mothering boys.

When I found the 25 Characteristics of NMs, I was reading it in relation to my mother.  What I found was that I kept saying, oh, that's MIL!  Many of the criteria applied to her.  So much so, that even DH couldn't deny it.  He did say that my NM was more "obvious" and that his wasn't "that bad" (because he misses her subtle nature).  I doubted myself for a long time about her being a narcissist.  But I just can't find any other way to explain her than with this: she is an emotional child, self-centered, and self-absorbed who can't put anyone else above herself.  She is a narcissist.