MIL Enmeshment Is Hurting My Marriage — how to have boundaries that aren’t complete NC
My husband and I have been struggling with boundaries with his mom and I genuinely don’t know what’s reasonable anymore or how to approach this in a healthy way.
She’s widowed and very emotionally dependent on him, and he carries a huge sense of guilt/responsibility toward her. He has an extremely hard time saying no to her, disappointing her, or prioritizing our relationship when there’s conflict between us and her needs. He seems to feel responsible for managing her emotions and keeping her happy.
To be fair, I do think she has significant social anxiety, and honestly I’ve sometimes wondered if she could even be autistic. I don’t think she’s intentionally manipulative in an obvious way. But despite being uncomfortable socially and dependent on my husband, she still tends to dictate the terms of relationships, family expectations, holidays, visits, and emotional dynamics in a way that feels very centered around her needs - all while being very cold and self centered to me during my pregnancy and postpartum, doesn’t acknowledge deaths in my family, etc.
Meanwhile, I often feel emotionally sidelined and invisible in the dynamic. She can be very loving toward our child, but toward me she tends to be cold, dismissive, critical, or disengaged whenever I talk, but can make jokes in front of me that he should ask his boss for a raise to take his mother on expensive vacations. My husband acknowledges some of it, but often minimizes it because “that’s just how she is” or because she’s nicer to me than she is to other people, and that she has no one and if we are just more kind she will eventually open out of her shell.
What really brought this to a head was that the day after my miscarriage, I was devastated and emotionally overwhelmed and wanted to cancel a dinner at her house because I didn’t have the emotional capacity for a cold environment towards me. It turned into a huge argument because he still felt obligated to go and prioritize his mom’s feelings, and was angry at me for trying to cancel.
There are also financial dynamics where he feels responsible for some of her expenses even though shes very comfortable being cold to me and helping other family members financially even when it creates stress for our own household, as we are in debt and want to save for a house.
I feel like we’re stuck in this pattern where he sees setting boundaries as hurting or abandoning his mom, while I see the lack of boundaries as hurting our marriage and preventing us from functioning as our own nuclear family.
For people who’ve dealt with enmeshment/family guilt dynamics in marriage:
What helped?
What made things worse?
What boundaries are reasonable vs unreasonable?
What should I avoid doing so this doesn’t become a power struggle?
Did your partner eventually recognize the pattern on their own? What did you do to help them really understand it and do something about it?
He isn’t open to individual counselling but he is open to couples counselling so I’ll take what I can get and probably better to be there so that counsellor can see the full picture - we are right now doing consultations to see who might be the right fit and he’s been very open and enthusastic
I’d especially appreciate perspectives from people who’ve been the spouse struggling with guilt toward a parent. Also, what do I do, what do I say in these scenarios where she’s so warm to her kids and my child and cold to me and acts like I don’t exist and I’m all alone during the hardest times but SO will expect us to jump backwards whenever she feels like it.