![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
May. 30th, 2022 08:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conulyDear Prudence,
My family and I have just decided to relocate from a large West Coast city to a less expensive but lovely college town a couple hundred miles inland. My mother-in-law lives with us, and for reasons I can’t explain, our relationship has always been fraught. For some reason, she insists on taking things I say wrongly and seeing my compliments (for doing something nice for her grandchildren, or going on a birding adventure, for instance) as “solicitous”—her word. We’ve lived together for three years, and she doesn’t want to do it anymore. So since we are selling our house in a high-cost city and moving to a low-cost one, I bought her a house four blocks away from where we’ll live. It’s a lovely, newly renovated old home. She declined—she plans to rent a duplex further away (she has virtually no financial security either, so paying rent will be more onerous for her). I thought it would be a way of showing my care and love and hope. But her refusal is a slap in the face to me and my child, and I don’t know how I can even go on trying with her. I want to cut off all contact. My otherwise lovely spouse just thinks that my kindness is wrongheaded and defends her mom’s position. It changes how I feel both about the move and, frankly, being in this family at all. Can you talk me off the ledge?
—Generous to a Fault
( Read more... )
My family and I have just decided to relocate from a large West Coast city to a less expensive but lovely college town a couple hundred miles inland. My mother-in-law lives with us, and for reasons I can’t explain, our relationship has always been fraught. For some reason, she insists on taking things I say wrongly and seeing my compliments (for doing something nice for her grandchildren, or going on a birding adventure, for instance) as “solicitous”—her word. We’ve lived together for three years, and she doesn’t want to do it anymore. So since we are selling our house in a high-cost city and moving to a low-cost one, I bought her a house four blocks away from where we’ll live. It’s a lovely, newly renovated old home. She declined—she plans to rent a duplex further away (she has virtually no financial security either, so paying rent will be more onerous for her). I thought it would be a way of showing my care and love and hope. But her refusal is a slap in the face to me and my child, and I don’t know how I can even go on trying with her. I want to cut off all contact. My otherwise lovely spouse just thinks that my kindness is wrongheaded and defends her mom’s position. It changes how I feel both about the move and, frankly, being in this family at all. Can you talk me off the ledge?
—Generous to a Fault
( Read more... )