It's Either Her or Me: A Guide to Help a Mom and Her Daughter-in-Law Get Along - Softcover

Fisher, Ellie Slott

 
9780553385946: It's Either Her or Me: A Guide to Help a Mom and Her Daughter-in-Law Get Along
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0553385941 ISBN 13: 9780553385946
Verlag: Bantam, 2010

Inhaltsangabe

THERE’S NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT—YOU’RE NOT LOSING A SON AND YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE GAINING A RIVAL.
 
For a mother who’s accustomed to having been number one in her son’s life, the arrival of a girlfriend, fiancée, or wife can be a complicated, confusing, and emotionally challenging event. Likewise, coexisting harmoniously with the mother of her partner can be an overwhelming challenge for any woman. Sons, often caught in the middle, are sometimes understandably reluctant to take sides.

In It’s Either Her or Me, relationship expert Ellie Slott Fisher examines the complex dynamics of these potentially fraught relationships and how they can be made rich in rewards for all parties. As a wife and the mother of a grown son, Fisher has been on both ends of the spectrum. She recounts her own experiences and those of the mothers, sons, girlfriends, fiancées, wives, and even sisters she interviewed. With the help of psychologist Dr. Beatrice Lazaroff and licensed professional counselor Esther Ganz, Fisher offers practical solutions to help women on both sides cope—and thrive—in this most sensitive of relationships. Discover how to
 
• gauge when it’s time to voice an opinion—and when it’s best to bite your tongue
• reach out to the woman in your son’s life without being overbearing 
• handle the partner or mother-in-law who’s truly impossible
• show respect to your partner’s mother
• ensure that your partner’s mother respects your boundaries
• deal with jealous sisters and other difficult family members
• and much more
 
Also including welcome advice on what he can discuss with either woman, It’s Either Her or Me is an invaluable resource for women and the men they love.
 

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ellie Slott Fisher is the author of the critically acclaimed Mom, There’s a Man in the Kitchen and He’s Wearing Your Robe. A veteran journalist, Fisher has written for numerous magazines as well as the anthology Single Woman of a Certain Age. A dating mom herself, she lives in Yardley, Pennsylvania, and has two children.

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CHAPTER ONE

Moms and GirlfriendsVie for First

For most moms, it comes about quite unexpectedly. All of a sudden the little boy who refused to part with his well-worn Toy Story pajamas, despite the fact that Buzz Lightyear’s face had faded to obscurity, is wearing aftershave. And he doesn’t even shave. That child who shrieked “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!” when you returned home from work now grunts “Uh- huh” and “Nah” in response to your questions. Yet you overhear him speaking animatedly and loquaciously to someone on his cell phone.

This new, redesigned little boy has moments of unexplained extreme pleasantness, offering to take out the trash before you even ask. (Don’t get too excited; these moments are fleeting.) You attribute these changes to his entering puberty with its typical hormonal shifts and turns. While this certainly is true, what’s also happening is that your son has embarked on a journey to find a new—and different—love of his life.

Oh sure, you’ll still get the requests for money (you may actually recall with fondness his five-dollar allowance) or for help, but that pedestal you’ve been on for the past fourteen years or so is starting to crack. Now that your son has discovered girls—not just in a stealing-their-lunch-on-the-school-bus way, but as potential intimates— your relationship with him will change.

Meanwhile, as the girlfriend, you hadn’t considered how his mother could affect your relationship. You’ve fallen for a guy who may act one way when he’s with you, and another way—not all that pleasingly— when he is with his mom. You’ll find yourself treading carefully around this woman, knowing that regardless of what happens between you and your boyfriend, she will always love him.

It is rare that one can see in a little boy the promise of a man, but one can almost always see in a little girl the threat of a woman.

—Alexandre Dumas

Who’s on First?

A natural order follows the birth of a son. A mother smiles knowingly when his first word is Dada and not Mama, because, as everyone knows, it’s an easier word to form. She directs the barber to cut his hair so he’ll mimic an adorable GapKids model when she dresses him for Easter. She arranges his plans for the summer, artfully working them around the family vacation. She anxiously gets him ready for his first school dance, straightens his tie, and takes a picture.

And then she moves over.

As difficult as it is for a mom to step off first base, in order for her to raise an emotionally healthy son who will enter an emotionally healthy adult relationship, she has to be willing to hit a sacrifice fly.

Most moms understand this, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

Hope, whose married son recently became a parent, says that as much as she has been reluctant to share her only child with another woman, whom she likes, she recognizes that in order to keep her son in her life, she has to allow his wife to take her place. “If you’re going to fight that, you’re going to cause friction,” Hope says. “I’d never want to do that.”

Caroline, another mom with a married son, believes she has been replaced by her new daughter-in-law. “He would talk to me, rather than her, before he got engaged. I do feel replaced,” she says, adding with a little resignation, “but I should be. That doesn’t bother me.”

Family counselor Esther Ganz applauds the way these two moms handle their relationships with their adult sons. As much as a mom might want to maintain some control over her son, and maybe even his significant other, she really only has control over her own feelings. “I would work on myself. It’s not the girlfriend’s problem. It’s mine,” Ganz suggests.

For you moms, this may require taking stock of your own life. Has it become too centered on your kids, and not on yourself? Did you give up a career or hobby or other passion once you became a mom? Have you been living vicariously through your kids so that you fear feeling lost when they no longer need you? (A cautionary note to mothers of younger sons: They always will need you, especially when you’re ready to retire, play golf, and focus on yourself.) As mothers, you chart your children’s development along with your own aging, so the more independent they become, the more ancient you feel. Yet you are really never too old to add a new dimension to your life. You can still get a new job, develop a hobby, go back to school, take a cooking class, learn yoga, travel with your husband or friends. You can make yourself whole. The interesting consequence to all of this is that your sons will be so proud of you—and not feel smothered by your myopic attention to them—that they may even initiate an occasional phone call.

I used to play tennis with a very wise mother of two boys who were a few years older than my kids. When I told her how sad it made me to think of my first child going off to college, especially since I projected a lonely future as a single mom, she reminded me about the universal goal of mothers. That goal is to raise children to be independent, financially and emotionally, so they can develop their own productive lives. It’s why you gave them piano lessons, made them go to Sunday school, and insisted they brush their teeth. And those lives should, in the best of circumstances, include falling in love with your replacement.

Amy gets this. She has a thirty-year-old son who just got married. As close as she has always been with him, she claims she doesn’t feel less important now that he has a wife. “I really don’t. I feel that this is our goal as parents to see our kids become independent, find a loving spouse, replicate what our parents had.” She adds, laughing, “I think my husband feels he’s being replaced more than I do. When our son got married, my husband acted so depressed, like we were sending him to the gallows rather than to a wife!” Her husband insists, of course, that he has no personal take on this.

You should emulate these three women by being content to move over and give your son’s new flame your space, as in a chess game—a kind of queen for a queen, where, if you refuse to budge, you’ll end up in a stalemate. I know you understand all of this without my telling you. But deep down inside, it’s okay to feel a little saddened by this change.

When the boy’s mom readies herself to relinquish her first-place position to the girlfriend, if you are that girlfriend, you have your own set of responsibilities. Coming first in a guy’s life comes with a price. Dethroning this other woman (indulge me as I continue the queen metaphor) doesn’t mean you get to relegate the Queen Mother to the servants’ quarters. No one will tolerate that. And you’ll be unfairly viewed as the wicked, heartless daughter-in-law whose husband, by the way, will probably continue speaking to his mother behind your back. Since first place is yours for the taking, try to be magnanimous to the woman you bested. Hopefully, you’ll even grow to like her.

Twenty-six-year-old Kelly is trying. Even though she doesn’t particularly like her boyfriend’s mom, she genuinely feels sorry for her, believing her insecure behavior is in some way the result of her son’s own insensitivity. Kelly’s boyfriend frequently gets so caught up in his activities that he forgets to call his mom. Because Kelly speaks to her own mother every day, she understands how lonely her boyfriend’s mom must feel. Purely out of a sense of obligation—and not...

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Verlag
Bantam
Erscheinungsdatum
2010
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0553385941
ISBN 13 
9780553385946
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
240
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Verantwortliche Person
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