If your mother in law buys all these paintings, curtains and comforters for most of the rooms in what is supposed to be your and your husband’s house and changing the look a bit every couple of years can never happen(because her son your husband) has a fit and really angry, how would you handle it?
If you buy a new comforter just to change up the look but if it doesn’t match the curtains she chose years ago for the room, taking the curtain down would cause complete hysteria. You have no say in the aspects of the house where she has already chosen the look for and it stays regardless.
Husband is super close to her to the point where they talk with each other every day which is nice.
Is that how husbands act?
This is not a personal issue of mine. I’m just wondering how it would be handled by the married women here or members in general here.
Yes, there can be a tug of war over furnishings and mil can be sensitive if the first thing new bahu does is change her newly installed furnishings which mil chose for her new bahu.
But years later who gives a rat’s ass. If after so many years people are still using furnishings as a power struggle then it’s shows off how immature some people are. Any dude making a fuss over this has the mental maturity of a toddler throwing a tantrum. The tantrum is just a symptom of bigger underlying issues which wife needs to resolve first.
In this particular situation the bahu is not new, they have been married for 2 years by now but the house was newly bought.
There are women that can handle a situation like this.
The mother in law buys 20-30 clothes from Indonesia for the grandchild and they have to be put on the child or else the husband acts like well the exact same way as he does about anything else she buys. Everything is done for her.
If they are all traveling together, if the grandchild is 4-5 with constant bathroom breaks and visiting 5 places in one day, especially in Pakistan where there might not be fences to protects kids from running off mountains(when climbing them) or rest areas, is too much according to the wife who suggests the trip be shortened so the child can be considered, it’s responded to with anger and no compromise in sight. Kids that age are very active.
What do you mean by bigger underlying issues and how would a wife who is seen as such an outsider resolve them? He’s an only child.
Marriage does not seem like much fun in any way shape or form when I put myself in the wife’s place. I would be a horrible candidate for marriage.
The being seen as a outsider is the bigger issue. If she still hasn’t gained that kind of respect and trust then she needs to figure out how. If the house is new and the change of furnishing is immediately after mil makes changes then it’s practically a new bahu issue all over again. It’s not PC to change curtains after a month or something.
I think wife should have taken her husband into confidence beforehand because it’s his room too. This would have given her an idea of what to expect instead of letting him see the finished item or telling him dude I’m making changes unilaterally. Some tact is required to coax her husband to see the changes are merely because they look cute and not an attack at his mother (although anyone who reaches that conclusion first is kinda weird already). If the husband still doesn’t see how dumb his stance is then it would be time to time to stop playing coy and flat out having a discussion about how she feels like an outsider.
Heh. My MIL moves stuff around every time I am gone out of town or if she is expecting guests. I find it really annoying and move the stuff back to their original place. Sometimes right in front of her to get the message across but nope, it continues to happen. She is not some evil MIL either but yes things like that could result in a power struggle. My husband doesn’t care and says do whatever you want. Yes, it is OUR house. We bought it. If the house you live in belongs to your inlaws, it is their right to do what they want with it. If you bought it, it is yours to do whatever you want with it.
I’m not saying she’s an outsider. I’m just looking at the situation and seeing it as that. It was not after a month but 1 or 2 yrs later that a change in how it looks was considered if I remember.
Lol. You did not buy the comforter to change the look. You bought it to remove her curtains. Come on. No one buys comforters and then change the curtains to match it
Not every thread is about the OP. The “You” implies the issue is about me. I am not married I am not in a relationship. If I start a thread about how adultery is handled, it automatically becomes about me?
So I guess curtains bought by the Mil even after 1 or 2 years stay no matter what! Got it. So marriage is all about power struggles with the elders. Fun. In the house, the paintings are still in that same place as they were when they were first put there because the husband makes sure they cannot be moved.
When my sister in law married my brother, my family already knew that she would be the one decorating the house. She can decide whether or not to put up something we give her. It just makes sense to me. My mother left everything to her when it came to my brother’s house.
Please clarify. Was the house bought by the husband and wife AFTER they got married? Or did the in-laws/husband live in the house and wife moved in it after the wedding?
Yes after they got married. It was more of a situation of he picked the house and she had to like it or else the lease on the apartment would end so she had no choice. In laws live in Indonesia. To be nice to her MIL since they did bring the paintings, comforter, and curtain for the house, she let the MIL choose where to put them since they bought them for the house. She is not the type to cause a power struggle.
i think her MIL is nice but it’s more of how her husband is.
In this particular situation the house was bought by her and her husband and the in laws visit. To make her relationship with her mil stronger she said that her mil can decorate it too but saying that got her mil to decorate almost every room. Some suggestions were just silly like she wanted to put a curtain in the entrance of a room. The wife wanted a change after 1-2 yrs in relation to the curtain in the master bedroom the room the husband and wife sleep in not after a month like assumed here. No comforter matched the color and style of the curtain. I helped her look for something to match it.
The decorations are still there in the same place.
How do you word it with your mil or husband so he does not feel strongly about this and she respects your choices? I think it takes a special touch to be able to get the husband to not care or not act aggressively in relation to a change.
If your life revolves around curtains and bed sheets there isn’t enough left to say about anything. Life is way bigger and beautiful than that, enjoy it!