The aftermath

After yesterday's mini saga with the MIL, I was wrecked with all forms of guilt and decided to try to clear my mind. I had to balance between maintaining my position of boundaries and yet, making right if I had sounded rude.

So I took awhile to craft out a message to humbly apologise and other know that while I meant no harm, I realised that I might have inadvertently hurt her feelings because no one likes to be rejected (especially when she is used to her ways) but I beseech her to respect me.

I saw that there is absolutely no point to avoiding her and now that there's baby coming, we are going to be spending a lot of time together, whether we like it or not. We can each go on making our own lives miserable by 1) her pushing and annoying me with no limits because she thinks she is queen and 2)me beating myself up and simmering inside. This was my attempt to repair the relationship and it is by no means perfect but I actually felt relieved for trying instead of slithering away like a coward.

She is obviously angry and I don't expect her not to be actually but now the ball is in her court. I hope she will get over it and respect me and her own son. Our future helper also needs to know that she is not going to nitpick and find fault for every speck of dust when our first priority is for her to take care of the baby.

Husband has been very supportive and objective and I cannot be more thankful. I've heard of friends' husbands who walked away and just HID or avoided any skirmish when overbearing MILs push their way and try to take over the household leaving their wives with either a choice to be subservient and obey for the sake of obeying or walk away, leaving grandchildren completely to their charge. He objectively assesses the situation with me to make sure I'm not reacting out of my hormonal changes and spite and we agreed to speak to her (again) to ensure our sanity will be intact when baby arrives. Everybody we let into our lives needs to respect us and bear with us first time parents as we figure out and yes, they might know it better but we need to learn and get there. Please don't take over the wheel while we are driving. It is very dangerous.

A friend sorta berated me privately after I fessed up to this and suggested I did the Asian way and just  "ignored" lest my son learn how to disobey elders. I told her as politely as I could that not everything in our culture is to be lauded and I would want my son to not blindly follow the confucian statutes of filial piety and learn to differentiate right from wrong objectively and not defer to anyone remotely older and more senior than him. This is very contrary to Asian culture where seniority carries a heavy weight in society. This will teach the young people a fast, near extinct quality to uphold justice and not merely be "yes" people and weigh in on either majority, peer pressure or any abusive elders.

Of course, I didn't do it exactly right and I need to fine-tune my way of delivering it. It is inadvertent that feelings will be hurt because in our culture, you just don't find a younger person telling an older person what NOT to do. It is very frowned upon and in that sense, I committed a very big sin. But my job now is to protect my sanity for my family and be a good wife and mother. They need me more than ever now and yes, criticism and guilt may come but knowing my own propensity for anxiety and my fragile state of well-being with episodes of depression frequenting my life, I need ever more than ever the support and understanding of friends. That means, I need to cut out negative influences in my life and hence, the difficult decision to get her on the supportive side or leave me alone.

She is free to think horrible thoughts about me or dismiss me as hormonal but I maintain my case.

Because for her own sake, I think it is high time she stops alienating her husband, children and start having friends in her life. These relationships all require a great deal of respect and not an empress dowager.