Kaplods that's terrible. You know, I've had to institute a "no mail" policy with certain family members. All it took was one returned, un-opened letter and I haven't received a nasty gram since. Perhaps she should lose her snail mail priviliges as well. It sounds like David is very strong, but I think letters like that are so damaging and awful and why subject yourselves to it? Next time, return it unopened and spare yourselves.

COLLEEN....just send a Thank-You card and get on with your life....

life is too short to worry about that kind of garbage...as you well know...

although it is fun sometimes to "throw" it around...just like garbage....

get a good laugh...say a prayer of thanks on how far you have come and send that Thank-You card...one that just says...Thanks, you shouldn't have...and sign it with your name only....

It is sometimes best to just ignore the ignorant.

You are doing so very well. Don't let things like this affect your progress.

3fc is double posting. Sorry about that.

This made me laugh.

I already have forgiven MIL. As I said, I was raised not to hold grudges. My family is often outwardly far "meaner," but usually we argue loudly and then make up (although that has it's own problems, because food was always part of the reconcilitation process).

I can handle directness and even hostile aggression without a great deal of stress, but I'm not so good with this level of passive aggressive behavior (My family does have it's share of passive aggressive tricks - but as hubby says my parents are amateurs and his are professionals - I thought he was exagerating, but apparently not).

I wasn't prepared for this. How DO you respond when you get a pretty package wrapped in a sparkly bow - and you find a dog poop inside.

"Thank you, you shouldn't have," really does cover it, doesn't it.

How DO you respond when you get a pretty package wrapped in a sparkly bow - and you find a dog poop inside.

Me? I'd still go with playing the broken record. I don't want to have to put a lot of energy there.

You know that saying?

I know some moms want to still feel needed/included/in charge and so on even though their kids are grown up. Some gracefully enter the secondary grandmother role and let someone new take the primary mother mantle, others cling to being the matriarch figure in charge of everyone else.

But I have my boundaries, and my health problems are my own. I don't put up with my own mom bugging me, I'm certainly not with my MIL.

If MIL has been this way all this time, I doubt she's going to change. So variants of the broken record would be the way I'd go.

"Thanks for your concern, but in this case you don't need to worry yourself for my sake. It isn't up for discussion. "

"Thanks for your letter. I can see you are concerned. But this isn't up for discussion."

"Thanks for the letter. This isn't up for discussion, so don't expect a letter in a reply."

"You know, we don't reply to letters trying to engage us in things that are just not up for discussion. Thanks. "

Emotional vampires have different types and different techniques. For passive aggressives

http://www.albernstein.com/id58.htm

suggests

If you think this strategy would work, give her a "job" in her letters. Tell her you are looking for X sorts of diabetic/exchange type recipes and if she finds any to mail them.

That's got to be better in the mail than dog poop. So maybe the broken record could be

"Thanks for your concern, but we keep health details for the doctor. You could help us more by sending ___ recipes. That would be great."

Then praise recipes to the skies -- "We really enjoy geting new ideas! You are so clever and finding these!" even if you never even make them.

A.

It's funny I just gave the "job" suggestion to my sister about our mom (she recently bought a condo and is moving out of my parents home. Mom is having some separation anxiety).

My mom you can give tasks to distract her and make her feel useful. David says if we try that with his mom, she'll treat it as a foot in the door, and get even worse (probably would send us a diabetic cookbook every week, or enroll us in diabetic classes (with herself as well, so she can "help" us).

David says unless you slam the door firmly, she'll be knocking every five minutes. He's been telling me this for seven years, while I've been telling him "she can't be that bad." I think I finally do understand that he really has learned the best ways to keep her at arms length. For the last 7 years, I've been trying to play peacemaker between David and his family, pushing them together, even though David wasn't comfortable with the more frequent contact, he cooperated for MY benefit. Well, I'm not getting any benefit, and I see that David isn't either, so I think he was right all along.

Having a close family (admittedly a too-close family, sometimes) I really didn't understand the "we have nothing in common, so we don't hang out, doesn't mean we don't love each other" families. I'm starting to "get it."

That's true too -- "give an inch take a mile" types.

A.

What the heck is it ANYONES buisness what you ate, how much you ate, your wt., your medical issues,ect. my GOD how rude!!! Here is mho for what it is worth
1. stop treating this woman with endearment, if you call her some form of mom, STOP IT- she is not your parent she is your adult equal, use her christian name only.
2. I see you're a psych major and maybe you should stop thinking she could ever be your inellectual or cognitive peer as she clearly is incapable.
3.You should NEVER allow anyone to treat you/ or make you feel bad in your own home. I have ONE place on the planet I am SAFE from the cruel world and I will not allow crap to enter by any form of deliverance(mail,phone, ect.) From my OWN experience I took the high road w/the inlaws for 20yrs. and I finally had to take them to the mattresses. Ended all relations (i am still happily married thoughThe first yr. was odd not having any contact and now it is pure joy, my holidays and really everyday is better because I chose to end my relationship w/all of my inlaws...I wish I had stood up to them and gave them exactly what I got...maybe it would have been diffrent .....God Bless YOU

Well, I would write a letter back to mother-in-law, something along these lines:

Dear Mother-in-law,

Thank you for your letter expressing your concerns regarding the weightloss. I regret to inform you that our weight and the losses we have already made are actually none of your business and although you are a relative, you do not have the right to interfere in our lives.

However, if this approach is not possible, may we suggest you either see a psychiatrist about your compulsive desire to manipulate others or ask for a personality transplant as you can be a horrible person.

I hope you do not take offence at our comments as they are truly given with love and please feel free to show this letter to the psychiatrist.

Yours estrangedly


XXXXXX

And then you need to pack all your things and move and tell no-one where you live!!!!!

I have to say I love and respect all the responses and suggestion (especially the funny ones), and do want to assure everyone that neither my husband nor I allow ourselves to be abused by anyone. In the scheme of things, I knew from the moment i finished reading it, that the letter would ultimately be a source of amusement rather than pain for us, but it was just so unexpected and so strange to me (strange is not nearly a strong enough word - ALIEN perhaps?) that I responded with emotion rather than reason.

I did consider the move with no forwarding address, though. Not really necessary though as they don't "drop in" and we screen our calls. We'll just be screening them a bit more tightly in the future.

We have a family wedding coming up in July (AT MIL's home). Under most circiumstances, I do not find negative crtiticism (or even sincerely kind, constructive crtiticism) motivating. Tell me what I'm doing right, and I might respond positively. Tell me what I'm doing wrong when you know I already know it, and I'm bound to get angry and it will be at you, not me.

Hubby and I went out to eat today (the restaurant is a block from our house and it's so cheap it's almost as cheap as eating at home. They have $2.99 breakfast specials). I do have to be careful there, but there are a lot of diet-friendly choices.

Hubby made better choices than I've ever seen him make in a restaurant. Not that he hasn't been making progress. When we met, he always ordered appetizers, the meal and dessert and ate it all. Since we've been together he's made a lot of progress. First, he stopped eating dessert. And then started only ordering the meal. Eventually taking about 1/4 to 1/3 home

And today he took home about 2/3 of his meal in a leftover container (which I've been doing for a much longer time, but his eating habits started out worse than mine. When he met me, I had long sworn of junk food and for the last 20 years I've eaten dessert about four times a year (and I can tell you that you do not have to eat junk food, fast food, or desserts to stay fat).

Regardless, I think we both have revenge on our mine. The plan is to obviously have lost weight since her letter, and yet STILL remind her that our weight is not an acceptable topic of conversation.

Yes, it is evil. And I expect that we will lose interest in revenge long before the family wedding. It's fun as a concept though.

As has been said for nearly 400 hundreds of years (assuming it was an original idea when George Herbert said it, perhaps it's been around even longer),

Living well is the best revenge.

(George Herbert, English clergyman & metaphysical poet, 1593 - 1633)

I mean this very lovingly, but you've just got to let it go. Seriously, you know it has nothing to do with you, really, and everything to do with her - and that you can't change anyone but yourself (which you are clearly doing, congratulations by the way!) - so just put it out of sight, out of mind. I simply would not mention it at all.

In Gavin DeBecker's book, The Gift of Fear, he talks about stalkers and says the only way to deal with them is to completely and 100% ignore them. It is tempting to do otherwise, but it is not fruitful.

I realize we are not talking about a scary stalker (or are we? jk lol) -- but she seems to get her energy from a reaction/a rise/a conversation and even if you are scolding her or being firm with her about how it is 'not acceptible' she will still get off on the fact that you are even mentioning it.

She seems to have said not to mention the letter because she wants you to, that is obvious. She wants you to 'prove' to her that you are doing something about your weight so she can actually think for a millisecond that it has anything to do with her and that she is owed an explanation.

So, long story short -- what you said it right on -- don't say a thing about it, keep losing, keep being happy, tra la la, show up all fabulous at the wedding sweet as sugar looking fabulous, and she will be so va klempt that you aren't mentioning 'The Letter' that she will even wonder if you've gotten it and it will kind of drive her a bit crazy. When everyone is telling you how fab you look, she will get it without anyone having to say a word - and if she says 'yeah I wrote them a letter telling them to lose weight' (or whatever) ... you still won't have to say a word because anyone hearing that will likely be thinking she is tacky... at best...basically, let her do all the foot-in-mouthing and explaining, and backpeddling etc... while you live your life happy and healthy.
Good luck

You know, you and your hubby are doing really well and sound very happy with each other. Also sounds like you are well set up to keep mother-in-law at arms length (ROFL @ call screening). So it sounds like you've got it pretty much sorted and good luck to you.

My ex-husband got one of those letters once from his mother because we hadn't visited her on mother's day. She lived over an hour away and we sent a card. We also didn't see my mother that mother's day. Anyway, the letter said lots of hurtful things and was all worded to make him feel maximum guilt (his mother is a master manipulator and even arranged for ex-hubby to be beaten repeatedly as a boy by his father) and she finished the letter by saying, "Just think of me as being dead". So that's what he did for the next 6 years and they were great. Ex-hubby was a lot less stressed. Unfortunately, it did not change the fact he was an a$$hole and I woke up to that eventually.

My point in all this is: As long as you let her be in a position to manipulate, she will. Keeping her at arms length sounds like it might be a workable compromise.

Good luck.

My husband warned me before we married that he was a "master manipulator who had learned from the best," and he's right. I didn't know how right he was.

He's just very lucky (or I would leave him) that he works hard to fight the urge to manipulate, and when he loses the battle with himself, I point out when he's doing it (which he denies, but then begins behaving again, so I know he does recognize it on some level).

He's a sweet guy, but he's got a very strong, BIG personality (luckily mine is an equal match).


MIL sent a "sweet" email to me today inviting me dress-shopping for SIL's wedding. I'm not sure whether it's an olive branch (as it would be if it came from my mom) or feelers to see if I'm offended too.

I don't want to punish SIL though by refusing to go. I asked hubby what he thought, and he said that was entirely up to me.

I'm giving it some thought, before I decide. I don't hold grudges, it's just too far against my nature, so my instinct is to accept and just refuse to talk about weight or the letter or any other divisive topic. I can have a good time with the devil himself (I truly enjoyed working with most of my probation clients when I was a probation officer), but I don't want to reward crappy behavior, either - or hurt hubby by anything that might look like "siding with the enemy" right how. I think I'll ask him again what he would prefer me to do. I really think I need to let him take the lead with his family, even my involvement with them. I've meddled too long, and he's been so sweet about it (learning about these letters I'm surprised he has contact with his family at all - and for 7 years he didn't. He really only reestablished contact with them shortly before meeting me).

The email may be a genuine olive brancy, but in the back of my mind, I'm thinking it's a fishing expedition for information. She suggesting that we look for an outfit for me in the wedding, which probably means she'll offer to buy me clothes (another olive branch or more manipulation?) I suspect this is her way of finding out if I've really lost the weight hubby says I have.

I hate even suspecting it, but I have to be realistic. I hate most that her behavior has changed mine. I like taking people at face value. I like not suspecting ulterior motives, and I really don't like to have to "work" in a relationship to decifer truth from manipulation.

Forgiving is the easy part, it's the moving on from there that is so difficult. Forgetting never works out very well.

The funny thing is that I decided to tell her that I can't shop for my wedding outfit until the last minute, because I don't know what size I'll be (the wedding is in July), but darn it that violates the rule I'd already decided on to not discuss weight in any way with this woman. Even saying I want to wait to make sure my dress fits properly (still implies weight loss). Maybe I'll just tell her I already have my dress planned (which is true, it just isn't purchased yet).

I've got one of those mothers too. Just about every conversation we've ever had has been steered around to diet and weight loss. I've nearly had to stop talking to her entirely. As my therapist puts it, "She tears you down even when she thinks she's building you up." And I just can't take that any more.

I was going to go into personal detail, but I don't want to hijack your thread, so I'll start my own.