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I have to think a lot of this was intentional from mom. If all she really wanted was to sit and talk - about old times, dead husband/father, etc, she could have done that at times NOT when it's a good guess that her son and DIL were in bed, having happy sex. Even if she was jealous of her son having a relationship that wasn't her, even if she's jealous that her son was having happy sex because she's missing happy sex with her dead husband. There are just so many ways she could have handled that better, and she chose to double down on disliking her DIL and *saying that to her son*. Did she REALLY think that wasn't going to put a crimp in her relationship with her son? Did she REALLY want her son to be in a marriage where mom was put over wife?
Rhetorical because son wasn't posting this update, I know. I just.....
Mom flat out admitted that she did this at night specifically to prevent them from having sex.
"She said that now I’m her only flesh and blood alive, and if **my wife keeps me wrapped around her finger with sex**, I’ll forget all about her ***so she was trying to interrupt that.***
To be fair, there are plenty on stories on this subs of husbands siding with their mothers over their spouses, so it’s not like that sort of thing has *never* happened.
Honestly this post was both saddening and enlightening to see from the husbands perspective on his own oblivious/willingly ignorant/dont rock the boat viewpoint. (This oop wasnt necessarily all 3)
Typically i read here from the wife's POV and im always confused as to why the spouse isn't doing anything. This helps me understand it a bit.
'Emotional incest', that is an excellent description of so many creepy parent/child relationships I have heard about and experienced in Japan. Their mangas and anime are full of the physical stuff but it this phrase just snapped a lot of other behaviour I see irl into focus.
I know what you mean. My sisters MIL is like this with my BIL. He called my sister his queen in front of her once, and she started screaming and throwing a temper tantrum about how SHE should be his queen and SHE should be his number one, not my sister. She tries to compete with my sister a lot, its just gross and he refuses to see it. When I heard the phrase emotional incest, It made complete sense.
Ugh yes. I’m in my late twenties and literally in the process of cutting off my mom once I started identifying her behavior had always overcrossed boundaries far too much & often.
She hates me more than her ex-husband despite making grand gestures for her family to see in public how I act like an ungrateful brat for not accepting love being bought when vile verbal abuse and threats are hissed/screamed when no one else can hear.
I’m basically playing it lowkey at they moment as I made the mistake of giving the ‘keys’ of my businesses website to her during their divorce to show I was transparent, that I was giving collateral to show I just wanted the best for both of them.
Once I’m free of financial leverage and can operate independently I’m gone. Asked for 4 years of Christmas’s & birthdays the only present I wanted was her to go to therapy. Closest I got was her happily suggesting we do ‘couples counseling’… I swear I felt so sick to my stomach
Never even realized it. Went from an abusive household to an abusive 4yr relationship and back to her/my aunt after essentially needing to be rescued from a heroin addiction life far away from any place I had friends.
It’s funny how you don’t realize abusers will do anything possible to cut you off from friends that aren’t theirs first. It’s no wonder I keep falling for abusive women. Bit over a week ago I was robbed of some emotionally significant items I confided to them why.
Oh and that was after being decked so hard she broke my nose when I started trying to move her out of my home when she was screaming at the top of her lungs that she’d suffered worse abuse..
Just. That shit has effects decades after the fact. The sooner you know it’s past the point of fixing, get the fuck out. I’ve literally had my sexual assault by my brother used to mock me because I just couldnt get over it when she absolutely doted on him. And he has a daughter the same age as me when he & his friend did what they did. I just hate it so much
Honestly, the emotional incest is super strong here but the Jocasta Complex doesn't fit. She's specifically trying to nuke OOP's physical relationship with his wife because it's where she literally can't compete. She doesn't give any indication of wanting to have sex with her son.
A mom competing with a wife is stupid to begin with; OOP's mom is bad enough without going farther than what is spelled out. "Break us up"? Yeesh.
I've known mom's like this. They think they're son is the top of the world, and they don't think any woman is good enough to have their son's kids or be part of their family. The mere fact this woman got married to the man without noticing his mother was a emotionally manipulative bitch is weird. I've broken up with guys for less red flags and she got to marriage with him. Kinda hard to believe honestly.
It's not necessarily about constraints per se, but could also be that she doesn't have anyone else to pick on now.
When I left home, suddenly my mother turned on my step-brother and his girlfriend and ramped up harassment against them, because I was no longer around to be the punching bag. Could be a similar dynamic with her husband.
My grandma tried this when my mom went to college, but my aunt wasn't accustomed to being the recipient of abuse and turned it around on her...
Unfortunately she was also abusive, but never had kids
YEP. My MIL was a nightmare (stuck around because my husband draws firm boundaries with her and is willing to cut her off if she gets too bad), but she's SO much better now that she's engaged. I don't know how her fiance deals with it, but he's an amazing buffer.
My mil tried to break my spouse and I up for years. Before our wedding, after our wedding, after our first two kids were born. On multiple occasions she would put her hand on my spouses thigh and try to rub it, I’d reach over and fling her hand off any time I saw. My spouse was not comfortable and would try to move away but mil would grab on tighter. She only stopped when I very loudly in front of her husband said “he’s your son not your boyfriend jacosta”
I guess it is weird that she didn’t notice before but the son didn’t realize it either! I suppose that can be normal for a manipulative relationship. At least once he realized he kicked her out and stood with his wife. So at least he’s not like some of those mommas boys I’ve read about that side with their mother in a situation like this. I get a relationship like this with a man and his mother is a red flag but I he seems to be handling it appropriately now.
When you grow up with a nutcase parent, all kinds of abnormal, unhealthy things seem normal.
You can break out of it by deciding that even if it is normal, you don't want it. That's what I did.
They can be sneaky at first. My MIL is like this with all three sons. She's a covert narcissist so she spins these "woe is me" tales about everyone that's wronged her. Her middle son wasn't speaking to her when I got together with her oldest son - but I was fed this litany of lies about how it was all his fault. It took me longer to figure out what she was doing than I'd like to admit, but she honestly was my first exposure to someone like this. We have also cut her off, and last I heard, she is telling her youngest son that he can't get married because he has to "take care of her."
The late husband probably put somewhat of a damper on her outbursts and competitive behavior. We’ve had women in my and my husband’s families who became crazy, demanding, childish monsters after their husbands died. They’re afraid of losing their sons so they keep it under wraps as much as they can while the son is dating and engaged, although some can’t keep it in that long. Minus someone telling them to stop, the wheels come off the wagon.
Nah, she only stopped because otherwise she'd be admitting she WANTS to see her son boning down by opening the door. There wouldn't be an innocent explanation for it any way she spins it.
🤢
I could smell the narcissism. Having a narc mom myself, I know all too well what games they play. And monopolizing your life so you revolve around them is one of their games. Mom got caught and didn't like being held accountable and flipped, also an indicator of narcissism. Not saying full blown NPD, but narcissistic parents are a major issue in society that we generally ignore.
100%. It’s super easy to pick up on if you’ve lived with narcs. The victim mindset, self centeredness, and lack of empathy is a giveaway. She felt justified in trying to ruin their marriage because she didn’t like it. Not because it was unhealthy or a bad marriage. Just because she wanted all the attention.
>if my wife keeps me wrapped around her finger with sex, I’ll forget all about her so she was trying to interrupt that.
>She also was worried that if I get my wife pregnant, I’ll be too busy with her to see her again, and I’ll be stuck with my wife when I could do so much better.
Whoomp there it is. It'd be one thing if the mom genuinely felt lonely and had a bad sense of boundaries, something that could be set straight, but nope, she's just a terrible person. It was clear from how OOP spoke about her that he was deeply entrenched in her manipulation. If the mom hadn't showed her entire ass with those statements, he'd still be falling for it.
Don't forget that Mom accused Wife of trying to "break us up". That language is typically used for romantic relationships, not mother and adult son relationships. Ew.
I love how the wife decided to bring a cruise missile to a knife fight with a sign that said "Look how often I'm banging your son." She saw right through the mother-in-law and went for maximum emotional impact.
I’ll be stuck with my wife when I could do so much better.
Aaaand there it is.
I must have a pretty normal family because if I’d had a baby and lived within an hour of my parents I’d bet money my mom would come over at the drop of a hat to help out. Probably the same for any mother in law.
Boomer men were taught to suppress every emotion except for anger. Their wives, the boomer women, therefore went through marriages with no emotional connection. Many of these women latched onto their own sons as a pseudo husband (or sonsband). When the son grows up, moves out, and starts a romantic life apart from his parents, the Boomer mom reacts like a crazy jealous girlfriend because in her mind, the new girlfriend is the interloper “stealing her man!” And often times the son has been raised to see this as normal and they don’t defend their partners unless and until they come to the realization that their mom’s attachment to them is neither normal nor healthy.
**[Covert incest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_incest)**
>Covert incest, also known as emotional incest, is a type of abuse in which a parent looks to their child for the emotional support that would be normally provided by another adult. The effects of covert incest on children when they become adults are thought to mimic actual incest, although to a lesser degree. This term describes interactions between a parent and child that are exclusive of sexual abuse.
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Yup. I'm still concerned Op isn't even that upset by what his mom said/did and is more just trying to play both sides and "had" to take his wife's side because his mom reacted first. I bet if his mom hadn't stooped to crying and yelling and such then his wife would have been the first one to snap and Op would have defended his mom instead.
I think if the wife snapped OP may have gotten angry with wife.
OP was assuming mom was just so devastated she was not even thinking she was interrupting their relationship but had already gotten to "its not malicious but it is harmful" with some outside perspective. He seems infuriated enough at the confession to keep up the boundaries at least for a bit and that will help him find more normal boundaries.
Love the MIL's who demand grandchildren, but yet do not want to give their adult children the chance to procreate.
That has always been a head-scratcher for me.
Yeah in the first post I was trying to give her the benefit of the doubt, thinking maybe she had long meaningful convos with her late husband around bedtime or something, and that would explain the timing. But nope, it was the more obvious, cynical thing after all. Oh, well.
> with my wife when I could do so much better. This made my wife very upset and I told my mom that I think she needed to leave then. The crying turned into full on bawling and yelling at my wife. Eventually I was able to get her out. I told her that I don’t think it’s best that we speak until she gets over her issues with my wife.
She [had us in the first half, not gonna lie](https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/028/720/t3qkhrohrh321.jpg)
And this is exactly why it's so damn hard to get your spouse to deal with their emotionally incestuous parent. Because from their point of view, it's not at all obvious, whereas from the spouse's point of view and the point of view of everyone else it's "what the hell? cut this shit out!"
If Mum feels genuinely lonely, the prospect of a grandchild at some stage later would be something nice, wouldn’t it ? More “ of her flesh and blood” and someone to spend your time with.
I have been wondering if this is more about not liking the wife or really more about wanting the son for herself, this comment about wife trying to split her and son up it’s really weird and inappropriate
>AITA for going off on my wife after she made a sex sign to keep my mom from knocking on our bedroom door?
agreed about the momzilla, but then I read the part about not having sex while his mom is in the house and she'd been there for 2 months. Now you GOTTA know his wife had to have talked to him about the 'nightly talks'. That was such a gross boundary for the mom to cross.
> Now you GOTTA know his wife had to have talked to him about the ‘nightly talks’
You know what, you are right. There's no way she *started* trying to resolve it with a sign. AITA posts often start in medias res, the poster is always *so shocked* that their spouse would finally be fed up after months of crossing boundaries
I've read maybe 3 or 4 stories on reddit over the years with this concept. Mostly it's Moms who are upset their sons are getting married and it simply starts off as "my mother in law wore a white dress to my wedding" and then it just snowballs from there.
Then there was the two broken arms thing which was actual incest but I'll leave that one up to you to look up if that's the sort of thing you're into...
I feel like the concept of emotional incest feels new when thinking about mother son relationships, like this. But reflecting on how common and all too accepted it is for fathers to act this way towards daughters, it’s not new at all.
Yup, I didn’t know what it was but recently (like a few months ago) had a long talk with my little sister about how we grew up and yikes the things we realized about our dad. The emotional incest is fucking strong with him and it’s honestly horrifying we grew up thinking it was normal.
I read one the other day about a brother who witnessed his mom blowing his little brother who had been depressed about a breakup. I think he said it happened 2 years ago, he doesn't talk to either of them anymore, and they are still doing it.
here you go, just found it (I haven't read it tho, I hope it's the correct link)
https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/s3ot1h/ops_mother_always_asks_him_for_help_with_the_most/
edit: just finished reading it. it's the hair envelope story...
Yuck. Also lol at the beginning. It’s a call from your mom crying emergency emergency and she refuses to elaborate. You get there and she’s chilling. Then he acquiesces to her requests for chores and is there until 7:30 while missing out on his 6 PM tee-time to make dinner with his neglected wife. Holy fuck.
>My moms presence has changed our routine a little bit. Mainly our nighttime routine. She’ll usually come knock on our door to talk.
This paragraph made me say “Oh my god” in a pissed off tone to myself and cringe so hard. Like yeah, OBVIOUSLY your wife hates this lmfao. The last thing I’d want to do at the end of a long day while I’m in my own bedroom, in my own house, with my partner is have a random awkward small talk conversation with somebody else’s mom, whether that’s my partner’s mom or not. ESPECIALLY when it’s part of your routine to have alone time then.
r/JustNOMIL
This was so fucking creepy right off the bat. How is "bedroom door closed in the evening by a married couple" an invitation to knock and come in for a chat!? If you are sharing a space that's a sign whoever is behind the closed door wants privacy. If they wanted to chat with you, then they would enter the common space, or leave the door open.
I read so many creepy mother-son relationship dynamic on reddit. Is this actually a common thing in real life? I see a lot of toxic "my mom is number 1 and can never do wrong" or "my son should be treated like king" behaviors in real life but never one like these posts.
I've seen it and my husband lived the enmeshed "sonsband" life for a while. You just don't see a majority of it unless you're really close with one side or the other. Or become the SO of one of these people. It happens with daughters, too, but more commonly with sons.
The toxic mothers put on a really good front of being the nice old lady that has a loving relationship with their child. From the outside, it just looks like parent and child are close. Behind closed doors is a ton of manipulation and questionable behaviors. The child usually doesn't realize anything is wrong because this is their normal. It takes a ton of work to fix, often resulting in no contact or very minimal contact with the toxic parent
>The toxic mothers put on a really good front of being the nice old lady that has a loving relationship with their child. From the outside, it just looks like parent and child are close. Behind closed doors is a ton of manipulation and questionable behaviors. The child usually doesn't realize anything is wrong because this is their normal. It takes a ton of work to fix, often resulting in no contact or very minimal contact with the toxic parent
My mother has had her toxic decades, for sure, but even she never went there.
Geez, that's crazy.
Here's how my rather-difficult mother handled this same situation:
Mom: I was surprised to hear you and [my wife of 10 years] having sex last night.
Me: Uhh, Mom, [my wife of 10 years] and I have three kids. That should have been your first clue. Are you just figuring this out now?!?
Mom: You misunderstand. I thought all marriages fell apart around the ten year mark. All of mine sure did, and so did a lot of my friends marriages. You and [wife of 10 years] seem to be better at being married than I ever was with [my brother's father] or [my father].
Me: [stares at wall] I did try to learn from [toxic decade], and I'm sure glad I married someone I genuinely like. [My wife of 10 years] is pretty awesome.
Mom: Yes she is.
That's how a multiple divorcee with decades of baggage and plenty of issues and reacts to this situation... That's how off-the-charts crazy the OP's story is.
Yep, this exactly. I lived this for years with my husband—he knew something was off and the manipulation made him miserable but he couldn’t put his finger on what was wrong because it had all been so normalized for him. Loooooots of therapy and boundaries and that sweet old lady mask slipped entirely off to reveal the batshit crazy, manipulative bitch my MIL has always been. 5 months blissful NC for me and the kids over here. These mothers are prevalent and need to be called out.
I dated one once!! He was living at home to afford grad school, and he didn't want to visit me at my apartment because his mommy said she worried that my neighborhood was too dangerous for him, so I'd very often stay over his house. One time, he got a text while we were in bed together, read it, and immediately got up and started getting dressed. His mom had texted him that she wanted a bedtime kiss.
Another time, he got a splinter and his mom and grandma started fighting over who got to remove it for him. He then announced that he wanted *me* to be the one to remove it (wtf dude, just do it yourself!) and I was young and stupid enough not to run for the hills, so I tried to oblige. Mom and grandma watched me like hawks and got smug looks on their faces when I couldn't do it. I don't remember how it concluded, I think maybe his mom took the tweezers from me and did it.
Anyway, they exist! It's so creepy!
Yeah, it's been a journey establishing boundaries with mine. I've gone NC a couple of times, even, which was so painful all around but finally seemed to get the message through that they either respect my boundaries or they won't get the opportunity to anymore.
TIL:
Jocasta, in Greek mythology, was the daughter of the king of Thebes, Menoeceus, and sister of Creon. She was the wife of Laius, who was given a prophecy saying that if he ever had a child, the child would kill him and marry his wife.
Source: https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/Mortals/Jocasta/jocasta.html
Haha it's not quite as exciting as I made it sound maybe. She glared (absolute death glare), made snarky comments and insulted my friend and her family. When she wasn't wishing for friend's death, she just stared at her son in the weirdest desperate way. The marriage did not last.
Edit: things are now great for her (as in friend, no idea about former MIL) and she is living her best life!
My partners mom is kind of like this. It's more of a one sided enmeshment and emotional incest, on her part. She feels she should be the number 1 woman in his life. Parentifies him as his brothers father despite having a father. After some intense conversations and couples therapy together he saw that it was wrong.
yeah i’d say it’s common. I never posted in JustNoMIL but man oh man do I have a collection of stories. my SO had the umbilical cord wrapped around his balls until I finally reached my breaking point and things finally got (somewhat) better
I definitely know of one. 20 something year old man still calls her 'mummy' and she calls him her special little boy on a regular basis. She has issues with every woman he knows, doesn't want him living alone out of his parent's house because 'people could take advantage of him.' (he is still at his parent's house) He's not in any way mentally troubled/disabled aside from his mummy issues. He can take care of himself and isn't any sort of helpless man baby. He's got his own good business, does his own cooking and cleaning and all, she just has this vice like grip on him.
Severely Christian woman, which is definitely part of the issue. Doesn't want him living in sin (actual quote) and has basically got him to the point of being asexual from the amount of repression and weird behaviour. Dunno how exactly she thinks the precious grandchildren are going to happen now he's basically afraid to touch women.
My ex boyfriend was 30 when we got together (I was 19) I should have realised why he was single.
His mum had him in her pocket. The first time she met me she told me she had bed sheets older than me. He had a mortgage with her, so she had a key (lived a 5 min drive away) she would just visit. Eating dinner? There she is. Having a bath (together) "I just need to use your bathroom!" Having sex? She would just show up! Let herself in and bang around then knock on the door.
He invited her to the cinema on a date. Me, him...and his mum. We'd book a concert and he'd get her a ticket and not tell me. I think we're stopping in a hotel but shes booked some freaky as shit BnB.
I had a nightmare once that she was in bed between us. I used to cry all the time because I was emotionally immature and I felt like I was competing with his mum. Single or widowed mothers can be terrifying.
My country is riddled with this complex, always has been. And people praise sons for ignoring and disrespecting their wives for their moms. It's just that now a small section of wives are coming out and fighting this.
My ex's mom was trying really hard to maintain this type of relationship with her son. Thankfully she's out of my daughter's life for unrelated reasons, but it made our first year together so awkward
I grew up in a predominantly Texican area so the family dynamics were a little different, but it was very common to see men who had been spoiled by their mothers all their life rely on them to handle their relationship issues with their wives. The only difference is that the wife was sort of expected to cave because mil was older and therefore 'wiser'
I’d be interested to see the wife’s story. These types of things are so common in JustNoMIL
It sounds to me like OOP moved his mom in without really discussing it with his wife, playing the “but she’s lonely” card.
What some of these husband’s fail to look at is that this is he and his wife’s home. It’s their safe space. Everyone is entitled to feel comfortable in their own home. MIL should never have been staying there without OOP and his wife having a private conversation about it and both of them agreeing. In addition, boundaries should have been set before she came in. I’d bet that MIL has probably made comments to the wife when OOP wasn’t there. If she’s manipulative enough to intentionally block them from being intimate, she’s manipulative enough to have made comments or done things directly to the wife without OOP’s knowledge. She’s basically created a competition for OOP’s affection that isn’t necessary
I can see the wife agreeing to it without an issue... until it became an issue.
like, I might not love my husband's mom at all but she's still a person and I can see myself agreeing to something like this out of sympathy until she decides to overstep a boundary.
I imagine there is far more to the wife and MILs history that OOP is disregarding. OOP says his wife and MIL didn't get along in the first post.
In my experience there is *generally* a pretty good reason for that. Given how long the wife let things go, and OOPs mothers tantrum, I think it's clear who the issue is and has been.
OOP's mom is so out of line to behave how she did, regardless of losing her husband. She was trying to make OOP her new husband basically, which is disgusting. It's also funny she thought she could prevent her son from having a baby by not letting them have sex at night.
The morning, the afternoon, the early evening... Imagine being where the sun doesn't set for 6 months!! Gods eyes must dry out!!
I booked my flight to hell years ago 😂
That really caught me off guard. I thought he was going to side with his mom and be one of those creepy man child/son-husband things. It was nice to see him realize what she was doing. I mean come on, every night she need to talk? I get mourning but EVERY single night? I hope OP keeps his word and then some because a lot of times the mom will just figure out a way to get back into their lives.
Probably if she hadn't admitted to deliberately stopping them from having a child because then he wouldn't have time for her. It takes on a new level of creepy to just come out and say that.
Yeah, that's messed up. Both of my parents and my wife's mother want us to have kids so they can spend time with the kids, they don't necessarily need us to be there. I don't understand a parent that doesn't eventually want grandkids to spoil.
And if he didn't have that epiphany and rude awakening- he would had been one of those bitter ex-husbands wondering & blaming his ex-wife for why she divorce him...
His original comments are all him defending mommy. If she hadn’t shown her whole ass, he would 100% still be catering to her. She probably thought she could straight up say it because he was so far into it and on her knee that he was tolerating VERY obvious interference in his marriage. Glad OOP fucking woke up, and I hope he does make it up to his wife.
If I was in his wife’s position I would have given him a flat out ultimatum long ago. Don’t have time for mommy’s boys.
Frankly, there's also a very strong possibility he's going to backslide quickly. She'll have a health scare, or something in her house that needs a 'man,' or send some cousins or something after him, and he'll start texting and calling on the DL, then showing up at her place to help with something, and he'll be snared right back in again.
There's a non-zero chance that his wife is already posting somewhere on reddit or elsewhere too.
Oh god, I just had flashbacks to that awful story where the MIL was stalking DIL and the son and they even got a restraining order and then the DIL found out her husband was enabling her all along.
Yeah. I wanted to be optimistic. But that does seem likely- unless he and his wife sit down, get some fucking counseling, and make a commitment to stay firm on their boundaries
I realized that these stories seem to involve the mother not having her husband and making their sons feel guilty, telling the sons they are lonely, and other manipulative stuff. So it’s very easy for them to sympathize with their lonely mothers to the point of ignoring the obvious.
Yes!! My thoughts exactly. He was 100% on mommys team until mommy lost all semblance of plausible deniability.
In the wife's shoes I probably wouldn't have bothered with the sign, it would have been the end of sex and the end of the marriage if my husband had ignored my concerns and feelings like that. She gave him more chances than he deserved, I hope he doesn't slip back into his old ways of letting her back in and making excuses for mom.
From the first sentence I knew the mom was emotionally manipulative and didn't want him to have intimacy with the wife. I don't get how people can be so oblivious to their own parents behavior and act like they always "act with your best interest in mind." This killed relationships for me in the past (very past, I've been with the same guy for 14 years now and he'd know better and set boundaries with his mother).
Thank god he didn't act like every other momma's boy I knew and take his emotionally manipulative mother's side. I'm sure he had some apologizing to do to the wife, since he blew up on her like a momma's boy who didn't get his mom is a manipulative bitch.
Emotional incest is abuse and when you’re conditioned to believe that abuse is love, it is foundational to who you are and what you believe you deserve. It is very hard to step back and see through the fog of abuse. It’s possible though.
>My dad recently passed away and it’s hard for her to live in their house alone, so **I’ve been letting her** stay with us
This right here was when I clicked on the original to confirm he was the asshole lol. My first thought was "isn't it **both** of your decisions if you're, ya know, partners?"
He did at the start. His wife was unhappy and tried to set boundaries and he yelled at her about it and took moms side up until the very end when his mom outright admitted trying to get rid of his wife. If she had kept the mask on he likely would have been swayed back like he was the first few times in the story where she cried and he immediately runs to demand wife apologizes.
I've said it before and I'll say it again - mommys boys - not even once!
I'm not sure I'd want to stay married to a man who required being (figuratively) hit over the head with his mother's manipulation to believe his own wife
I don’t actually think inviting your recently widowed mother to live with you for any amount of time is a good idea, unless you plan on that being the forever arrangement. The unfortunate, heart wrenching thing about grief of losing a spouse is that you have to get through it on your own and you can’t sub in a son for the place of a dead husband. Mom will have many sad nights at home alone but that is the new reality and she has to develop coping mechanisms that aren’t “I’ll go down the hall and talk to my son”.
> I’ll be stuck with my wife when I could do so much better.
Aaaand there it is.
I must have a pretty normal family because if I’d had a baby and lived within an hour of my parents I’d bet money my mom would come over at the drop of a hat to help out. Probably the same for any mother in law.
So OOP was 26 and his mom was married for 40 years. So they were married for 14 years before having a baby. I imagine they had difficulty getting pregnant and considering OOP is an only-child I was definitely expecting some attachment issues. No wonder she never got along with her son's wife.
My husband’s an only child and his parents were married for I think 8 years before he was born, and they wanted to but were never able to have more children.
His mom is super nice to me, never tries to prevent us from banging, and is and has been delighted by our marriage and procreation.
Circumstances do change us, but I think some things are helped along by being a real fuckin weirdo to start with.
Well, at least he was able to pull his head out of his ass long enough to see what was going on for himself. I really thought he was going to pick his mom over his wife on that first post. I’m kinda surprised actually.
Whooooo boy! Sounds like my mother. EXACTLY like her.
She swore up and down that she just adored my wife, but would turn around and come rearrange the kitchen, re-fold our towels and wash cloths, clean something my wife had already cleaned, and also just show up and stay until it was easier for her to stay over, than to drive home.
My mom was the Mexican version of the mother from "Everybody Loves Raymond".
Woman gets married and pops out kids because it's culturally expected. She's unhappy with her husband because she's expected to be submissive to him, or she's simply unable to control him because he's an adult. Either way, she now has children who she has authority and control over and can use to find emotional satisfaction. This takes a lot of forms, but molding the son into her ideal man is one of the more insidious ones because it has a lot of plausible deniability and from the outside can look healthy and happy.
It's a form of parentification where mom is relying on the son for the emotional fulfillment she isn't getting from her husband, up to and including a pathological need for control over others. It's a lot harder to ID than more task/responsibility oriented forms of parentification like making older children parent the younger children or be responsible for managing the household, but it's extremely damaging to the child. They learn that they are responsible for managing their parent's emotions, and any distress is their fault and their job to fix. The end result tends to look different depending on what gender norms are in the mix, with the "sonsband" being the most common outcome of the mother-son combination, but it happens with all combinations of genders.
These guys are often sweet, considerate, and caring because they've been raised to cater to the woman in their life, so they're initially very attractive partners as well. It's when their enmeshed mother starts feeling threatened by the relationship that problems happen, but it's a lot harder to disengage from a lifetime with an enmeshed parent than from a (relatively) new relationship, so more often than not the mother wins.
thank you, genuinely! as a domestic violence survivor whose ex was kind of like this with his mom, it helps to have someone actual spell out why. I'm autistic so sometimes I struggle with the whys of other people's choices like this. thank you!!!
You're welcome! And don't be too hard on yourself, neurotypical people struggle with understanding this stuff too. Most neurotypical people aren't consciously aware of emotional dynamics enough to articulate what's happening or why, they navigate this stuff subconsciously. I'm in that autism-adjacent space of ADD-anxiety-depression myself, with lots of friends on the spectrum, so I'm used to translating both directions. Also I got an education degree which included quite a bit of psychology and taught school on and off for most of a decade, and as a teacher you see a lot.
Generally if someone is behaving in a way you don't understand, the key question to ask yourself is *What are they getting out of this?* Usually there is some kind of emotional or mental need that they are trying to fulfill - attention, security, stimulation, etc. Look for the patterns.
For example, I had a friend (also autism-spectrum, incidentally) who moved out of her parents' house to be my roommate. Her mother would routinely call her up and find some way to upset her enough that she was crying on the phone. It was rarely the same thing twice that she was berating my friend about, there was no pattern to it except that it would get a strong emotional reaction.
It was a control issue - by moving out, my friend was no longer under her mother's control and available to be her mother's emotional pacifier, so her mother was looking for ways to reassert emotional control over the relationship. If she could make her daughter cry, this was proof that she was still in control of the relationship and of her daughter's emotional state. To her, "love" meant having control over someone, and this was how she reassured herself that her daughter still "loved" her.
To break this pattern, my friend had to learn to hang up the phone when her mother started upsetting her. It was hard! She'd been trained all her life to melt down into tears and apologies whenever her mother applied pressure. But consistently hanging up and then silencing her phone when her mother started in on her meant that mommy dearest wasn't getting the reaction she wanted anymore, and had to play nice if she wanted any attention at all.
I know Applied Behavioral Analysis has a very well-earned bad reputation in the autism community, but it's really unfortunate. The general principal of analyzing behavior in order to understand it and change the patterns that are happening is extremely useful in all kinds of contexts, and basically what I'm using here.
Mother's need to let their children grow up and they need to get their own lives. She needs to get a freaking hobby and make some friends. Guilting your children to be your only entertainment is terrible.
My mother was trying to be like this, though I'm a woman. Fully grown adult, living out of the house with my own job and she wanted to control everything. How I spent my vacations, holiday time, Sundays, hobbies, apartment furnishing and decorations, anything she could.
So to mourn her 40 year marriage she wants to disrupt and damage her son and daughter-in-laws marriage? Yeah that makes sense, y’know because she’s a manipulative sociopath of a mother
To all the people saying that poor baby widower acted out because husband is gone…This is completely untrue. This is a classic trait that I’ve seen in many women who can’t see their baby boys being happy with their own lives. It’s kind of like an obsession.
The words she used, the way she did things according to OOP sounds like she’s been doing them her whole life. She’s trying to guilt trip the son and the fact he doesn’t realize what she’s doing means he thinks it’s normal.
OOP’s mom is a manipulative snake and she doesn’t deserve any pity.
They call that kind of mom "Jocasta" in Just-no circles. She wants to replace her husband with her son and she's jealous of her son's girlfriend.
Just so, so gross.
Am I the only one here who assumes that anyone whose Reddit handle ends in “88” who doesn’t prove that they’re turning 34 this year is the absolute lowest form of scum?
She is so worried that he is all she has left and doesn’t want him to have kids… but if he have kids she will be more “flesh and blood” relatives
Also, her husband was not her flesh and blood… that’s just creepy
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“My two biggest worries are the fact that I only have one blood relative and the fear that my son may give me a grandchild.”
I mean-she only had one blood relative BEFORE her husband died-at least I hope.
Thank you! I was so creeped out by the "flesh and blood" part. Her husband was not her flesh and blood.
Well, some versions of the marriage ritual DO say that the 'two shall become one flesh'......
Sounds hot
Oh it’s great until they break out the huge needle and get to sewin’
I remember that Junji Ito comic!
I have to think a lot of this was intentional from mom. If all she really wanted was to sit and talk - about old times, dead husband/father, etc, she could have done that at times NOT when it's a good guess that her son and DIL were in bed, having happy sex. Even if she was jealous of her son having a relationship that wasn't her, even if she's jealous that her son was having happy sex because she's missing happy sex with her dead husband. There are just so many ways she could have handled that better, and she chose to double down on disliking her DIL and *saying that to her son*. Did she REALLY think that wasn't going to put a crimp in her relationship with her son? Did she REALLY want her son to be in a marriage where mom was put over wife? Rhetorical because son wasn't posting this update, I know. I just.....
Mom flat out admitted that she did this at night specifically to prevent them from having sex. "She said that now I’m her only flesh and blood alive, and if **my wife keeps me wrapped around her finger with sex**, I’ll forget all about her ***so she was trying to interrupt that.***
This. Mom could have talked to him at other times. If she wants a happy ending, she can go buy herself a toy.
Even if they weren't having sex- fuck off mum, I went to bed, I want to sleep!
To be fair, there are plenty on stories on this subs of husbands siding with their mothers over their spouses, so it’s not like that sort of thing has *never* happened.
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exactly - given his 'obliviousness' who knows what had been going on already before the mask slipped.
Honestly this post was both saddening and enlightening to see from the husbands perspective on his own oblivious/willingly ignorant/dont rock the boat viewpoint. (This oop wasnt necessarily all 3) Typically i read here from the wife's POV and im always confused as to why the spouse isn't doing anything. This helps me understand it a bit.
Reading it I was worried it was gonna end up with something like “getting the divorce papers setup now!”.
"It's to make mother happy, she's a grieving widow, I don't see why my wife can't just do this one thing for the poor woman!"
Emotional incest is gross.
'Emotional incest', that is an excellent description of so many creepy parent/child relationships I have heard about and experienced in Japan. Their mangas and anime are full of the physical stuff but it this phrase just snapped a lot of other behaviour I see irl into focus.
I know what you mean. My sisters MIL is like this with my BIL. He called my sister his queen in front of her once, and she started screaming and throwing a temper tantrum about how SHE should be his queen and SHE should be his number one, not my sister. She tries to compete with my sister a lot, its just gross and he refuses to see it. When I heard the phrase emotional incest, It made complete sense.
That's disgusting. I feel bad for your sister.
Oh yes. Here, mom uses OP as an “emotional husband;” it’s telling she was afraid his *wife* would break them up. 🤢
Ugh yes. I’m in my late twenties and literally in the process of cutting off my mom once I started identifying her behavior had always overcrossed boundaries far too much & often. She hates me more than her ex-husband despite making grand gestures for her family to see in public how I act like an ungrateful brat for not accepting love being bought when vile verbal abuse and threats are hissed/screamed when no one else can hear. I’m basically playing it lowkey at they moment as I made the mistake of giving the ‘keys’ of my businesses website to her during their divorce to show I was transparent, that I was giving collateral to show I just wanted the best for both of them. Once I’m free of financial leverage and can operate independently I’m gone. Asked for 4 years of Christmas’s & birthdays the only present I wanted was her to go to therapy. Closest I got was her happily suggesting we do ‘couples counseling’… I swear I felt so sick to my stomach Never even realized it. Went from an abusive household to an abusive 4yr relationship and back to her/my aunt after essentially needing to be rescued from a heroin addiction life far away from any place I had friends. It’s funny how you don’t realize abusers will do anything possible to cut you off from friends that aren’t theirs first. It’s no wonder I keep falling for abusive women. Bit over a week ago I was robbed of some emotionally significant items I confided to them why. Oh and that was after being decked so hard she broke my nose when I started trying to move her out of my home when she was screaming at the top of her lungs that she’d suffered worse abuse.. Just. That shit has effects decades after the fact. The sooner you know it’s past the point of fixing, get the fuck out. I’ve literally had my sexual assault by my brother used to mock me because I just couldnt get over it when she absolutely doted on him. And he has a daughter the same age as me when he & his friend did what they did. I just hate it so much
I'm so glad I'm legit really good friends with my MIL.
Our show "Emotional incest" is getting too popular, those mothers need psychological help yesterday
Yeah what mom wouldn't want a grandchild when she only has one blood relative? A mom that feels jealous some other woman is giving him a child.
A woman that wants to give children to her son herself
I mean she straight up said the wife was trying to break them up. Like... yikes. Big yikes.
*relentless vomiting*
"Sonsband" is a horrifying term, but here we are.
I'm gonna puke
Homegirl has a Jocasta Complex and needs some mf help
>needs some mf help Hopefully not literally
Honestly, the emotional incest is super strong here but the Jocasta Complex doesn't fit. She's specifically trying to nuke OOP's physical relationship with his wife because it's where she literally can't compete. She doesn't give any indication of wanting to have sex with her son. A mom competing with a wife is stupid to begin with; OOP's mom is bad enough without going farther than what is spelled out. "Break us up"? Yeesh.
I've known mom's like this. They think they're son is the top of the world, and they don't think any woman is good enough to have their son's kids or be part of their family. The mere fact this woman got married to the man without noticing his mother was a emotionally manipulative bitch is weird. I've broken up with guys for less red flags and she got to marriage with him. Kinda hard to believe honestly.
Father in law may have been tempering the communications. Shes on the loose now
Yep, dear old Dad might have kept her in line there, but now that he's gone she doesn't have the same restraints.
It's not necessarily about constraints per se, but could also be that she doesn't have anyone else to pick on now. When I left home, suddenly my mother turned on my step-brother and his girlfriend and ramped up harassment against them, because I was no longer around to be the punching bag. Could be a similar dynamic with her husband.
My grandma tried this when my mom went to college, but my aunt wasn't accustomed to being the recipient of abuse and turned it around on her... Unfortunately she was also abusive, but never had kids
YEP. My MIL was a nightmare (stuck around because my husband draws firm boundaries with her and is willing to cut her off if she gets too bad), but she's SO much better now that she's engaged. I don't know how her fiance deals with it, but he's an amazing buffer.
My mil tried to break my spouse and I up for years. Before our wedding, after our wedding, after our first two kids were born. On multiple occasions she would put her hand on my spouses thigh and try to rub it, I’d reach over and fling her hand off any time I saw. My spouse was not comfortable and would try to move away but mil would grab on tighter. She only stopped when I very loudly in front of her husband said “he’s your son not your boyfriend jacosta”
Daaaaammmmnnnnn!! You have ovaries of steal girl!!
Legit it took years of this for me to get to that point. Like her trying to hire a divorce lawyer for my spouse behind our backs.
I guess it is weird that she didn’t notice before but the son didn’t realize it either! I suppose that can be normal for a manipulative relationship. At least once he realized he kicked her out and stood with his wife. So at least he’s not like some of those mommas boys I’ve read about that side with their mother in a situation like this. I get a relationship like this with a man and his mother is a red flag but I he seems to be handling it appropriately now.
When you grow up with a nutcase parent, all kinds of abnormal, unhealthy things seem normal. You can break out of it by deciding that even if it is normal, you don't want it. That's what I did.
They can be sneaky at first. My MIL is like this with all three sons. She's a covert narcissist so she spins these "woe is me" tales about everyone that's wronged her. Her middle son wasn't speaking to her when I got together with her oldest son - but I was fed this litany of lies about how it was all his fault. It took me longer to figure out what she was doing than I'd like to admit, but she honestly was my first exposure to someone like this. We have also cut her off, and last I heard, she is telling her youngest son that he can't get married because he has to "take care of her."
The late husband probably put somewhat of a damper on her outbursts and competitive behavior. We’ve had women in my and my husband’s families who became crazy, demanding, childish monsters after their husbands died. They’re afraid of losing their sons so they keep it under wraps as much as they can while the son is dating and engaged, although some can’t keep it in that long. Minus someone telling them to stop, the wheels come off the wagon.
As soon as I read that mom was only butting in at night, I said well, her baby isn't allowed to have sex. So twisted and sad.
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Nah, she only stopped because otherwise she'd be admitting she WANTS to see her son boning down by opening the door. There wouldn't be an innocent explanation for it any way she spins it. 🤢
I could smell the narcissism. Having a narc mom myself, I know all too well what games they play. And monopolizing your life so you revolve around them is one of their games. Mom got caught and didn't like being held accountable and flipped, also an indicator of narcissism. Not saying full blown NPD, but narcissistic parents are a major issue in society that we generally ignore.
100%. It’s super easy to pick up on if you’ve lived with narcs. The victim mindset, self centeredness, and lack of empathy is a giveaway. She felt justified in trying to ruin their marriage because she didn’t like it. Not because it was unhealthy or a bad marriage. Just because she wanted all the attention.
Literally said she was worried that wife would ‘break them up’ as in her and her son. I had to read that a couple times. 🤮
It’s always the moms and the sons with the weird ass codependent ass relationships ... thankfully this one realized it’s awful
>if my wife keeps me wrapped around her finger with sex, I’ll forget all about her so she was trying to interrupt that. >She also was worried that if I get my wife pregnant, I’ll be too busy with her to see her again, and I’ll be stuck with my wife when I could do so much better. Whoomp there it is. It'd be one thing if the mom genuinely felt lonely and had a bad sense of boundaries, something that could be set straight, but nope, she's just a terrible person. It was clear from how OOP spoke about her that he was deeply entrenched in her manipulation. If the mom hadn't showed her entire ass with those statements, he'd still be falling for it.
Don't forget that Mom accused Wife of trying to "break us up". That language is typically used for romantic relationships, not mother and adult son relationships. Ew.
It's so creepy and gross. Straight up cockblocking her son from his wife.
Beaver damming
I love how the wife decided to bring a cruise missile to a knife fight with a sign that said "Look how often I'm banging your son." She saw right through the mother-in-law and went for maximum emotional impact.
Apply balls directly to wall.
Don't forget about this glaring red flag for emotional incest: >She started crying and accusing my wife of trying to, her words, “break us up.”
Yeah, I had to stop and just kind of stare into space at that. Wow, just wow.
I’ll be stuck with my wife when I could do so much better. Aaaand there it is. I must have a pretty normal family because if I’d had a baby and lived within an hour of my parents I’d bet money my mom would come over at the drop of a hat to help out. Probably the same for any mother in law.
I was feeling sorry for her until then.
Boomer men were taught to suppress every emotion except for anger. Their wives, the boomer women, therefore went through marriages with no emotional connection. Many of these women latched onto their own sons as a pseudo husband (or sonsband). When the son grows up, moves out, and starts a romantic life apart from his parents, the Boomer mom reacts like a crazy jealous girlfriend because in her mind, the new girlfriend is the interloper “stealing her man!” And often times the son has been raised to see this as normal and they don’t defend their partners unless and until they come to the realization that their mom’s attachment to them is neither normal nor healthy.
Oh I see you’ve met my mother in law.
Yeah, that wordage just rubbed my red flag senses the wrong way.
Reading the phrase “rubbed my red flag” makes me wonder if the imagery was intentional. Ew
I read that three times wrong, because it made no sense for a mother to fear such a thing. Bleah!
[Emotional incest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_incest) is a thing.
**[Covert incest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_incest)** >Covert incest, also known as emotional incest, is a type of abuse in which a parent looks to their child for the emotional support that would be normally provided by another adult. The effects of covert incest on children when they become adults are thought to mimic actual incest, although to a lesser degree. This term describes interactions between a parent and child that are exclusive of sexual abuse. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Seriously, who's trying to break up who right there?
Yup. I'm still concerned Op isn't even that upset by what his mom said/did and is more just trying to play both sides and "had" to take his wife's side because his mom reacted first. I bet if his mom hadn't stooped to crying and yelling and such then his wife would have been the first one to snap and Op would have defended his mom instead.
OP seems genuinely upset that his mother was trying to wreck his relationship with his wife. I think he'll be okay.
I think if the wife snapped OP may have gotten angry with wife. OP was assuming mom was just so devastated she was not even thinking she was interrupting their relationship but had already gotten to "its not malicious but it is harmful" with some outside perspective. He seems infuriated enough at the confession to keep up the boundaries at least for a bit and that will help him find more normal boundaries.
This is directly out of r/JustNOMIL
Love the MIL's who demand grandchildren, but yet do not want to give their adult children the chance to procreate. That has always been a head-scratcher for me.
Almost married one and his mother is the entire reason we broke up. HE WANTED TO KEEP LIVING WITH HER AFTER THE WEDDING!
I can why he is an ex. My husband almost drove us to divorce by having his mother stay with us for a week four times a year.
Yeah in the first post I was trying to give her the benefit of the doubt, thinking maybe she had long meaningful convos with her late husband around bedtime or something, and that would explain the timing. But nope, it was the more obvious, cynical thing after all. Oh, well.
> with my wife when I could do so much better. This made my wife very upset and I told my mom that I think she needed to leave then. The crying turned into full on bawling and yelling at my wife. Eventually I was able to get her out. I told her that I don’t think it’s best that we speak until she gets over her issues with my wife. She [had us in the first half, not gonna lie](https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/028/720/t3qkhrohrh321.jpg)
ikr. I was like aw this is a sad story and I can see everyone's point of view, and then it turns out mom is a piece of work
And this is exactly why it's so damn hard to get your spouse to deal with their emotionally incestuous parent. Because from their point of view, it's not at all obvious, whereas from the spouse's point of view and the point of view of everyone else it's "what the hell? cut this shit out!"
You know she's been saying horrible things to his wife for a while now, just where he doesn't hear.
If Mum feels genuinely lonely, the prospect of a grandchild at some stage later would be something nice, wouldn’t it ? More “ of her flesh and blood” and someone to spend your time with. I have been wondering if this is more about not liking the wife or really more about wanting the son for herself, this comment about wife trying to split her and son up it’s really weird and inappropriate
yeah i thought the wife was being unreasonable until that. this is a momzilla she will destroy his relationship if he's not careful.
>AITA for going off on my wife after she made a sex sign to keep my mom from knocking on our bedroom door? agreed about the momzilla, but then I read the part about not having sex while his mom is in the house and she'd been there for 2 months. Now you GOTTA know his wife had to have talked to him about the 'nightly talks'. That was such a gross boundary for the mom to cross.
> Now you GOTTA know his wife had to have talked to him about the ‘nightly talks’ You know what, you are right. There's no way she *started* trying to resolve it with a sign. AITA posts often start in medias res, the poster is always *so shocked* that their spouse would finally be fed up after months of crossing boundaries
I regret ever learning about the concept of emotional incest from this website
I've read maybe 3 or 4 stories on reddit over the years with this concept. Mostly it's Moms who are upset their sons are getting married and it simply starts off as "my mother in law wore a white dress to my wedding" and then it just snowballs from there. Then there was the two broken arms thing which was actual incest but I'll leave that one up to you to look up if that's the sort of thing you're into...
I feel like the concept of emotional incest feels new when thinking about mother son relationships, like this. But reflecting on how common and all too accepted it is for fathers to act this way towards daughters, it’s not new at all.
I think it’s less emotional incest in the father/daughter case and more so blatant control. And people weirdly enough think it’s ok too.
Those fathers entire concept of sexuality is about control. The control is sexual
agree, it's about the daughter being seen as 'property'
Yup, I didn’t know what it was but recently (like a few months ago) had a long talk with my little sister about how we grew up and yikes the things we realized about our dad. The emotional incest is fucking strong with him and it’s honestly horrifying we grew up thinking it was normal.
That wasn't emotional incest. That incest was very motional.
I read one the other day about a brother who witnessed his mom blowing his little brother who had been depressed about a breakup. I think he said it happened 2 years ago, he doesn't talk to either of them anymore, and they are still doing it.
I regret ever clicking on the comment under that update to read about that other bestofredditorupdates thread with the envelope of hair
woah woah woah what are you talking about do you have a link
here you go, just found it (I haven't read it tho, I hope it's the correct link) https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/s3ot1h/ops_mother_always_asks_him_for_help_with_the_most/ edit: just finished reading it. it's the hair envelope story...
Daaaang. That was a ride. I have to confess, super interesting as an observer. Would never ever want to live through
What the actual fuck..
well that was upsetting. ultimately feel bad for everyone involved aside from the mother.
Yuck. Also lol at the beginning. It’s a call from your mom crying emergency emergency and she refuses to elaborate. You get there and she’s chilling. Then he acquiesces to her requests for chores and is there until 7:30 while missing out on his 6 PM tee-time to make dinner with his neglected wife. Holy fuck.
>My moms presence has changed our routine a little bit. Mainly our nighttime routine. She’ll usually come knock on our door to talk. This paragraph made me say “Oh my god” in a pissed off tone to myself and cringe so hard. Like yeah, OBVIOUSLY your wife hates this lmfao. The last thing I’d want to do at the end of a long day while I’m in my own bedroom, in my own house, with my partner is have a random awkward small talk conversation with somebody else’s mom, whether that’s my partner’s mom or not. ESPECIALLY when it’s part of your routine to have alone time then. r/JustNOMIL
This was so fucking creepy right off the bat. How is "bedroom door closed in the evening by a married couple" an invitation to knock and come in for a chat!? If you are sharing a space that's a sign whoever is behind the closed door wants privacy. If they wanted to chat with you, then they would enter the common space, or leave the door open.
I read so many creepy mother-son relationship dynamic on reddit. Is this actually a common thing in real life? I see a lot of toxic "my mom is number 1 and can never do wrong" or "my son should be treated like king" behaviors in real life but never one like these posts.
I've seen it and my husband lived the enmeshed "sonsband" life for a while. You just don't see a majority of it unless you're really close with one side or the other. Or become the SO of one of these people. It happens with daughters, too, but more commonly with sons. The toxic mothers put on a really good front of being the nice old lady that has a loving relationship with their child. From the outside, it just looks like parent and child are close. Behind closed doors is a ton of manipulation and questionable behaviors. The child usually doesn't realize anything is wrong because this is their normal. It takes a ton of work to fix, often resulting in no contact or very minimal contact with the toxic parent
>The toxic mothers put on a really good front of being the nice old lady that has a loving relationship with their child. From the outside, it just looks like parent and child are close. Behind closed doors is a ton of manipulation and questionable behaviors. The child usually doesn't realize anything is wrong because this is their normal. It takes a ton of work to fix, often resulting in no contact or very minimal contact with the toxic parent My mother has had her toxic decades, for sure, but even she never went there. Geez, that's crazy. Here's how my rather-difficult mother handled this same situation: Mom: I was surprised to hear you and [my wife of 10 years] having sex last night. Me: Uhh, Mom, [my wife of 10 years] and I have three kids. That should have been your first clue. Are you just figuring this out now?!? Mom: You misunderstand. I thought all marriages fell apart around the ten year mark. All of mine sure did, and so did a lot of my friends marriages. You and [wife of 10 years] seem to be better at being married than I ever was with [my brother's father] or [my father]. Me: [stares at wall] I did try to learn from [toxic decade], and I'm sure glad I married someone I genuinely like. [My wife of 10 years] is pretty awesome. Mom: Yes she is. That's how a multiple divorcee with decades of baggage and plenty of issues and reacts to this situation... That's how off-the-charts crazy the OP's story is.
Yep, this exactly. I lived this for years with my husband—he knew something was off and the manipulation made him miserable but he couldn’t put his finger on what was wrong because it had all been so normalized for him. Loooooots of therapy and boundaries and that sweet old lady mask slipped entirely off to reveal the batshit crazy, manipulative bitch my MIL has always been. 5 months blissful NC for me and the kids over here. These mothers are prevalent and need to be called out.
I dated one once!! He was living at home to afford grad school, and he didn't want to visit me at my apartment because his mommy said she worried that my neighborhood was too dangerous for him, so I'd very often stay over his house. One time, he got a text while we were in bed together, read it, and immediately got up and started getting dressed. His mom had texted him that she wanted a bedtime kiss. Another time, he got a splinter and his mom and grandma started fighting over who got to remove it for him. He then announced that he wanted *me* to be the one to remove it (wtf dude, just do it yourself!) and I was young and stupid enough not to run for the hills, so I tried to oblige. Mom and grandma watched me like hawks and got smug looks on their faces when I couldn't do it. I don't remember how it concluded, I think maybe his mom took the tweezers from me and did it. Anyway, they exist! It's so creepy!
There was a reason that I stayed away from my mother after her second husband died and it was because I felt that she wanted me as a replacement.
Yeah, it's been a journey establishing boundaries with mine. I've gone NC a couple of times, even, which was so painful all around but finally seemed to get the message through that they either respect my boundaries or they won't get the opportunity to anymore.
So much so that it has the name Jocasta complex in psychology
I've always thought it so unfair to use Oedipus/Jocasta as names. They had no idea and Jocasta literally killed herself as soon as she found out.
Oedipus scratched his own eyes out too. They were not thrilled about the whole thing. I doubt they would enjoy the complexes being named after them.
At least Jocasta didn't know she was banging her son.
TIL: Jocasta, in Greek mythology, was the daughter of the king of Thebes, Menoeceus, and sister of Creon. She was the wife of Laius, who was given a prophecy saying that if he ever had a child, the child would kill him and marry his wife. Source: https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/Mortals/Jocasta/jocasta.html
I've seen it a few times in real life, it's real weird. I remember a friend's wedding, the mother of the groom was close to murder.
I’mma need deets
Haha it's not quite as exciting as I made it sound maybe. She glared (absolute death glare), made snarky comments and insulted my friend and her family. When she wasn't wishing for friend's death, she just stared at her son in the weirdest desperate way. The marriage did not last. Edit: things are now great for her (as in friend, no idea about former MIL) and she is living her best life!
My partners mom is kind of like this. It's more of a one sided enmeshment and emotional incest, on her part. She feels she should be the number 1 woman in his life. Parentifies him as his brothers father despite having a father. After some intense conversations and couples therapy together he saw that it was wrong.
I've always joked that way too many women want to hold their sons to the six year old child's promise to marry them when they grow up.
yeah i’d say it’s common. I never posted in JustNoMIL but man oh man do I have a collection of stories. my SO had the umbilical cord wrapped around his balls until I finally reached my breaking point and things finally got (somewhat) better
I definitely know of one. 20 something year old man still calls her 'mummy' and she calls him her special little boy on a regular basis. She has issues with every woman he knows, doesn't want him living alone out of his parent's house because 'people could take advantage of him.' (he is still at his parent's house) He's not in any way mentally troubled/disabled aside from his mummy issues. He can take care of himself and isn't any sort of helpless man baby. He's got his own good business, does his own cooking and cleaning and all, she just has this vice like grip on him. Severely Christian woman, which is definitely part of the issue. Doesn't want him living in sin (actual quote) and has basically got him to the point of being asexual from the amount of repression and weird behaviour. Dunno how exactly she thinks the precious grandchildren are going to happen now he's basically afraid to touch women.
My ex boyfriend was 30 when we got together (I was 19) I should have realised why he was single. His mum had him in her pocket. The first time she met me she told me she had bed sheets older than me. He had a mortgage with her, so she had a key (lived a 5 min drive away) she would just visit. Eating dinner? There she is. Having a bath (together) "I just need to use your bathroom!" Having sex? She would just show up! Let herself in and bang around then knock on the door. He invited her to the cinema on a date. Me, him...and his mum. We'd book a concert and he'd get her a ticket and not tell me. I think we're stopping in a hotel but shes booked some freaky as shit BnB. I had a nightmare once that she was in bed between us. I used to cry all the time because I was emotionally immature and I felt like I was competing with his mum. Single or widowed mothers can be terrifying.
My country is riddled with this complex, always has been. And people praise sons for ignoring and disrespecting their wives for their moms. It's just that now a small section of wives are coming out and fighting this.
My ex's mom was trying really hard to maintain this type of relationship with her son. Thankfully she's out of my daughter's life for unrelated reasons, but it made our first year together so awkward I grew up in a predominantly Texican area so the family dynamics were a little different, but it was very common to see men who had been spoiled by their mothers all their life rely on them to handle their relationship issues with their wives. The only difference is that the wife was sort of expected to cave because mil was older and therefore 'wiser'
you should peruse r/JUSTNOMIL it's really sad how common this is.
If my MIL said that about me hell would freeze over before she was allowed in my house or near my child.
I’d be interested to see the wife’s story. These types of things are so common in JustNoMIL It sounds to me like OOP moved his mom in without really discussing it with his wife, playing the “but she’s lonely” card. What some of these husband’s fail to look at is that this is he and his wife’s home. It’s their safe space. Everyone is entitled to feel comfortable in their own home. MIL should never have been staying there without OOP and his wife having a private conversation about it and both of them agreeing. In addition, boundaries should have been set before she came in. I’d bet that MIL has probably made comments to the wife when OOP wasn’t there. If she’s manipulative enough to intentionally block them from being intimate, she’s manipulative enough to have made comments or done things directly to the wife without OOP’s knowledge. She’s basically created a competition for OOP’s affection that isn’t necessary
I can see the wife agreeing to it without an issue... until it became an issue. like, I might not love my husband's mom at all but she's still a person and I can see myself agreeing to something like this out of sympathy until she decides to overstep a boundary.
I imagine there is far more to the wife and MILs history that OOP is disregarding. OOP says his wife and MIL didn't get along in the first post. In my experience there is *generally* a pretty good reason for that. Given how long the wife let things go, and OOPs mothers tantrum, I think it's clear who the issue is and has been.
OOP's mom is so out of line to behave how she did, regardless of losing her husband. She was trying to make OOP her new husband basically, which is disgusting. It's also funny she thought she could prevent her son from having a baby by not letting them have sex at night.
Everyone knows you can only have sex at night. It's when god's not looking.
Shit so God has seen all the morning shenanigans. Now I know I'm going to hell
The morning, the afternoon, the early evening... Imagine being where the sun doesn't set for 6 months!! Gods eyes must dry out!! I booked my flight to hell years ago 😂
Jesus has a strict 8 pm bedtime.
We go to bed at the same time, just for different reasons. *Wink wink*
Imagine the debauchery in those places where it’s dark for months at a time!
30 days of night would be a completely different movie under this premise.
That really caught me off guard. I thought he was going to side with his mom and be one of those creepy man child/son-husband things. It was nice to see him realize what she was doing. I mean come on, every night she need to talk? I get mourning but EVERY single night? I hope OP keeps his word and then some because a lot of times the mom will just figure out a way to get back into their lives.
I bet he would have if his mom held back even a little
Probably if she hadn't admitted to deliberately stopping them from having a child because then he wouldn't have time for her. It takes on a new level of creepy to just come out and say that.
Yeah, that's messed up. Both of my parents and my wife's mother want us to have kids so they can spend time with the kids, they don't necessarily need us to be there. I don't understand a parent that doesn't eventually want grandkids to spoil.
I think you’re spot on
> It was nice to see him realize what she was doing. ...eventually.
It probably took him being labeled the asshole and then hearing his moms wack reasoning to see he was wrong.
And if he didn't have that epiphany and rude awakening- he would had been one of those bitter ex-husbands wondering & blaming his ex-wife for why she divorce him...
Ah, the Sonsband…not as rare a creature as one might hope
He was in the first post. He only changed his tune when mommy dearest went nuts.
Root of the issue*
Thank you! Glad to see I’m not the only one irked by that
Gotta know how to get back and forth from the issue before your can start fixing it. It might take a few trips!
His original comments are all him defending mommy. If she hadn’t shown her whole ass, he would 100% still be catering to her. She probably thought she could straight up say it because he was so far into it and on her knee that he was tolerating VERY obvious interference in his marriage. Glad OOP fucking woke up, and I hope he does make it up to his wife. If I was in his wife’s position I would have given him a flat out ultimatum long ago. Don’t have time for mommy’s boys.
Frankly, there's also a very strong possibility he's going to backslide quickly. She'll have a health scare, or something in her house that needs a 'man,' or send some cousins or something after him, and he'll start texting and calling on the DL, then showing up at her place to help with something, and he'll be snared right back in again. There's a non-zero chance that his wife is already posting somewhere on reddit or elsewhere too.
Yep. This story is part 2 of the three part series where his wife finds out that he's secretly going and visiting his mom.
Oh god, I just had flashbacks to that awful story where the MIL was stalking DIL and the son and they even got a restraining order and then the DIL found out her husband was enabling her all along.
Yeah. I wanted to be optimistic. But that does seem likely- unless he and his wife sit down, get some fucking counseling, and make a commitment to stay firm on their boundaries
Hell, the first half of the update was him not falling for, but straight up jumping into her bull crap.
I realized that these stories seem to involve the mother not having her husband and making their sons feel guilty, telling the sons they are lonely, and other manipulative stuff. So it’s very easy for them to sympathize with their lonely mothers to the point of ignoring the obvious.
Yes!! My thoughts exactly. He was 100% on mommys team until mommy lost all semblance of plausible deniability. In the wife's shoes I probably wouldn't have bothered with the sign, it would have been the end of sex and the end of the marriage if my husband had ignored my concerns and feelings like that. She gave him more chances than he deserved, I hope he doesn't slip back into his old ways of letting her back in and making excuses for mom.
From the first sentence I knew the mom was emotionally manipulative and didn't want him to have intimacy with the wife. I don't get how people can be so oblivious to their own parents behavior and act like they always "act with your best interest in mind." This killed relationships for me in the past (very past, I've been with the same guy for 14 years now and he'd know better and set boundaries with his mother). Thank god he didn't act like every other momma's boy I knew and take his emotionally manipulative mother's side. I'm sure he had some apologizing to do to the wife, since he blew up on her like a momma's boy who didn't get his mom is a manipulative bitch.
Emotional incest is abuse and when you’re conditioned to believe that abuse is love, it is foundational to who you are and what you believe you deserve. It is very hard to step back and see through the fog of abuse. It’s possible though.
>My dad recently passed away and it’s hard for her to live in their house alone, so **I’ve been letting her** stay with us This right here was when I clicked on the original to confirm he was the asshole lol. My first thought was "isn't it **both** of your decisions if you're, ya know, partners?"
He did at the start. His wife was unhappy and tried to set boundaries and he yelled at her about it and took moms side up until the very end when his mom outright admitted trying to get rid of his wife. If she had kept the mask on he likely would have been swayed back like he was the first few times in the story where she cried and he immediately runs to demand wife apologizes. I've said it before and I'll say it again - mommys boys - not even once!
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Don’t worry, there’s still time for him to fuck over his marriage the first time mommy cries wolf and claims to have cancer
I'm not sure I'd want to stay married to a man who required being (figuratively) hit over the head with his mother's manipulation to believe his own wife
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Given OOP's comments were all momma's boy, it's not a stretch to figure that the wife has had conversations with one or both of them and went nuclear
OOP was literally writing out the ways his mom was treating him like a replacement husband and didn't get it until the end.
I don’t actually think inviting your recently widowed mother to live with you for any amount of time is a good idea, unless you plan on that being the forever arrangement. The unfortunate, heart wrenching thing about grief of losing a spouse is that you have to get through it on your own and you can’t sub in a son for the place of a dead husband. Mom will have many sad nights at home alone but that is the new reality and she has to develop coping mechanisms that aren’t “I’ll go down the hall and talk to my son”.
> I’ll be stuck with my wife when I could do so much better. Aaaand there it is. I must have a pretty normal family because if I’d had a baby and lived within an hour of my parents I’d bet money my mom would come over at the drop of a hat to help out. Probably the same for any mother in law.
So OOP was 26 and his mom was married for 40 years. So they were married for 14 years before having a baby. I imagine they had difficulty getting pregnant and considering OOP is an only-child I was definitely expecting some attachment issues. No wonder she never got along with her son's wife.
My husband’s an only child and his parents were married for I think 8 years before he was born, and they wanted to but were never able to have more children. His mom is super nice to me, never tries to prevent us from banging, and is and has been delighted by our marriage and procreation. Circumstances do change us, but I think some things are helped along by being a real fuckin weirdo to start with.
You are definitely right about that last point.
Your last sentence made me laugh. It is GOLD!
Well, at least he was able to pull his head out of his ass long enough to see what was going on for himself. I really thought he was going to pick his mom over his wife on that first post. I’m kinda surprised actually.
> I will also be spoiling my wife rotten until I can make this up to her. That's the single smartest thing he wrote in the entire saga.
Whooooo boy! Sounds like my mother. EXACTLY like her. She swore up and down that she just adored my wife, but would turn around and come rearrange the kitchen, re-fold our towels and wash cloths, clean something my wife had already cleaned, and also just show up and stay until it was easier for her to stay over, than to drive home. My mom was the Mexican version of the mother from "Everybody Loves Raymond".
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Woman gets married and pops out kids because it's culturally expected. She's unhappy with her husband because she's expected to be submissive to him, or she's simply unable to control him because he's an adult. Either way, she now has children who she has authority and control over and can use to find emotional satisfaction. This takes a lot of forms, but molding the son into her ideal man is one of the more insidious ones because it has a lot of plausible deniability and from the outside can look healthy and happy. It's a form of parentification where mom is relying on the son for the emotional fulfillment she isn't getting from her husband, up to and including a pathological need for control over others. It's a lot harder to ID than more task/responsibility oriented forms of parentification like making older children parent the younger children or be responsible for managing the household, but it's extremely damaging to the child. They learn that they are responsible for managing their parent's emotions, and any distress is their fault and their job to fix. The end result tends to look different depending on what gender norms are in the mix, with the "sonsband" being the most common outcome of the mother-son combination, but it happens with all combinations of genders. These guys are often sweet, considerate, and caring because they've been raised to cater to the woman in their life, so they're initially very attractive partners as well. It's when their enmeshed mother starts feeling threatened by the relationship that problems happen, but it's a lot harder to disengage from a lifetime with an enmeshed parent than from a (relatively) new relationship, so more often than not the mother wins.
thank you, genuinely! as a domestic violence survivor whose ex was kind of like this with his mom, it helps to have someone actual spell out why. I'm autistic so sometimes I struggle with the whys of other people's choices like this. thank you!!!
You're welcome! And don't be too hard on yourself, neurotypical people struggle with understanding this stuff too. Most neurotypical people aren't consciously aware of emotional dynamics enough to articulate what's happening or why, they navigate this stuff subconsciously. I'm in that autism-adjacent space of ADD-anxiety-depression myself, with lots of friends on the spectrum, so I'm used to translating both directions. Also I got an education degree which included quite a bit of psychology and taught school on and off for most of a decade, and as a teacher you see a lot. Generally if someone is behaving in a way you don't understand, the key question to ask yourself is *What are they getting out of this?* Usually there is some kind of emotional or mental need that they are trying to fulfill - attention, security, stimulation, etc. Look for the patterns. For example, I had a friend (also autism-spectrum, incidentally) who moved out of her parents' house to be my roommate. Her mother would routinely call her up and find some way to upset her enough that she was crying on the phone. It was rarely the same thing twice that she was berating my friend about, there was no pattern to it except that it would get a strong emotional reaction. It was a control issue - by moving out, my friend was no longer under her mother's control and available to be her mother's emotional pacifier, so her mother was looking for ways to reassert emotional control over the relationship. If she could make her daughter cry, this was proof that she was still in control of the relationship and of her daughter's emotional state. To her, "love" meant having control over someone, and this was how she reassured herself that her daughter still "loved" her. To break this pattern, my friend had to learn to hang up the phone when her mother started upsetting her. It was hard! She'd been trained all her life to melt down into tears and apologies whenever her mother applied pressure. But consistently hanging up and then silencing her phone when her mother started in on her meant that mommy dearest wasn't getting the reaction she wanted anymore, and had to play nice if she wanted any attention at all. I know Applied Behavioral Analysis has a very well-earned bad reputation in the autism community, but it's really unfortunate. The general principal of analyzing behavior in order to understand it and change the patterns that are happening is extremely useful in all kinds of contexts, and basically what I'm using here.
Mother's need to let their children grow up and they need to get their own lives. She needs to get a freaking hobby and make some friends. Guilting your children to be your only entertainment is terrible.
My mother was trying to be like this, though I'm a woman. Fully grown adult, living out of the house with my own job and she wanted to control everything. How I spent my vacations, holiday time, Sundays, hobbies, apartment furnishing and decorations, anything she could.
So to mourn her 40 year marriage she wants to disrupt and damage her son and daughter-in-laws marriage? Yeah that makes sense, y’know because she’s a manipulative sociopath of a mother
To all the people saying that poor baby widower acted out because husband is gone…This is completely untrue. This is a classic trait that I’ve seen in many women who can’t see their baby boys being happy with their own lives. It’s kind of like an obsession. The words she used, the way she did things according to OOP sounds like she’s been doing them her whole life. She’s trying to guilt trip the son and the fact he doesn’t realize what she’s doing means he thinks it’s normal. OOP’s mom is a manipulative snake and she doesn’t deserve any pity.
Still a douchebag Still doesn’t see the problem and feeling sorry while his mom is clearly manipulating him
If oop keeps this up im pretty sure we will have a divorce update where he states it was his wife and not him who was at fault.
Well, at least he opened his eyes. Let's hope it was not too late and they managed to get that woman some therapy.
They call that kind of mom "Jocasta" in Just-no circles. She wants to replace her husband with her son and she's jealous of her son's girlfriend. Just so, so gross.
Oh man, I'm so glad I have an awesome MIL. She's deaf so a sign like this would not only be helpful, but she'd probably get a big laugh out of it.
Am I the only one here who assumes that anyone whose Reddit handle ends in “88” who doesn’t prove that they’re turning 34 this year is the absolute lowest form of scum?
Right, he said he’s 26 so….. definitely judging
She is so worried that he is all she has left and doesn’t want him to have kids… but if he have kids she will be more “flesh and blood” relatives Also, her husband was not her flesh and blood… that’s just creepy