Today, Lisa of Privilege returns, talking about HOW to deal with, what shall we call it? A delicate situation with your Mother In Law. Yesterday she wrote about possible reasons, from the mother end of the spectrum, why said delicate situation might exist. If you haven't read that yet, you might want to catch up first. Lisa talks about a lot of important things here - like the protecting of the baby family (this takes practice, and will probably be sloppy at first, but will pay dividends for years. Imagine if it were a baby and not a wedding that you were discussing. Exactly). Lisa talks about all this from the perspective of wedding planning, but I think what she says is equally useful for those of us who are (blessedly) done with the wedding circus. Now, onwards to the ever fabulous Lisa (When is her book of essays and advice coming out, anyway? Achem.)

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B.

So. What to do, as a planning bride faced with a mother-in-law? A bride wrestling with her own family of origin, her own identity as represented by her vintage wedding dress, to say nothing of, um, a new marriage? In times of stress and high emotion, I resort to extreme rationality.

Here are some assumptions.

1.    The most important thing is your relationship with your partner. He or she should also believe this.
2.    You do want to facilitate as much happiness for your mother-in-law as possible.
3.    You are willing to approach this project with your best, most rational self in place.

Of course, you might wonder, why facilitate happiness for your MIL? Other than the general rule of Be Nice Whenever Possible? Because. You want: a) to  thank her for spilling her blood giving birth to your spouse b) to smooth the way for a good future relationship. Some day she might be the grandmother to your kids. Good grandmothers are invaluable, and worth any reasonable investment that practical wedding planning can provide. She will always be the mother of your spouse. And mothers run deep.

Here are a few recommendations.

1.    Before you begin to involve any extended family in planning, cloister yourself with your intended.
2.    Agree on 2-3 non-negotiable values for your wedding. (These might change, but the discussion will set necessary context.)
3.    Agree on 2-3 details that you both think you really care about. (Again, things change, a place to start is good.)
4.    Agree on with what strings you are willing to accept any money from your partner's parents, and on the best way to communicate this. (Only if it's completely yours to do with as you will? Willing to have discussions as long as you get the final call? Amenable to concessions? Remember, we've spent a lot of money on your spouse over the years and we always used to get a say in how it was spent.)
5.    Now, and only now, open up the phone lines.

Because if you are going to have mother-in-law issues, or mother issues for that matter, a united front is useful. In fact, a united front will be not only useful, but devastatingly important for your entire marriage. And united rarely means floating blissfully in agreement. It usually means bashing it out, at one point, or another, or many.

Here are the details. The juicy part, if you will.

Imagine the easy mothers-in-law. Because clearly some people are more evolved and more adult than others. If you've got an adult for a mother-in-law, defined as one who puts her love for her child over the rest of her personal agenda, proceed as you would in any job with a matrixed management structure. Continue reading Ask Meg (and she’ll ask someone else): Mothers-In-Law, Part II

Often, I get requests for posts on excellent questions, to which I have no answers. One of those excellent questions, which keeps coming up over and over, is the question of the Mother-In-Law. The most common variant of the question I here is this, "Back when we were just dating, I had a good relationship with my mother-in-law. She was nice, we were friendly, things were good. Then we got engaged, and sweet-baby-jesus-what-happened?" Sometimes the problem is that your mother-in-law became overtly, um, crazy, and started with the screaming and the bossing and the crying and the throwing things. More often the problem is that the relationship just became tense. Super tense. Either way, the question is "WHY?" followed by a plaintive, "How do I fix it?"

Since you know, I've only been a wedding graduate for 10 months now, and I've never been a mother.... I have no idea. So. Because it was a really good question, I thought really hard about who might have a really good answer. And I decided that LPC, who writes over at Privilege, was definitely the ticket. LPC is fantastic (like, real life fantastic, she gets drinks with me and gives me advice regularly) LPC's kids are in, and just out, of college, and she's not in danger of becoming a mother-in-law any time soon. But in my head, that made her perfect. She was a neutral party. She could look on both sides of the fence, say "Hum" very thoughtfully, and then write something honest and helpful. Well, she outdid herself. So the Mother-In-Law post comes to you in two parts. Today is Why, tomorrow is How.

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A.

If you are having trouble with your mother-in-law, as you plan your wedding, this is not why.

These are my children almost 20 years ago, and this picture can make me cry in 90 seconds. Your mother-in-law has one just like this, somewhere, of your spouse-to-be. Maybe without the hats. And it wails like a banshee in her heart. This wailing is hard to understand in the non-faerie world in which we live, but it's real, to moms.

People will pretend mothers-in-laws-to-be are bad about your wedding because our banshees are wailing, because we love our children and you are taking them. That is hogwash. Hogwash.

Well, on second thought, sometimes we're bad because of banshees. But only when we first meet you. When our children tell us they are marrying you, we may think you won't take care of these people who have left their baby selves in our hearts. At those moments, we might act up. But once we decide that 1) you are the best person for our child, or 2) you aren't but we can't make their choices for them, our love for our kids will actually make us behave well. As you plan your wedding, and whenever good behavior is required. Continue reading Ask Meg (and she’ll ask someone else): Mother-In-Laws, Part I