Monster-in-law needs to be dressed down

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DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: If I could, I’d fire my mother-in-law across the room this Thanksgiving dinner. She’s a drunk and has a foul mouth. She also thinks she owns her son. She calls him day and night to wait on her — home repairs, yard work, fixing her car — when she has all the money in the world to get things fixed by a professional.

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Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/09/2018 (2930 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

DEAR MISS LONELYHEARTS: If I could, I’d fire my mother-in-law across the room this Thanksgiving dinner. She’s a drunk and has a foul mouth. She also thinks she owns her son. She calls him day and night to wait on her — home repairs, yard work, fixing her car — when she has all the money in the world to get things fixed by a professional.

She’s so old he’s afraid not to answer her in case she’s dying, and then it would be on my husband’s conscience that he ignored her last cry for help. She refuses a personal monitoring service where she’d have to wear a pendant “like a cowbell around her neck.” And she uses the F-word around our teenage children too, who find her alarming and disgusting. They don’t know what a loving, sober grandmother who speaks nicely would be like.

I don’t want to divorce my wonderful husband to get rid of his mother, and I don’t like wishing she was dead, either. One of the reasons my husband married me is because I’m a nice person who speaks kindly to everyone. But now, I can’t stand that woman and she is bringing out the worst in me.

Thanksgiving is coming and I’m dreading it. What do you suggest I do? She has to be one of the invited guests and she will definitely come. She always does and arrives half cut. The kids roll their eyes and head for their computers. They call her “Dad’s mom,” not Grandma, and believe me I’m… 

— Not Her “Daughter-in-Law,” Winnipeg

Dear Not: Make this her last chance at a family dinner and then count on her messing up. If she starts to spoil dinner with her drunkenness and vulgarity, it’s her last invitation. Your husband can take her out privately the day before for future dinners, if he wants.

Now here’s your part in this: a week before dinner, call your mother-in-law on the phone and warn her of your expectations. There’s a chance she’ll tell you where to stuff it — and that’s just great! Then you’ll even get out of hosting her for this last-chance dinner. Tell her if she starts to spoil one more family get-together, you’re sending her home in a taxi.  

 

Miss Lonelyhearts

Miss Lonelyhearts
Advice Columnist

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