Okay here goes. My mom is a selfish, narcissistic individual, who raised me in a way that hindered me from really growing up, exploring the world separate from her, and developing my own identity and ideas.
My wife never really liked her, even before we got married or had our daughter. After our baby was born in September, my mom wanted to be a "very involved" grandmother. Her optimal visitation schedule would have looked something like spending three nights at our house every other week.
I would resonate more with my mom's feelings than with my wife's, and bargain with my wife for as much visit time for my mom as possible. My wife began to feel abandoned, neglected, and betrayed. She felt like my mom and I were a team trying to take the baby away from her.
We settled on a bi-weekly afternoon visit, and for months we suffered great stress surrounding those visits, me feeling horrible about not being able to give my mom more of the relationship that she wants with her granddaughter, and my wife feeling horrible that her husband wasn't putting her feelings first. On multiple occasions following the visits, I would tell my mom that it's not working and that it's ruining my marriage, but would ultimately invite her back and plead with my wife to be okay with her visits.
Let me tell a few of the key stories involving my mom during her visits, to give context to why my wife hates her so much. Right after the baby was born she came over and spent a couple nights here because I had to go back to work immediately and work evenings. She was supposed to be here to help my wife, etc, but she didn't do anything but hold the baby at every opportunity. She was completely tone-deaf to the expected role of a caregiver of a woman who has just given birth. She literally didn't do anything. She even asked my wife to fetch her her laptop at one point. She didn't bring her food or water in bed, didn't take care of her in any way. She honestly had no awareness that my wife needed to be taken care of in that way.
A few weeks later, my mom and older brother came to visit. We told my mom very clearly in advance that we can only accomodate visitors at this time if they help out with the housework while they're here. My mom said "of course!" She did bring us about $100 of groceries when she came, but it wasn't anything in particular that we had asked for, and a lot of it we couldn't use. Then she sat for a few hours watching the baby sleep, not asking about any housework she could do. I said "mom you've been sitting here doing nothing for an hour and a half, remember what we talked about in advance?" She got very upset and said that I'm being cold and that her feelings matter too. I said "no mom, your feelings don't matter in this post-partum context right now." At that she exploded, picked up her purse to leave, yelled at me that I'm the rudest son ever, threatened us with "you have no grandma!" and began walking down the stairs. My wife was hearing all this from the other room where she had taken the baby to breastfeed, and was seething with rage.
Inevitably though, I pleaded with my mom to stay, and even invited her back the very next day (she was in town for two days, lives about four hours away). Before coming over the following day, I tried to have a talk with her about behavior and how she needs to be more respectful of the needs and feelings of my wife in the sensitive post-partum time. She was incredibly defensive, yelled at me about being cold again, told me that my wife is cold and that she's not at all like how I said she was when we first started dating. I said "Mom I'm just trying to help you." She shot back "No! Help yourself!" She maintained that we need to work on accepting her the way she is.
Aaannnd I then invited her over to the house. Right after my wife texted me that she's not ready for visitors quite yet. I thought "but my mom will be so sad if she misses visit time with the baby," and texted my wife back "are you sure they can't come? etc" to which she reluctantly agreed that they could come then.
So you see me giving a pass to my mom for everything basically, attending to her feelings and having my primary concern be her getting what she wants.
During the visit on that second day, my mom approached my wife and said that she understood she was angry about what happened the day before, and that she would like my wife to be brutally honest with her about how she feels, to get it all out in the air. My wife said "okay, well for starters don't say that you're here to serve and help out around the house if you're not." My mom got defensive and said it was a misunderstanding and that she was serving according to her own definition. My wife pointed out that the definition of the word "serve" is to do whatever is helpful to the person being served. My mom got agitated and said "so we've established this is a misunderstanding, can we drop it?"
She then continued to ask for that brutal honesty though, so my wife wrote her a harsh email laying it all out there, even though she didn't really want to. She did it because both me and my mom asked her to. She forwarded the email to me, and I texted her something like "That's horrible! That's my mom! How could you talk to her that way!?" I then Skyped my mom when I got home to make sure she was feeling okay.
My mom never replied to my wife, saying she was too hurt by the email and that that's not what she meant by "brutal, honest communication." She wanted it to be an in person back-and-forth conversation that would allow everyone to "be heard." My mom has on occasion told me that she feels my wife owes her an apology for the way she wrote in that email, and that a reconciliation conversation between the two of them would have to consist of both of them apologizing and being seen as "equals."
Okay, so you probably have enough of an idea now. My mom is more or less incapable of really apologizing for or taking responsiblity for anything, and is very self-centered, and I was wired to defend her and act on her behalf, unconditionally.
Over the past several months the sadness and anger built up within my wife, and she would frequently tell me that she feels like I care about my mom more than her, and that she feels abandoned. At one point she "joked" that her "soul is dead." My mom never visited more than once every two weeks though, but the tension and dynamic between my wife and I was just catastrophic because of the fact that my feelings and loyalty were ultimately aligned with my mom.
Then there was the day where we finally officially diagnosed the problem, it being that I was putting my mom's feelings before hers. Upon me admitting openly to what I had been doing, and vowing to change, my wife felt so good and so relieved that in that moment she felt no animosity towards my mom, and even told me that I should apologize to my mom for the way she was kept at a distance, and that it was my treatment of my wife that my wife hated, and not my mom specifically. She said "She could even visit every week, now that I feel like you're on my side."
However, I did not go on to be on her side simply because we had diagnosed the problem. My enmeshment with my mom ran much too deep to just be killed off by the open recognition of the problem. So after the next visit my wife again hated my mom, not only because I was still coming across more aligned with my mom, but because of the fact that my wife finds my mom's behavior very annoying in many instances.
So time went on, another few months of stressful visits and stressful marriage, and my wife telling me that I'm not taking her and her feelings seriously. My feeling throughout all of this was that I had every intention of taking my wife's feelings seriously, but I felt that my mom had a right to a close relationship with her granddaughter, and so I would feel like my wife is being unreasonable for restricting the visits so much, and even unreasonable for disliking my mom so much.
And so the tension surrounding the issue grew. And grew.
Finally when our baby was six months old, I put the visits on halt until I could sort out my issue and stop putting my mom first. She didn't visit us for about a month and a half, and then we went up to my parents house for a couple days, for the first time since the baby was born. It was my older brother's 30 birthday party, and we attached a couple extra days to the trip. It having been a month and a half since the last time we saw my mom, this was my chance to solidify the progress we were making and show my wife that I can be on her side even at my parent's house.
I failed. My wife felt like I was treating her like a nanny while we were there, because the baby would wake up from a nap and I would immediately ask "can I take her to my mom now?" Etc.
During that visit, for the first time my wife admitted to herself something that she said had been brewing for a while; the feeling that she and the baby might be better off without me, and that she kind of wishes she could break up with me and look for a different guy.
I reassured her that her feelings were okay given the context, and pointed out that I had been making a lot of progress in dealing with my issues of family attachment, and she did acknowledge that I had behaved more like a solid husband during that visit than she expected. But the "can I take her?" right after the nap was the last straw for her. We got into a really bad place then. But on the last day of the visit we did manage to go into the town near my parent's house and have a relatively good time together.
We returned home, and over the next few days I again would plead with my wife to like my mom more, etc. I even asked her whether she feels like it's passive aggressive the way she agrees to a visit from my mom, but then is in a bad mood while she's here.
On that day, two weeks ago, she had had enough and said she was leaving, that I had lost her. I pleaded with her for a few hours and convinced her to stay and give me one more chance. I told her that facing the possibility of losing her like that pushed me to the point of really being able to take hold of my issues and get them sorted out, and that everything is going to be okay.
I convinced her to cancel her plans of leaving. On my way to work that evening, she texted saying that we're going to cut my mom out of our lives completely (zero contact) for a minimum of six months, and that I'm going to go to therapy. I enthusiastically agreed to both. We are now two weeks into that six-month cut-out, and I've had two sessions with a therapist, though I don't like him that much so far and I am looking for a better one.
The last couple weeks has mostly consisted of the three of us spending time together as a family and reconnecting. My wife and I have cracked up laughing together multiple times in the past few days, something that hadn't really happened in months before that.
I have apologized profusely over and over again for the way I had been putting my mom's feelings before hers. My wife says "I don't need apologies. I need you to fix your issue."
I fully understand how horrible and unacceptable my behavior was, and how completely not okay it was for me to be resonating more with my mom than with my wife. As I said at the beginning, I was raised to be my mom's solider. She engaged to some extent in a form of emotional abuse known as parentification in the way she brought up me and my brothers. We were her confidants, her closest friends and emotional supports. She needed us. She used us for her own emotional fulfillment and inadvertantly trained us to be fine tuned to her feelings and needs.
I was honestly enthusiastic about the six-month ban idea. The thought of being free of my mom for that much time and being able to enjoy the spring and summer with my family and reconnect, was a beautiful thought. I've been telling my wife that six months should be just the minimum, and that it may very well be longer if I don't feel confident that I have really had conclusive, successful therapy regarding the emotional attachment with my mom. And I have also told her that we will not be inviting my mom over again until/unless my wife is comfortable with it, whenever that may be.
So, my title was "Need thoughts on difficult situation." The difficult situation at this point is us moving forward together as a family. My wife is very hurt by all those months of me putting my mom's feelings first. She's hurt and bewildered by the fact that it took threats of divorce to get me to finally take this seriously. But she does also understand the way I was brought up and understands the power of that emotional enmeshment.
At this point her concern is that I'll never really be able to fix the issue, and I believe that is the main thing that's making her skeptical about her ability to grow to trust me again. At this point she doesn't believe I'll make it six months without talking to my mom, and she feels that even if I do, that then I'll say "okay I've showed you that I'm on your side, now my mom should be able to come over every two weeks." I feel very confident about the six months and definitely will not be contacting my mom at all, and I also have no such expectations for after the six months are over. I've told my wife that, and that makes her feel better. But she doesn't trust me right now, so she doesn't fully believe anything I say.
As I said, we've been having really good times together the last few days, and obviously the fact that this six-month ban is in place means that each day that passes helps my wife feel a little bit more confident about our future, but the pain of all those months is still there, and she doesn't think it will go away quickly.
I am very clear on everything at this point. I am putting my wife's feelings first, I'm being really sweet to her on a daily basis, I'm getting therapy, and I'm really happy at the thought of us moving forward together for the next several months with my mom completely out of the picture. At this point my wife says that once everything is sorted out properly, that visits from my mom once a month (for 4 or 5 hours each) are what she would be comfortable with, assuming she can behave respectfully, and assuming that my wife feels like I'm more a husband than a son during the visits.
So my main personal question is, should I have hope that I can really sort out this issue through therapy, and "grow up" and have an adult-to-adult relationship with my mom? Has anyone been able to successfully do that with my kind of background? Does my clarity and commitment at this point indicate that I will be capable of achieving this goal?
And then the other general question is, how do we most effecitvely move forward together at this point? My wife does want to feel closer to me again and rebuild trust, and I'm doing everything I can at this point. My mom is out of the picture completely, and we're having a great time together as a family on a daily basis. How do I better help my wife come back to me? She doesn't trust me right now, but she wants to. What do we do? Given everything, is there hope for her to feel close and trusting and loving towards me again in the future?
Sorry for the length! I really did try to summarize things as much as possible... Your thoughts are immensely appreciated!