CALLING HOME with Whitney Goodman, LMFT - Toxic Mother-In-Law Or Brainwashing Daughter In-Law? with Janelle Marie

Episode Date: October 29, 2024

I invited Janelle (@heyjanellemarie) from TikTok to the podcast this week. I have watched every single one of her toxic mother-in-law videos, and I've been dying to speak with her. In this episode, Janelle discusses the challenges of navigating relationships with mothers-in-law and the impact it has on marriages. She shares her personal experiences and observations as a content creator on this topic. Our conversation explores common complaints from daughter-in-laws, such as postpartum issues and misalignment in marriages. Janelle also addresses the role of partners in managing these relationships and the cultural differences that can contribute to conflicts. The discussion highlights the need for boundaries and open communication to maintain healthy relationships with in-laws. We explore the challenges and dynamics of the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law relationship, the shift in roles and expectations when a woman becomes a wife and mother, and how this can strain the relationship with her mother-in-law. Mothers-in-law, you can learn a lot from this episode (you, too, sons). And Daughters-in-law, I think this episode will leave you feeling heard, understood, and a little bit less crazy. Chapters 00:00 Introduction and Background 10:19 Common Complaints from Daughter-in-Laws 25:08 Challenging Reconciliation 30:57 Setting Boundaries for Children 44:12 Surrounding Yourself with Honest Feedback Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When you're with Amex Platinum, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. Hey, guys, welcome back to calling home. Today we have an interview episode with Janelle. Janelle is someone that I found on TikTok because she does these really great, like, toxic

mother-in-law spoof videos. And because we've talked about in-law relationships, a lot at Calling Home, we have an entire month on the website for maybe five weeks of content dedicated to navigating in-law relationships. relationships, if you want to check that out. I thought she would be a great person to come on. Her goal with her account, she's not a therapist, she's just somebody that really started talking about this and it grew like wildfire and you'll hear her tell more of her story in the episode. But she is on a mission to make us all better mother-in-laws. And as a mother of sons, I am trying to learn for one day eventually becoming a mother-in-law myself. So with that

Not further ado, let's welcome Janelle to The Calling On Podcast. All right. So, you know, the first thing I wanted to ask you is, like, why start talking about this topic on the internet? This isn't your full-time job, correct? No, I work full-time in addition to this. Yeah, I knew you were going to ask me this. I had listened to a few of your, well, I've listened to all your episodes, but in preparation for this, I listened to. to your episode with Abby just while I was getting ready. And I was listening to how she responded to that question. And I knew you're going to ask me this. So sort of by chance, I suppose, I had started posting on TikTok. And there were a few trending sounds that I couldn't help,

but they were just so applicable to the concept of a toxic mother-in-law. And so I went for it, and I posted a couple of those, and they really took off. And it sort of gave me pause. And it sort of gave me pause. And I definitely with a business background and communications background, I thought about it. And I'm like, okay, what do I want to do here? And I landed on, there just wasn't anyone talking about from what I could find. There wasn't anyone talking about what it feels like to have a challenging relationship with your mother-in-law in a non-clinical way. And knowing that for all intents and purposes, my relationship, with my mother-in-law had sort of run its course and I talked about it with my husband and I just

felt like this is something that I feel like I can give a voice to and approach from all sorts of and I'm still sort of feeling out all the different ways I want to look at it but yeah I just I really felt like there was an under-representation in the space of talking about making light of relatability as it pertains to having a challenging relationship with your mother-in-law and And so I just sort of went for it. And yeah, I cannot tell you how unbelievably rewarding and empowering it's been as I've gone through this journey over the past year or so. Yeah, that's amazing.

And I think you can see that in your content, right? That you like get it and you're trying to be very, I find what you post to be very like diplomatic and understanding of the nuances of these relationships, but also in because you're not a clinician, you know, coming at it also from like this funny, relatable, understandable way that is an important part of all this discourse. Because I think as a therapist, you know, I hear a lot about in-laws. Like, it's definitely the thing that I get asked to talk about most of the time, you know. Yeah.

And whenever I was watching a bunch of your videos again this morning, like prepping for this and just seeing if there's anything new I wanted to see. And your comment section looks a lot like mine sometimes. A lot of the same characters showing up. And I was like, wow, she really gets how this feels. And I'm wondering, like, why you think people are so triggered by what you post. Yeah. So I'm going to answer it from truly my perspective, perhaps not as diplomatically as I normally

try to sometimes you know like sometimes I go for it with my content you know I really take a stance on it and sometimes I pay for it and usually it I know the polarizing stuff goes viral so but anyways my why I think it's so triggering is because I think I mean I feel like it's probably like this in any relationship dynamic but it's one of those ones where for some reason people have just true blinders on to anything other than what their lived experiences and their circumstances and that becomes their reality. And so it's so having lived through it, it's so all consuming when you're going through it from both ends, I imagine, both sides of the, and even like the tertiary side, which is the sister-in-law dynamic as well, that I think, I think people find it so triggering

because if you've lived it, it's been such a big part of your life and your marriage for a period of time or in an ongoing way. And if you're close to someone who's gone through it, you've seen how much it's impacted them. And then the other side, the side of the of the in-law or the parent in the dynamic, they also feel like their experience is the truth and perhaps it is. And so they feel completely misunderstood or they feel like whatever they've done, they should have, it should have gone their way, you know? And so I think when they see my content and what I'm repeating are the sentiments that perhaps their child or their daughter-in-law has said before and they know what they feel to be the truth or the reality in the situation, they can't help but comment. They can't

help but say, yeah, but what about this? Yeah, but that's like, yeah, it's so true. I also just think it's one of those, I think it's also so triggering and the comment section goes the way that it goes because so many of these relationship, so many times where the in-law, the idea of having a challenging relationship with your in-laws comes to a head is during key life milestones, is during postpartum, is during planning a wedding, is during some big shift in the family for whatever reason. And so that milestone event already lives in its own realm in terms of its significance to you. And so when you add on the added externality pressure that you experienced, whether it was you became a grandparent and that didn't go how you thought it was going to go or you became a mother and that didn't go how you wanted it to go because of how someone else was making you feel. truly it lives with you forever like it's and so I think that's additionally why it's so

triggering for people in my content yeah it's it's so true and you don't get to do those moments over again right like you don't get the birth of your first child back like yeah if you have more children you get to experience that again but at that point if something went wrong now you're playing catch up like trying to make the next situation go well and that's on the the daughter-in-law and the mother-in-law side, right, that I think a lot of people have these really entrenched expectations, like you said, about what it's going to look like when I become a grandmother. I'm going to be in the delivery room. And then I'm going to be there when you bring the baby home and I'm going to. And when those things don't go as plan, it's like you're the

villain because you're not allowing me to have my dream, you know, that I was supposed to get. which brings me, you know, to my next question of, like, I think you have such a unique view of this. Like, what are the top things that you hear from daughter-in-laws, especially that their mother-in-laws are doing? The most routine complaints, yeah. So, I mean, I definitely approach my content from a, like, generally speaking, my content is mainly for women who are in heterosexual relationships. And it's, it's the husband's mom or the boyfriend's mom. who's where the issues lie primarily. I definitely have followers and people I've worked with who it's their own mom,

but that's definitely less so for my particular content. Heavy-hitting topics. So there's a ton of postpartum, ton of postpartum. Okay. I would say an overarching theme that I've extracted from the content or from the submissions that people send to me is mothers-in-law expecting their daughter-in-law, to kind of make up the gaps between like the communication gap or the relationship gap that exists with their son. And I think that causes a lot of frustration for daughters-in-law because the mother-in-law is frustrated at the daughter-in-law for not using her communication skills to benefit the relationship between her and her son when the mother-in-law isn't being kind to the daughter-in-law.

And so, and that you see that a ton in my comments as same in your comments, where there seems to just be this expectation of because someone is your husband's mom, you should on a fundamental level, want to manufacture, facilitate, perpetuate that relationship between her and her son or her and your grandchildren, even if she hasn't been very kind to you. And I think that that's, I don't know if it's generational per se, but I think that's definitely something that, um, women are saying no thanks to and yeah the other unfortunate kind of like common theme is is a misalignment in the marriage and so that one's one that I've I've tried to just approach again not being a clinician I've tried to just approach from my own lived experience and that's where the daughter-in-law is in a position where she can't her husband doesn't understand why she's unwilling to have a relationship with this person who's been really unkind to her or the husband doesn't understand why the daughter-in-law isn't willing to accept,

okay, great, that she's always been this way, but that's not something that works for me. I'm not going to have someone, whether it's the passive-aggressive remarks or the showing up at their house unannounced or the comments on parenting, comments on how she keeps her house, which then again really starts to lean into the whole gender norms thing, which again I think the bulk of my followers are also saying like no like it's not if you come over in my house isn't like you think it should be why is that just my fault like your son lives here yeah so I think that's sort of the the misalignment in the marriage and I've said that before on my content before where a lot of you have a mother-in-law issue but you also have a marriage issue

and I don't mean to joke about that because I know it's not funny and it's also really really really tough for the women who are living it for sure, but it's, that's also a tough pill to swallow to realize that your mother-in-law isn't doing everything right here, but it's also not, it's not her job to be defending your best interests necessarily. It's, it's your husbands, it's your partners, and you guys got to get on the same page there. In my opinion. Yeah, yeah, that's, you know, that's, that's leading us into something that I did want to talk about, you know, is like, what role do the partners play in all of this? You know, like, I think, I mean, a big reason I've been able to really lean into this content and go for it is because I have just total complete, not even support cheerleading from my husband.

And a lot of women don't have, never mind putting themselves on the internet, but a lot of women don't have that. And they're caught in this rock, hard place situation when it comes to their in-laws. and their husband and they're torn. They really want to support their husband and they want him to feel like he can have a relationship with the people in his life that he wants to have a relationship with. But they're still very hurt. They're very hurt that they have to allow, like let their children see someone who has been openly disrespectful to them or very disrespectful about them or to them behind their backs. And so in my opinion, like, I wouldn't be able to exist in a relationship where I,

was married to someone who was allowing anyone, never mind their mother, say unkind things about me. And, you know, and I think that that's what it comes down to. For some reason, so I've gathered, a ton of husbands, they wouldn't let a stranger at the bar say something about their wife or they wouldn't stand for, you know, a friend's girlfriend or a friend saying something about their wife, but they'll let their mother say it. And I think that that's, again, I'm not a clinician. I think that that's probably, if I were to guess, I think that that's likely a bigger issue to tackle than just simply a single conversation. I think it's, although it feels like it should be really simple, this person is someone that you've chosen to spend your life with or the mother of

your children, you love them more than anything in the world. Why are you unable to say something when your mom or dad says something, or your sister says something unkind to her? It should be really simple. It should be very just black and white. And unfortunately, it's not a lot of the time. And that's where I really do encourage people and think people need to fight for their marriage in the form of working with a professional to kind of unpack why that's happening. Yeah, I totally agree with your analysis on that because I do think it is really a marriage issue when you're saying like only this person can treat you poorly and I am not going to stand up to them. I'm not going to set boundaries. And something that I've found like through my work is

that a lot of those partners that are unable or unwilling to do that are really enmeshed with their mothers in a way where they're kind of serving as like a surrogate spouse to them. And they're trying to please both sides because that's what they've always done, particularly sons with their mothers when they have fathers who are emotionally absent or unavailable or gone a lot or a single parent, where they get put into this role for their whole life of like, I'm there to take care of my mom, emotionally, physically, financially, whatever it is. And when you get a wife who's also expecting that from you, it makes things very complicated. And I think if those partners are not empowered to like separate from the family in some way and the way that makes sense for them,

it's hard to sustain a marriage. It's hard to like align with your partner. Yeah. And the reason I think that's so interesting and that you say that because I think that's totally true, I've also still very much when I'm more so doing like more casual content on my Instagram stories and people will ask me about what do I think about a husband who's, you know, expected to go help his mom with all of these sorts of things. To me, I always come back to like whatever feels good for you. There's a lot of things that I think people feel like they need to say no to from a principled perspective. And sometimes they should. But when you're talking about that, I'm right away thinking of my own parents actually. And I don't know that necessarily

my dad was enmeshed with his mom. But my grandma was was on her own. My grandpa wasn't in the picture anymore. And she was living on her own. And my dad was the oldest son. So he definitely helped her with a lot of things. And it was never, ever something I felt tension between my parents. And even when I've reflected with my mom, especially now with the content I make. And I've asked her about that. I'm like, did that ever bug you? And dad would like go help grandma with stuff. And she said, no, grandma was always nice to me. And I think that's a piece, right? It's there, there's probably a lot of homeostasis and relationships that are fine until they're not. And they become not fine when the the emmeshment or the relationship that probably should be cutting ties or maybe

require should have a bit more distance that mother is then making comments about the becomes unkind to the daughter-in-law or judgmental about the daughter-in-law and then all of a sudden everything that's like oh this is always how it was this is like why is this such a big deal i've always been like this with my mom isn't okay anymore because no the mother is essentially the same type of figure as any other female figure who would be judging or putting negative pressure on your relationship, like an ex-girlfriend almost, right? You wouldn't want your husband's ex-girlfriend who's making all these rude comments about you. You wouldn't, you know, and that's not to say that the mothers are like ex-girlfriends,

but, you know, it's like, it's maybe, it's sometimes, and that's why I think there's so much confusion sometimes, especially for the husbands when they're like, this was fine. Why is this not fine anymore? And it's like, well, because your mom thought that she should come to my house after I just had a baby, and sit on my couch and make all sorts of comments about my parenting and my postpartum body and expect me to wait on her hand and foot. And that made me uncomfortable. And where do we go from here? And then everyone's at a loss and it becomes this tension that's really hard I've gathered to move through. Yeah. Yeah. I think the point you're making about a measurement is so important

because the meshment's very, like, culturally dependent, you know, different ethnicities, religions, cultures have different degrees of what they would consider to feel like being emmished. And I think that's also what gets tricky when you marry someone from a very different background than you who might have different standards of that. But what you're pointing out is that, like, it's all about how it feels, you know, and what the impact is. It's not, necessarily the fact pattern because they're mother-in-laws or in-laws who live with their, you know, with the adult children and they're all together and it feels good for them. We can't look at that and say, that's enmeshed because they're having all this constant contact.

It's more about like, are you losing yourself and your marriage and your ability to like live a life that you also want to live as being part of that dynamic? And I think that's really important and how the person treats you is ultimately a fundamental piece of that that's going to make you make certain decisions. Completely. And I do think that's kind of back to the why this is so triggering or why the comment sections look like they do. And it still speaks to that point of a person's reality is in these relationships is like it's so challenging for them to peel back their lenses on the situation. So I do see that's where so much discourse happens in the comments is people. comment, see my content and comment things like, I had my mother-in-law with me two days after birth and it was, it was the best. And people will comment back and say, but she's probably not a jerk to you. Like, that's, like, do you not see that? Like, she's probably not unkind and

judgmental to you. And then, then there's also the, like, sometimes my content ends on the side of TikTok or on Instagram where there are a ton of people who are able to say, your content just makes me so grateful for my mother-in-law or I feel so bad for the way and I'm like good this is where I would like to live let's stay here yeah but those those people you see that they're able to like hold both at the same time of like my mother-in-law isn't like this and I understand that other peoples might be you know and that when someone is talking about something and it's not consistent with your experience it can still exist I think the flip side though is like you see a lot of older women. And I understand this sentiment of like, I did this and so you should have to do it

too. And there's a huge gap, I think, between like, you know, millennial gen Z women that are having children and maybe women from the boomer generation, things have changed so rapidly, you know, over that course of time that I'm wondering, like, is that something that you see a lot of of like, well, I did this, and so you should do it too. You should have your mother, your mother-in-law there in the delivery room because that's what we did when I had my baby. Yeah. Bank more on course when you switch to a Scotia Bank banking package.

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and this is, again, just like my personal take on it. So when an interesting perhaps fact is when I have worked with people one-on-one, which I'm not doing so much of anymore, having gone back to work, I haven't had a single client that wasn't a professional. I haven't had a single female client. who wasn't a professional. And I think, like, that's not to say that women who aren't, aren't experiencing this as well. I think that it was just so interesting, as I observed, like, client after client and session after session, that the impact I, or the feeling I was having, I guess, is, and what I was observing, is that in general, women are meeting their partner or choosing to become married, have children with their partner later than perhaps our parents' generation did.

And so, in my opinion, that speaks to a lot of things. That speaks to how you feel about yourself, how you feel about what you're comfortable with, and also what your expectations are for other adult relationships that exist in your life. And so you're meeting your mother-in-law, yes, as your partner's mother, but you're also meeting your mother-in-law as just another adult that you're going to get to know now, who is an important person to your husband or is a person in their immediate family, family of origin, and you're going to get to know them now. And so when the getting to know them phase includes all of these implicit expectations

all of a sudden, especially to women who are, you know, existing in a, in the workplace and or existing in all these other roles they have in their life, in addition to this one, They're like, what the heck? Like, how about we organically figure out what this relationship looks like for what works for both of us? That's a comment you see on my content. Anytime I kind of go for it in an aggressive way, relationships are a two-way street. Relationships are a two-way street.

And what I've observed from my followers definitely is that what that two-way street looks like. It seems as though, and I think that's more so speaking to your question about the generational gaps, I think previously it was either just expected that you just tolerated whatever the dynamic was with your mother-in-law, forever and ever, amen. Or you really took on a role of wanting to impress your mother-in-law. And I think that's where so much of this pain and frustration comes from daughters-in-law is they wanted to do that. They wanted to have a good relationship with their mother-in-law. But that doesn't mean that they're going to put themselves in positions continually, repeatedly where they're hurt or where they're made to feel uncomfortable or their children.

Something's happening with their children that they don't feel good about. And so I think that that's a challenging thing to reconcile when you know you wanted this to be good. You wanted this to be good and healthy, and it's not anymore. And you're definitely made to be the villain. And at some point, it's a really long, hard road to just be okay being the villain. And it gets really tiring, trying to decide if it's worth it to prove that you're not. Because often proving that you're not the villain in a lot of these dynamics means really, really compromising on something that is important to you or makes you feel comfortable.

And it's a... That's such an interesting perspective that I hadn't really thought of. is like the age of when you are interacting with your mother-in-law and what your status is. I can imagine that if you are, you know, a girl who gets married or a person who gets married at 21 and you don't have a lot of experience out in the world, maybe you're not working, you may look to your mother-in-law for more guidance or take their authority in a different way. Then if you're 33 years old and you've been working at a law firm and you have all this independence and confidence under your belts, that I imagine that really impacts how people

present in these relationships. Completely. The other note, and I think it lends itself more to the women, because there's definitely people who are still married to their high school sweetheart, of course. I think the mother-in-law dynamic that I see referenced a lot in my DMs or when people are commenting for women who more so meet their mother-in-law in that college-age high school sweetheart have known their mother-in-law they're from for a long time is the mother-in-law wasn't ready for the shift that was potentially going to happen when they went from a girlfriend to wife right so this is a dynamic where for a long time they were perhaps spending time with their boyfriend at the time in his parents home right like like kids or young people do right they

they go to their in-law's house and it's their house and their rules in terms of like what the conduct's going to look like or what time spent. And it's definitely still a maternal and child dynamic. So even if there's ever been frustrations, it's easier perhaps for yourself as the daughter and law, the daughter-in-law figure, as the girlfriend, to be okay with them because you're like, well, like, you're still in that child parent dynamic. And that child parent dynamic doesn't go away just because you get married. But there's definitely a shift, right?

when you have your own home or you're in a marriage and women who are getting married know that. But I think, unfortunately, for a lot of mothers-in-law, they still view that girl as, as her son's 15-year-old girlfriend, you know, going to make out in the basement downstairs. And the shift is, and it's like, no, you can't speak to me like that anymore. Like, this is my home that we are married. These are my children. Like, I'm not going to, you know, you used to be. able to say things like us to us like that or tell us what to do or where to be we were kids then we're not anymore and so i see i see that more so i see that a ton in the when i've asked people

pulled them on when did the relationship shift a ton of people said everything was fine until we got married or everything was fine until we had kids which i know i already referenced but i think that sometimes why that happens is there has been a longstanding history of a good relationship and that's where I feel like my background in communication comes in handy where it's evident that there's a gap in what the communication expectations were. And I think the jury will forever be out on whose responsibility it is to sort of set the stand, like, you know, get the communication out on the right foot. Yeah.

You're so right about that. I think for me, like both personally and professionally, anecdotally, the, the, the children piece has been the biggest shift. And I think that speaks to exactly what you're saying, that like once you have a child and you become the parents of that child, you step into this position of authority that the in-laws or even your parents no longer really have. Right. And there can be this jockeying for power and control over like, well, I want to have an influence over those children. and I want to be able to say what should be done, how it should be done, and it really might be the first time for a lot of these parents that they did not have control or influence over the situation. Yeah, I think that that's also a common comment or response is the accusation that the daughter-in-law in particular is using her children as a means to gain power in the dynamic to manipulate the in-law.

laws that, oh, well, they're using their children as pawns, using, weaponizing the children. And I truly don't, I don't think that that's what anyone wants to do. I think it comes down to, for a lot of women, they, they say, if you're not kind to me, you're not, I don't trust you with my children. I don't want you with my children. Or they, they set rules or boundaries around what it's going to look like to interact with their young babies or their newborns. And like, to be, it's just so, and that's why I make the content from the lens that I do, because to me, it's just so silly to think that, like, yes, a new mom doesn't want you to kiss her newborn baby's face because she wants you to feel sad, because she wants you to feel grouchy. Like, in what world

does that make sense? Right. Right. I, you know, I think, like, that's when people really, like, over-emphasize, like, how much pathology there is among people that people are, like, manipulative to this degree where they are like diabolical and like planning a lot of this stuff most people are really just thinking about themselves you know of course we have pathology like on these extremes where there are going to be people that have personality disorders and all this stuff but a lot of the time the way this information is getting interpreted is so like in the lens of like it's all about me and that's what's making it look this way like making it look crazy but I I I think people don't understand, like, how valuable a grandparent is, even just from, let's talk

about it from like a monetary perspective. If you don't have healthy grandparents in your life who can help you with your children, you are likely having to outsource all that labor to paid help, right? Like, even just from that perspective, it's really a big risk for a daughter-in-law to say, I want to eliminate all of these loving, wonderful people from my child's life. life who can help me simply because I'm spiteful and I want to hurt them. It just feels, it feels extreme to me. I know it, I know it happens on a small scale, right? But it seems extreme. Yeah. Like I, I don't think I have a single, like on a weekly basis, I'll do a series on my Instagram called WTF Wednesday where I'll ask a question and people will comment back. And so

sometimes I'll do confessions instead. And I have had a few people send it. really, really funny, like, things that they have done out of pettiness or spite to their in-laws, it never has to do with their children. It never has to do with their children. It always has to do with, like, I poured nail polish remover and my mother-in-law's plants, so her plant would die. You know, but, like, it's never to do with their children. Like, and I feel like when people are making that, taking that stance or approaching it that way, where women are using their children as leverage to get what they want out of this relationship. or using it as a power chip or whatever.

And that's why it's so hurtful when those accusations come through to the daughter-in-law, because first of all, you're likely calling her daughter-in-law something she's not in terms of who she is as a person, but you're also calling her something as a mother, which is arguably more insulting, right? You're insinuating that she would be doing something to intentionally harm her child, be, in this case being like the lack of access to an otherwise good or healthy relationship because she's spiteful to you? There's not, you know, mothers aren't doing that. It's, it's hurtful when, it's hurtful when you're called a manipulative bitch. It's hurtful when you're called

a whatever, but it's even more hurtful when your role as a mom is questioned because, yeah, it's, it's never mind the, the labor and the monetary piece. It's also just, obviously, Obviously, as mothers, we want all the love for our children, but I don't think... It's a lot of work to be so spiteful towards someone. Like, you have to really be committed. Like, I've just feel too lazy for that. Summer's here, and you can now get almost anything you need for your sunny days, delivered with Uber Eats. What do we mean by almost?

Well, you can't get a well-groom lawn delivered, but you can get a chicken parmesan delivered. A cabana? That's a no, but a banana, that's a yes. A nice tan, sorry, nope, but a box fan, happily yes. A day of sunshine, no. A box of fine wines? Yes. Uber Eats can definitely get you that. Get almost, almost anything delivered with Uber Eats. Order now. Alcohol and select markets. Product availability may vary by Regency app for details. It's a lot. Like, yeah, I think that like it's the, I would say it's also just like the misalignment or the disappointment that comes from what, a lot of mothers-in-law or mothers of sons expected their role to look like as a grandparent, not looking how they thought it was going to look, a lot of times rather than sort of approaching that head-on and looking at it from all the different ways they could look

at it, right? What did your relationship look like with your child, period, before the girlfriend even came along? What did, you know, all the ways you can look at that relationship. Sometimes I think in the absence of wanting to do that work because it's going to hurt, it's easier to just say that, like, oh, the daughter-in-law is the mastermind in this whole chess game that is me not seeing my grandchildren as much as I wanted to see them. Right, right, yeah. So I am a mother of sons. And I'm wondering if you had to tell me like, I don't know, two or three things. that you have learned from all these conversations you had that you think are very important for me or someone like me to employ with my future in-laws, what would those be?

You know, great question. Another comment I get a lot of the time is that I don't know what I'm talking about because my children are babies. I don't know. I don't know what I'm talking about because you'll see when your kids grow up because I also have a son. And I would say the really acute understanding that your child's partner might not be whatever we all, I think, have, especially as our children are going to grow up, we all probably have an idea of what we think our relationship is going to look like with our child or what kind of person our child is going to end up with. And as often as you can kind of gut checking that and just saying like, this is.

this is completely fabricated in my own mind. My child is a separate person. And so that would be number one is just consistent self-awareness and really catching yourself on that. Number two would just be always keeping whatever your goal is out of that relationship with your adult child in the forefront of your mind. And even though there may be and likely will be times, whether your mother of sons or daughters, but using sons as an example, right? That's the common dynamic is or what is remarked all the time is that your son is going to go off and marry someone who's very close with her own mom and you'll never see him again. And I think that, you know, that isn't always the case. But regardless, there might be times where us, when our sons get

older, we're a little bit like, oh, you know, it would have been nice to have that experience. But keeping your goals in the forefront, which is what's my goal? My goal is to have a relationship with my adult child, my goal is to have a consistent and healthy dynamic with them, not letting, having a healthy way to work through whatever that disappointment is, whatever that looks like. And so, again, I've observed that it's the grandparents who, and I know not everyone has this luxury and not everyone's in this situation, but it's the grandparents who, who very often have budding social life and have hobbies and interests and have, yeah,

very often their own marriage. And that's not to say you need all of those things in order to have a good relationship with your adult child. But if you have other stuff going on, the times where your interactions with your adult child and their partner maybe don't look exactly how you thought they were going to look or them not coming to a family event that you thought they definitely should come to or whatever, it stings a little less because you've got, you know, it's kind of like cross training for your sport, right?

Like it doesn't feel like it's related, but I truly think that it is. Because if you have other things that are filling your cup of fulfillment, you're not putting all your eggs in that basket. And I think that that's, that also helps to, I think, probably mitigate the ego blow that comes from whatever can happen in this dynamic. Because I know that there's a piece of it, right? It feels like it's a personal attack on you or it feels, however it feels, if you're getting other things, if you have other things in your life that are really reminding you that you're a good person, you've got a lot. going on you've got fulfillment in your life it's it doesn't feel as much of a disappointment perhaps yeah i i totally agree with you on that and i think an important note there is like you're allowed to feel disappointed totally you and i are both going to experience whether you have daughters sons

whatever you have for your child you are going to feel disappointed i think by decisions that they make in adulthood, whether that's moving away, getting a certain career, getting married, not getting married, and it's okay to have those feelings. I think that sometimes what gets lost in translation is people are like, well, wait, you're going to feel like this. And I know I'm going to feel like that. I know that's going to come up around holidays, birthdays, events. There are going to be things that I'm like, man, I wish that wouldn't have gone that way. But not putting that on your adult child and their partner is what's important. And I think that speaks to what you're saying about having all these other outlets of like, who else can I talk to about this? Where else can I check in with myself that

my expectations that I have fabricated in some way, because we all do that, are not getting in the way of us having that good relationship. No one is ever denying that there are parents who don't have these feelings. Like I have these feelings already. And my super little kids where you're like, oh, I wish I didn't go that way, you know, but it's not my kid's problem. No, and so, and then the third piece would be, and this one is more so from personal experience, but I definitely think that it's something that it was really triggering when I posted it for people, but I think it rings true, which is remembering as our children get older, we aren't parenting in a vacuum. And we arguably never were, but I think it becomes so much more poignant when our child acquires an additional set of parents, right?

And it isn't your child's responsibility to downplay, right? As parents, all we want right now when our children are young, and we arguably are parenting in a vacuum, all we want is for our children to feel good and to feel happy and feel accepted, right? I have children headed to school next year, and I just want them to feel accepted. And so what that can also look like when your child grows up and they find someone to spend their life with, and yeah, if that person does have a healthy relationship with their parents or a close relationship with their parents, your child is also going to be spending time with their parents. And so remembering that you're not parenting in a vacuum. And so that doesn't mean that you have to keep up with the Joneses. That doesn't

mean you have to be doing everything that your daughter-in-law's parents are doing. But understanding that if you make decisions that make your child feel a negative emotion, it isn't their responsibility to decide, oh, I don't feel crummy about that. Because if I do feel crummy about that, it's going to make my mom feel like, like, I'm favoring my in-laws and, right? Or it's not your child's job to downplay how good it feels to have fun experiences with their, with their in-laws in order to, because that I get, I see talked about all the time, is daughters-in-law and sons feeling like they can't even talk about their daughter-in-law's parents existing because it makes the mother-in-law feel insecure.

And so I think, yeah, like it's a competition. Right. And I think that that speaks again to boundaries, right? That as a parent, as an in-law, you're allowed to have boundaries. You're allowed to have boundaries on what's allowed at your home, what you're going to spend money on, what you're going to contribute to a wedding. All of those things are valid and fair, right? But that doesn't mean that your daughter-in-law's parents aren't approaching their parenting

journey in adulthood differently. And so that might make your child feel a certain kind of way and, you know, just sort of being agile to what that looks like. And I just like I feel like I see that a lot and I find myself saying that a lot is, especially when you become adults and your child finds their life partner, you're not parenting in a vacuum. They very likely have another set of parents now that. Right. There's other influences on them and other things they're learning. And it's sometimes it's different from you, you know, and it's, I think we cannot over-emphasize, like, how difficult that transition can be for parents of adult children, too, and how you might have a lot of feelings about it. And it's all about how you decide to manage those feelings.

I think that's what makes all the difference in maintaining those relationships and keeping them healthy. And then point number four for me would be making sure it kind of speaks to point number two in terms of having other people in your life. But point number four for me would be make sure you don't just have yes men in your life. Make sure you try to foster relationships and have people in your life that are going to help you when you get off track from those goals. When those disappointing things happen in our life, yeah, you want a healthy way to talk about it. you want to vent about it. Venting to your other child, venting to your other daughter-in-law, venting to, you know, like having over and over really, really not productive conversations with all the other people that are also in your child's network is probably not great. But also having

people in your life that are going to say, you know, what about looking at it this way? And so that also requires some self-awareness and personal work because you have to be already the type of person that your network knows is open to that type of hard feedback, but sometimes it comes down to like, as we're moving through these younger phases of parenthood, like, I definitely have packs with a couple of people that it's like, if I do something completely out of pocket, you need to tell me. Like, right? Like, you have to tell me I will not. Right. Like, we all, I mean, hope, um, as women, right, we have hormonal cycles, right? Women who are, who are becoming mothers-in-law. They're having their own hormonal shifts. Some of them, like, there's,

there's other factors. There's other things going on in our life that we might be projecting onto our relationships with anybody. And never mind our adult children. And so making sure you have people in your life that are not going to let you, right? We all need help. And I think having really. Yeah. And we all can be the problem sometimes. Like myself included, you know, it's important to be able it's a sign of good emotional health to be able to navigate like what could I be doing to contribute to this dynamic not always assuming that it's all you or none you you know but being somewhere in the middle of like what could I do a little bit differently and then figuring out when you've done enough is is very important for people in difficult dynamics

yeah and I think that that's sort of something that I from the daughter-in-law's I think that's also why there's so much, like, so much hurt when it comes to these things is daughters-in-law trusting themselves that when they've decided that that's enough or they've decided that's where their line is, constantly that's cyclic of, okay, should I, they're having so much self-awareness is what I'm observing is they're constantly checking themselves on, okay, but am I the problem? Okay, maybe that's not as bad as I think. And then they put themselves in a position where they're hurt again. Meanwhile, from what it appears, there isn't any of that happening on the other, on the other side of the table. And that sucks and that hurts. It does. It does. Gosh, well, Janelle, I really appreciate you being here today and sharing all of your wisdom. I think it's always so interesting to hear from somebody who has like a very direct pulse and like view into what people are talking about in these spaces. So thank you. And I'd love if you could share just where, people can find you if they would like to see more of your offer.

Well, thank you for having me. This has been great. I'm a fan girling myself over here, chatting with you. Yeah, if my handle is Millennial Matleave on both Instagram and TikTok, I go by Janelle Marie, which is a pretty common name on Facebook, but it's the same profile picture as my Instagram if you're only on Facebook. And yeah, those are the two places I'm most active. Yeah, that's where you'll find me. Sounds good. Thank you so much. And I hope everyone enjoys this episode. The Calling Home Podcast is not engaged in providing therapy services, mental health advice, or other medical advice or services. It is not a substitute for advice from a qualified healthcare provider and does not create any therapist, patient, or other treatment

relationship between you and Colin Colm or Whitney Goodman. For more information on this, please see Collingholm's terms of service linked in the show notes below.