My Experience With A Nasty Daughter-In-Law

She’s a psycho-bitch, and everyone knows it. They don’t say it aloud, but their eyes dart about the room whenever she enters one. You can feel the tension. She’ll scowl at anyone who goes near her husband, scolding him at every chance, cutting him off in mid-sentence and taking over his words. Heaven forbid if he ever had a thought develop in his poor, emasculated head. Hell would freeze over if one ever reached his lips.

I saw one, only one, land upon them a long time ago. Her steely gaze soon followed it, and the atmosphere turned to glass. Silence enveloped the fragile space, and I never witnessed another make it to the surface.

But this wasn’t the girl who originally dated him. That version presented itself as a kind, sweet and well-spoken human being. She respected his family and friends. The hell-bitch arrived right after the pregnancy was announced. That’s when the evil creature surfaced, and its forked tongue hissed to all and sundry. It could’ve gone either way, but he lost his nerve early, and instead of facing it down when he should’ve, he cowered in the corner. I think he even developed a proper hunch over it.

She had him lock, stock and bank account.

In the years that followed, his friends and family were exiled one by one. She didn’t have to explain her reasoning; she reached down, squeezed her husband’s nut-sac, and he yielded to her wishes. Once this pattern of behaviour had taken root in their marriage, she could do anything, anytime, for any reason — and she does.

My son married a female narcissist, a witch, our family’s only evil in-law, and he’s stuck with her.

Forget her for a moment; I can’t figure him out. He’s a smart man. He left his family home an intelligent person with an astute mind and a solid heart — a sensible individual who became a respectful, well-paid professional in a position of authority. He’s never been in trouble with the law, never entertained fools, until he married one and then knocked her up. I can’t understand how she tricked him so easily.

Perhaps tricked is the wrong word. Perhaps there wasn’t one decisive moment when she threw a net over him and dragged him into captivity. It may have happened slowly enough that he barely noticed it happening. One concession to preserve the peace. Another way to stop an argument. A cancelled visit because she was in a mood. A friend was ignored because she didn’t like him. A family gathering was missed because attending it would cause more trouble at home than staying away.

After enough concessions, surrender can begin to look like routine.

From where I stand, the answer appears simple: tell her to get stuffed, pack a bag and walk. But I’m not standing where he is. I don’t wake in his house, share his finances or calculate the cost of every sentence before speaking it. I don’t know what happens after the doors close and the witnesses leave. I see the result, not every small event that produces it.

He may stay because leaving would mean losing daily contact with his children. That fear alone can hold a person in place long after love has given way to tension. He may believe that enduring her is the price he must pay to remain a father rather than becoming someone his children see every second weekend. He may worry that if he leaves, she’ll control the story told about him as thoroughly as she controls everything else.

There’s money too. Houses, bank accounts, legal fees, child support and the destruction of a life built over years. Walking away sounds courageous when someone else says it. From inside the marriage, it may look like throwing himself into a financial woodchipper and hoping enough pieces emerge on the other side to resemble a man.

Then there is pride.

He’s intelligent, capable and professionally respected. Admitting that he has lost control of his private life may feel unbearable. It would mean acknowledging that the people he pushed away were right. Every year he remains makes that admission harder. To return to his family now, after defending her or remaining silent while she excluded us, would require him to explain what happened. He might not have the language for it. He may not even fully understand it himself.

People also adapt to the intolerable. If conflict arrives often enough, avoiding it becomes a skill. He may know precisely which subjects to avoid, which friends not to mention and which expression on her face means he should stop talking. Those adjustments probably don’t feel like decisions anymore. They’ve become the furniture of his marriage, arranged around him so gradually that he no longer remembers what the room looked like before.

And direct criticism from me may only make matters worse.

If I attack her, he may hear an attack on his judgment, his marriage and the mother of his children. He may defend her because defending her is easier than admitting I’m right. Every insult could push him closer to her, forcing him to choose a side when the last thing I want is to make that choice necessary. If she already tells him his family is hostile, interfering and determined to break them apart, my anger becomes evidence she can use.

That is the trap. Silence feels like abandonment, but speaking too loudly may drive him further away.

If I tell him she’s controlling him, he may withdraw out of embarrassment. If I tell him he’s weak, he may avoid me rather than prove me right. If I demand that he leave, he may stop sharing the few things he still shares. The harder I pull, the tighter he might grip the life that is hurting him.

Perhaps the best I can do is leave a door open without standing in it and shouting instructions. Let him know that he has somewhere to go, someone who’ll listen and a family that hasn’t forgotten him. No lectures. No victory dance if the marriage collapses. No “I told you so” waiting beside the spare bed.

That’s easier to write than it is to practise. I’m angry. I’ve watched my son diminish while pretending not to notice the machinery doing it. Patience feels far too polite for what has happened. But if anger costs me the last remaining connection to him, she wins again.

Unfortunately, my son looks gaunt and withered. She’s broken the boy I raised, and I can’t say a thing to him about it because she blocks every path when I try to. The saddest part goes to my three grandchildren — the next generation who’ll never know me or what a kind relationship between a man and a woman should look like. Their dad appears irrelevant and weak, while their mother represents strength and dominance. They never really stood a chance.

–Michael (Dark Fiction. Author of SEETHINGS (the first book), free for a limited time)

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