How I connected with her mother-to-mother. Published on May 6, 2013 by Cynthia Copeland in Good Riddance When Will and I started dating, I didn’t expect a hug—or even a handshake—from Martha, his ex-wife, but I also didn’t anticipate that she would be so disagreeable that I would be tempted to grab a white flag and begin waving madly: Ceasefire! I surrender! As every second wife knows, dealing with Wife Number One is tricky business. This woman is, after all, the beloved mother of his children, the one who is regarded fondly by his friends and family members. So when Martha came after me with both barrels, I understood that it was wiser for me to deflect and duck than to defend myself. Will had promised me that Martha would stop the harassment once we were married. “She’ll leave you alone as soon as she realizes that she can’t drive us apart,” he assured me. But he was wrong. If anything, Martha’s behavior worsened after Will and I tied the knot. She requested a meeting with us just so that she could tell us she had cancelled the hotel reservations and plane tickets for our upcoming family vacation. Then she called to make sure I knew that she had thrown out a gift I’d just bought for one of her sons. Not long after that, I was reprimanded for sending care packages to Boy Scout camp, then chastised for picking up one of the boys after sports practice when my husband got tied up at work. A family portrait for the church directory was nearly ruined because she insisted on bringing the boys to the church herself: She delivered them 45 minutes late—after she had shaved their heads with an electric razor, leaving them looking like prison inmates. “I give up,” I told Will. “For some reason, everything I do upsets her. It’s not worth it.” My husband reluctantly agreed. He was afraid to talk to her about what she was doing because he feared it would affect his own relationship with the boys. It was OK, I told myself. With three kids of my own, my life was busy and full. But after months of very limited contact with my stepsons, I knew that staying out of their lives wasn’t the right solution. How could I connect with them without angering their mother? I began probing my husband about his ex: Why was she so opposed to allowing me to have any kind of relationship with my stepsons? Why was she threatened by my limited presence in their lives? Reluctantly, he told me about Martha’s strained relationship with her own mentally ill mother, and about how she was raised by her father and two difficult stepmothers after her mother lost custody of her. As we talked, a complicated and sad picture of her childhood emerged. And then my husband said, “I honestly don’t understand what’s wrong. I told her that she has nothing to worry about when the kids are with us because you’re such a fantastic mother!” He may not have understood what was wrong, but I did. The next time I saw her name appear on our caller ID, I picked up the phone. “Don’t you dare come to Adam’s open house at the school tonight,” she began. But this time I had carefully planned my response. “I will be coming to the open house,” I told her calmly, “and we need to talk about why it’s important for me to do that and why there’s nothing for you to worry about…” And a few hours after we talked, mother to mother, we not only sat next to each other at the open house, but she slid her desk a little closer to mine so that I could share her handout from the teacher. Truce.
Posted on: Wed, 02 Jul 2014 21:25:17 +0000
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