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Dear Care and Feeding,
My fiancé and I are big on traveling. Over the years we’ve been together, we’ve enjoyed longer-term trips away (think 3-4 months at a time) and also a stint of living abroad for a couple of years too. Since coming home we’ve realized that we preferred our life abroad (for a number of reasons) and have started exploring options to move back across the world. We both have jobs that can be easily relocated and no house/pets/kids. My MIL has never understood the appeal of traveling and dislikes that we enjoy going away for long trips; and although she tries to be supportive to our faces, we hear from other family members that she talks behind our backs of her disappointment that we haven’t gone down the “traditional” route of marrying, buying a house, having kids etc.
When she heard that we are planning to move abroad permanently, it seems she panicked and the next time we saw her she really offloaded her feelings—which are: She thinks we’re taking away her future grandchildren from her; we’re being selfish for not wanting to be around our families at home; we’re not considering the fact that she won’t be able to visit us (she has severe flying anxiety) and that we haven’t thought about how she will cope when she gets older (for context: she’s in her late 50’s and has other children nearby—my fiancé is the youngest.) It got a little heated and we were both very upset by some of her comments.
It’s been a few weeks now and we’ve tried to be reassuring (e.g. we will come home, we can FaceTime often, if we have children we will share photos/videos, etc.) but we are running out of patience…Especially me! It’s understandable that she is sad at the idea that her youngest is moving away from home, but equally her lack of support and unsupportive words is hard for us both to bear. Do we need to set boundaries?
—Patience Wearing Thin
Dear Patience,
I’ll keep this brief—do not live your life for your parents, your in-laws, or even your hypothetical kids. All that does is create a sense of resentment and anger that will ultimately make you miserable. Our time is limited on this floating rock, so we owe it to ourselves to be the best versions of who we are. In doing so, we’ll be able to better serve the world around us.
Also, it’s bananas that she’s calling you selfish, when she’s the one telling you to live your life on her terms. I get it—she loves you and wants to be close to you, but that’s not a reason why you should give up on your dreams. You and your husband aren’t children, and you should feel empowered to live freely.
Yes, you need to set boundaries with her (i.e. “we won’t talk about this again if you make unfair accusations”), as well as doing all the mitigating things like FaceTime that you suggested—but you also need to be kinder to yourselves. She may not like it and she may call you all sorts of names, but you should sleep peacefully at night knowing you aren’t doing anything wrong. Nobody should tell you how to live your life. Full stop.
—Doyin
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