Question by a PooraPagal Visitor :

Age:: 26-32

Gender:: Female

Ethnicity:: Pakistani / Indian

I am having problems with my in-laws, my mil who is a widow is a possesive lady. she used to trouble me a lot with her taunting talks in the intial years of my marriage. she used to back bite abt me to each and everyone right from family to friends. intially i was very silent and used to bear all her tortures without utteringa word. This went for 3 yrs and then i realised that if i take it more from her she will make my life hell, so i started back answering her, which ended she harrasing me more. So i turned very voilent and i used to control her in all her actions and made her dependent on me and my husband. but then somehow we had to move abroad and she was sent to her first son where she started telling all bad things abt me and my husband . Now my problem is i feel very guilty of harrasing her and feel that i should have kept my mouth shut and shouldn’t have troubled her. But at that point of time in my life i was so mad at my mil’s behaviour that i was crazy and very angry for what all she did to me.

But i really do respect her and have high regards for being my husbands mother and take care of her. i wanted to get rid of my guilt pls help

Answer by Poorapagal

Well the situation is somewhat similar to what a lot of married women go through at one point or the other in their life. The thing is that deep down it seems that you are a very caring person, you just had enough at one point. And obviously torturing someone is not good, but so is being tortured. So yes what you did at that point in time by answering back, could be seen as rude by some, it can also be seen as the only alternative.

To remove the guilt, I think the only thing that you can probably do now is look deep down within yourself and know who you really are. And by the message above you sound like a person who cares, and has a conscious, which might have been fogged at the point when MIL was doing what she did.

If you feel you are unable to talk to your MIL and just  turn things upside down by being the way you are, nice that is, then write her a letter, which she obviously wouldn’t get because that would be from you to her.. You can write everything you feel on it, and at the end when you feel you have taken out all your feelings on the paper .. rip it to shreds and move on.

When the MIL calls or talks or anything, just be yourself and smile Good luck