I became pregnant with my daughter eight months into my two-year fixed-term contract. I really loved my new job and wanted to have a chance at staying at my firm after those two years, so I gave my superiors a heads up about the pregnancy and decided to go back to work fairly early in comparison to other mothers in my country. The problem was that my country offers no daycare for a baby this young and I also did not want to run the risk of missing my chance at the firm. So I asked my mother, who is living across the country from us, if she would be willing to come help us take care of the baby so that I am able to go back to work part time. She agreed and moved in with us recently. Now I know that living with the in-laws or with one’s parents becomes difficult as one turns into an adult, and we are no exception. What makes it even more difficult is that we come from two totally different type of families. My husband’s family is very neat and really like their cleanness and that everything has its place and order. You could drop by their house at any time and the place would be nice and tidy. My mom on the other hand, I would describe as a pretty messy person. Like I would not guarantee you would find the scissors for exemple in the same place in a time span of two weeks, nor would I drop by unannounced and expect the house to be in decent shape for guests.

That being said, the two of them have also two different styles of communication. He is very direct and not one to tiptoe around a subject, or take his time to pick out the perfect words. My mom is extremely sensitive and one to take pretty much everything very personal and serious and start crying. Myself, I am like the mix of those two personalities. I hate how messy my mom is, but also hate how very neat my husband needs to be about pretty much everything. I hate how sensitive my mom is, and that I need to really tiptop around a subject with her, but I also hate that my husband doesn’t adapt his speech to the person in front of him.

Coming to the topic: Today I was with my mom in the kitchen and my husband just walked in with my daughter, as my mother was trying to butter a slice of bread in her hand, over the counter, with what one could describe as a rather large slicing knife. He immediately told her why doesn’t she take a plate or a chopping board so that the counter doesn’t get full of crumbs, since he just cleaned the counter and why isn’t she using a proper knife for the butter. He also added something like: when I see you doing this, it almost makes me crazy.

The first part might come of as rather unfriendly for someone like my mom, the last part was said with kind of a laughing face, which she could not see since she was not facing him. She immediately went kind of silent, mumbled something like sorry I think and finished what she was doing. Then she left while the two of us were doing something in the kitchen. Since I know both of them like an open book I went after her to see if she was ok. Of course she was rather upset that she was told off.

Since we are going to live for a few good months together, I told her that if she doesn’t like what he said and foremost how he said it, she should say it to his face and also tell him how she wants to receive the information that some things are important to him and need to be a certain way.

Now I need to cut the story short other I would end up writing a novel just narrating this: I told both of them that they need to learn to communicate with each other, that I would not be the kidney of their relationship, filtering this type of misunderstandings and I repeatedly asked my mother nicely to just tell both of us how we should adrese certain things to her so that she doesn’t take them as criticism and get upset. This was to now avail since my mother kept saying she will not make the mistake again to use this knife, and me trying to endlessly tell her is not about this situation its about the bigger picture, to learn to healthy communicate with each other what is of importance to us , while we live together. After more than one hour of going round in circles I lost my temper and she eventually kind of admitted that: - no matter how this was said to her she would still feel bothered since she finds those kind of things really unimportant. - that she wouldn’t say something like this to someone being a guest in her house - she thinks he is the type of person that always is unhappy with things and needs to complain - she finds it hypocritical of him to tell her about the crumbs since she also cleans after us sometimes ( we do try to do as little mess as possible, but is inevitable sometimes) - that we should have given her a list of rules

As also a back story, I also asked her not to use the bread knife to cut a dry sausage. And during previous visit this kind of dinamic between them repeated itself.

So guys now I really need to know which of us is the A….. I am too emotionally involved and I really need an outside perspective on this. Per my mother’s request: I would also love to hear the perspective of a licensed therapist.

Thank you guys !!!