My MIL (mother-in-law) suffers from My Son is a Single Father Syndrome. What, you ask, is My Son is a Single Father Syndrome (MSIASFS)? My simple definition is as follows:

(MSIASFS): A mother who is blind to all the work her son’s partner/wife/significant other does to support the family financially, emotionally, and spiritually.

The other side of this argument can be, my daughter-in-law is a deadbeat, a mooch, and basically lazy.

I don’t want to spend the brief time I have your attention by boring you with details of how my MIL refuses to acknowledge my accomplishments. That just seems petty. Though, recently, when a loved one was listing off my typical workday, my MIL told her to “shut up” and then continued with “my son is way better than her. Why aren’t you listing off all that he does?”

It made me laugh. There is no competition. My husband and I are partners. Purveyors of each other’s work. We are a 24/7 husband and wife team that is so content with our lives we’ve no reason to take these statements to heart. Right?

Mostly right, but also wrong.

It hurts my feelings that the grandmother of my son puts forward so much effort to discredit me… me, a human, a woman, a mother, a wife, and a fairly accomplished (dare I be cheesy enough to say it? yes) business WOMAN!

“Do you have some sort of businesswoman special?” Name the movie and win huge points from me.

Shouldn’t we be on the same team? Aside from the obvious, I love her son bullshit, and the fact that I AM the mother of her beautiful grandson, she and I should be holding each other up as women. We should be supporting the crap out of each other. High-fiving how we’ve managed to stick in the game, fight for our piece of the pie, own our own homes, vote for human rights, work full time, chase down our dreams, support other females, and just, generally, being badasses?

Personally, I feel like I put so much pressure on myself to do better, be better, and be more. When I hear someone else think of me as less than, I take it to heart. Doesn’t she realize we humans are our own worst critics? We don’t need another voice putting us to shame. We have got that covered, quite well.

I pledge now, in front of all of my readers, that I will treat my son’s future partner/spouse/significant other with the same respect I would any other new person I meet. I will not begrudge them for all things in my life they remind me I am not anymore (like – young). I will be sure to love them to the best of my ability without being gross. And I promise to try and not resent them for taking my son’s love away from me but instead thank them for being one more person to love my son as much as me.