Mother and Son Relationship Issues

My son is 30 years old and we historically had a very loving and close relationship. Over the last 4-5 years he got involved in a relationship and just this last summer got married. Since he has been with this gal, he suddenly questions and debates me on almost everything and is stressing me out not to mention the disrespect. Most recently I had an ornament exchange pre-holiday party with just my gal pals and invited my daughter-in-law to attend to hopefully bond. My son was very offended as to why he was not invited and did not understand why it was for only ladies. My son and his wife both disagreed with me and didn't understand why it couldn't be co-ed. At the end of the day, I told my Son he could attend, then the day of the party, neither showed up. Please help me understand how I could of handled this situation better. Thank you.

Hello Jenna Ann: I'm sorry I don't know as I can really shed much light on this odd situation. From what you wrote, it sounds as though you did nothing wrong. You scheduled a "gal pals" event & invited your daughter-in-law. That makes perfect sense to me. Personally I can't imagine why your son would expect to be invited or even want to be there. I guess I could speculate as to what is going on in your son's mind, or perhaps, what might be going on between your son & your daughter-in-law. But that's all it would be... just speculation. So I'll refrain from going there.

My personal opinion is we can never know what's really going on in another person's mind. And we also seldom know what's really going on within someone else's relationship. All we can do is to deal with what we actually observe or experience. So my perspective would be that this is your son's & his wife's issue (whatever that issue is)... not yours. And next time, I would simply not invite either one of them. I guess you could perhaps ask one or both of them what happened after things have cooled down a bit. But you may or may not get an honest answer. And, in the process, you risk simply re-kindling the fire. You yourself will have to be the judge as to whether or not it's worth the risk. Perhaps other members, here on PC, will have some better insight to offer.

I see this is your first post here on PC. So... welcome to PsychCentral… from the Skeezyks! May the time you spend here be of benefit.

PsychCentral is a great place to get information as well as support for mental health issues. The more you post, & reply to other members’ posts, the more a part of the community you will become. Plus there are social groups you can join & chat rooms where you’ll be able to connect with other PC members in real time (once your first 5 posts have been reviewed & approved.) Lots of great stuff! So please keep posting!

Well it is common practise today that both men and women attend those things once only in the domain of 'gals' or 'pals'. Men attend wedding showers and women attend stag parties. It's just the thing now. So, there may be a generation gap here leading him to have his nose out of joint. It likely never even occured to him it was a girls only party.

You did right to end up extending him an invitation.

With that said, it was unfortunate that this whole thing became a mess. You meant well and he should have clearly seen and respected that. It was incredibly crass of him and your daughter-in-law not to show up at all; and, even worse, that they not inform you in advance.

I encourage you to gather up your courage and say something about this. "We missed you, was everything okay?"

This could be an indicator of trouble in their paradise. Hopefully not.

Hello Skeezyks:

I truly appreciate your reply. I actually had my therapist appointment this morning and she told me if was an irrational request on my Sons part. My son had pointed out to me that if I really cared about his feelings that I would invite him. That's when I told him if it means that much to you then you can come. However, deep down I still just wanted to bond with my girlfriends as this was our annual tradition and its always nice to catch up with them. I eventually became very frustrated as all of this drama was building up right before the event which made me feel like he had rained on my parade. At this point I actually thought he would show up so I texted him the day of the party and asked if they were coming to the party, his response was "what party?" Wow. I'm just beside myself. And actually I'm not in a good place right now because, Christmas is his wife's favorite holiday and wants to have him at her parents house for both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Last year I struggled with him to come over at least for 2 hours. Now that this girls party issue started along with some other issues, he told me today that he will not be seeing me this weekend for Christmas. I'm so heartbroken and feel like I need to place a wall up with my son to avoid the continuous jabs and pain this is causing me.

Hello justafriend306:

Thank you for your reply. You have a great point regarding the generation gap, I truly believe this could be a contributing factor, however, I still feel that my Son should have respected my decision. I told him in front of his wife, in the past you would have never asked me to attend such an event, why now? No response. My son and I have lots of issues to work on I just feel at this point its gonna be an up hill battle.

All this said, whether your decision was appropriate or not is water under the bridge. The real problem here is, you're absolutely correct, your son's reaction was poor, ugly, uncalled for. Communication is the issue I believe. This too may be colored by a jealousy issue in his relationship.

For several years my son and I were estranged (he was 17-23). In our case, he had some resentment for my choice to leave his step-father. Regardless, communication became extremely difficult. Any occasion we did get together was strained.

What changed this? Well, my getting sick seemed to knock him over backwards and he finally began to take interest. The big thing though was that I took interest in him. Fast forward and we can now have two way discussions and tolerate one another's presence.

I think talking to him about this is the only solution.. wish you good luck