MIL: Control

I recently read an article written by Richard and Linda Eyre which they titled "Let go of control and find unexpected joy and opportunity."

It began:
 "It's very natural to want to control as much of our lives as possible.  Human nature desires to be in charge, at least of personal things, and to eliminate uncertainty, disappointment and surprise by taking over."

They go on to say that while taking control of our emotions and appetites is a good and desirable thing, most people don't want to stop there.  They go on to list some other things that people want to control--their circumstances, their children and their entire destinies.

Yes, I put those last two together because I have met more than a few parents who really do want to control not only their children (through discipline and rewards), but they also want to control their childrens' destinies.  We recently received a question from a reader that has left me stumped as to how to respond.

Dear O2I,
My DW and I have been married for about a year.  We are young, still in college and we are both close to our parents and siblings.  When we have faced different situations in our marriage (apartment hunting, setting a budget, whether or not to attend graduate school, when to start a family, etc.) we have both, individually, shared these questions/issues (and others) with our own parents and even asked for their input.  The problem is that our parents often have very different ideas.  It's not really a problem for my DW and I because we talk things out and both believe in give-and-take and are happy with the decisions that we've made together.  The problem lies with my MIL.  When she finds out that we haven't taken her advice she gets really mad.  And when she finds out that we've taken the advice that MY parents have given, she has gone ballistic!  This is really hard on my DW and she doesn't know how to respond to her mom.  It's not that we always take my parents' advice.  We have taken her mom's advice as well.  And sometimes, we take the best advice from both sets of parents and come up with our own solution to the situation.  Short of asking my DW to never talk to her mom about problems/challenges we are working on, what can we do so that we don't have to deal with her mother's wrath when we don't follow the advice she's given us?


This mother sounds like one who wants to control her child's destiny--and seems to think she has that right because she's being asked her opinion on some of the issues in her daughter's life/marriage.  And, short of telling the wife in the above question to keep her mouth shut-either when decisions are being made in her marriage OR in telling her mother that they took her ILs advice--I don't know what to tell this young man.  As the Eyres say, some people "seem hard-wired for the desire to control things" around them.


In this article, Richard and Linda remind us:  "We have control of only a tiny island of things around which swirls a huge sea of uncontrollability....and our challenge is not to control this ocean, but to see its beauty and appreciate its waves and currents."

We can choose to be annoyed because our children, spouses, ILs and others don't do things the way we would.  We can choose to be bugged by those same people because they don't want to be what we want them to be or because they are not interested in just what we think should interest them.  Or we can be appreciate the fact that they are independent thinkers and thus don't have to rely on us to make every decision for them.  We can see beauty in the new views and opinions they bring into our lives.  It's really our choice in how we respond when we can't (and shouldn't even want to) control them.

Next time I'll share the rest of this article as the Eyres propose the alternative attitude of serendipity.