Marriage was supposed to be about two people, but mine included a third: my controlling mother-in-law, Diana. She treated my 36-year-old husband, Dan, like a child and constantly interfered in our marriage.<\/p>\n
On Valentine\u2019s Day, we arrived home to find our door covered with hearts reading \u201cMy Baby Boy\u201d and \u201cMiss My Danny.\u201d Outside sat Diana\u2019s \u201cspecial\u201d gifts: romantic satin boxers for Dan\u2014and dishwashing gloves and a toilet brush for me.<\/p>\n
Humiliated, I refused to respond. But at 7 a.m. the next morning, Diana appeared at our door demanding to know why we hadn\u2019t visited. When she claimed the gifts were loving and helpful, Dan finally confronted her.<\/p>\n
He reminded her of every boundary she had crossed\u2014from calling his boss and ruining his first job to faking a heart attack when he considered moving away. Then he told her the painful truth: her behavior wasn\u2019t love; it was control.<\/p>\n
Diana tearfully admitted that she still saw the little boy who once needed her. Dan gently explained that he was now an adult with his own wife and family.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what healthy children do,\u201d he said. \u201cThey grow up.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Marriage was supposed to be about two people, but mine included a third: my controlling mother-in-law, Diana. She treated my 36-year-old husband, Dan, like a child and constantly interfered in our marriage. On Valentine\u2019s Day, we arrived home to find our door covered with hearts reading \u201cMy Baby Boy\u201d and \u201cMiss My Danny.\u201d Outside sat …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24162,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifevibesever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifevibesever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifevibesever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifevibesever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifevibesever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24161"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifevibesever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24163,"href":"https:\/\/lifevibesever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24161\/revisions\/24163"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifevibesever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifevibesever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifevibesever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifevibesever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}