Answer
In this counseling answer:
“Parents are supposed to launch their kids, meaning sending them out on their own to live their own lives, not parent them their whole lives. The kids are supposed to care for the parents by making sure they are fed, clothed, sheltered and loved. Keeping company with one’s mother more than anyone else is highly encouraged in Islam, but it does not mean you let your mother run your life.”
Wa’ Alaikum Salaam dear sister in Islam,
I feel your pain! It seems to me that your husband does not manage his business of your marriage properly. First, he does not manage his relationship with his mother. Rather, he asks you to deal with his mother (with her inappropriate behavior). He should deal with it not you as the husband’s role in marriage is to protect and provide. A woman’s mother in law does not have the rights your mother in law takes in your house and in your bedroom (especially regarding privacy). It is not your responsibility to stand up to her; it is your husband’s!
However, you are the one feeling guilty. For what? You did not violate any one’s rights. You seem to think that you should have just put up with your mother in law’s bad behavior and then everything would have been fine. I don’t agree. You have done nothing wrong. Your mother in law has and so has your husband. When someone does something wrong, and a person points it out (because it is a violation of their rights), who is the guilty party? Just because someone says that the person pointing out the wrong is the guilty party does not make them the guilty party. The doer of the injustice was the source of the problem. Just because someone did not notice the injustice until the victim said something about it does not mean that it did not exist before the victim pointed it out. So, again, you are being the scapegoat in this situation. Don’t allow them to scapegoat you.
It sounds like your husband already made his decision not to take you back, but you want him to, right? You want him because you were rude in the way you expressed the problem to him. Well, you can feel guilty about it; however, that is not a sin. That is a weakness. Yes, you should still repent, but please don’t confuse it with a sin.
I say tell him that you don’t want him back until he can protect you in your marriage. He is duty-bound to do as your husband. Also tell him to stop blaming you for other people’s crimes against you, even if it is his mother. If he does not want to correct his mother, a thing I can perfectly understand, he still needs to protect you. So, move you away from the source of the problem, if he can’t move the problem away from him and you.
I am sorry to be so harsh but this problem is so common and so misunderstood and so destructive. I don’t know where these mothers get their ideas from—it is not Islam. Parents are supposed to launch their kids, meaning sending them out on their own to live their own lives, not parent them their whole lives. The kids are supposed to care for the parents by making sure they are fed, clothed, sheltered and loved. Keeping company with one’s mother more than anyone else is highly encouraged in Islam, but it does not mean you let your mother run your life – or let your mother trespass in your bedroom!
Salam,
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