Her mother is making me resentful

belfastgirl23

The real problem is that you see your only two choices as putting up with this or walking away. I think you need to ask yourself honestly how big a part of the problem you are. If you are not prepared to tell your wife how you feel, for whatever reason, then that has to come back to you. I'm not saying she will make it easy on you obviously.

Classifying yourself as the victim can be very comfortable, you bump along grumbling to yourself about how things are someone else's fault. But people have choices. You have choices. You can choose to put up with this - there are some things I don't like that I've chosen to put up with but it is MY choice to do that. You can choose to challenge it. Or you can choose to walk away from it. Whatever you do though you are making a choice. No one is making you do it.

I know this is a bit scary in one way but in another way it's empowering.

Nothing is going to change until you change it. If you really love your wife as much as you say in the first post then you need to fight for your relationship. And that means taking hard actions and making frightening choices. Don't just drift into a situation where you can pretend some outside force has broken you up - that's not fair to her or you.

Errata

Presumably this has been going on for the ten years you've known your wife. You need to take responsibility for being part of the problem, because so far you don't appear to have been part of a solution.

Yorkie1

Keith, have you heard of Relate, the marriage guidance people?

They will work with an individual rather than a couple, if that's something you feel you might want to do - assuming it won't set off ructions at home.

ViolaLass

OP, you say you don't feel you can tell your wife how you feel - I can understand this but I fail to see how you can resolve the situation without doing it. Maybe write your wife a letter (not the MIL - I wouldn't bother tackling her until/unless you have your wife on side).