IT’S widely accepted that alcohol flows freely during the festive period, although it can be a surprise to see your in-laws’ inner party animals come out.
But when do you need to realise that the drinking has gone too far?
And how do you cope with an incapacitated in-law?
From cutting them out at Christmas to confronting them for crossing your boundaries, it can be a tough and sometimes painful situation to navigate.
Using the pseudonym Luke Williamson, one man spoke to the Daily Mail about his mother-in-law Kathy’s addictive drinking habits—and how the rest of his family turning a blind eye to her behaviour was causing friction and frustration.
He wrote: “The truth is, Kathy is an alcoholic. The problem is that no one apart from me – not Kathy, not her hen-pecked husband Brian and certainly not my wife Emma – is willing to admit it.
“And this unwillingness to address the obvious is now causing problems within my marriage.”
Luke went on to talk about the day he married Kathy’s daughter, Emma, in 2004.
He said this was where he realised Kathy’s alcohol consumption ‘went beyond the norm’.
Luke said he saw Kathy throwing drinks back all evening at the nuptials – eventually finishing more than him, Emma and his parents combined.
He claimed that he saw Kathy ‘enthusiastically’ take to the dance floor with one of his ushers – ‘a chap young enough to be her son’.
He continued: “I nudged Emma, who just rolled her eyes and said: ‘Welcome to the family, that’s my mum for you.'”
Luke said he was shocked by Kathy’s behaviour – having come from a family who didn’t include much alcohol in their lives.
He felt horrified watching Emma and her father support Kathy’s behaviour, but kept quiet as he didn’t want to spoil the big day.
Later, when looking through their wedding photographs, he tried to tactfully mention the flirty dancing to Emma.
But it led to an argument and he realised that he had hit a nerve.
Luke quickly saw that Kathy’s alcoholism was being swept under the rug by Emma and her father – who were happier to shrug it off and continue as normal.
And Kathy had usually forgotten her emotional alcohol-fuelled outbursts by the next day.
But one evening, Luke claimed that Kathy ‘gripped his hands’, telling him how much she approved of him as her daughter’s husband, unlike the other ‘undesirables’ who had broken Emma’s heart.
The next day, he joked that he had ‘only just got the circulation back in my fingers’, to which Kirsty looked at him like he’d ‘lost the plot’.
Luke said he felt part of the reason Emma was so forgiving towards her mother’s dangerous drinking habits was because the mother-daughter duo share a ‘tricky’ relationship.
He described Emma’s face as ‘lighting up’ when her mother had a few drinks and started to reminisce about childhood memories.
And that Kathy was noticeably more affectionate towards her daughter once she’d had a drink.
But he also noticed a limit to Kathy’s ‘happy drunk’ phase – where she would get very maudlin at a certain point in the evening.
He shared: “There have been terrible outbursts of rudeness, such as telling Emma she is getting fat, or making jokes about our love life.”
He claimed that he wouldn’t put up with such behaviour from his family, but is expected to just grit his teeth and leave her to get on with it.
Luke feels left to pick up the pieces, saying ‘dealing with the emotional fallout’ is ‘exhausting’.
He recalled one particularly worrying Kathy incident, when she stormed out of his house after a drunken misunderstanding with a friend over WhatsApp.
He claimed that after ten minutes, she wasn’t answering his calls, leaving Emma in tears.
He spent ‘a good hour out looking for Kathy’ with a head torch on, ‘”‘praying she had not fallen into a ditch'”‘ on one of the country roads near his remote home.
But he then claimed: “It was only on my return that I found her snoring her head off in our shed, wrapped in one of my gardening jackets.”
Thankfully Kathy was fine, although Luke says until younger generations ‘are ready to have those hard conversations’ with their elders nothing will change.
And he’ll continue to ‘gird his loins’ every time baby boomer alcoholic Kathy comes to stay.
An overbearing mother-in-law is someone who craves control and dominance, according to Choosing Therapy
The experts put together 7 warning signs to look out for…
