I Took My Mother’s Side Against My Wife. Did I Do Anything Wrong?

When my mother came to live with us, our home finally felt stable. She came to help with the children, but she ended up becoming the quiet pillar holding everything together. She cooked while my wife slept. She cleaned while my wife sat on her phone. At night, when our one-and-a-half-year-old couldn’t sleep, my mother walked him around until he slept so my wife could rest. She did all this willingly, without complaints, and for a long time, the relationship between my wife and my mother was peaceful, even warm.

FOLLOW US ON WHATSAPP CHANNEL TO RECEIVE ALL STORIES IN YOUR INBOX

But that peace created a problem I didn’t notice early enough: my wife slowly stopped doing anything at all. On the few occasions my mother wasn’t around, I noticed something unsettling. Things fell apart quickly. Food delays. The house in disarray. The baby unattended longer than he should be. My wife had unconsciously handed over almost everything to my mother. I noticed it, but I didn’t confront it. Maybe I enjoyed the calm too much to question the cost.

Then one afternoon changed everything.

I wasn’t home that day. My mother was in the kitchen cooking. The baby was on the floor in the hall, playing. My wife was on the sofa with her phone. According to my mother, everything was normal until it wasn’t. The baby pushed a small bookshelf in the hall. It wasn’t heavy, but it wasn’t fixed either. The shelf tipped over. Books came crashing down on him. His cry was loud, sharp, terrifying.

My mother rushed from the kitchen and met the boy under a pile of books, crying uncontrollably. His face was swollen. His lips were broken. My wife was trying to pick him up. That was when my mother exploded. “Can’t you put the phone down for a minute and watch your baby?” she screamed. “What kind of mother are you? Or you didn’t suffer to give birth to him that’s why you’re this careless?”

Harsh words. Words that cut deep. Words no woman wants to hear, especially not from her mother-in-law. My wife didn’t take it quietly. She went straight into defense mode. Her words were just as sharp. What started as anger quickly turned into a full-blown fight between the two women I love the most. I walked in as the argument was winding down. The tension was thick. My mother pulled me aside and told me everything that had happened. My wife, shaking with anger, shouted, “How is that my fault that you have to insult me?”

I looked at my son. There was blood in his mouth. The left side of his face was swollen. All I could think of was how hard those books must have fallen on him. I took my mother’s side and I won’t lie, I went too hard. So hard that my mother eventually left us alone to go and find balm for the baby. I added my own accusations. I spoke from fear, from shock, from anger.

When the dust settled, the baby calmed down. Life, in theory, was supposed to move on. But it didn’t. My wife has been angry with me ever since. She says I took my mother’s side without knowing the full story. I asked her, “What’s the full story? Didn’t you stay on your phone while the baby walked into danger?” That only made things worse.

She said I ganged up with my mother to tear her apart. She reported everything to her own mother, looking for support. Her mother’s advice was simple and one-sided: ” Tell your husband to send his mother away.”

When my wife told me this, I asked her calmly, “Will your mom come and do what my mom is doing when she leaves?” She replied, “Can’t you get a house help?” That question got me livid, looking at our financial situation. I said, quietly but firmly, “Shame to the lips you use to say that. Go and get your own house help and pay her with your own money.”

Maybe I shouldn’t have said it that way. Maybe I should have softened it. But at that moment, it felt unfair. My mother uprooted herself to help us, not to be treated like a disposable solution.

Now my mother is fine or at least she acts fine. She goes about her duties like nothing happened. She doesn’t complain. She doesn’t fight back. She pretends everything is normal. But my wife is fighting a silent war. She no longer eats the food my mother cooks. She won’t drink water my mother fetches. She doesn’t sit with us to watch TV anymore. She would rather leave the baby with us and press her phone alone. The same phone that started all this.

I’m scared. I’m scared because resentment grows quietly. I’m scared because my house, once peaceful, now feels divided into invisible camps. I’m scared because I’m being forced to choose between the woman who gave me life and the woman I chose to build a life with.

Marriage Through the Eyes of Millennials and Gen-Z

I don’t feel like the villain here. I feel like a man trapped in the middle, punished for reacting to his child’s pain, punished for appreciating help, punished for not pretending everything is okay when it clearly isn’t.

So I’m asking, what do I do to bring peace back into my house before something breaks beyond repair?

—Bossu

This story you just read was sent to us by someone just like you. We know you have a story too. Email it to us at submissions@silentbeads.com. You can also drop your number and we will call you so you tell us your story.

*****