Ellie Slott Fisher tackles the trickiest of all family relationships with wisdom, wit, and laughter. It's Either Her or Me: A Guide to Help a Mom and Her Daughter-in-Law Get Along offers the practical step-by-step advice both women need to tackle the challenges each must face to forge respectful and affectionate family ties. This book is a must read for mothers with sons of any age, wives/girlfriends, sisters, and the men themselves.Leah Klungness, Ph.D., psychologist, co-author of The Complete Single Mother and co-founder of Singlemommyhood.comThis book deals with a topic that is generally given very little attention and yet has enormous significance for the relationships between families and the way people interact. Ellie Fisher has drawn from a wide experience to deal with countless issues and countless contacts. This should be most enjoyable and insightful reading to all of us who deal with the challenges of making life work particularly when it involves the developing of new and yet quickly important relationships. Herbert Pardes, M.D., CEO, New York-Presbyterian HospitalAn engaging, insightful and psychologically astute take on the triangle between the woman who raised him and the woman who bed and wed him."Susan Shapiro, author of Five Men Who Broke My Heart and Secrets of a Fix-Up FanaticAbout the AuthorEllie Slott Fisher is the author of the critically acclaimed Mom, Theres a Man in the Kitchen and Hes Wearing Your Robe. A veteran journalist, Fisher has written for numerous magazines as well as the anthology Single Woman of a Certain Age. A dating mom herself, she lives in Yardley, Pennsylvania, and has two children.Excerpt. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.CHAPTER ONEMoms and GirlfriendsVie for FirstFor most moms, it comes about quite unexpectedly. All of a sudden the little boy who refused to part with his well-worn Toy Story pajamas, despite the fact that Buzz Lightyears face had faded to obscurity, is wearing aftershave. And he doesnt even shave. That child who shrieked Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! when you returned home from work now grunts Uh- huh and Nah in response to your questions. Yet you overhear him speaking animatedly and loquaciously to someone on his cell phone.This new, redesigned little boy has moments of unexplained extreme pleasantness, offering to take out the trash before you even ask. (Dont get too excited; these moments are fleeting.) You attribute these changes to his entering puberty with its typical hormonal shifts and turns. While this certainly is true, whats also happening is that your son has embarked on a journey to find a newand differentlove of his life.Oh sure, youll still get the requests for money (you may actually recall with fondness his five-dollar allowance) or for help, but that pedestal youve been on for the past fourteen years or so is starting to crack. Now that your son has discovered girlsnot just in a stealing-their-lunch-on-the-school-bus way, but as potential intimates your relationship with him will change.Meanwhile, as the girlfriend, you hadnt considered how his mother could affect your relationship. Youve fallen for a guy who may act one way when hes with you, and another waynot all that pleasingly when he is with his mom. Youll find yourself treading carefully around this woman, knowing that regardless of what happens between you and your boyfriend, she will always love him.It is rare that one can see in a little boy the promise of a man, but one can almost always see in a little girl the threat of a woman.Alexandre DumasWhos on First?A natural order follows the birth of a son. A mother smiles knowingly when his first word is Dada and not Mama, because, as everyone knows, its an easier word to form. She directs the barber to cut his hair so hell mimic an adorable GapKids model when she dresses him for Easter. She arranges his plans for the summer, artfully working them around the family vacation. She anxiously gets him ready for his first school dance, straightens his tie, and takes a picture.And then she moves over.As difficult as it is for a mom to step off first base, in order for her to raise an emotionally healthy son who will enter an emotionally healthy adult relationship, she has to be willing to hit a sacrifice fly.Most moms understand this, but that doesnt make it any easier.Hope, whose married son recently became a parent, says that as much as she has been reluctant to share her only child with another woman, whom she likes, she recognizes that in order to keep her son in her life, she has to allow his wife to take her place. If youre going to fight that, youre going to cause friction, Hope says. Id never want to do that.Caroline, another mom with a married son, believes she has been replaced by her new daughter-in-law. He would talk to me, rather than her, before he got engaged. I do feel replaced, she says, adding with a little resignation, but I should be. That doesnt bother me.Family counselor Esther Ganz applauds the way these two moms handle their relationships with their adult sons. As much as a mom might want to maintain some control over her son, and maybe even his significant other, she really only has control over her own feelings. I would work on myself. Its not the girlfriends problem. Its mine, Ganz suggests.For you moms, this may require taking stock of your own life. Has it become too centered on your kids, and not on yourself? Did you give up a career or hobby or other passion once you became a mom? Have you been living vicariously through your kids so that you fear feeling lost when they no longer need you? (A cautionary note to mothers of younger sons: They always will need you, especially when youre ready to retire, play golf, and focus on yourself.) As mothers, you chart your childrens development along with your own aging, so the more independent they become, the more ancient you feel. Yet you are really never too old to add a new dimension to your life. You can still get a new job, develop a hobby, go back to school, take a cooking class, learn yoga, travel with your husband or friends. You can make yourself whole. The interesting consequence to all of this is that your sons will be so proud of youand not feel smothered by your myopic attention to themthat they may even initiate an occasional phone call.I used to play tennis with a very wise mother of two boys who were a few years older than my kids. When I told her how sad it made me to think of my first child going off to college, especially since I projected a lonely future as a single mom, she reminded me about the universal goal of mothers. That goal is to raise children to be independent, financially and emotionally, so they can develop their own productive lives. Its why you gave them piano lessons, made them go to Sunday school, and insisted they brush their teeth. And those lives should, in the best of circumstances, include falling in love with your replacement.Amy gets this. She has a thirty-year-old son who just got married. As close as she has always been with him, she claims she doesnt feel less important now that he has a wife. I really dont. I feel that this is our goal as parents to see our kids become independent, find a loving spouse, replicate what our parents had. She adds, laughing, I think my husband feels hes being replaced more than I do. When our son got married, my husband acted so depressed, like we were sending him to the gallows rather than to a wife! Her husband insists, of course, that he has no personal take on this.You should emulate these three women by being content to move over and give your sons new flame your space, as in a chess gamea kind of queen for a queen, where, if you refuse to budge, youll end up in a stalemate. I know you understand all of this without my telling you. But deep down inside, its okay to feel a little saddened by this change.When the boys mom readies herself to relinquish her first-place position to the girlfriend, if you are that girlfriend, you have your own set of responsibilities. Coming first in a guys life comes with a price. Dethroning this other woman (indulge me as I continue the queen metaphor) doesnt mean you get to relegate the Queen Mother to the servants quarters. No one will tolerate that. And youll be unfairly viewed as the wicked, heartless daughter-in-law whose husband, by the way, will probably continue speaking to his mother behind your back. Since first place is yours for the taking, try to be magnanimous to the woman you bested. Hopefully, youll even grow to like her.Twenty-six-year-old Kelly is trying. Even though she doesnt particularly like her boyfriends mom, she genuinely feels sorry for her, believing her insecure behavior is in some way the result of her sons own insensitivity. Kellys boyfriend frequently gets so caught up in his activities that he forgets to call his mom. Because Kelly speaks to her own mother every day, she understands how lonely her boyfriends mom must feel. Purely out of a sense of obligationand not out of fondnessshe encourages him to call his mother.As a girlfriend or wife, your being considerate of his momgiving your regards when her son calls her, offering to let her sit in the front seat of the car with her son (she should refuse but will appreciate that you asked), thanking her when she gives you that perfume that smells a little like Bubbliciousmay not only improve your relationship with her but also stabilize her relationship with her son, which will, consequently, effectively strengthen your relationship with him.And as the boys mom, you should recognize how difficult it is for the wife or girlfriend to fit in with your family. She tries to be on her best behavior but she feels ill at ease with your daughter, who acts possessively toward her brother, and with your sister, Aunt Jean, who relishes every opportunity to criticize, and with your elderly father, who resents her different religion. Just like the girlfriend, you, too, should offer to take the backseatfiguratively and literally.One more word on the subject of gifts. My mother-in-law looked forward to giving me an Este Lauder gift box every Christmas. I loved the gift the first year, but then by the seventh or eighth Christmas I had stockpiled so much makeup, I could have worn a different shade of lipstick every single day. I never had the heart to tell her I no longer wanted it. She also used to fill her candy dish with pastel- colored mint candies. Being polite, I once told her I liked them. I didnt, but they turned up enclosed with my birthday present and Christmas present every year that followed. Today, four years after my mother-in-law has passed away, Ive actually run out of makeup, and Ive found myself searching store after store for those tasteless mints.There will certainly be times that, despite the efforts of the mom and the girlfriend, the guy will do something to hamper their relationship, sometimes unintentionally. Jill, the mother of a twenty- four-year-old son, says her sons girlfriend expects to be with him constantly. But when he needed to buy a suit for a job interview, he asked his mom, rather than his girlfriend, to accompany him. She got angry because I went instead of her, Jill says. They fought for a week. She told him, I cant believe you took your mother instead of me. Now not only is her son feuding with his girlfriend, but the two women are at odds. This incident also emblematizes a dangerous crossing of boundaries in that the boy told his mother about the argument with his girlfriend. Theres only one reason for a guy to divulge this: Hes unsure of his feelings for his girlfriend, and he wants feedback. Even if he and his girlfriend easily move on from this disagreement, it wont be readily forgotten by the mother, who will subconsciously store it away for the day she is inclined to list all the things wrong with this younger woman. And if the girlfriend learns that he confided in his mother rather than resolving matters privately between them, she will be angry and hurt, and rightly so.Also significant is that this occasion involves a noteworthy event in this young mans life. He has graduated from college and wants to make a grown-up impression on a prospective employer. His choice to help him pick out this new suit reveals how he views his relationship. If he chooses his significant other over his mother, then he is already comfortable transferring some of the trust he has in his mom to his girlfriend. If he selects his mother over his girlfriendand shes not offering to paythen either he feels bad leaving Mom out because shes already upset over his leaving home for good, or he just doesnt feel all that serious with this particular girl.A girlfriend should not have to fight to be number one in a guys life; shes entitled to it. If the guy cannot see this, if he continues to seek out his moms voice rather than his significant others, then hes not looking to be in a mature, committed relationship. Not only do his actions correlate with how he views his relationshipsIs he ready to pull away from his mom? Does this girlfriend figure prominently in his future plans? but they can create a competition between the two women.Malcolm in the MiddleIts ironic, then, that its often the guy who complains about feeling stuck in the untenable middle position. Rather than deal with the personality conflicts, unless he witnesses mutual enmity between the two women, hell just gladly imagine that theyre getting along. Its not that these guys dont care enough to get involved; its that they care too muchfor both women.Life for the son is hell if the two women dont get along. Unfairly, thats the person who pays the price, says Sue, a mom of a newly married son.According to clinical psychologist Dr. Beatrice Lazaroff, this role of middleman is inevitable. Eventually some issue, some comment, some situation will come up and he will get a certain amount of feedback from the girlfriend and the mother. He will feel divided loyalties and will have to negotiate that terrain somehow, she says. The guy yeses everybody to death, and what happens is that the other people end up getting mad at him because they think he agrees with them, and then he doesnt follow through.There is a simple explanation for why these guys fail to follow through. They cant win. If, for example, the mother is annoyed with the girlfriend for avoiding her at a family christening, shell complain to her son. Her son knows that if he relays this to his girlfriend, hell find himself between two fuming women. All guys get this, and since most men would rather wrestle a hungry bear in the woods in a blinding blizzard than get between two females, can we women really blame them?Sure we can. Because not only should they take some responsibility, but they also hold all the cards. They know both women will forgive them if they occasionally make a poor decision. In fact, well probably transfer the blame to her because we dont really want to denounce our son or our boyfriend.Thirty-five-year-old Paul is one man who understands instinctively that eventually he may have to choose sides. Sensitive and compassionate and with a self-proclaimed strong feminine side, Paul finds any form of confrontation to be offensive. When he fell in love at first sight with his co-worker, Jess, he immediately called his mother. The two women met, enthusiastically greeting each other with a warm hug and a kiss. But the lovefest collapsed a few weeks later when Paul announced his engagement. His mother implored him to wait, insisting they barely knew each other.Jess was emotional and dramatic and very upset when I told her what my mother said, Paul recalls. She told me to stop listening to other people. We dont need more time. We know what were doing. I felt like I was between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, Mom is giving me advice to hold off the wedding, and the woman Im about to marry is giving me a calendar date. I wanted to make two people happy.So Paul went to his therapist, actually his hairdresser, for advice. She told me she was in a similar situation. She said to me, My husband is very close to his mother. One time he put her before me. I told him that as much as you love and respect your mother, youre starting a new family. You always put your wife first, no matter what. And hearing that, I made a change on the spot. I came homemy hair looked greatand I had a completely different outlook on how to approach the situation. what genre is most popular in books It's Either Her or Me: A Guide to Help a Mom and Her Daughter-in-Law Get Along
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Keep looking for a better book.By BrookeI couldn't even finish this book. The first chapter was ok, but the more I read, the more the author contradicted herself. She seemed to have one opinion, but then the more she wrote she would end up defending an opposite opinion. It became confusing and overall not helpful. I tried to skip through the chapters, reading the ones with the titles that interested me, but ultimately put it down feeling none the wiser. I still have a m.i.l. I don't know how to deal with.3 of 5 people found the following review helpful. So soBy LilyThis book was not as good as another one I read on the same subject. If the scenario presented doesn't affect you then I just skip those parts and there were many. Such as ethnic marriages,or when one person has kids already etc. What I would like to see more of is the dilemma of the actual two sets of parents. What do you so with the feelings of intense jealously and competition? Especially when grandchildren come On the scene. Thank goodness I have one daughter because I think it's much better to be the mom of the girl,the advantages are tremendous especially if you and your dtr are close. I do not like being the other of the boy,from the wedding to the amount of time the couple spends with her family as opposed to yours,you must take a backseat and I don't like that. Books acknowledge this but I get the impression us On my way! Of boys have to shut up,Bizet the bullet or risk losing our sons. I am not jealous of my dtr in law,I know she must come first in my sons life for it to be .a healthy marriage but I hate that her family is always in the know before ours just that being the very nature of girls talking more then boys and girls stay closer to the family. I have always said and my friends laugh,best case scenario is if your kid marries an orphan. I'm sure most people feel this way and just don't talk about it.4 of 5 people found the following review helpful. Amazing and insightful read into improving your relationship with his family.By Kim T.Where was this book ten years ago? I have been dating my boyfriend for nearly 11 years and have always wondered about how I could improve my relationship with his family and vice versa. I will readily admit I have harbored concerns and fears about whether or not I was doing enough or involved enough, and Ellie Fisher's book offers advice and insight that should be seen as common sense for anyone entering a new relationship or looking to improve a current relationship.Coming from a family of all girls, It's Either Her or Me offers critical insight into what the mothers of sons are thinking when a new woman enters his life. For all the stress and pressure we girlfriends put on ourselves, it was reassuring to learn that this internal struggle is also shared from the mother's perspective. They too need to navigate the fine line between wanting to protect their sons and welcome this new woman in his life. As Fisher points out, rather than walking on eggshells around one another, it is critical that their is communication and respect from both parties. I have learned both his mother and my mother from their difficult experiences with their respective mother-in-laws, whether it was not speaking to one another for years, or learning quickly that your way would always be wrong, that to overcome these issues takes time, effort, communication, and most importantly respect.While I am still navigating my own relationship road, and before the ring is on the finger, I thought it was important to take the time and effort myself to learn what I could or should be doing differently. Some of Fisher's pointers I have tried - using the man as the proxy, biting my tongue, respecting his time with his family, among others - but some tips were so obvious I was ashamed I had never thought of them. Why haven't I thought to ask her out one-on-one to a movie or dinner? Why don't I call or email more frequently? Rest assured that these questions are helpful reminders of areas of improvement!More importantly, Fisher's book offers helpful advice on the wedding planning process. I have witnessed enough friend's wedding preparations to know that fun and stress will go hand-in-hand. Learning to pick my priorities, and remembering to keep both families involved in the process is important and I know it will go a long way towards ensuring our future is just as bright as our past.It's Either Her or Me is a book I should have had on my bookshelf long ago. Not only will I be leaving this spring read on my boyfriend's nightstand, but I know that It's Either Her or Me will be a wonderful (and helpful) wedding shower/bachelorette gift.For full disclosure, I received a copy of It's Either Her or Me from Random House in order to craft my review.