Word: motherlies
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...married just over a week ago, so I haven't had a mother-in-law for long. So far, so good. In the 10 days we've been in-laws, and the five years before that when my husband was my boyfriend, my relationship with his mom has been blissfully stress-free. And while we both like to think we're too charming and too wise to lock horns, there are other factors at play that help us stay friendly. One is proximity - or, in our case, the lack thereof. My husband and I live in London, while his mother...
Another savior of our relationship is my husband's relationship with his mother. "If I doubted my son's love for me, I'd be more likely to see you as a threat," she tells me. "But I don't." Apter's research supports that theory; she found that doubt is what drives any conflict between women and their mothers-in-law. "The root of the problem is vulnerability," says Apter, "the fear that the valuable relationship between mother and son is under threat as lives change. Mothers are left thinking, 'Will I still be valued for what I bring...
...mother know that she will be - a job most aren't very good at. "Daughters are better at reassuring their mothers that even though their lives are changing, they're still attached to their mothers," Apter says. "Men are less proactive about that reassurance." So every time my husband calls his mother to chat about the latest football scores, he takes us all another step further down the path of familial harmony...
...happens if my husband and I have children? Raising kids is rife with possible in-law-infuriating issues: disposable diapers vs. cloth, breast-feeding vs. the bottle, video games vs. chess club. How will the decisions my husband and I make about our kids affect my relationship with my mother-in-law? "If you have children," she says, "I'll be blaming you for all their problems, not my son." She's only kidding. But for some women, that's one mother-in-law joke that's no laughing matter...
...nautical miles out at sea - well beyond the pirates' previous range. One of the men involved in that raid, 24-year-old Mohamed Dashishle described a distinctly low-tech operation, though organized by men he said had once trained in the Somali coast guard. One of the pirates' "mother ships" spotted the tanker and deployed three small skiffs to surround it. Dashishle told TIME that the pirates simply had to brandish their rocket-propelled grenade launchers to intimidate the tanker. They never even fired a shot or boarded the ship before it got to anchor...