Very wise reply! I've saved it and I see a lot of patterns that I know in here. Makes me think if that "thing" is in my family too like OP wondered
I can relate to the rift between what is being said to what is being done in the story below (that I read which was interesting)
A personal anecdote for this too:
My mother is a kind of lovey-dovey talk everything rose colored "we love each other so" type of person. I recently got mad at my sister-in-law for a very real thing. She borrowed something dear to me, lent it on, the next person sold it
So then my mother tried to talk me out of my anger "No! No! She didn't mean it!"
Livid. Like I didn't have a right to be mad.
So I'm mad at my sister in law and I hold a grudge. Fast forward my sister in law is pregnant and she's married to my sister.
What does my mother do at this point in time? SIL's eternal advocate whenever me and her had a rift (We hadn't always had the best relationship)
My mother gets all disappointed. Why? Because it's my SIL's baby and so technically you know. What a disappointment and she didn't make a secret of the disapproval
So I can't be mad at SIL for a real mistake (my childhood wodden train is now forever gone) But then my mother gets to be like this over someone else's life choices
So what happened. SIL breaks down, crying. Who is like a really tough person and who wants my mother's approval. She says she's sorry, but it just doesn't work any other way with two women. Mother feels validated. She tells me, she had the right to express her true feelings. She says that it would have felt better for her, had they just adopted a child and I'm swallowing a stone
So far so well. At least this was being honest
Then just a few days later, she cheerfully starts knitting a woolen blanket for little baby to be born and starts talking like she can't wait
Apparently, she got over her adverse feelings rather quick and now it's all the opposite. Love love love, aren't we all so in love already? She's paid for a baby trolley for them and making plans. She never ever apologized. My SIL was crying
How can you first insult a person so so deeply that I think it just must have left a rift like a wound somewhere. And tomorrow play the generous grandma to be
What will SIL feel in the future when grandma interacts with not-really-my-grandchild?
It doesn't sit well with me