By Jane Sonnenschein · April 11, 2026

For several years, my relationship with my mother-in-law was quite tense. Not because we lived together and had daily friction. Quite the opposite — we did not live together at all.

She lives in southern Germany, about three hundred kilometers away from us. Usually, she comes to see us only twice a year. Sometimes around Easter, sometimes when the Christmas markets open. Or she invites us to her home for Christmas, and we stay for two weeks or so.

In theory, with that kind of distance, it should be difficult to have any serious conflict between daughter-in-law and mother-in-law. But during those years, I carried a lot of resentment toward her. Only later did I slowly realize that I had been using the standards of a Chinese popo¹ to judge a German mother-in-law.

In my understanding, a mother-in-law would help at least a little. Either by helping with the child, or by giving some financial support. Even if it was not much, at least it would make you feel that she had some sense of participation in this family.

But Germans tend to have a very strong sense of boundaries. Whenever my mother-in-law came to visit, she would not stay in our home. She and her current husband would usually stay in a hotel, and they rarely ate at our place. At that time, I often felt as if she were only stopping by to see us on the side.

Looking back now, there was actually a very large cultural difference hidden inside this. For Germans, staying in a hotel and arranging their own meals is the most natural thing in the world. But in my Chinese way of thinking, when family members come to visit, especially elders, even if they do not stay in your home, not even sitting down together for a proper meal can still make one feel uncomfortable.

Every time they came to Leipzig, they would also walk around the city. Her current husband especially likes the fried fish at a bar in town, so most of the time, they would not deliberately stay at our place for a meal. Buying something casually from the supermarket downstairs, or simply eating something outside, seemed perfectly normal to them. But from my perspective, it always felt a little hard to justify.

It was the same when we visited her home. Breakfast was bread. At lunchtime, there was often no proper formal meal. Whatever was in the fridge, one just ate: bread, ham, cake. To them, this was all very natural. Only dinner would be properly cooked.

But according to Chinese habits, when guests come to your home — let alone your son and daughter-in-law, even qinjia² — you should at least prepare a proper meal with some care, or take them out to eat something decent. But they were not like this. In the past, I would silently keep all these details in my heart. The more I collected them, the more I felt she was a very cold person.

In ordinary life, she did not contact us very often either. Sometimes she would send small gifts, but in my eyes at the time, those did not really count for much.

Especially around the time our child was born, together with my husband’s poor health, then later the pandemic, unemployment, and all kinds of burdens pressing down on life, I was carrying many things alone. The resentment in my heart grew even heavier.

At that time, I was not only cold toward her. I could even say that I was hostile. So every time we met, I did not really want to pay attention to her. I would not deliberately start an argument, but I also would not give her a friendly face. In front of her, I was almost cold the entire time.

On the one hand, I felt that she, as a mother-in-law, was too “cold.” On the other hand, I had never been able to let go of some of the choices she had made earlier in life.

When she was young, she divorced and returned from the United States to Germany with two children. Later, she had relationships with several men who were not really suitable, and the family environment became very bad because of it. This had a major impact on my husband’s growth.

There was another thing I had always held onto.

My husband is very intelligent. He learns quickly, especially in mathematics, physics, and chemistry. But back then, my mother-in-law wanted him to graduate as soon as possible and take the path of vocational training early. Even though a teacher had advised otherwise, she did not change her mind.

In my view, these decisions affected the direction of my husband’s later life to some extent.

So during those years, whenever she came to see us, I basically did not engage with her. She rarely complained about me either. Germans often have clear boundaries and do not easily express dissatisfaction. So on the surface, there was no conflict between us. But that awkwardness was real.

A few years ago, I suddenly began to understand one thing: she actually did not owe us anything. This sentence sounds very simple. But only after I truly understood it did my state of mind begin to loosen little by little.

Later, I realized that so much of my dissatisfaction with her looked, on the surface, as if I was blaming her as a person. But in fact, many other emotions were mixed into it.

There were cultural differences between China and Germany. There were differences between my expectations of a Chinese mother-in-law and a German mother-in-law. There was also my disappointment in my husband’s family of origin. On top of that, during those years, I was under too much pressure and too much suffering, and I had no outlet. So she became the most convenient object for my resentment.

But when I looked at her from another angle, the weight in my heart became less heavy.

Later, when she came to our home, I even began to chat with her normally. We talked about everyday things, about life, and little by little, the atmosphere became much more relaxed.

Once, my husband said with some surprise that he had not expected the two of us to be able to sit together and talk for so long. Actually, I was also a little surprised myself.

After the relationship eased, I slowly began to see things I had not seen before.

For example, when our oven broke, a new one cost more than five hundred euros. After she heard about it, she immediately paid for it and helped us buy a new one. Later, when I started a training course, I needed a headset with a microphone. At first, my budget was around seventy or eighty euros, but then I found a more suitable one that cost more than one hundred and eighty euros. After I told her, she agreed very readily as well.

If these things had happened in the past, I might have felt that this was what she should have done anyway. But now I feel that this was her way of expressing support within her own boundaries.

She is not the kind of elder who asks about you every day, interferes in everything, or expresses emotions in a very warm and intense way. But that does not mean she has no heart at all. It only means that the way she expresses care is very different from the one I was originally familiar with.

Later, I gradually realized that another important reason our relationship could soften was this: she actually did not have many demands of me.

When I went to her home, I did not need to deliberately perform. I did not need to rush to do things. Whether she was cooking or cleaning, she followed her own rhythm. She would not require me, as the daughter-in-law, to help. Nor would she feel uncomfortable because I had not done anything.

When she came to our home, it was the same. She would not point fingers at our life, and she would not assume that I had to revolve around her. Many times, even when I said, “Let’s eat together,” she might not stay. From her perspective, they had come all this way only rarely, and they preferred to follow their own plans: walk around the city, have a drink, eat something they wanted to eat.

In the past, I saw this as coldness. Later, I slowly understood that when two people do not place so many demands on each other, the relationship can actually become more relaxed. You do not have to perform in front of the other person, and the other person does not come to reshape you. In a certain sense, this is a rare kind of comfort.

These boundaries are mutual. She does not easily intervene in our life, and we also do not assume that she has the right to interfere in our family. Even when it comes to the child’s education and daily habits, the boundaries are clear.

In the end, the reason this relationship later became smoother also has something to do with my own personality.

I am not someone who is especially good at expressing care through everyday details. Nor am I used to proving that I care by taking care of another person’s daily life. Only later did I realize that this kind of relationship — where both people can take care of themselves and do not over-demand from each other — actually suits me better in some ways.

Of course, even now, there are still many things I do not understand.

For example, there is a knot between my husband and his sister that has never been untied, and the beginning of that knot actually had something to do with my mother-in-law.

At that time, my mother-in-law’s boyfriend suddenly fell into a coma. After he was taken to the hospital, they found out that he already had late-stage cancer and could not be saved. In the end, he died almost entirely while unconscious.

Although this man was not their biological father, he had lived with my mother-in-law for many years. He had always been a decent person and was one of the few people who had truly been good to her. So my husband and his sister still had quite deep feelings for him.

Because everything happened so suddenly, my mother-in-law told my husband not to tell his sister for the time being. She said she would find a time to tell her herself.

Looking back now, perhaps she had her own considerations at the time. My husband’s older sister lives in the United States, has four children, and has no parents nearby to help. For someone living far away abroad, whose life was already busy and chaotic, suddenly hearing such bad news would only add distress. In the short term, there was not much she could actually do. Perhaps it was precisely because of this that my mother-in-law told my husband not to say anything first. She wanted to wait until she found a suitable time to slowly tell her daughter.

My husband agreed and did not contact his sister proactively. But not long afterward, my sister-in-law heard the news from an acquaintance. After she found out, she was very angry and blamed my husband for not telling her immediately. Later, because of this, the brother and sister gradually stopped contacting each other.

In my view, this whole thing was actually very strange. Because it was not my husband’s own decision in the first place. It was my mother-in-law who had told him not to say anything yet. But in the end, the sister blamed the brother, not the person who had originally made that decision.

What I found even harder to understand was that their relationship had not originally been bad. Yet because of this one incident, they stopped communicating for many years, almost to the point of never seeing each other again.

I always felt that if my mother-in-law had been willing to stand up and explain one sentence, or even just mediate a little between them, things might not have reached the point they did.

Once, I even spoke with her specifically about this. I hoped she would step in and ease the relationship between her son and daughter. But her attitude was always very clear: this was a matter between the siblings themselves, and she would not interfere.

Even now, I do not agree with this. In my view, it is still too cold. But unlike before, I no longer insist that she must act according to my logic. I still do not understand it, but I have begun to respect it.

Later, I increasingly felt that in cross-cultural families, the hardest part of many relationships is not right or wrong, but the fact that the logic behind each person is completely different.

You think this is coldness; the other person thinks this is boundaries. You think this is obviously something one should get involved in; the other person thinks adults should handle their own affairs. You think this is the most basic form of support between family members; the other person thinks that gifts, visits, and even helping with money at an important moment are already ways of expressing care.

These differences are often not resolved through arguing. Nor are they resolved by one person completely convincing the other. They are resolved, if at all, through slowly accepting that we did not grow up inside the same culture. We may not be able to truly feel what the other person feels. We do not necessarily have to force ourselves to agree. But at least we can learn not always to look at things only from our own angle. We can learn a little more perspective-taking, a little more understanding, a little more respect.

Today, my mother-in-law and I are certainly not especially close. But at least we are no longer awkward with each other.

For me, that is already a very rare kind of progress.

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Notes

1. Popo（婆婆）: In Chinese, popo specifically means a husband’s mother. It is more precise than the English “mother-in-law,” because Chinese has different words depending on whether the in-law is the husband’s mother or the wife’s mother. In many Chinese families, popo also carries strong cultural expectations: she may be expected to help with childcare, support the younger couple financially or practically, participate in family life, and sometimes also exercise authority. This makes the word emotionally and culturally heavier than the English “mother-in-law.”
2. Qinjia（亲家）: Qinjia refers to the relationship between two families connected by marriage, especially the parents of a married couple. For example, the wife’s parents and the husband’s parents may refer to each other as qinjia. In Chinese social etiquette, qinjia are not simply “the other in-laws”; there is often an expectation of hospitality, respect, and formal courtesy when the two families meet.

This essay is also available in other languages:

Chinese version: 很长一段时间，我一直对我的德国婆婆有很深的怨气，后来却慢慢想通了

German version: Lange Zeit hatte ich meiner deutschen Schwiegermutter gegenüber viel Groll. Später begann ich langsam, sie zu verstehen