Check now whether you have got a mother-in-law or a real monster-in-law

February 25, 2009
By

Ms Eve was the luckiest woman; she had no mother-in-law. Women “tormented” by their moms-in-law love this statement. So did 32-year-old Dimple who met me about two years ago. When I made the remark, she burst into laughter and said: “I wish I were Eve.”

Well, Dimple is not the only one aspiring to be the First Woman; I know many — both as a handwriting analyst and also as the only brother of five married women. But Dimple’s case is one of the most interesting.

I distinctly remember the evening Dimple met me. “You’re looking very fresh today,” I told her after she settled herself across the table at a coffee shop where I waited for her.

A still from Monster-in-Law starring Jennifer Lopez and Jane Fonda“Oh yes! I’m coming straight from the railway station,” she said and paused for a couple of seconds. Suddenly an impish smile flickered across her face. She looked straight into my eyes and said: “I went to see off my mother-in-law. She won’t be around for three months.”

We laughed uncontrollably. The start of the analysis session was good. Soon, Dimple got to the point and explained to me at length how “dominating, authoritative, imposing, stubborn, interfering, critical, unsympathetic, heartless, cruel and mean” her mother-in-law was. “She will even cancel her funeral to make sure my plans for the day are spoilt,” Dimple said.

As long as she was talking, I did not say anything. I just listened to her. I had no choice. When she realised that she had exhausted her stock of spiteful adjectives, she became quiet. I then signalled her to hand over to me the handwriting sample of her mother-in-law.

According to Dimple's description, her mother-in-law would have looked something like this wonderful creatureAlong with her own handwriting sample, Dimple had brought along a note written by the lady on a small piece of paper. My analysis said the lady was indeed a little stubborn, but she definitely did not deserve most of the adjectives Dimple dedicated to her.

Stubbornness in handwriting; notice the gap between stems of 't'On the contrary, her handwriting reflected that the senior lady was quite friendly (connection between letters), generous (ending stroke), open-minded (lower case ‘L’), disciplined (left margin) and organised (line spacing). Her handwriting had some minor problems. One of them was her obstinacy, shown by braced ‘t’ .

Closed 'e' indicates that the writer is a bad listenerI asked Dimple for her own handwriting sample. Now, here I saw the root of the problem between the two women. Let me tell you a few things Dimple’s handwriting showed. She was unsystematic (shown by overall disorganisation of handwriting) and she did not like to listen to anyone, shown by closed ‘e (See pic).

Low t-bar indicates low self-opinionShe believed that every negative comment made by anyone was “aimed at proving her inferior” (shown by low bars on t stems) and therefore she thought that the “only way to deal with such people is by being nasty”. Also, Dimple imagined that some people (in this case, her husband and mother-in-law) often discussed her behind her back and bitched about her, shown by certain loopiness in d stems (below).

Loops in d indicate sensitivityI really can’t say that whether her husband and her mother-in-law bitched about her behind her back. Maybe they did. But the loops in Dimple’s d’s reflected that most of the “demeaning discourse” between the mom and the son took place in her imagination.

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© 2009 – 2012, Write Choice. All rights reserved.

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  • Ragini Mehta

    hahahahahaha… really liked reading this. i have read most of the articles on this website and i am wondering how i missed this post though it was posted in 2009!!!! better late than never. really interesintg

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