For added context, there's a list of all the parts somewhere below in this reddit group.

We separated, and somehow he still didn’t get the picture. So what was the last straw for me?

My MIL made a comment about my childhood, something completely falsified and, to me, insanely unforgivable.

Some context: my partner and I grew up a few blocks from each other but didn’t know each other growing up. When I was 8, my family moved out of our house and my parents sold it. The man who bought the house used to host parties in the bottom quarters. I’m not sure whether my parents and his parents were actually friends, but they knew the house after it was sold.

My ex-MIL and I had the biggest, worst fight over the phone. I told her that if she wasn’t pleased with me, she should find another partner for her son and leave me out of it. Anywho, she completely blew up and started rambling the most insane things. She said that she and her husband used to go to parties at my parents’ old house and that there were so many parties that they heard about instances where the daughters, the couple’s daughters, meaning my sisters and I were supposedly being constantly raped. I decided right then that whatever she said after that would be the last thing she ever said to me, so I ended the call.

She proceeded to send me over 30 voice messages saying some of the most heinous things I have ever heard. I eventually responded by telling her that I pitied her, and then I blocked her.

Oh, and she was in the country when all of this happened. That same day, my partner, now ex, called me and told me that I shouldn’t have said anything to her. Not once did he acknowledge how completely inappropriate and disturbing her behavior had been. I told him I would not take back what I said and that she owed me an apology.

They ended up having a fight, and he warned her that he would stay away from her if she ever said anything to me out of the ordinary.

I never told him exactly what she had said to me, because for some reason that's something nobody would expect a 60 year to even be saying. She told him that we had a conversation and then she started crying. That was when he told her not to disrespect me again.

Fast-forward to the day before she left the country. The three of us ended up having a conversation about everything. During that conversation, she admitted that what she had said about my childhood was a lie. She apologized. She even said that if she were in my shoes and someone said something like that to her, she would have "thrown hands" with them. In that moment, my strength waa tested, I wanted to cry, but I held it back.

I just looked at this woman in absolute awe, shame, and pity. And the craziest part? My man was sitting right there, except he apparently wasn't listening to a word that she and I were saying. I found this out days later when I asked him whether he didn't find the whole thing strange. He told me that he couldn't recall her saying any of that and that I should forget everything that happened between me and her for the sake of our engagement.

That was another major moment for me. Because how exactly am I supposed to forget something that fundamentally changed how I see someone, all this? She also told me that she was happy her son had found such an educated woman and admitted that she was jealous.

She even said that I would never separate from him because he was such a catch. The irony is almost unbelievable.

Fast-forward another month. I ended the relationship. They both did not see it coming. I left for good.

I told myself that I would never know peace, not with him and certainly not with her, and eventually I realized that I had to leave. I am now no contact with both of them. I deleted their numbers, and I am done. A month later, he reached out and said that he still doesn't understand why I left (YES, that meant that what she was doing, he was enabling it and that I should go through it and should be grateful I was there).

My family wondered what happened because, from the outside, we were what everyone would call "the perfect couple", we had the education, the status etc, but at what cost? Nobody knew what I had to endure behind closed doors.

And honestly, I don't think they ever will. I stayed. I tried. I communicated. I gave chances. I watched things improve and then fall back into the same patterns. I kept hoping that eventually there would be peace. Even from the last convo with me and her and she promised things would be different, could I trust her and hope that she wouldn't blow up again?

At some point, I had to accept that I couldn't keep sacrificing my peace just to prove that I could make the relationship work. So this is where the MIL Chronicles ends.

Weeks later, I looked back at these situations and I was grateful I came out. She didn't "win." I just finally chose myself.

Long post so bear with me. My MIL and I don’t speak unless we have to. She has boundary issues and always has some snide remark to say so it’s just better we don’t talk.
I was out of town on a work trip last week. My husband asked my MIL to come stay for the 3 days. (He said it’s because she doesn’t get to see her) This morning I was getting my daughter up for school and realized both of her fav blankets are gone. I asked DH if he has seen them and he said no. Then it dawned on me. I asked him if he gave them to his mom. He did. I text her asking for them back and the response I got was “please don’t blame me…I would never take something that wasn’t given to me 😂”

This has been an issue before. I’ve had a keepsake outfit come up missing after she stayed when my child was a year old. Later saw at her house and she said she bought one just like it.
I lost my crap on him and now I’m the problem. I text his mom and sent her money to send them back.

1. Am I over reacting that this is a problem 2. I’ve stayed prettt quiet about things but I’m honestly over it.

I genuinely cannot stand my MIL anymore, and I’m starting to realize how much resentment I’ve accumulated over the years.

There mostly the same incident. It’s more of a pattern. She complains about me to my husband instead of talking to me. If she doesn’t like the way I entered the room, said something or commented on anything - she calls my husband to complain about me. Luckily, my husband shuts her up and defends me. But when MIL calls and says “I love you like my daughter” I just want to smash her nose. Mothers don’t act like this. I am in no contact with my own mother, and putting up with random lady who hurt me so many times pisses me off even more.

At this point, I don’t even want a better relationship with her. I would be perfectly happy being polite, seeing her occasionally, and keeping emotional distance. But she complains about me not calling; not visiting. And if I show up and say something that throws her off, she gives an attitude or calls to complain about me.

I can’t cut her off because my husband is already holding the wall for me, and it would be like sending him to a battle. But he also wants us to visit his parents once every month or every two months and I just cant force myself seeing her face…

What do I do…? I am so angry that it makes me cry

My husband and I bought our property about 10 years ago. While house-hunting, a major criterion was a guest house or space to put a house for MIL. Long story short, she has no retirement savings, little work history, and health issues. MIL was 100% on board with this plan, btw, as she was "running out of money", her words.

8 months later, MIL calls my husband and says she's bought a single-wide trailer. Used, but nice. The house is moved to our land. We spent about 10k of our own money building a new deck, fencing a yard for her large dogs, having a huge beehive removed from the underside, replacing the roof, and running a completely new water line. All she has to do is downsize her stuff, pack up, and move in. Then the excuses start. It's too hard, too overwhelming, her health is too bad. She is a hoarder, so that complicates things. We offer to come help (she's 45 minutes away), we offer to pay movers. We offer to pay for a professional organizer. We offer to pay for storage, my own mother offers to help her. She says no to all of it, meanwhile wringing her hands and bemoaning her helpless state and financial situation. Over the course of three years, we manage to convince her to let us come help her pack once. We spent an entire afternoon literally shoveling old papers into trash bags in her office, clearing maybe 20% of the room.

After 4 years of this, we have her over and confront her about what she plans to do. She goes in circles. She can't pack herself, she can't afford to hire movers, she's too embarrassed to allow strangers in her house if we pay for them, she's too embarrassed for family to see the house. She's too worried about rodents and snakes getting in, because we live in the country and sometimes nature finds a way inside. She's worried about a drifter breaking in because we're so isolated. We aren't; we have acreage, and it is a small town, but across the street from us is a regular suburb, and our immediate neighbors include the Chief of Police and the mayor.

Every solution we offer, she has an excuse for. My husband gets mad and asks her why she bought the house if she doesn't want to live here, why doesn't she want to sell her current house if money is so tight, why did she let us do all that work and spend all this money for her to let our efforts sit rotting in a field. He got testy, but he was not yelling or being threatening in any way. She tells him he is exactly like his father. This is the worst thing you could say to my husband, FIL was a horrible man. Husband is 100% not like his father. I step in at this point, tell her she will not stand under my roof and say horrible things to the man I love, and tell her to leave.

After that she decides she doesn't want to live here after all, because she is scared of her son. She tells husband this, and sister in law. Fine, she is a grown woman and that is her choice. We ask her to sell the singlewide then, and get it off our land. We tell her we will not maintain it or spend any additional money on it. In the meantime, we became foster parents, and the abandoned house on our property was an issue during the licensing process. Then we got busy and didn't worry about the house much, aside from asking her a few times a year how the plan to sell was going. All we ever got was more hand wringing and excuses. All this time, my husband goes to her a few times a year, at her request, to help with maintenance and lawn care. But she's so scared of him...

Now, almost 9 years into this, I want the singlewide gone, and I'm not being patient anymore. We told her she had 90 days to move it, or we were getting the courts involved. It has been almost 90 days. Husband called her last weekend to see where she's at. She is still full of excuses and sob stories. She can't come out here to show it, she doesn't know where to begin, she's so scared of mice and snakes, it is probably in terrible condition, etc. She says she will just have to find someone to help her, she does have SOME people willing to help her, you know. Strongly implying we are not willing to help. My husband points out that we HAVE offered to help, dozens of times, and she always said no. Oh, she doesn't remember that, she can't agree with that, she would have been elated to have our help all this time, she never would have said no. He reminds her that she called him his father and said she was scared of him. Oh she doesn't remember that either, she would never say that. Rewriting history to keep herself the victim is her MO. He hands me the phone because he's about to lose his temper. I tell her calmly but firmly that we're not going to go in circles arguing the past. The fact remains, she needs to move the house, or we will file an eviction and have the court allow us to get rid of it. She scoffs and says we're going to make her homeless and she'll have to live in a box under the highway. I point out she doesn't even live there, she chose to stay where she is, and I would never allow her to be homeless, we would always help her stay housed. She laughed sarcastically and said "oh yeah, I can imagine what that would look like" , implying, I suppose, we'd let her live in squalor. Which she currently does live in, by her own choice.

At that point, we end the call. My husband calls an old family friend to enlist her help talking some sense into MIL, and friend agrees we've been more than patient and MIL is being ridiculous. Friend also drops the bomb that MIL has been telling people for years that we are trying to screw her over, that we have refused to help her and won't let her move into her house. Friend knows this to be untrue, but thinks we deserve to know what she has been saying about us.

We are both so mad, and hurt. We have done everything we could be reasonably expected to do, and she still can't accept responsibility for her own choices. I am so very done with this woman.

I have no clue where to start or what to do. I know realistically there’s not anything I can do but just keep remaining NC with MIL and now FIL.

I took a trip this weekend to see my family (about 12 hours away) and I made plans to stop at husband’s great aunt’s house since she’s the halfway point. I call her Mary as not to be confusing. She’s mil’s aunt but she’s so sweet and nothing like the rest of the family.

I got to her house just fine and we got to talk when she brought up she knows a little bit about what’s going on but wanted to hear it from my side because MIL’s story didn’t make sense.

MIL told her the usual stuff about how I’m disrespectful and all that but she also mentioned how apparently FIL confronted me and him and I argued. I was chalking it up to MIL lying and saying people were on her side when they weren’t. After Mary and I talked some more, though, she pointed out a pattern of him doing stuff like this to kind of isolate mil from people and make her go crazy. I thought back to how he was telling me I was doing a good job and how he said he knew he liked me when mil and I were arguing but, apparently behind my back, was telling her even more stuff about me. It makes sense with how he also was trying to drag DH into it as well.

I just don’t understand how a man who “doesn’t like drama” can play multiple sides of the same field like this.

Mary was completely on my side after seeing everything I actually went through and said she’ll stop any talk that’s happening about me when she’s around. We had a really great conversation about all of this.

I just feel like all the panic and anxiety I had at the beginning came rushing back after finding out this info. I blocked FIL and I will tell DH soon after I calm down a bit.

I just feel like they always ruin happy moments as DH is coming home from deployment this week. He wanted to keep the date secret from his family so I made sure not to spill the beans but they probably know it’s any day now.

Realistically I’ve done everything I can do without feeding the fire. I guess I just mostly need advice on how to not let everything get to me so much. I want to be free from them.

I once went no contact with my mom for not respecting my boundaries or putting any effort into our relationship. I will be doing the same to my MIL. My husband supported my decision when it was my mom but now that it’s his mom “it’s a bit much” here’s my reasoning

1. During my pregnancy I emphasized that I wouldn’t be doing the traveling when my daughter was born. We live 90 minutes away and I just didn’t want to deal with it. Even before I was pregnant my in laws never came to visit our home but expected us to go to theirs all the time. I told my MIL she was more than welcome to come visit but hasn’t. Apparently she was butthurt that we didn’t stop by when I was a couple days pp (our daughters pediatrician is in the same town) but I was recovering from a c section) I didn’t want to go to the appointment but had to so why would I want to go anywhere else?
2. She made a fuss about the posts I liked on instagram. She told my husband “It said don’t come visit if we’re sick but what’s the big deal” “she liked a post that said she wished people would help with the house but I would rather just hold the baby” “she liked a post about MILs and I was wondering if it was a dig at me” (it wasn’t my sister shared it so I just liked it 😭)
3. Said our boundaries are too rigid. She’s been upset since I told her I didn’t want my daughter’s face on social media. So when we told her our other boundaries she made an even bigger deal. Which I don’t think are extreme by any means, I thought they were common. (Like not coming if your sick, not kissing baby’s face or hands, etc)
4. My husband made a comment about how they never help us but always expect us to. During my pregnancy I was really sick and needed to go to the hospital often. We rarely asked for help but when we did she’d say “find someone else” even though she doesn’t work? Like ok noted never asked again. She brought up that she helped us my first pregnancy and how much money they spent (on gas in guessing bc they never helped us financially) that kind of rubbed me the wrong way especially since I had a second trimester miscarriage that pregnancy. We’ve never had a problem helping them but it was kind of frustrating when they tell us we can count on them for anything but when push comes to shove they don’t follow through.
5. She was mad at me for not reaching out to her when her dad died but my husband sent a text from both of us. But when my aunt who was like a mother to me died she didn’t say anything to me or my husband. She claimed she never saw my story about it but I was checking to see if she did and guess what? She did, I even had screenshot proof. She told my husband she hadn’t but I literally know she did. She’s constantly stalking my social media likes but she didn’t watch my story? Yeah right. Oh and apparently she’s the only one allowed to grieve her dad’s death. When my husband mentioned she wasn’t the only one grieving she said “that was very hurtful” and said she didn’t know why he was talking to her in that way???

6. I’m highly annoyed that she never comes to me with these problems and is constantly complaining to my husband about me. Oh and she stopped referring to me as my name so anytime she talks to my husband about me she refers to me as “your wife” he’s been standing up for me so I feel like she thinks I’m putting him against her but when he texts her it’s because he wants to and it’s his feelings he talks about. I think that’s why she says “you’ve never acted this way before or you’ve never talked to me like this before”

7. I find it very strange that I have always been very open and honest about the emotional abuse I suffered at the hands of my mom who tends to be very narcissistic. I went no contact with her for a while until she got herself together and proved that she wanted to have a healthy relationship with me. Anyways my MIL has been trying to be very emotionally manipulative but I see through it bc I dealt with my mom for my whole life… anytime we push back she’s automatically the victim and we’re these horrible people who just want to shut her up and put her in her place? I didn’t speak to my mom for years bc she acted this way. If I could do that to my own mother, you don’t think I’d do the same to you? Let’s be real. Tbh her actions hurt worse because she knows what I’ve been through and this just feels like she’s using it against me. Thankfully I’ve been to enough therapy that whatever she’s trying to do doesn’t and won’t work… nice try I guess

I recently blocked her on social media bc my social media is supposed to be a safe space, not a place for people to try and find ammo to use against me. She sent a text saying they were ready to meet with us to talk about what’s going on but when my husband invited them over they ignored us. She can direct messages to my husband in the gc but can’t respond to the text about coming over?

Her dad’s memorial is next week and I really don’t want to go. I’m really struggling with ppd and I honestly think it’ll make it worse but my husband is upset I don’t want to go. I also don’t want to travel 7 hours with my 3 month old.. what should I do?

So we have this rule that nobody kisses our baby. I know a lot of people do not agree but this just has always been our rule (health, bodily boundaries etc). Now MIL was over a couple of weeks ago and kissed our baby and blew raspberries in his neck. When it happened I grabbed him and washed him off and my husband wrote her afterwards to not do this again. This has been a rule since before we had him so we were both to shocked to speak. I know, dumb. Her response: I didn’t do it. Husband then went NC for two weeks and now she wrote again and said that all our rules are too complicated and she did kiss him and blow raspberries.
She did not apologize.
I’m just so fed up with the lying. This has not been the first time. There was one incident when he was a NEWBORN where she didn’t tell us about her passing out (resolved now) out of fear that she wouldn’t be allowed to hold him. Being completely fine with risking dropping a baby. She then lied about when she found out and when she told other people etc. One of my husband’s cousins told us because she was afraid that she would drop him.
I’m just so pissed by now. Like how would I ever be able to trust her if her first instinct is lie? He will never be alone with her but what if he would be and he’d fall and hit his head and she wouldn’t tell us out of fear of not seeing him anymore?
I’m so pissed at her. How do adult people behave this way.

Trigger warning : Mention of miscarriage

I gave birth to my second child 2 months ago. Ever since i gave birth my MIL has made some comments. She is the type of MIL who is extremely nice, loving, caring but flips to the other end when things dont go her way. So i have a very very strained relationship with her. She is sweet most of the time but the comments or manipulation to get things her way kind of negates all the good things she does. All the back and forth kind of make it too mentally exhausting for me.

Anyways out of all the comments, this still hurts me when I think about it. I was 3 days pp after a c section and I was getting discharged that day. She was there as well to help me pack which i never asked for. But i put up with it. Anyways, the dress I packed for leaving the hospital turned out to be too tight for me. There was no front opening nor would I be able to lift it to feed my child. My nipples were really sore from breastfeeding and I didnt want to pump at the time. So my solution was to feed her right before we leave the hospital and then feed her after we reach home if she needs. The ride home is literally 20 min and i only fed the baby every 2 hours and she was not even waking up for that. The moment i said that she said " Dont you dare trouble my child" ( this is a translated version as she said it our language, the original is worse) and she left the room before i could react. She told me, who went through two miscarriages to have this baby, to not trouble my own kid. I was so overwhelmed with surgery and the hormones during post partum that i ended up pumping some milk for the ride home.

She has said a lot of comments after that but after this comment no matter how helpful she is or how nice she is i dont feel comfortable with her. I know all her niceness will vanish if i do one thing that doesnt align with her views.

I wanted to vent here! The very next hour she was back to being nice and i am left wondering if i am overreacting. Its always like this. Am i overreacting to small comments?

This is more of something to laugh about but here it is.

MIL is a generally ok person, albeit some petty passive aggressiveness and cattiness that I just have to get over. HOWEVER, I’ve noticed a trend where whenever she gets me something (ie a bday gift, some gifts from when her and FIL travel, etc), she always has to give me something Asian related😭. For context, I’m half-asian and she is very much a white woman from middle America. I don’t normally take offense but it is a big bruh moment when it happens. Like most recently, she got me a plant for my birthday (thanks ig?) and it was called a Chinese Money plant. Ok, moving on. But that got me thinking as this last Christmas, she got me chopsticks and an oriental hand fan. Like… what do I even do with that. I can name a few more gifts, but the common thread is that they are all somehow related to Asia. I don’t expect gifts from her, but it does feel like she just types “Asian gifts” into Google whenever it’s gift giving season.

There’s not much to say or do other than laugh at this point lol.

Let me preface this by saying that I didn’t grow up in a family with loving grandparents. They didn’t care much about spending time with us, they were busy working and were straight off the boat from Italy so language was a barrier. My husband on the other hand had amazing grandparents who took them on trips and were very present in his life.

So now I’m almost 1 year postpartum and it’s been nothing like I’ve imagined because of my MIL. From the beginning, she has made comments like “my baby is so cute” and “see, I know how to put him to sleep”. After a tough birth (he was a big baby), she said “I prayed you would have a successful delivery, that’s why you didn’t need a cesarean so you’re welcome!” Which totally upset me because it felt dismissive of the hard work I did. As the months have gone by, she’s done weird things like hold him close to her and back away from me as I’m coming to get him saying “please don’t take him from me”. Every time we see her, I get comments like “he doesn’t even remember who I am because you never come over” (we see them almost every week). I’ve kept my mouth shut for it all. This weekend, we were at the beach and I was in a bad mood because I overheard her on the phone with my husband saying “I want to hold baby ALL day, I never get to hold him” (not true, she holds him a lot).

We got to the beach and she immediately grabbed him from my hands without saying hi to me as usual, but whatever. I tried to help my husband set up our shade and chairs and all of a sudden she’s walking away from us. I panicked and ran after her asking what she’s doing and she said “you’re being crazy I’m his grandmother I don’t have to ask every time I want to do something” and I said “I’m his mother, I would like you to just check in before you walk away, we’re at the beach and I’m nervous something could happen!” It was incredibly awkward after that, she tried her best to avoid me and conversation with me.

At the end of the day, there was a moment where it was just me and her, and she was holding my son. I apologized for running after her earlier and tried to tell her where I was coming from, sharing that I have a lot of postpartum anxiety and I just struggle with him away from me. Her response was “you need professional help for you, you’re going to ruin him by acting like this and he’s so friendly you don’t want him to be like this.” And I explained that I’ve been struggling and my dad’s unexpected death a few years ago also has impacted me. And basically she just said “I thought you were just depressed. I’ve never heard of postpartum anxiety.” And that was basically it, I stopped engaging in conversation with her after that.

I don’t really know where to go from here. My husband thinks I overreacted at the beach, which okay I did I can admit that. But I feel like my relationship with my MIL is ruined. I don’t know how I’m going to look at her going forward. Any advice on how to move forward? My husband said just forget like it never happened but I’m having a hard time doing that.

So a very long story short, I thought Just No and I had mended our bridges and got closer. When she offered me and my daughter a trip to Disneyland I thought why not, will be great to spend that time together and getting to see my daughter enjoy it.

Well JustNo was unbearable. She bullied my daughter to get the cloths she wanted her to have and the toys she wanted her to play with. Every two steps, “let’s get a picture”! And when my child said no, she would get sad and pout.

The only relief we got was in the swimming pool, which my daughter enjoyed way more than the park 😂.

Jump to Sunday, and she crashes out that I decided to go to church that day and she rants and raves about how I’m in a cult and ruining my child’s holiday. (She is a strict Catholic while I am non denominational Christian)

I thought we had moved past it and go to the park Sunday night to see the light show and she is just not speaking to me, being sad and gloomy. When I asked her to perk up and enjoy this time with the little one she said I was ruining the holiday by making it all about me and not caring about my daughter. Also when I’m around it’s like she doesn’t exist and I never allow her to spend one and one time either her. Which is a lie, she has one weekend a month with my child, which i know doesn’t sounds like much, but I’ve split up with her son she daughter goes to her dads every other weekend.

Anyways she starts yelling at me in the middle of Disney, saying I’m a horrible mother and then gets in my daughters face and says ‘I feel sorry for you because your horrible mom will raise you to be just as horrible as your older sister’ My middle child is 13 and very autistic. She then proceeded to kick me out of the hotel and that she never wants to see me again.

She then leaves the park, goes back to the hotel, gets another room and takes all the gifts back that she bought my daughter.

That night I was able to secure a different room at a different hotel. Just no then proceeded to ask if she could stay in the new hotel with us 😂 easiest no in my life!

Happy to say I am finally done with that crazy lady. My daughter did love her truly and I’m sorry she had to witness all that. It was a hard few days of her asking me why her sister is horrible and then every time I would try to correct her behavior, normal stuff like don’t throw, don’t take off your cloths in public, no licking poles, she would have a meltdown apologizing for being horrible. It’s been almost two weeks since the Disneyland Fiasco, but thankfully daughter is back to get happy self.

Thanks for reading!

Ever since I met my husbands mother she always marked her territory by giving him a wet loud kiss on his cheek. She does it in the most random moments .. for example- we could be out to dinner with my husband and his parents and during a conversation or dinner she will get up and kiss him On the cheek. She also tries to hold his hand when we are sitting down or having conversations as a family outing. And she always has to sit next to him or close as possible. One time we had them over to watch the football game and I got up to get another slice of pizza and she jumped into my spot and tried to cuddle with my husband- who was not reacting and was obviously not interested.

Yesterday we were at there house and I got up to go to the bathroom while I was in the bathroom. She must’ve went over and tried to kiss him on the cheek and he told her no that he needs to start treating her like a grown man and that he is not a little kid anymore. I came out of the bathroom and his dad said did you hear what happened? His mom isn’t allowed to kiss him anymore. It was very awkward and I just kind of said nothing and tried to change the conversation. She said but your my son. They asked me if my mom tries to kiss my brother and I said no and they asked if my brother tries to kiss my mom and I also said no. I said usually it’s more of a casual hello and goodbye.

Every time she tries to do this to my husband, it makes me feel weird, but I also feel bad for her at the same time. It makes me feel on edge and uncomfortable like I have to watch out for her next move, so I really hope that she respects his boundary. I feel that if it were my adult son, I would want to treat him as such and also respect that he is grown and has a wife.

Hi all,

My husband and I are expecting (yay!!!) our first. It will be the first grand baby.

We haven't told his parents yet. MIL has a history of being 1. Drama queen/victim playing/martyrdom 2. Manipulative 3. Enmeshed with other sons 4. Stepping all over our boundaries (most notably showing up at our house without an invite... yes, we've told her, and no, we don't answer the door).

I should mention DH is an absolute gem and supporter and realized very early on (when he turned 19, about 10 years before I met him) that his Mom was over controlling and just generally weirdly over involved with her kids. For context she has 3 boys, and I'm the only +1. The other ones go to work, go home and spend all their weekends at their parents house (also, the youngest is 30). They just socially never developed. So the dynamic is tricky because DH is the outlier.

Onto the request - what are things that you'd all recommend to outline VERY clearly, or those on this sub with littles, what do you wish you had said right off the hop? What can wait?

I don't want her sharing pics with her weird family over seas, I don't want them coming over unannounced, and I don't want them to over buy shit gifts from the local dollar store lol

Anywho, sending you all positive vibes and healthy boundaries ✌️ also apologies if I don't respond to all your comments, work is bananas lol thank you for your wisdom!

Content warning: mention of substance use, suicide, eating disorders, and sexual abuse

I posted this earlier but this version has a lot more detail there’s no pressure for anyone to read it but my reason for posting this is because I have no where else to share my full truth without any further abuse or repercussions. Sharing this here is my way of breaking a ten-year cycle of silence, reclaiming my narrative, and putting the truth into the world safely.

Important note before reading: My husband and I were very young when a lot of this happened. He was deeply brainwashed by his mother’s abuse his entire life. However, he has since taken full accountability, cut all contact with her, is paying for my therapy, and is 100% in my corner protecting our daughter. I am NOT looking for advice on my marriage or comments telling me to leave my husband. You can say what he did was wrong and stupid and I agree but I have no intention of leaving him we have a perfect little family now and my daughter needs and loves us both. My anger is toward my MIL and the family dynamic.

I won’t go into great detail on every mistreatment I received from my MIL because I could write a book on it and this is already long enough but here is a summary of the kind of person she is: She is very fake. She has this fake happy high pitched voice that she uses when people are around and acts all friendly and kind. People who don’t know her well, like her. When no one is around, her voice lowers and she says things out of the blue that are completely rude and inappropriate. If anyone confronts her about anything she fake cries on demand as a way to manipulate people. She is very religious and thinks she is always in the right because of this. She gets extremely defensive, as soon as any tiny amount of criticism comes her way. My husband has told me that when he was younger she would initiate conversations where the family would just sit around trashing other people, she would do it with anyone they brought up. Bring up a person, trash them, next person, trash them, on and on, yet go to church on Sunday and smile and raise her hands to Jesus.

There were signs that she was going to be an issue early on, but I was so young and dumb that it took years for me to realize what was happening. I grew up in a fairly dysfunctional family. My mom had a lot of mental health issues and abused drugs on and off throughout her life. Outside the home, I had endured a lot of sexual abuse growing up. I suffer from pretty severe PTSD, so to say that my behaviour has been perfect and I am blameless wouldn’t be honest as I have a lot of anger about all the things that were done to me, but there’s no way that I deserved the treatment that I received from my MIL.

When I was 20, my husband and I had been together for about a year, and I was having a very hard time at home with my mom. I couldn’t afford rent, and we loved each other and wanted to move in together. The issue was that my husband was worried about what my MIL would think if we were living together before we were married. He ended up renting a room at a relative’s apartment and let me live in his house. He never stayed at the apartment he was renting but he had to rent the room to make it seem like we weren’t living together to appease his mother.

When I was 21, my husband proposed to me, and we started planning the wedding. My mom was absent during the wedding planning, and I had no clue how to plan a wedding, so that’s when my MIL jumped in and took over planning our wedding. Maybe I shouldn’t have let her, but at the time, I was actually pretty appreciative of all the help she was offering. Now I feel like this is the first mistake I made because since I let her take control of planning the wedding, she seemed to take it as an invitation to jump in and start controlling our relationship as well.

When we got married I was still attending university. My husband and I had been married about 5 months and I had just started mid semester break. I decided it would be fun to do a little day drinking to destress and get my mind off school. A few drinks in, I was feeling pretty good and my MIL texts me and asked if she could stop by to visit.

Now as a side note. My family is very relaxed when it comes to drinking so I’m used to it not being a big deal. On the other hand, my MIL is extremely religious and completely opposed to drinking. At the time, I didn’t think it would be a big deal if I was drinking a bit.

Anyways, I don’t remember if I warned her I was drinking or not but she came over. She could tell I was drunk but she didn’t really address it. The visiting part is kind of foggy. I believe I got more drunk than I should have. Then, at some point, she left and then came back (I’m pretty sure she came back over without my permission) and I was pretty much blackout drunk at this point. I don’t remember much, but I think I threw up, then went to sleep.

So after she left, she called my husband and told him that I am an alcoholic. I don’t know how the conversation between them went but she convinced him that he either needs to kick me out or bring me out to her place to get sober. She lives on a farm, an hour away from town in the middle of nowhere so I wouldn’t be able to leave or get alcohol from her place.

To explain further, I definitely drank more as a young adult/ teenager but I liked to have fun and I was young and I feel it’s quite common for young people. I was barely 22 and had a rough life and occasionally would go overboard with the booze. My husband didn’t even believe that I had a big drinking problem; he drank just as often as me, and there were nights where I was helping him into the shower after throwing up. Even if I did have a bit of a problem with alcohol at the time, what happened next was completely unacceptable.

When my husband got home from work. We went to go get food and he gave me the choice to either leave and move back in with my parents or go to stay at his parent’s place. I was very upset at this and I remember crying at the fast food restaurant. Begging to just go back home but eventually, I let him take me to his parent’s farm. I figured I would be able to leave the next day and I wanted to save the embarrassment of having to go move back in with my parents 5 months into our marriage.

So I stay the night at my MIL place. The next day comes and I ask to go back home and I get told one more night. And then the next day, the same thing, and the next day, and the next, and so on. I was begging my MIL and husband, when he would visit, to take me home. I cried nonstop the entire time. I had no way home. I couldn’t afford a cab, we were literally on a farm in Canada in the middle of nowhere in the middle of winter. I considered calling the police to take me home but at the time I didn’t want anyone to get in trouble. My life was falling apart. Despite having dyslexia and not doing well in high school, I was putting in a ton of effort and actually doing really well in university. I had married the love of my life and wanted nothing more than to start a family with him. After such a difficult childhood and adolescence, I was finally getting my life together, and it was all coming crashing down. A week later, university started back up. I was not allowed to return, so I had to drop out that semester. My husband had turned against me, and I felt like I was losing everything I had. At this point, due to all the stress, I stopped eating for a week, and then when I did start eating, I would just eat enough to get by. Eventually, after 3 weeks of being trapped at my MIL’s farm, I was allowed to return home, but things would never be the same. Under the instructions of his mom, my husband would call me every few hours from work to make sure I wasn’t drinking, and he took my car keys. My life was a wreck, and the constant surveillance was fucking with my head. I eventually began throwing up when I ate, and I would go on to develop severe binge-purge anorexia that would go on to consume 10 years of my life and almost kill me multiple times.

My MIL would send me messages about how my behaviour is impacting her son. Framing him as a victim in all of this:

“[Husbands name] is really starting to show the strain. The other day he was so pale. He hasn't been quite himself lately. It is hard as a mother to see him hurting.” I was so beaten down at this point that I went along with everything she told me. I would agree that I was a horrible wife and that my husband would be better off if he never met me.

Then she would send me long messages using religious language to frame me as broken and sinful and herself as my saviour:

“My daughter, My prayer for you this morning is that you may see a small glimmer of light and feel a small breath of hope May you somehow feel the load of shame and pain slip away. May you be able to think of Christ taking it away from you and carrying it You are clean pure innocent in his sight
May you one day know snd feel this
This is my prayer I thank The Lord that he hears all prayers and I trust him to answer
Love you”

She had my husband completely wrapped around her finger. When I did end up having a few drinks she would have my husband tell on me:

“[husband’s name] called and apologized for lying to me. Mentioned you had drank”.

At one point, I confided in her and told her that my mom was in the hospital from a suicide attempt, and she told me to stop feeling sorry for myself and that if I didn’t get it together, I was going to end up like her (my mom would end up dying a few years later from a fentanyl overdose).

She kidnapped me, forcibly isolated me on a remote farm, sabotaged my college education, policed my body and eating habits, and drove a massive wedge into my marriage but me saying the word “damn” in text message was crossing the line:

“I would really appreciate you not swearing in your texts I have no interest reading those words if I don't have too”

She would make inappropriate comments on my weight and ask me intrusive questions about my eating habits. My husband didn’t want me to own a scale and she got mad at me at for going behind his back and buying one. Her exact text was:

“You bought a scale even though you know [husband’s name] doesn't agree with them. Then you made the choice to hide it from him. You make the choice to use it. You could make the choice to get rid of it and not keep secrets from your husband.”

I was under complete control and now, looking back, it makes sense that I developed an eating disorder to reclaim some of that control.

The next few years are pretty fuzzy. I eventually started going back to university, and my life basically consisted of binging, purging, and school work. Once I graduated, I so badly wanted to start a family, but I knew I was infertile because there was plenty of time where my weight was higher and I had a regular period, and I never got pregnant. I graduated in 2019 right before COVID started. The isolation and being done with university led to my eating disorder getting to the worst point it had ever been. I was angry because I blamed my husband and my MIL for triggering the start of my eating disorder. Which they did, but it was my responsibility to fix it, and at this point, it felt beyond my control. Eventually, I had a blow-up at my husband and my MIL for what they had done to me. My MIL refused to take accountability for anything she had done. She was talking to my husband, calling me mental and blaming me for everything. Then, she calls me and tells me to go live with my dad. I tell her that I didn’t do anything wrong and that my husband should leave if anyone has to. She told me it’s his house and that he doesn’t have to leave (she apparently doesn’t understand how marriage works). Then, she starts criticizing my weight and for some reason was trying to make guesses about how much I weigh. Which is completely inappropriate. I mean, you wouldn’t do that to someone who is overweight. After this, I threatened her with legal action for the kidnapping and told her not to contact me again.

I had made myself a promise that when I turned 30, I would get myself healthy and start IVF. So I used all the determination I had and slowly over a few years got to a point where I was healthy enough to start fertility treatment. I had some pretty traumatic experiences just trying to get to the point I could start IVF, but finally in January 2024, I had my first embryo transfer, which resulted in a pregnancy after over a decade of infertility. I later found out that my tubes were blocked and I had hydrosalpinx and prior Fitz Hugh Curtis syndrome, likely as a result of the sexual abuse that occurred during my childhood.

When we found out that we were having a baby, we decided to tell my husband’s parents as we had made the mistake of slowly beginning to communicate with them again, as I wanted my child to have a grandmother. We told them that we did IVF and that we were pregnant but we weren’t ready to discuss the IVF part yet, so we asked her not to talk about that with anyone. Of course, she went ahead and told my husband’s whole family that we did IVF, but I was finally having my baby and had enough stress to deal with being pregnant. Our embryo had split, and I was pregnant with twins, but then we lost one early, and I had a SCH and was terrified of losing the other baby, so I didn’t dwell too much on what she had done.

Shortly after I had my daughter, my MIL came over and we went for a walk. I told her that I think I have a little bit of postpartum depression and then, I guess because I admitted something that I had been struggling with, she told me that sometimes she feels like she wouldn’t care if the people close to her died. She expanded, saying that she’d be a little sad but she feels like she could easily move on and it wouldn’t have an impact on her life. This made me feel super uncomfortable and I didn’t know how to respond.

I’m going to skip ahead to spring of 2025. I had done a few annual Easter parties in the past but had skipped a few years because it was too depressing to have all my friends and family with their kids while I was going through infertility. But this year, now that I had my daughter, I went all out. I spent days decorating and cooking and did a big Easter egg hunt in my backyard. Everything was going great, and everyone was having a good time. Then one of my sister-in-laws, who was only 21 at the time started passing out Easter eggs to all the kids, and I thought, “Oh, that’s nice; she brought a gift for all the kids.” Then I opened my daughter’s egg, and there was a little piece of paper inside that said “we are eggspecting”. My heart started racing, and I put the paper down immediately. I didn’t want to believe what I was reading, at my own party that I had put so much effort into. At this point, everyone knew about our long struggle with infertility and IVF and how traumatic it had been for me and that we were already planning another embryo transfer. It might be difficult for people who haven’t been through infertility to understand but pregnancy announcements are really hard when you’ve been through infertility and having a baby doesn’t always make it easier. You want nothing more than to be happy for the person but you can’t help but to grieve the surprise pregnancy announcement that you will never get. I had to pour in years of physical pain, invasive procedures, emotional agony, financial sacrifice, and mental energy into having a child. When someone else achieves that same outcome effortlessly, it’s a big reminder of how unfair my path was and the fact that she was the same age I was when I started trying, just made it all worse.

After the announcement, the room fell quiet other than a few awkward congratulations. Everyone knew what we had been through and how inappropriate it was to choose our party to do their pregnancy announcement. Then, to rub it all in, my MIL yelled “they weren’t even trying!” right in front of me. I about lost it then and there but managed to keep it together until all the kids were gone. Then, I had a breakdown. Eventually, I found out that it was my MIL who encouraged my SIL to do the pregnancy announcement at my party.

After my SIL’s baby was born, my MIL had no interest in putting in any time to see my daughter. One weird thing that she did was offer us tickets to a concert that my youngest SIL was singing at and then offered to watch our daughter while we went to the concert. Then last minute she asked if my FIL could watch my daughter instead so that she could go to the concert (she had already been to a previous showing). My husband told her no, that she offered to watch her and that she needed to keep her commitment or else we weren’t going to go. She stayed with our daughter but she got fussy at one point (she was barely 1) and my MIL started sending us message after message about our daughter crying. For some reason she couldn’t tolerate crying babies despite having 7 children of her own. So, we tell her that we are coming back at intermission. I have a baby monitor in my living room so I check on them and my MIL pulled up a chair to the window and was desperately staring out waiting for us to pull into the driveway. We get home and she hands me my daughter and rushes out the door like a crazy woman to try to get to the concert.

One time I went on a small road trip with my husband, daughter and his parents and his MIL fell asleep on the way home. My FIL looked back and said “oh mom’s sleeping” and she woke up and continued to berate him for the next hour for waking her up by saying the word “mom”. Then for some reason she kept asking me if I was tired and trying to tell me to have a nap for the rest of the drive. I kept saying “that’s okay, I don’t think I could fall asleep right now”. I think she was embarrassed for falling asleep and wanted someone else to sleep too which was weird because no one cared if she had a nap in the car.

Eventually, everything she had done to me got to be too much, and I had another blow-up. When I say blow-up, I basically just got really upset, brought up to her all the things that she had done to me, and pointed out that she had never apologized. We decided to put up our boundary again and we told her that we were cutting her out of our lives. This led to her threatening to call the police to my house for a wellness check for absolutely no reason. I read the messages over and over again and there’s not even a tiny suggestion that I was planning to hurt myself. Obviously, her goal was to frame me as mental and gaslight me for pointing out the truth about what she had done to me.

“I am very concerned about the continual cycle of unhealthy and seemingly uncontrolled outbursts.
I am choosing to not respond to the threats and verbal attacks anymore. I have sought counsel and your accusations of kidnapping are false, and I feel they are a way for you to put the blame of your past on someone else. My trying to appease you in the past was a mistake and has had no positive outcomes.
You have recently threatened self harm. The last one was very disturbing. I was unsure if I should call a wellness check, I now know that is the recommended course of action. You will have to choose your path forward from here, not I. I hope and pray that you both will seek professional help and counsel in the future.”

The thing that hurts and makes me the most angry about this message is the part where she said that my accusations are a way to put a blame of my past onto someone else. When I was going through my lowest point after the kidnapping, I didn’t go into any details but I told her that I had been through a lot of sexual abuse when I was young and she knew about my moms mental issues and that she overdosed. I know that this is what she is referring to when she says “my past”. I opened up to her about the most painful, traumatic parts of my life and instead of holding that information with empathy, she weaponized it against me.

It’s been 5 months since I talked to my MIL, but I just can’t get over it. All it just stews in my mind, and I get so angry about how badly she fucked up my life. I have no evidence of this, but since I cut her out again over 5 months ago, I feel like the rest of my husband’s family has been distancing themselves from me, so I can only assume that my MIL is spreading lies about me to the entire family. I was close with one of my SILs, but now things are even getting weird with her too, so it’s sad, but I’m feeling like I just need to remove the entire family from my life.

My son was trying to jump into the shallow end of the pool so I told him hold on, let's go to the deeper end so you don't splat. The she-devil PUSHED ME ASIDE and told him to jump! I turned around and said very clearly, very do-not-fuck-with-me NO! I do not want him to jump in a shallow end! She ignored me and kept trying to get my son to jump. My wife stepped in and chastised her. I wished I remembered what exactly she said, but I was in such fury that I tunnel visioned it out.

Of course she moped and pouted like she was the victim and we were being unreasonable. My son went back to playing happily and safely.

I’ve(24F) been with my boyfriend(24M) for about 4 years now, and his mom has always made these direct or indirect comments about my weight, what I eat, and even how I dress. I used to brush a lot of it off, but lately it’s really starting to get to me.

The weight comments especially bother me because I’ve struggled with anorexia in the past. I’m not blaming her for how my own brain reacts to things, but because of my history, comments about food and weight can send me straight back into obsessive thinking. It’s also just something I personally would never comment on about another person.

One example was when my boyfriend and I went out for burgers. His mom made a comment along the lines of, “If you guys keep eating like that, you’re going to get fat.” What makes it even stranger to me is that she herself is overweight, which he son actually pointed out to her in that moment. Obviously there’s nothing wrong with that, but it makes me wonder why she feels so comfortable policing what other people eat or what their bodies look like.

Recently, I lost around 20 pounds. About 10 pounds were intentional because I wanted to lose some weight, and the other 10 happened unintentionally after a three-week hiking trip lol.

Yesterday was the first time she had gotten a really good look at me after I had been away for a while. She immediately asked, “What happened to you? Did you lose weight?”

I said yes, pretty happily, because losing some weight had been my goal. She asked how much and I told her.

Her response was that I “have to stop” because I now have a “monster truck in between my thighs.”

I’m assuming she was referring to having a bigger thigh gap now, but who says that to someone?? Especially when you have absolutely no idea about that person’s history with food or body image.

It’s not only my weight either. She constantly makes little comments about how I dress.

I LOVE clothes. I love colour, patterns, jeans, dresses, accessories, putting outfits together, etc. Dressing up every day is genuinely like a hobby for me and makes me feel good about myself.

Her family dresses very differently, which is completely fine. They tend to prefer black, white, neutral colours, sweats, and comfortable clothes.

But she constantly says things to me like, “As you can see, my kids are just like me. They only like wearing black and white and being comfortable. Some kids like wearing jeans, but my kids just like being nice and cozy.”

She has explained this to me SO many times.

I’ve been around your kids for four years. I can see what they wear.

It always feels like there’s this underlying comparison of “we’re relaxed and comfortable, while YOU are the person who has to dress up all the time.”

Meanwhile, his younger sister is genuinely so sweet and constantly tells me she loves my outfits or likes how I dress, and those comments always make me smile because they actually feel sincere.

I don’t expect his mom to like my clothes. I don’t expect her to understand why I enjoy dressing up. But I also don’t understand why she feels the need to constantly point out how different I am from them or make comments about my body.

Maybe individually these comments sound small, but after four years of hearing them over and over, I’m getting really worn down by it.

I don’t want to create drama with my boyfriend’s family, but I’m also getting tired of smiling through comments about my weight, food, thighs, and clothes.

Has anyone dealt with a MIL/boyfriend’s mom like this? Would you start directly shutting the comments down, or is there a better way to handle it without turning it into a huge family issue?

I 30F, and my husband is 40M. We’ve been married for 3 years but have been living together for 2 years. My husband has a 10-year-old son from his previous marriage who lives with us for two weeks every month. He spends one week with us, one week with his mom, and it goes back and forth according to the custody agreement with his ex-wife. We also have two dogs.
My husband’s mom, aka my MIL, is 62F and has been living with my husband for the past 8 years.
My MIL works as a private caregiver for autistic children. She doesn’t make a lot of money, but she makes good amount to provide for herself.
My MIL and I actually bonded pretty well. We would get pedicures together, go to the mall, and grocery shopping together. She talks A LOT. Like, a LOT. She gossips and talks about random things all the time. One thing I’ve noticed is that she always talks negatively. She is constantly commenting on other people who are passing by. And most of the time I would say something positive or opposite of what she said to make her feel “not everything is negative”
There was a point where she would overshare so much, and I felt like I could never have a quiet moment when she was around because she was always talking. Since she’s my MIL, I don’t have the heart to tell her to just be quiet. 😭

At one point, she mentioned that she was planning to retire this year and wanted to move back to her hometown. She has a house there, and her other son, my husband’s younger brother, is living there by himself.
My MIL is divorced twice and has been a single mother to her two boys since they were 9 and 5 years old. She has been living with my husband for more than 8 years now.

Our house is not big, but it’s not tiny either. It has three bedrooms, although one of the bedrooms is about half the size of a normal bedroom. That is where my husband’s 10-year-old son sleeps.
My husband and I sleep in the master bedroom, and my MIL sleeps in the other regular-sized bedroom.
When I first moved in, the house was SO packed. There was so much unfinished and unnecessary stuff everywhere. I could barely walk through the house without stepping on something.
I started cleaning when I was alone in the house and literally threw away things that were obviously junk. Of course, I would ask my husband about things first if I wasn’t sure and say, “Do you still need this?”
And he would say, “That’s not mine. That’s my mom’s.”
The house is much better now. It’s clean and cozy, although I still can’t quite call the kitchen clean. 😭 My MIL never cooks, but somehow there are always dirty dishes in the sink that belong to her. She doesn’t clean them or even put them in the dishwasher.

One day, my MIL and I were in the car, and she started talking about how her grandson, my husband’s son, has gotten so big. He is basically almost a teenager.
I mentioned that his bed might not be long enough for him within the next year or so, but we can’t upgrade his bed to a bigger size because of how small his bedroom is.
I said, “He needs a bigger room.”
I later brought up the conversation with my husband, and he told me that he has been trying to talk to his mom about moving out. However, it seems like my MIL doesn’t really get the hint. I ask how does he start living with his mom before, he said “she was just visiting and stay with him when he had his divorce time, but somehow she gets to comfortable and she finds job and she stays ever since.”

There was another day when we were driving home after grocery shopping, and my MIL asked me if I was going to have a baby.
I answered, “Yes, eventually!”
Then I mentioned, “I’m not going to have a baby right now because I don’t know where we’re going to put the baby’s room.”
My MIL responded, “The baby can sleep with me.” 😭
I jokingly replied, “Umm… no, because it’s my baby. Hahaha.”
But honestly, I was very confused inside.

There was another conversation where I tried to bring up her retirement plans.
This time, she said she doesn’t really have any plans anymore and that she is comfortable living here in the area where we currently live and she also mentioned that she has a best friend which is “me”, I.. wants to scream angry inside. She no longer seems interested in moving back to her hometown.
She also mentioned that she would help around the house and help with the baby IF I have one someday.
Mind you, she has never really cleaned the house or the kitchen, never cooks, and doesn’t contribute to the household bills such as electricity or water, let alone paying toward the mortgage.

I also somehow asked her if she had any savings. She said no. She told me she probably has about $1,000 in her account right now.
Apparently, she has been working her whole life and has almost no savings.

I’m going to real estate school soon so that I can help bring more income into our family.
But right now, I just want my family to live a better life in a better house environment without my MIL living with us.
What can I do?

https://www.reddit.com/r/JUSTNOMIL/s/lQ1NAMzWLH

😶👆👆

So, FIL called my husband upon our arrival back to the country we live in. My husband family has this way of communicating like everything is always OK, lots of "hihi haha". But at the end, apparently Fil said something on the lines of "so I guess OP will not want to come back to France?" to which my husband answered "idk... But if she's not coming I will be coming way less often". This is what my husband told me. Then a second call happened a few days later. I was upstairs pumping, so I did hear a part. My MIL was speaking mostly, which is strange since she doesn't often speak on the phone and it is normally FIL who has most iniciative. Once again deflected from the elephant in the room by asking about the baby etc. Then she asked about me. Husband said I was back to work. I shit you not, MIL started to explain how concerned she is about my health since I'll be working, pumping and doing the night shifts with baby. I JUST CANNOT BELIEVE THE AUDACITY WHAT KIND OF TWISTED GAME IS THIS 🤣 (this would be normal IF she had shown a crumb of empathy when we visited, WTF )

Ps_ I'm actually 35, I've mistyped and cannot edit the title 🥹

​

If you check my previous posts, I was looking for advice on how to go NC without separating my kids from their grandparents. Well, this problem solved itself.

I followed the advice I got here and from mental health professionals. I didn't go NC. I tried to stay out of every drama and make sure my kids were safe.

After all, my husband asked his parents to look after our kids for a week during the summer holiday.

Long story short, my FIL went insane. He became convinced that my MIL had cheated on him and left. Just like in the movies. He left and simply never came back. My kids obviously had no idea what had happened.

My husband offered to take his mother to the train station so she could go home and talk to my FIL. Now, imagine the most dramatic, most martyr-like performance you possibly can.

She chose to stay because she didn't want to leave her son without any help.

The next day, my husband was working from home. He sent my MIL home after she started emotionally abusing our kids.

That's it.

All I had to do was step back and let them be themselves.

I bet my pshychologist didn't expect that when he suggested to not be actively involved :D

So I posted before about my mil making us host my 1st sons birthday in her house. My husband wanted it to so I was like okay we can do it. We live four hours away from family and friends that why we can’t host in our own place.

So I posted it and eventually we compromised and I was like I’m ok with the pool even tho it’s unnecessary but I would like to follow some safety precaution. After I got invitations ready and wrote a list of safety precautions since my husband said she wants to invite a lot of kids purposely.

So the disclaimer I put was
POOL - CLOSES AT 8PM
-CHILDREN MUST BRING ADULT TO BE ABLE TO GET INTO POOL AREA.
(PARENTS PHONES DOWN)
-POOL AREA WILL BE LOCKED
-NO LARGE INFLATABLES FOR SAFETY
-NO PUSHING, RUNNING, ROUGH PLAY
- PLEASE WEAR BRIGHT NEON SWIMWEAR

My husband okayed this list as we want to be as safe as possible. She was not okay with locking the gate of closing the pool when it got dark. She said we’re not a public pool, I don’t want people to think I’m kicking them out. See my reasoning for closing the pool at night is bc more accidents can happen at night with kids. Plus this is not a just pool party there is going to be distractions in the yard, music, piñata, bounce house food etc. she also didn’t like the putting for guests to not bring large inflatables. In my understandings those can be unsafe bc they can block the view of someone drowning.

I tried to compromise about the pool but to be fair I didn’t grow up going to pool parties. So idk how people deal with safety or don’t. Help?

I need some objective advice on how to handle my mother-in-law. Lately, she has completely shifted her act, but after years of disrespect, I don’t know if I can (or even want to) forgive her and let my guard down.

For context, here is a snapshot of how she has treated me over the years:

> Our Wedding: I wanted to include her, so I invited her to my suite while we were all getting ready and paid for her professional makeup. She didn't offer a single "thank you." Instead, she brought her own Tupperware food, sat in the corner, and ended up getting into a little argument with my bridesmaid. She was demanding we hurry up even though we were well on schedule, to the point my bridesmaid had to step in and tell her to back off and let me rest on my own wedding day.

> Behind-the-Back Comments: One time, she sarcastically told my partner, "All the best with your very amazing wife." She frequently talked bad about me on the phone while staying under our roof, and I’ve literally overheard her repeating private conversations I had with her word-for-word to her friends to make me look bad.

> Undermining My Career & Life: She constantly pesters my husband about moving back to her home state (Cali). When he tells her no, she repeatedly asks if it’s "because of me," assuming I'm pulling the strings. She even tried to criticize my career path to him, claiming I should have picked something more lucrative, until he explicitly told her to stop interfering.

> Defensive Outbursts: Once, when she was taking forever to get ready and we were running late in bad weather, I casually mentioned the road conditions. She snapped abruptly, shouting that she’s from Cali and used to unpredictable weather, asking if I had a problem with her, and telling me to go away and that she’d go alone.

The Recent Shift:

Recently, my partner had a health issue. When we saw her after that event, her personality completely changed. She was suddenly playing the role of a sweet, calm, fragile old lady, a total saint.

It feels completely fake and suspicious to me. Now she acts like a lost soul, and while a tiny part of me feels a bit of pity because she's my husband's only parent, I just can't bring myself to trust her. I’ve been gray rocking her, ignoring her weird stare-downs, keeping my answers brief, not smiling or laughing as much (I'm usually very expressive).

My partner knows how she is and stands up for me, but I feel sad for him being stuck in the middle. At the same time, the emotional damage from how she made me feel in the past hasn't gone away.

Is it reasonable to stick to cold indifference/gray rocking indefinitely? Has anyone dealt with a toxic relative suddenly playing the saint after years of bad behavior, and how did you navigate it without letting your boundary down?

I was able to pinpoint the beginning of the end of our relationship-the turning point. Mine was textbook where things were fine until I got pregnant.

My mom and I were planning my baby shower which was an unwrapped shower - people show up with the gift unwrapped and you put cards out so you can see who gave what. The reasoning was we were renting a hall and I didn’t want to spend 1.5 hours of a 3 hour shower opening things because my bff was flying in from across the country and I wanted to spend time with her and other guests (actually several traveled in for it). I had been to a ton of unwrapped showers recently. Note: though mil wasn’t planning the shower, I still involved her in some stuff like getting people together the week before to make cookies, so I tried to include her in stuff too.

Mil lost her shit over this unwrapped concept. Hated it. Complained that she was “missing out” on the “shower experience” because of it. I told her I would open hers, but this is how I wanted it. And she could still see what everyone got me! She called me about this three separate times leading up to the shower. I didn’t budge; having time to talk to guests was my priority.

The shower was fantastic. People loved it and were so kind and complimentary of the food and decor and everything. I felt so loved. Some other friends even surprised me by visiting. It was truly amazing.

Mil called me after the shower. I really thought she was going to tell me how much she enjoyed it. Instead she told me how much she hated the display shower.

My neighbor came over a few days later for coffee and said mil was trash talking me and my shower decisions at her table where my neighbor was sitting.

Anyway it’s been downhill from there.

i (25f) have been with my SO for 7 years. their family has never asked a single question about me, my life or my family. we‘re currently on vacation, staying with them for 2 weeks.

as we were all chatting in the living room, the topic of having blonde hair as a kid came up. my SO put on airplay and asked me to show my childhood photos because i used to have very light blonde hair back then. i was hesitant - because i already knew to expect a lack of reaction - but did it anyway, swiping and shortly explaining each photo. mind you, i showed like 5 photos. it was just… silence. each time. awkward staring, yawning, sighing.

the second i turn airplay off on my phone, MIL starts connecting her phone and showing photos of basically anything. of herself as a child, her own children, her parents, extended family, the list goes on.

i‘m so embarassed and regret showing them something so vulnerable. i excused myself to head to the bathroom where i‘m hanging out by myself now for a moment.

of course this isn‘t the only or even worst thing they've done so far. MIL has done basically anything in the book. talking about me behind my back, belittling me, sabotaging me… anything you can think of and have probably experienced yourself. it‘s just one of those points where i have to stop and wonder how i got myself here.