Ok, so I am not a daughter in law yet nor do I have a mother in law from hell…yet. I have certainly however, entered into this world and experiencing little by little what it means to meet the mother of your significant other. I have just found out the mother of by BF has had a long standing grudge against me for something that happened between myself and my BF’s sister which myself and the said sister have already worked out and are now good friends.

I am no longer hurt or angry at this revelation in any way however I do feel unfairly judged. By reading all these stories posted here, I know many of you have gone through worse and were unfairly judged too. While I don’t know you I really hope you can keep your head up through these tough times, protect your heart, your sanity and your children if you have them.

I have begun to notice a trend in these situations, the most important thing is to definitely figure out whether your man is a mummy’s boy. If he is and if you can get away then go. This type man will stand aside and happily let his mother or his parents tear you down for no reason and expect you to take it. Learn about your partner, will he stick by you when you’ve been wronged? Will he listen to your doubts about his mother? Its best that you speak to him in the most calm manner possible, state your side of the issue and then talk about how you feel you’ve been hurt. That way if he gets angry at you, you will know that you haven’t provoked it. You have every right to talk about his family if there is a problem just like he is just as able to talk about issues with your family should your man feel any conflict with them.

Another thing is to always be respectful no matter what the MIL does to you and be strong enough to say no. She can yell, scream, throw malice in your face all she wants but if you can keep your cool and show her that her mistreatment is not affecting you then hopefully she will soon give up.

Surround yourself with friends and family who love you, who will support you. In-laws always have a way of trying to tear down your confidence, nit-pick and criticize. This because of the generation gap, a difference in how you were raised to how they were raised, that and the MIL feeling that you are going to take her son away. If you have a good strong bond with your family and friends then you have a way of talking out your problems, getting different perspectives and coming up with ways to deal with your troubles.

I always try to remember that I do not need my BF I just want to be with him because I believe he is a good person. In this situation where I have been wronged I know I am able to walk away should he decide that his mummy dearest is more important. I am ok with being on my own, I have parents and friends who love me and I am independent and educated. If my BF shows he is willing to stick up for me then I don’t mind keeping my distance from his parents, tolerating them and showing them respect, as long as he is on my side and supports me like I support him.

Finally I also take any negative treatment from FMIL as a learning curve, how NOT to be should I ever have children in the future. When he grows up, while I do want to be part of his life I want to remember to try my best not to become an overbearing bitch but to be wise, advise him when I sense something wrong with his partner but in the end let him make his own decisions and be there for him through the ups and downs.

Some people are born with amazing parents and some…..less than amazing. When you have a partner with less than amazing parents, keep your head up, let the insults slide off you, don’t bother returning any malicious acts or returning hatred it will only give you bad karma in the end. Always remember your worth when she nit-picks at you, criticizes the way you look or just outright acts like you don’t exist.

Look at every situation logically and try see things from your MIL’s point of view too, if she is really malicious then having logically assessed the situation, her behavior and your behavior, you will know whether her treatment toward you is unprovoked. From there you have to decide whether your partner is worth it to tolerate or work through this situation or not. The best sign is if he listens to you and lets you talk about his mother without getting fired up and blaming you or telling you you’re out of line.

I just wanted to write this small message to all you ladies to keep your head up and remember to value yourself too. I am hoping for things to get better for you all and that you will get some peace.

Stay strong ladies, keep writing, venting, anything that stops you from turning in on yourself. This whole mother-in-law issue is so common, I bet there are plenty of men out there who get crap from their GF’s or FW or WD’s parents too.

Stay cool

She constantly offers unsolicited advice and is “critical” of many things that I do.

Examples:

I made sun tea when she came to visit and she said WE shouldn’t drink it because workers pee in the fields and it needs to be boiled because people have died from sun tea infections.

When I shared the news of our 2nd miscarriage, she suggested I look at it as a late period so that I didn’t get so worked up about it, and then suggested I use my non-pregnant time to research how evil OBs are and how they practically kill your baby if it’s born in the hospital.

When we were engaged she announced that we owed her $10,000 for my husband’s college education and finally announced the she would forgive the unknown “loan” for our wedding gift.

In general, all we talk about is events, news, etc because the moment I try to share a feeling (I’m nervous about this, excited about that, wonder about such and such) she begins on the bad advice that has nothing to do with what I was really saying.

Granted, she is definitely a little nutty, but I still think there’s the potential to one day have a conversation with my MIL about how I miscarried (for instance) and that I’m sad about that and receive a hug from her instead of offending advice.

I’ve thought about interrupting her when she launches into it and saying, “I can see that you really care about me, or you wouldn’t want to share so much with me, but it’s not a problem I need you to solve, it’s a problem I need you to share.”
etc.

Can you offer suggestions on how to deal with someone like this? I hate to just not share anything with her b/c of her responses since we’ve only been married 5 years – there’s a lot of time around them left! How can I manipulate this situation?

I was raised to respect my elders and not speak back to people. So out of respect for my husband and his request, I have held my tongue at her MANY outlandish, crazy, and bizarre ideas and requests over the years.

Until yesterday. The storm hit with full force. She had had enough and asked my husband to come over so she could speak to him ALONE. My hubby responded that whatever she had to say she could say in front of me as My son and I where his family now. She had a cow, and waited patiently for us to arrive at her home.

Where, she began to call me names, tell me I was disrespectful for leaving my shoes in her living room, and not taking responsibility for cleaning the bathroom regular. Mind you I cooked and washed dishes almost every single night. She called me a hypocrite for coming to her house and being uncomfortable and not telling her so. So called me a childish little girl for god knows what. She accused me in front of my husband of taking him away and brain washing him, and Insisted that he MUST come and have dinner with her once a week ALONE.

All this time, I was able to speak my mind maybe twice. And I never once called her a name, never once raised my voice, never did I interrupt her. I kept quiet and explained that I had not been raised to speak back, and that I didn’t appreciate her calling me names. It was horrible, I held it back, but once I got home I cried for hours.

This is a woman, that since my son was born she would snatch him from my arms and walk to other side of the room to be alone with him. That insists that every-time her other son is visiting from Michigan, that we must spend every single passing moment with him, or my husband has forgotten the value of his TRUE family. She constantly gives my husband major guilt trips, and guilts him into feeling bad for her. She moved here with my husband and her other son about 11 years ago from another country divorcing her husband, and choosing not to date because she cant deal with men. She makes fun of every friend she has ever had. She even accused her own father of trying to kill her when in fact he moved across south america to be there for her and her family when she needed him.

Im out of options, I don’t know what to say or how to react, my mom wants me to confront her, but I was hardly able to get two words in yesterday during her accusations. I feel lost and hurt, she will never apologize, will never change and will never accept me. I told my husband that he would have to choose between me and his son, and this once a week ALONE dinner with her. I dont know what else to do. I feel so helpless.

I will try my best to describe it. I really need help. I am at the point where I feel like leaving my relationship and I desperately need advice.

I take my son to school in the morning and its about a 20 min drive to get him there since we recently moved. The school year is about over so we decided not to transfer him until next year. So, it being that far and with traffic it isn’t plausible to travel back home, so I stay at my mother’s house in the mornings until he gets out of school. I pick him up and come home. I leave my home at about 7:20 and I do not get home until about 11:40 or so.

We recently moved so things aren’t all put away, unpacked, etc. My boyfriends mom takes it upon her self to do our laundry, put them away, etc. She has unpacked boxes, moved things to where SHE wants them to go and she even did my daughters room without asking me. I was waiting for my boyfriend to put the crib together so that I can put her room together. Well, he waits until the day he picks her up from the airport to put it together. It’s all done now because she took it upon herself to do it. She separated my daughters clothes to what she thinks will fit and what she thinks will not fit. It hurt me because I was looking forward to putting all her clothes away, putting her crib sheets on, going through her clothes, etc. She is trying to completely take over. When I am gone in the mornings she does everything and it makes me look like im lazy. She had the nerve to tell my boyfriend that I spend too much time on the computer and ignore my son and that she feels sorry for him. I hardly use the computer anymore, mainly to check e-mail. I don’t work and she sure has no problem rubbing that in. Another example, I told my boyfriend I wanted the yard to be MY project. I have talked about what I wanted to do since day one and well now his mother is doing it. All he has to say to me is that “Why are you upset if someone wants to clean, you shouldn’t be upset that she is pulling the high grass and how do you expect to do it with two kids.”, things like that. He also said “When you own a house there is always something that needs done” and I agree with him but even though it may take time WE are the ones doing it. He defends his mother and I’m sick of it. I have bit my tongue, I have tried to be nice, and I’m losing hope. I really am. I can’t sit here and type this without getting upset to the point where I cry.

She completely undermines me when it comes to my son (I was a single mother until I met my bf). I was leaving to go to my mothers one day because I couldn’t stand to be around her any longer because she was questioning me about why I wanted to be with david and our age difference is an issue. Basically telling me we made a mistake having a baby because he is older and I’m younger, etc. She flat out said to me “You can take him (meaning my son) and leave HER with me”. That just added to the fire. They are my children and I will take them when and where I please. She also gave me a hard time about going to wal-mart and taking my children.. making remarks like, “That isn’t important enough to be taking the kids out.”My boyfriend is not here during the day to see what she says to me or how she acts but when he does ask her she says something different, making me out to be a liar. She pretty much told my boyfriend that I let my son go hungry. He doesn’t defend me at all. He wont stick up for me but he tells me to stick up for myself. If I stick up for myself it’s not going to be pretty. I am at my mothers house now, typing this as I had mentioned before… I am desperate. I don’t know what I want to do anymore. I question if I should leave or stay but I will not tolerate this for the rest of my life. Please help me.

He treats me like an angel and is rarely home, which makes her jealous because he always wants to be with me, rather than her. On top of that, the summer before our senior year, she kicked him out. Not by any fault of his own, but because she was angry and told him not to come back. So he didn’t. My step dad took him in and he lived with me for 8 weeks during the toughest time of his life. They took everything from him, so I did my best to take care of him, but I feel like she holds a grudge against me for this. She still sees me as the girl that took her son away from her, because he chose me over her.

Our relationship is starting to patch up. She bought me a Christmas gift, which my boyfriend says is a first. I know she’s trying a little, but I can’t help but feel like she’s still looking down at me with contempt whenever I come to visit. It doesn’t seem to matter how nice I am to her or how polite, because as long as her son is serious about me, I don’t think she could ever truly like me.

How do I prove to her that I’m perfect for her son and the best thing for him? What do I do to make her like me, or want me around and as a part of the family? I feel like I always do something wrong, and that his parents don’t think that I like them, but I’m so new to this I don’t know how to act! I feel like she hates me, and I would do anything to change that.

Once he told his mother we decided to move in together she suddenly announced she wanted to come up to visit him. We live in Washington State and she lives in California. I knew that she was only coming up to inspect me. Every time I told my boyfriend this was the case he would deny it. However, she admitted as much to him once she got here. Scheduling her trip turned into a complete power trip on her part. My boyfriend forgot that we had an out of town visitor the weekend she asked about. When he tried to explain to her that HE got the dates mixed up she pitched a total fit. She didn’t want to change her flight, and would call to argue with him and interrogate him about why the flight had to be changed. I would hear her on the phone doing this and my boyfriend would sort of acknowledge it and sort of deny it at the same time.

When she arrived for her visit there were a few weird moments. Within a few minutes of meeting me she told he I looked like a ‘beautiful vampire.’ His family is very waspy – my boyfriend, his two younger sisters, and his mother are all California blondes. I’m of eastern European/Jewish background – so I’m very pale and have dark hair but I by no means look like a goth or a vampire. I tried not to think about the comment too much. I thought it might be a compliment but it seemed very strange. The rest of the visit she was very polite and I thought things had gone very well and that maybe everything that happened before would go away. She seemed to be encouraging about the move after this – she paid for our movers, and sent us a housewarming gifts. I really thought everything was fine but boy was I really, really wrong.

This is when things got incredibly weird. Shortly after moving in together my boyfriend and I had some heated arguments. Part of what we talked about was the prospect of us getting married. Without my knowledge my boyfriend had been calling his mother throughout our arguments and giving her a very abbreviated version of what I was saying to him. Though I don’t know exactly what was said she came to the conclusion that I was a gold digger and was trying to force him to marry me. This was absolutely not the case. During one of our last arguments around this time I realized that his phone kept beeping with new text messages. For the few days before that his phone had been ringing off the hook, over and over again as well. I picked up his phone and looked through his text messages and was absolutely horrified. He had been talking to his mother the entire time. I then found numerous text messages and emails from her from the week prior. I also saw repeated missed calls from both of his parents. The text messages from his mom were all about how I’m scary, and the fact that we are still together means he must be doing whatever I want, she also advised him to break up with me. I also found a word document about 2 pages long that she had drafted in bullet points. All the bullet points were about how he should consider IF he EVER wants to get married, what my motives were (again implying I’m a gold digger), and other comments about how I must be psychologically weak. When I found this I was beyond furious and was ready to move out. I couldn’t believe he had been including his mother in our private discussions and was texting her during our arguments. I moved into the office in our apartment. After following me around for days and asking if I would agree to see a couples counselor with him I elected not to move out.

Counseling has really helped a lot in terms of our relationship. He didn’t understand what a mess he was making by including his mother. Since he had never had a very serious relationship before he didn’t know how damaging this would be. He always saw his mother as a friend. He now knows he has to have very firm boundaries with her and since we’ve starting counseling he has been 100% on my side, always representing our relationship to her positively, and doing everything he can to be a good partner. The problem is his mother still hates me. She pretends to be nice but then makes passive aggressive comments, and insults me in really back-handed ways.

This post is already long but this is basically what has been going on since:
- My boyfriend wrote his parents a letter explaining that he was upset when he talked to his mother and acted badly and irrationally. He told them I am the most important person in the world to him and he feels terrible about hurting me and really needs them to learn to love me. He then repeatedly tried to tell his mom how important I am in every conversation he had with her afterwards.
- Despite this when my boyfriend would tell her how much he loves me she would say something divisive like “BUT does she love you”. She would say other insulting and divisive things like that in other conversations.
- I went home with him to thanksgiving to try and make peace with them. She acted polite but would then do really backhanded weird things. After thanksgiving dinner she gave a speech to her daughters about how they should marry someone ‘of good breeding stock,’ who makes a lot of money, comes from a good family, and went to specific type of school. It was really classist and bizarre. My boyfriend kept insisting it had nothing to do with me but it was very difficult for me to believe that. I am a law student, and went to an Ivy League school for undergrad but I come from a very poor family. In contrast his parents have a lot of money and his sisters are practically Barbie doll replicas. As far as I could tell she wanted to make it clear that I’m not good enough for her son.
- During thanksgiving she also told her daughters that if they weren’t’ married with kids by the time they were 30 they would be done for. She said this in front of me even though she had sent an email to my boyfriend telling him not to even talk to me about marriage until I’m out of law school. She knows I’ll be 29 at that point. This made it pretty clear to me she will do anything to make sure he doesn’t marry me no matter how much it hurts my life.
- When I first met her I added her on Facebook at her request to be nice. Last weekend I had stomach sickness – probably due to something I ate. I posted to Facebook about being sick and feeling nauseous. She immediately called my boyfriend to tell him she thinks I’m pregnant. When he told her she was being stupid she then proceded to send me a facebook message at 1am telling me that I’m experiencing symptoms of early pregnancy and need to get it checked out right away. Not only do I think this is totally inappropriate and insane – I can’t help but think she just wants to make sure its caught early and I have an abortion or something if I am. She couldn’t be more hysterical about it.
- On top of the pregnancy comments this week (while she knows I’m in law school finals by the way) she writes me a second email asking me to call her so she can talk to me about ‘my Christmas traditions.’ I called her back thinking she wanted to make me comfortable about coming to her house for Christmas this year (which I am dreading). Instead she spent the entire time explaining to me how much money they spend on presents at their house. She kept telling me she was buying expensive things for my boyfriend. She then told me NOT to buy him any Christmas presents. She explained there was no need for my presents since they would be getting him very nice ones. Then she kept alluding to my ‘financial situation’ over, and over again. When she asked me what I got him for Christmas and I told her she said “why would he want that?” I still can’t figure out what the point of this call was except to make me feel bad.

I don’t know what to do. I love my boyfriend so much. He wants us to work towards getting married. We’ve been going to counseling. Even though he really messed things up with his family initially he has been doing everything possible to try and fix it. The problem is I feel like his family is so latently hostile (and sometimes openly hostile) I can’t bear the thought of spending Christmas with them this year. We have already tentatively agreed to going but after the conversation I had with her the other day I’m just totally burned out. My boyfriend is willing not to go home for Christmas at all but I’m worried this will just fuel the fire and she’ll start being really, really hostile towards me. I don’t know how to make her not crazy towards me. I feel like I’d be a horrible person to break it off with my boyfriend over his parents but I just can’t bear that thought of having to deal with constant put downs and suspicions all the time.

Thoughts? Am I overreacting too much? Can I do anything about her? So confused…

My boyfriend and I have been together for 10 months.doc (35 KB)

Now she still says she needs to talk but wants to do it in person and refuses to even get on the phone. I think I’ve had about enough of this. Right now my BF is mad at her and saying that is bullsh*t but I can see him asking me to make a trip up there to see her and “talk”. No way.

I am thinking if it comes to that, I WILL call her directly and put into use some of the advise I’ve gotten from the ladies here – and say “Hi, I keep hearing you want to talk to me. What would you like to say?…..” and put it on speakerphone so BF can hear what happens….

Is this a good idea? BF is working really hard to stand up for me but his mom is relentless and we are trying to be a united front. I think this is what I should do though if the scenario pops up….. thoughts?

Anyways, these 2 women put together had made my & my fiance’s life a living hell. They we’re not even excited that we got engaged because they were questioning where we got the money from for my engagement ring. Also, they don’t think we could save for a wedding because I’m a compulsive shopper. Also, these 2 women like to put everyone down. Not only their own son & brother but my parents too as well. I don’t have the courage to speak up and defend myself or my family because I’m not the one to disrespect anyones family. Especially, my future husband’s! Now I am getting to the point where I think I might have a nervous breakdown & want to tell them to @#$% OFF!

They are even trying to plan my own wedding. The sister is helping with the catering and the mom is helping with my dress. I almost don’t even want them to help out at all or even be there!!! They don’t like anything I pick out, when everyone else does. They are starting to tell my son that he doesn’t get to do certain things that his other cousin does (Evil sister’s son) because his mom & dad have to spend there money on other things like a wedding!

What do I do??? I have never had so much stress in my life being as my family is very loving and giving, we hardly ever had any kind of family drama! Most importantly, I feel sorry for my fiance. He’s so embarrassed and so fed up with these two women. I would just love some advice! I think I’m going to go insane if I have to put up with anymore of this! I already know these two devils are going to make my wedding day a stressful day but that day… I’m sure I wont give a s*** and probably will tell them off!

HELP!!!!