u/Greedy-Judge-9004

Trigger warning: mentions abuse.

I (28F) have been with my spouse, Eric, (27M) for over 10 years and married for 3. Eric and I come from very different family dynamics. I grew up the youngest of 6, dirt poor (not white poor, genuinely dirt poor), in a predominantly physically abusive home with only 1 parent. Eric is a twin and grew up at the bottom end of wealthy, with both parents that probably should've divorced, and with a family dynamic that predominantly had psychological and emotional abuse.

My whole family is autistic and is extremely blunt and direct as a communication style that works for us. While I've cut off my parent years ago, I have some limited contact with some of my siblings, but we all GET it. For example, one of my siblings (who wasn't invited to my wedding) caught wind of it and let a sibling (that was invited) know that they totally understood and wouldn't say a word of it to our abusive parent. My siblings independently communicated that if they weren't invited, they understood. Weddings are expensive. My siblings and I all understand that we love and support each other, but we also all live in different states and are content to not interact very much. When we need to communicate something, we just talk things out. I've done years of hard therapy and still have more years to go, but healthy communication and respecting boundries amongst me and my siblings is not one of the issues.

Eric's family's communication style is extremely indirect. It took me a couple years to actually pick out the social differences. In Eric's family, his feelings and opinions don't matter. Anything he might have an interest in gets railroaded into whatever his mom or twin want. When they don't get what they want, they lash out verbolly, saying whatever they think will cause you the most hurt. To Erics mom particularly, any information you give her is a weapon to get what she wants. If you said the worst case scenario would be a house fire, she would threaten to light the house on fire. And when shes done, she pretends nothing happened. They're so used to getting whatever they want from Eric that when we started dating they accused me of controlling him, because Eric hadn't ever really pushed back before. I've done a lot of work with Eric to see that what he wants and how he feels matters and to start setting reasonable boundaries with others.

Eric and I both have a hard time when it comes to dealing with his mom. He's done enough of his own therapy to really start grasping that it's not his responsibility to be managing her emotions, while she makes up false narratives that take things to negative extremes and lashes out at everyone around her as though the lies shes made up were fact.

Eric is an extremely emotionally level person, which works very well for me, but the randomized volatility of his mom triggers me. She might make empty threats but I grew up with promises, and that's what my nervous system is hardwired for.

Eric's twin attends college in a different state. He's graduating soon and we're both very happy for his twin and would love to celebrate him. But their mom would be there and I'm not okay with being around her at this time.

You might say, we could try and avoid her, except we can't afford to go. Eric's mom offered to cover plane tickets and a hotelroom if we decided to go and Eric's twin has offered us staying with him, but the first would leave us indebted to his mom with no garenteed emergency exits and for the ladder, Eric's twin relates to their mom and stated his home is a safe place for their mom. We know for a fact if we went and didn't do a family dinner, they'd throw a tantrum. And I really don't want to put ourselves in those conditions. I also don't want to risk setting something off that detracts from Eric's twins' accomplishment.

To Eric's family, it's not really a big deal if I don't go, but it would be if Eric didn't go. Eric's twin has expressed upset toward Eric if he opts not to go.

Eric wants to go and support his twin in spite of their mom and he wants to make sure he's also properly supporting me. It had never occurred to Eric to even go without me.

I would love to go, if it weren't Eric's mom and finances. (Eric's twin doesn't view finances as reason enough because Eric's twin doesn't believe in debt and never learned to be financially responsible. And while their mom offered to pay for flights and a place to say, that still doesnt cover transport or what we'd eat while there or that we won't be able to work while there. We are currently barely making enough to pay all of our bills). Eric's twin plans to come down to visit next month anyways with his partner and his partners kid, so I intend to celebrate his accomplishments in person at that time.

So I will not be attending. I let Eric know that if he wants to go, he can go. When he pressed for what I want, I honestly told him I'd prefer if he stayed. My ptsd is very debilitating in my day to day and he's my biggest support. I've been working hard and getting better and don't want that to hold him back, but I'm also anxious and would really like to have my person with me.

And while this is an important thing to celebrate, I am a little worried that him going dispite financial concerns because he's worried about his twin being upset with him would just continue to feed into the unhealthy family dynamic where he does things just to appease and manage everyone else's emotions.

Eric's twin being upset honestly doesn't make sense to me. Celebrating him when he's in town and wanting to avoid the parent is something my family would be totally down with. They might be a little sad, but they also get it and move on to actually enjoy the celebrations as they come. My siblings wouldn't create this dynamic where you have to leave your spouse behind because it wouldn't be good for them. My siblings would find a work around that works for everyone. My siblings are all very compassionate, selfless people and Eric's twin is an extremely self centered person who seems to have a hard time understanding what someone else might be experiencing. I recognize that a graduation might not be the "right" timing but at the same time, lines need to go somewhere.

In Eric's family dynamic, he is simply treated as someone who does things for them and who's wants and needs don't matter before their own ever. And I am placed even farther below that by extention.

We're not really sure what to do. So, would I be the a-hole for not wanting my spouse to go to his twin's college graduation?

Quick trigger warning. There is mention of an end of life attempt, assult, death and abuse, but nothing going into depth, beyond a couple of direct quotes for somethings. Kept things as vague as possible.

I'm sorry this is so long, I just needed to vent and wanted to give as much context as possible.

For background context:

My SO and I are high school sweethearts. We've been together for over a decade at this point.

When we first started dating, MIL was fake nice, and I could tell. Her mask didn't fall until 2 years into our relationship, when SO's twin was assaulted in their relationship and attempted to take their own life. MIL automatically assumed that was happening in our relationship too because it was also SO's first relationship. (She was incorrect). That was when MIL started bullying me.

She would make an assumption that would take things to the worst possible extreme. If you rightfully told her she was wrong, she'd accuse you of lying. If you lied and agreed with her, you're agreeing with the worst possible thing. (I'll note here, she is a lawyer). She would then proceed to berate you and treat you like what she decided happened is actually what happened. This was a continuous problem for at least 4 years.

One of the things she tried a few different times was self inserting herself to our dates that I would plan and arrange. Like our two year anniversary, I put a lot of work into making a fun date and MIL genuinely tried to invite herself into it.

One of the things she accused us of was being sexually active when we weren't. (I'm Ace and at that time, sex repulsed. At that time I was very religious on top of that.) This didn't stop until I told her SO and I were both adults. Whatever we do or don't decide to do is between us. And the she was not a part of our relationship.

MIL has also tried to get SO and I break up multiple times over the years as well. (Going to lunch with just me to tell me "SO should have some freedom when he's away at college". Trying to make me upset with SO by mentioning him watching porn. Trying to get me to break up with him by saying something along the lines of he wasn't done growing up and he was unreliable and that would make a toxic relationship. -which is a bunch of half truths spun in a very specific way that in no way actually reflected reality.- She also tried talking SO into breaking up with me more than once as well. She really didn't expectus to jist talk things out).

Notably I was at SO's place a lot because SO was over booked and it was the only way we'd get any time together. But also because I'm the youngest of a big family. Everyone had moved out and my mom, (that I don't have a good relationship with due to abuse), was at work or asleep. When I was out of high school and SO was still in, I'd stop by because it'd meant I'd eaten that day.

So I was always around and we were usually together which seemed to upset MIL. At one point I commented to FIL that us spending lots of time together was us acting our age and MIL was upset at us for acting our age and not her age or how she wants us to. FIL paused to think for a second and ultimately agreed with my observation.

Being with SO was one of the very first times I actually felt safe. And to this day, making any amount of physical contact with SO immediately melts all of the tension from my body.

I also struggle with food and food insecurity because of trauma. Spending time with SO, being there all the time, meant I ate food.

And here we were, with MIL throwing false accusations and treating me like I'd done the most evil thing I could possibly do. Blowing everything out of proportion, when we weren't even sexually active to begin with. It was a very hard time.

Some of the other lies she decided were real includes:

- that I was going to try and baby trap SO. (It's been over 10 years and still no kids. This was absolutely not true. I just knew he was the one and we talked about it. SO and I were on the same page about this)

- that I was controlling SO (because I explained to SO that they won't hear me, it has to come from him and I support and encourage him to voice his oppinions and wants as they're used to railroading him)

-:that when he bought me a ring as a gift I was the on that put in on my ring finger. (He put it there. When we started dating I bought a cheap ring I'd wear all the time to help keep guys from harassing me. I get asked out a lot. It kept them away. When it broke, SO bought me a reasonably priced real ring as a replacement and put in on my ring finger himself.)

MIL had also been taking things to extremes in other ways.

WhileSO's twin was in the hospital and having health struggles, MIL was getting angry at SO for not doing well in school.

SO had a Physically and time taxing even scheduled practically daily. He was over booked and undiagnosed ADHD and depression.

MIL's response was to empty his room of all personal belongings including his bedframe, and take his bedroom door. The only thing left in SO's room was his mattress. This still impacts him to this day.

I would try to support him by sending him all the silly memes I could find. Anything that would brighten his day and might make him laugh. MIL responded by having my phone number blocked through the phone company(so that SO couldn't undo it) for 5 years. Naturally we just messaged through discord instead.

When SO barely graduated from high school, MIL was adamant that he go straight into a 4 year university away from home and that taking a semester break or attending a community College instead would leave him "Homeless and only eating canned soup for the rest of his life".

Mind you, the Community College in my area is actually extremely good quality. There's top universities around us and their professors also teach at the community colleges. Same education for less. Also, I didn't immediately enroll in school out of high school. I got a job to make money before I spent it since I would be responsible for all of the costs. I started school in the following spring semester instead. So MIL was fear mongering SO with actions I was taking.

SO went to a 4 year university that was almost 1,000 miles away, and struggled very hard for 1 year because he never had the chance to develop the skills he needed to actually do well.

SO had extreme perfectionist anxiety because every single time he made a mistake, MIL would take over and perform the equivalent of jamming a square into a circle hole, hurting both in the process, when there was a perfectly usable square hole next to it. SO was inadvertently taught that he couldn't handle his own problems and things get bad when you make mistakes.

When SO left for college, I got my driver's license and a car with insurance. When SO hit very low points, I drove to visit him and try to help him along for a weekend of two.

MIL constantly stalked SO using the "where's my divice" tracker, and that is how she figured out SO was struggling, as he left his room less and less, and would then harass him aggressively about it. Saying things like, he was morally failing.

It got to the point she just decided, before the second semester had ended, to show up unannounced, pack up all his things and move him back home.

It crushed him.

I had moved and didn't feel safe around his mom at this point, so instead of going to his place all the time, he came to mine. And I think that's when it clicked for MIL that SO wanted to be with me, not that I just hung around all the time and SO didn't want it. And MIL got upset because she never got to see him anymore.

I initiated a weekly friend hang out that did wonders for SO's mental health and which created a safe enviornment where he was able to make mistakes and have everything be okay. Learning how to manage things after a mistake for himself.

That is when things finally started to shift back to MIL playing nice. Because her and everyone else around him started to actually realize that I actually make SO very happy. And if she wanted to see SO, and SO just wanted to be around me, then MIL had to be nice to me or she wouldn't see him.

As a general thing, SO and I have let go of things that happened before we moved out together. But sharing it is important because it does establish the history of her behavior patterns.

Fast-forward to us get engaged. We start planning for a wedding to be a year and a half out. We also move into our own space with a friend couple.

At the same time, FIL gets very sick. He ended up in and out of the ICU for months. When he was starting to get better, he could barely walk anymore. It was clear he was on his way out. We had hoped we could get married before his passing so we could have him there, but he unfortunately didn't make it that long and passed the year before our wedding. He did get to see SO and myself moved out, and happily engaged. FIL was very loved and SO and I still miss him greatly.

When it came to our wedding, pretty much all of the drama was entirely caused by MIL.

Early into the planning process, MIL asked about the guest list and I (having learned by then) responded with "its handled". She expressed concern about her sister not being invited. We said no, she's not invited.

MIL's sister's youngest (18 F,) is someone who loves to make everything about herself. (At FIL's funeral, she talked about how she was his favorite and how she talked to him all the time, more than anyone else. She also submitted a photo to the slide show of his life that only had her in it, not FIL, and threw a tantrum because it was vetoed. I am a classically trained singer and was asked to sing for his funeral. She kept trying to make some kind of competition about her thinking she would be better than me when I comfortably knew that wouldn't be the case and didn't bite. She was speechless and avoidant after my performance that genuinely stunned everyone, present physically and virtually. <The virtual ones noted I was the only one they could hear that didn't use a microphone. The other performance that didn't use a microphone was trumpets.> Just to give a few examples). She was also racist, classist, transphobic, and just overall not a great person. I'm trans and grew up dirt poor, I have close queer friends and close friends of different races, and it was important to both of us that everyone feel safe and comfortable at our wedding. And as SO and myself are both fairly quiet people who've been overshadowed our whole lives, it was particularly important that the one day that was to be ours alone, that we paid for out of our own pockets, not be overshadowed by anyone else.

So to avoid the likely situation of that Cousin inviting herself, we opted to not invite MIL's sister. And given that I hadn't ever met any of the other cousins prior to FIL's funeral, after being together for 8 years at that point, they were also not invited. (Though they were lovely and we did actually want to invite them, we were trying to avoid issues that'd come up with Cousin because of it).

Fast forward a little and MIL keeps making comments about not being more involved in the wedding preparations. (I was very particulare about everything because of my very bad PTSD, and I was making sure that there wouldn't be anything that would trigger it that day. Also, we were the ones paying for everything. MIL did pay for our photographer and MIL and a different Aunt (let's call her A) jointly gifted us 5,000$ toward the wedding which was helpful. The thousands of other dollars came straight from our own pockets. We don't make much, we just saved us as much as we could before moving out and having to pay rent.

So I gave MIL things to do. I asked her to work with Aunt A to plan a wedding shower. I also asked her to source the wood cuts I'd use as part of the center pieces since MIL was already cutting down the trees anyways and had offered. And I asked for her assistance in finishing pinning the lace onto my wedding outfit that I had made entirely by myself from scratch.

I gave her all of that. From what I observed all she did with the wedding shower was provide the space, Aunt A actually planned and managed everything (I have given A my absolute gratitude for this). I basically had to hound MIL about getting the wood cuts because cutting them was only one step in the process. A different friend was sealing the wood and then I would actually be able to make the center pieces myself, with assistance from my maid of honor. MIL had her new boyfriend cut them all for her. The lace thing was the only thing she didn't throw onto someone else. When I gave that to her, I was prepared for it to never happen and to possibly never see that garment I made ever again.

I gave her all of those things, all of which she actively complained about, while also complaining about not being more involved while not saying what that meant. The only clear thing MIL communicated was wanting a rehearsal dinner, which I vetoed because there just wasn't time and I wasn't down to add another stressful and unnecessary thing to do. Every time we stopped by and tried to check in or chat with MIL, she just up and vanished into thin air. It was insane.

She kept making comments about how there was going to be so much more of my family there than SO's (another thing shejust made up un pompted), and also never listened. She seemed to get into her own head about it. SO's twin asked about being involved in any of the ceremony stuff and was a little hurt when we said no. But when we explained why and that none of my family members were either, they seemed more okay with it. Ultimately they ended up being one of our witnesses.

To be clear, MIL seemed to have a lot of unspoken expectations that she also expected me to somehow know. But my whole family is autistic and fairly blunt. While 2 of my siblings were already married, one of them got married in a religious building, I couldn't even attend. I waited outside until we went to someone's nice backyard where they had a Lord of the Rings themed, very laid-back reception. The other one had a max of 20 people at her wedding in a public park with the reception in a church becauseit was a free venue. She went for as cheap and simple as possible. When I asked if there was anything she wanted me to do, she just wanted me to show up dressed however I wanted and I was invited to her bridal shower. That was it.

When it came to planning my own wedding, 2 of my siblings told me "Hey, weddings are expensive. If I'm not invited, I understand and I will still send you a gift and support you how I can." those were my only family members that I invited. My other siblings weren't invited. But when one of them accidently caught wind of my wedding he expressed that he understood why he wasn't invited and wasn't going to fight it. He also agreed to keep it from our mom. When one of my invited siblings came, she brought 100$ from our dad, because he understood why he wasn't invited but appreciated that he was actually informed, unlike my mom.

As far as I'm concerned, weddings are a rare big fancy party you throw for yourself. So you might as well make it what you want. And we went VERY nontraditional.

I digress.

MIL kept pushing to invite her sister. So finally I say fine. But you have to make sure she understands it's explicitly your sister and her husband. Not the cousin. And MIL said yeah. So we sent an invite. We had explicit names listed, just like we did for every single person so they understood they weren't getting a plus one, but we did invite both partners who were in a couple.

At some point MIL started pressuring us to invite the rest of her sisters kids, but we refused because we don't want to make it messy as much as possible. If we invited them then the Cousin would definitely throw a temper tantrum and might try to force her way into coming anyways. We had already compromised and weren't going any farther.

Fast forward to 1 month before the wedding. MIL calls SO to finalize who's staying at her place before the wedding. She's listing people and she includes the Cousin. I immediately clock the red flag. SO accepts that I've clocked this red flag and responds accordingly. Telling MIL that Cousin is not invited. MIL tries to dance around it, saying oh well, she might not be trying to go. She could just be visiting. And we weren't buying it. Immediately SO calls Cousin to say much more diplomatically than I wanted to say, "hey, you know you're not invited to the wedding, right?". Cousin says "okay". And hangs up.

Less than one minute later. SO's phone is exploding from both MIL and her sister going off on SO. Telling him he's a horrible person and that was so mean, how could he. "I've never seen anyone use a wedding as a weapon like that before". Calling him all of the horrible names and berating him. Dragging him through the mud. Anything they could think to say that would cause SO the most hurt possible. He tells MIL's sister that Cousin's name wasn't listed on the invite and MIL had agreed to make sure you were informed ahead of time. She's still not satisfied and continues to be insainely angry.

MIL gets angry at SO for throwing her under the bus. And starts going off about not knowing if she even had an invite (she did, I handed it to her directly, it was pinned to her calander) or if her name was on there (it was. She just didn't look). Saying she's canceling Christmas (it was December. We were supposed to also do it with one of my sisters too), and she didn't even know if she wanted to go any more. How could she have raised such a horrible and heartless son, etc. For literal HOURS. This is not an exaggeration.

The next day SO stops by MIL's place to try and talk things out more. MIL verbolly assaults him even more. It takes forever but she eventually calms down to not canceling Christmas, but her other threats, including not renting her home to us (so she could move out and we'd cover the mortgage. We'd already agreed to end our current lease with our current landlord at that time), and not coming to the wedding were left on the table.

It took at least 2 weeks of SO doing his best to manage MIL's emotions to get her to remove the threat to our housing and living stability. It was unnecessary, triggering stress when I was already working so hard on getting wedding things handled. We did do Christmas but she honestly ruined the whole feel of it.

We did our best. We recognized that there's a part of her that felt hurt and scared that her family was leaving her. She did everything she could and her husband still died. For someone who needs to be in control of everything, there is no greater loss of control than that. We gave her a LOT of grace and tried to work with her as best as we could.

It is important to note that making extreme threats that she never plans to follow through on are very much MIL's thing. I grew up with my mom not making threats, but promises. It doesn't matter if her threats and horrible words don't actually carry weight to herself. My nervous system will still respond to them like they do. Because that is what it was trained on.

When it came down to two days before the wedding, MIL, SO's twin and twin's partner all stopped by to pick up our dog so she'd be cared for for the next couple days. Everyone in our home was in the wedding and we were going to stay near the venue the night before and after so we wouldn't have to worry about driving 2 hours. MIL had given the pretense that they were there to help with what was left of wedding prep. Except our home was small, and what was left was flower arranging and finishing up the center pieces. Both of which require an amount of skill or an eye for detail that none of them had, so they were absolutely no help at all.

At that same time my maid of honor, who's also one of my room mates and was making the flower arrangements for me asked me about what we'd do for dinner, before or after the rehearsal. We were going the day before to the venue to rehearse where everyone in the party would be and when, how people would line up, waiting areas, entrances and exits.

None of this had been mentioned to MIL because it had nothing to do with her. But she heard "reheardsal" and "dinner" and immediately got pissy. She pulled SO away to another room, IN OUR OWN HOME.and started yelling at him behind closed doors. I immediately noticed them slink off and after it being a while, I went to go check on them. I over heard MIL berating SO about not being invited to the rehearsal dinner while SO did his best to explain that's really not what it is. And she was upset about him not walking her down the isle and acted like that was something I was somehow supposed to magically know about??? (I was aware of dad's walking daughters down the isle but I'd never heard of the son walking his mother. He's always already up there in shows or movies and no one talks about it in real life. And the thing she didn't understand is that he was not going to be walking her down the isle. Because he would be walking with me. And that was a big surprise we were keeping on the downlow. The venue has 2 entrances to the isle. A short one, and a staircase. The whole wedding party went up the isle without him while he waited for me at the base, where the two paths met. I decended the stairs alone and together we walked from the base of the isle to the front. This is very important and symbolic for us because I had been very alone and the last 9 years he had been my amazing support.) She was really tearing into SO, and I was ready to burst in there and demand she leave our home. That she was not welcome here.

But SO is his own adult who can handle the situation and was handling the situation. So I stood back and waited by the door quietly, listening in so that I would be able to support SO however he best needed it. When they left the room, I was standing right there. MIL asked SO about going on a quick walk together. I did a quick check in with him. He said it was fine, and they took our dog for a short walk. I was very concerned and very angry, not that it came out at all. I wasn't in a situation I felt okay expressing any kind of anger. It may have translated into a bit of a glare, but that's it. Everyone could tell something was off and MIL was acting up.

As soon as they came back from walking our dog, they all left. They were absolutely no help, it wasted time, energy, and emotion, needlessly. I stayed up very late that night alone, getting the bulk of the center pieces finished.

I checked in with SO and he downplayed things, but basically said she was very hurt by it all and he did his best to explain it and calm her down. I let him know it was not okay for her to treate him like that, especially in our own home. That while he is an adult and it's important to let him manage his own family dynamics and struggles, I can't just sit back idly while the love of my life is treated like shit. That it really was not okay and is a genuine trigger for me. (I watched my siblings be abused when protecting me and I was powerless to do anything to help them, because then I'd become the target and their efforts would be in vain.)

All the way up to the day of, MIL acted towards SO like she might not come to our wedding, which was especially important to SO as she's the parent he has left. He had planned to surprise her with the song they danced to being the same song FIL sang to MIL on their wedding day. It's something that had been planned from the very beginning. And she was unknowingly threatening to throw all of that away.

From SO's twin and my sister, we learned that to everyone around MIL physically, she gave no indication that she was ever considering not going.

MIL did come, and the day itself ran smoothly, but SO was on edge the whole time and completely out of it because of how MIL had been behaving. I did my best to help ground him and help bring him into the moment. But that just really sucked and was very shitty of her to do.

Oh yeah, MIL's sister uninvited her self as part of her tantrum and they never came. She tried to blame wasting her time on us when she literally had the invite with explicit names written.

I also much later learned that MIL tried to manipulate Aunt A into telling MIL's sister that the Cousin was not invited. Aunt A is not down for being manipulated and was very upset with MIL for it.

Since the wedding, SO and I ran into issues with MIL during the whole process of moving in. The only reason we agreed to move in is because:

a) it seemed to benefit everyone.

b) MIL had gotten better with her behavior before everything with the wedding went down. And we were trying to give her grace as FIL had passed away and we knew that was hard on her.

SO and I tried to see what we could do to help her with packing and moving out, as we only had so much time we would be able to spend focusing on moving things and were trying to help facilitate things. She barely accepted any.

When talking about what she was leaving, we had initially agreed that there was a cabinet installed in a room that she would take down. When going over things before she left, she conveniently left it out of things, hoping we wouldn't notice. I called it out, MIL made a dramatic fuss about it, "Fine, if you don't want it then I'll just have to take it with me," like she was expecting us to beg her to keep it here. No. We didn't want it. She did that with multiple things, including trying to make us pay for lawn maintenance and pool care when that wasn't part of the agreement. It was a nightmare.

When she finally left and we could finally start moving in, the place hadn't been cleaned at all. We needed to deep clean everything and finish moving her shit out of our rooms. Things she agreed to do, she didn't do, like replacing the flooing in the room that would become our roommates bedroom. Or actually addressing the black mold in the walls of that room. Less than a week later, we're not able to be set up at all and MIL insists that she has to stay with us when she absolutely does not have to and because of her negligence, there wasn't even anywhere for her to be. It took over a month for our roommates to have the mold in their room addressed and they had to put their own floor in, which took another month. She made a huge fuss about how she wasn't welcome during that time that was absolutely ridiculous.

Admittedly, something going on in the background of this all was I had no work for the unforseen future and SO lost his job at the same time. We kept it from MIL because she'd treat it as a liability. SO had applied for another job but there weren't any hours available yet.

At some point during that transition, she did stay for a bit. She gave us a start and and end date, but she kept randomly changing the end date when we checked in with her, just trying to move things along. And she threw an adult sized tempertrantrum over it. MIL brought SO onto the front porch to start berating him for it. Saying how she wasn't welcomed (she wasn't. She invited herself. She always invites herself. And she keeps changing the end date.). It was bad enough a neighbor from across the street yelled at MIL to stop yelling at SO. MIL stayed that night but left the next morning.

Watching MIL yell at SO was extremely triggering for me. SO tried to reassure MIL, that I'd be fine, before actually talking with me about it. I wasn't fine. That's not fine.

At first, with subsequent visits, MIL stayed at a hotel instead (which she has no problem affording). SO tracked her location and I made sure not to be home when she was there doing house maintenance.

I said she had to do a family therapy before she could stay again.

She did a family therapy. She spent the whole time talking incohearently, defensively, and directly lying. The therapist tried to do a repeat back to MIL what MIL said, and when I did MIL denied that's what she said, pivoting to something completely different and unrelated. Even the therapist was thoroughly confused and felt protective of me from MIL.

But in MIL's mind, she crossed off the mark and stayed at our place going forward.

I have left to be at a friends place just to not have to be around her. But one of those times, she stayed for a month. It's insane that I'm paying rent for a place I can't stay for that whole month. And I couldn't see SO very much because he was working long hours and taking care of our dog I couldn't take with me.

MIL started shifting to basically be here monthly, which again, is INSANE. In November I stayed at my friends place again but I really hit a breaking point with things. Nothing about the situation was okay.

I chewed my SO out for letting things get so bad with MIL. While he's used to it from her, it's not okay and him not standing up for us means I'm also getting treated like shit and I don't concent to it. I have him a list a boundries he needed to communicate to MIL, and he did his best.

I listened while SO tried. It was like SO was talking to a ferret. She was reciting the "prayer of a narcissist", like she had it memoried even though I'm sure she's never heard of it.​ SO was barely able to touch on most of the things.

SO and I made sure to spend time with Aunt A for Christmas in case MIL decided to self insert herself. MIL sent some okay gifts for us to Aunt A or us.

In January she was saying she'd be there for a week around SO's birthday and wanted to get food with him. Notably, within a week of SO's birthday is also my birthday and our wedding anniversary. Both of which she'd conveniently forgotten. (She celebrated my birthday the first year SO and I were together and I know she keeps a calander, but she consistently mentions my birthday and how we should celebrate it too, only to then completely forget about me when it came time to celebrate and would act confused and like I was crazy). Could we afford to take an anniversary trip? No. We took one anyways and managed to completely avoid her.

This is where things get to current:

But she left a card saying how she was really hoping things would be better this year. Which, fine. If she wants things to be better she has a LOT of work to do.

I made a list of things I need her to appologize for because it's the only way that I would be assured she actually understands what she's done that was wrong and is less likely to try and do it again.

This time when she forced a visit on us, I didn't leave. We had a start date but no end date, just a tentative month estimate, leavibg me no light at the end of the tunnel. (My friend had his widoms teeth removed and reasonably didn't want to hoast, and I wanted to see how it'd go if I didn't leave for once).

And her being there filled me with pure rage I had never felt before. (I have been working hard on healing my trauma for years. A side effect from healing includes new access to memories, randomly losing skills you know you have because they were powered by what you're healing and you disconnected the power source, and feeling completely new emotions). This rage was a completely new emotion for me, unlocked from all of the work I've been doing.

I asked my SO to close the front door so I wouldn't have to hear her voice. He did. And she opened it again. Filled with rage, I slammed it shut, so she'd get that it needed to stay that way. She left for the night, assuming it was some one time thing.

Another day, the door was left open again, I slammed it shut on my way out. Just the fact she was there filled me with so much rage and the story being opened like that was her invading our space that we pay for, acting like we don't pay to live there.

She finally actually talked to SO, where he was able to communicate most of what she needed to appologize to me for.

At the mark of a week, just the stress from her being there was giving me a massive headache. I went out with my SO. I tried not to but it's genuinely a blinding rage. It balanced itself out to slamming the screen door instead.

​This got her to talk with SO again. Where it finally actually got through to her that, no, this isn't normal. It really is just her. And she can't be here for a month, the most I can do is a week. And she finally left about half a week later.

I really am having a very hard time with this. Anything else, I have no problem navigating but this is just so so much.

We can't leave because we genuinely can't afford to. I have a lot of struggles with school, but with LOTS of therapy and meds, I've gone back and am working hard to get my degree that would make it possible for us to support ourselves. It needs to be where we are now because it significantly lowers the cost of school, helping us avoid school debt.

I do think she's genuine about wanting things to be better, but I don't know how much she'd be willing to fix things. She did agree to actually doing family therapy.

But I amd seriously struggling with this. It doesn't help that she's literally going around telling everyone so I feel anxious talking to anyone about how this has been hurting and impacting me and what's really going on. Doesn't help that I've never had a trusted adult in my life.

But part of my healing is the importance of speaking up, because only abusers benefit from your silence.

So I talked with Aunt A about it even though I was really scared to. They started at a spot of "Its important to play nice" and ended at a spot of, "actually your feelings are valid, you're not crazy, and you guys probably should go to therapy." It was nice to be validated. At the same time I can feel the unintentional residue from all the made up lies MIL has told them about me. It's scary, and nice at the same time.

And I barely talked some of it with SO's twin, but they're admittedly very defensive of their mom and there's a LOT they don't know or understand and some clear lack of life experience kind of ways. SO's twin emphasizes the importance of SO's relationship with MIL, and that it's more important than me and I shouldn't even be involved in family therapy.

I honestly don't know.

But I do know that that is part of how we got here in the first place. They keep acting like I don't exist when it's convenient to them. I've been there for over a decade of ruptures and have been intentionally excluded from all of the repairs. I haven't gotten any repairs, and they frankly don't care. It honestly triggers me some from a life time of how I felt never mattered. Only how my mom felt and how my brother felt mattered. I wasn't allowed feelings or a say in what I did or didn't do.

SO and I are very much a package deal. I feel like, to them, I'm an inconvenient background caracter who just shouldn't be around and the damage that's been done to me should be inconsequential and have absolutely no relation to MIL's relationship with SO.

MIL keeps acting like SO has changed so much when his relationship with her really hasn't changed that much. It's really just her perception of their relationship that has changed.

I'm debating if I should try talking with the Aunt on FIL's side, since I could see something click for her when it was noted that it's been 10 years and MIL is still acting insainely.

I really don't know what to do. I feel very alone in this. My SO is supportive and has been learning to speak up but it's not like he knows what he's doing either. I need help.