u/masyday

I just need some help trying to navigate this woman and her actions towards DH. For background we are both 27, turning 28 soon. We have been together since we were 16, married for 5 years.

MIL was actually fine prior to us moving in with each other during college. Only thing was in hs she was very pushy showing baby books and videos of DH from the ages of 1-8 years old specifically. We both noticed an uptick in attention seeking behavior when we were on our own but we generally ignored it.

Once we got married it took a downturn, she would buy me 2xl sweaters (I wear smalls/mediums) and take me “shopping” to places like torrid and Layne Bryant. Mind you, nothing wrong with those stores and they do offer good options, I just don’t fit into the size range they have. She was working on weight loss and type 2 diabetes issues at the time so I thought she was going for her but she would make comments once we were in the car about how she is so glad there are shops for “people like me”. I kept cool and just waited for her to get us back to her place so I could get home. I told DH that I will handle my mom and he will handle his and that has been the set up ever since.

She has noticed, and for the five years after she has made an effort to try to encourage us to “make her a baby”, and I told her things like “if you want a baby you can have a baby” or “buy me a house”, then stopped responding entirely bc she just wanted attention.

Then DH pointed out how she only ever talks to him when subjects relate to her or she can bring it back to her. And she only ever cares about him as a kid and can’t bother to remember what he went to grad school for or what his career is now. But she is making up memories and “traditions” from when he was little and tells us about it out of the blue, sending both of us photos of a laptop with baby photos/videos of him unprompted etc. We both think she wants us to have a kid bc if there is a chance it’s a boy she will be an overbearing psycho and pretend it is redo mini DH.

This behavior and rewriting his past and how their relationship was is disturbing to him. She didn’t raise him like a mamas boy, in-fact she seemed to be emotionally neglectful and a serial dater who prioritized men and tried to turn DH away from his Dad.

MIL and FIL were divorced by the time DH was 2. And now she keeps calling him “babe” “baby” “my baby” “my little boy” “my world” purely for attention (he hs told her to stop, she said she always has called him this and he called her out saying she did not) Seeing how uncomfortable he is makes me irate.

He feels awful about it and I have no idea how to support him or address it because I have a pretty good relationship with my own mom. And I think that may be another piece as to why she acts out so badly, bc my mother has a good relationship with all 3 of her kids, and me and my siblings are close as well. MIL is estranged from her own daughter, and SIL is not close with DH at all, I wish I could ask SIL her side bc I genuinely never met her. MIL is actively weirding out the only kid she has left that will talk to her and pushing him away.

I have been holding my tongue for so long and just trying to comfort DH the best I can, but I really want to give this woman a piece of my mind someday. How can I best support DH through this as he is trying to figure out how to address his mom?