r/inlaws

Hoping for some help on an issue with my in-laws. My MIL just retired and would love to do some more things with her. My FIL would like to be included where possible.

The issue is my FIL cannot. Stop. Talking. He needs attention on him at all times. He will tell you long stories about people you don't know. He will tell you long explanations of super boring topics like how paper is made. We went out for my MIL's birthday and he talked about rivers for over 20 minutes. Rivers.

If someone interrupts he just keeps going and will not stop. If people do not seem interested in what he is talking about, he gets upset and lashes out in a weird way like by being rude to the waiter.

My husband feels like calling him out too harshly is disrespectful because his dad did work very hard for his family. His mom has spoken to his dad about this but it hasn't gotten better.

Any advice? Currently I cope by not spending a lot of time with them which makes me sad but I don't need to attend lectures I didn't sign up for.

To preface, I like my ILs. They are nice people overall, but they have terrible organization skills and a strong tendency to assume that we will change our plans to fit their last-minute decisions.

We live roughly 3 hours away by flight, so that has helped us setting boundaries a bit because if things are not organized, they are just not happening.

We usually do Christmas all together with the ILs and my family who live in the same area. This year my MIL and FIL wanted to celebrate it at our place, which we are very happy to do (less travelling for us! Also I love organising Christmas). The issue is that they insist that my partner's sibling and their family has to come too to have the whole family there, and the sibling and family are dragging their feet. They are the worst when it comes to deciding stuff at the last minute and then assume that we will somehow fit our schedule around them. Again lovely people otherwise when we do get to spend time with them, but this attitude is driving me bonkers. I had to teach partner to set boundaries with them in the past.

Anyway, we confirmed with them that Christmas would be at our place in June, and with my partner's blessing I helped my family booked their flights (non-refundable). We noticed that the price was much much higher than it used to be, so I warned the ILs that they needed to book their flights soon. This finally launched a discussion amongst them on how they would organize things, and it was decided the sibling would start looking for their accomodation (our house is too small for everyone and they're allergic to our pets so only my family will be staying with us and will help with the cleaning/setting up/cooking instead). They started suggesting some rental accomodation that they had found, but we turned it down as it was over an hour away from our place with very bad roads (especially in the winter) and made more manageable suggestions. Since then, no news. Supposedly, they're 'waiting for a reply' from one of the rentals (which one or where? God knows) since August.

They still haven't booked flights, which have now doubled in price (from something already stupidly expensive to 'could fly first class to another continent off season for that price'). My partner is afraid of asking them because he kind of knows that he won't get an answer we will like. They haven't cancelled yet either. At this point my bet is that they will say 'we can't come so please come home instead' and I am so glad that my family has their flights so we have a strong excuse to tell them to pound sand. I am absolutely certain that the whole family will not come, might have the MIL and FIL but even that is not certain. I offered my help to organize everything in the beginning so they have zero excuse.

Communication in my family is very straightforward and any behavior like that would have been called out with someone asking clearly 'are you coming or not?' with no offence taken if the person has changed their mind and doesn't want to come. According to my partner, not all families have our absence of subtlety lol so I am staying away from any communication on this issue and letting the partner sort it out. I am just so annoyed and needed to vent here!

For context see my original post

My son recently turned 1 month old and MIL wanted to take milestone pics. I already had planned to do my own pictures, but didn’t want her to take over so figured I’d just go with it and let her do her own. Well come the day she shows me the onesie she made…that only has his middle name. I asked why she only has his middle name on the shirt and she said they like it better. I told her that’s not what we’re calling him and I don’t want him to be confused. She ignored my text so I didn’t take him to her and posted my own pics with his first name and sent her the photos.

My husband says I’m making it a bigger deal than it is, but I feel like she’s trying to create memories that erase his name because she doesn’t like it. She has already announced to our church and her own friends that his name is only his middle name. So now everyone knows him as his middle name exclusively.
Once he’s vaccinated and I’m introducing him to all of these people, I plan to use his real first name but I have no idea how to explain why MIL told them all something else. I feel like she wanted her own pictures to show all of them with the name she told them all is his first name. She’s also found a sticker she made with his face and only middle name.

My husband had another conversation with her because while he thinks I’m overreacting he thinks she is too. In that conversation she defended herself by saying that she goes by her middle name so doesn’t understand why it’s a problem but does understand why I’m upset that she announced only his middle to our church.

I’m trying to gather my own thoughts enough to have my own conversation with her per the request of my husband. He wants me to tell her it bothers me but also ask why she doesn’t like his name. Frankly I don’t care why she doesn’t like it but I’m angry and I don’t want to say something I’ll regret. Truthfully, I want to go scorched earth, but I think that’s my hormones talking and it’s important to my husband that our son have a relationship with his mom. Prior to the baby, my MIL and I had a great relationship but I feel so hurt and disrespected.
I’m already planning to fade out of our church because I have more important things going on than competing with MIL over sharing info about my own son. She has learned that asking me to see my son gets her supervised visits (by me) so she now exclusively texts my husband asking to see the baby and he drops him off to her so I’m sure she got her pics anyway. I’m willing to ignore that they’ve nicknamed him based off his middle name (even tho it annoys me) but the complete erasure of his first name is beyond crossing the line for me.

Should I keep pushing for her to respect his name or just let it go and teach my son his first name? Am I being crazy? How am I supposed to explain to him as he gets older that “grandma won’t use your name because she doesn’t like it”? How do I insure that he doesn’t get pigeonholed into using his middle name before he has the chance to choose that?

Edit to add:
Thank you everyone for being as angry about this as I am. I feel very vindicated. I will probably go through with the conversation my husband wants me to have with her but I know going in it won’t go how he hopes it will. I’m thinking of asking him to be present even if only to listen to prevent triangulation from her relaying the conversation to him afterwards.

As hilarious as it would be to say MIL has dementia, she’s a very young grandma and that wouldn’t really make sense. So I’ll probably go with “I don’t know why she told you that because that’s not true. We call him first name” And let her try to explain her way out of it.

As for her nicknaming, I’m going to nip that in the bud with 3 strikes.
Strike 1: I’ll say “we’re not calling him that anymore. His name is first name.”
Strike 2: “his name is first name.”
Strike 3: I’ll talk to my son saying, “silly grandma just can’t remember your name! We’ll have to try again another time.” Take my baby, say goodbyes, and leave.

On the subject of visits, I’ll be supervising them all even if I have to go to MILs separately because I agree he’s too little and she’s too disrespectful. I can’t make my husband agree with me but I can protect my son.

Thank you again for the wake up call!

So first, I messed up and I’ll take full accountability for that.

I’m a FTM and I already extra, over the top person, so (just my personal preference) I want to do it big for my first pregnancy. So I want the huge gender reveal and a big themed, beautiful baby shower. I did the same with my wedding and I don’t regret a minute of it lol.

So my husband and I have the gender written on two letters in my kitchen drawer and we planned on mailing it out to one of my family members and his mom closer to thanksgiving (that’s when we’re doing the reveal when both families will be in town). But my MIL wanted to know the gender as soon as we found out like 2 weeks ago. I messed up and told her we’ll mail it as soon as we find out.

But then, we had second thoughts because I KNOW she’s just so so so excited, this is the first grandchild, niece(nephew), great grand etc. And there was 2 months left until thanksgiving yet and I was afraid she’d somehow just let it slip.

He has a very overly close and protective family and mine is very “cold” and can be toxic (I haven’t even told my side I’m pregnant yet). So basically I want this entire pregnancy to be on my terms and I really want to enjoy all of it. Saying that to say— I think his mom will spoil the reveal if we let her know too early. Not purposely, just out of excitement. So my husband and I told her we changed our mind, and she’ll find out later.

His mom lost it. She’s been talking about us to others and hounding us about it. I was upfront with her and I apologized because it was wrong to tell her that we would let her know then take that away from her. But I explained that I was very very nervous she’d accidentally spoil it. Then she said, “but you don’t understand, it’s MYYYY grandchild.” And I’m like “I’m but it’s my child?” And it just makes me nervous because his side already does not have boundaries so I thought that was kind of weird for her to talk about the baby as if her feelings take priority over the mother (me)

OK anyway, so skip to right now. After I apologized and let her read me out, I compromise and told her that instead of telling her two months in advance, I’ll let her know a month in advance. We still have to send it out to my other family member and they’re gonna help actually do the gender reveal, but I was just afraid to let her know too early in advance. So we agreed on October 20. But now I haven’t been able to sleep at night and I genuinely just don’t think I wanna tell her at all. I want her to be able to experience the surprise with everybody else. I don’t trust that she’ll be able to keep it a secret for even a month. And also, I don’t like the fact that she’s kind of now put that pressure on me and I feel like it’s gone to her terms. I understand that I never should’ve said yes to begin with. And then after feeling bad I gave in again. But I’m afraid that I’m starting a precedent with pushing boundaries with the baby.

But then she made a good point because she said that I need to remember these “boundaries” when we wanna go on vacation and drop the baby off with her. But I feel like that’s making it a transactional relationship and that bugs me too..

Idk please give me your perspectives about how to navigate this, anything similar you’ve experience, or any constructive and not judgmental advice please :)

My husband cuts his own hair since COVID. It saved us a lot of money, because he needs a hair cut at least every 2-3 weeks. My FIL used to get free haircuts from SIL’s now ex-boyfriend, who is a professional barber, for the last 10 years. With ex-boyfriend out of the picture, FIL has now asked Husband to cut his hair. Fine, it takes about an hour to do, no biggie.

What annoys me to no end is the entitlement. We regularly see FIL and family on Sunday, so Husband planned to do the cut on that day. Apparently, that doesn’t work for FIL. FIL wants a haircut in advance of Sunday so that he doesn’t have to shower in the middle of watching football or hanging out with the family. FIL can’t understand that we have plans for ourselves and my family on Friday/Saturday that we will not drop for him. Husband even fucking apologized no other day would work for him.

FIL is now throwing a hissy-fit that Husband hasn’t come over to cut his hair and has stood his ground to cut it on Sunday, like he promised to. I swear if we get there tomorrow and FIL treats us poorly, we’re leaving. I don’t care if it’s in the middle of the hair cut or not. I am so over this entitlement.

Update: so FIL no longer wants his normal cut with clippers, but more complex scissoring for layers/styling. My husband had no idea how to do that and did his best to trim it. FIL was a little upset that he didn’t try more, and Husband said maybe a salon would be better since his scissors are actual craft scissors lol

Aside from that, FIL’s behavior was pretty uneventful. He welcomed us in and “allowed” husband to watch their favorite team play (and win) before doing the haircut.

I know what people will come here to comment “who cares, do what you want” but if were that easy of a decision I wouldn’t be posting.

We love the holidays. I don’t love spending the holidays with my husbands mom, sister or her husband. These are the three people who gang up on me when they’re all around me. It comes in passive aggressive insults, exclusion, and trying to take my daughter away from me to do their own thing. They will try to make me mad and then look at me to see if I’m upset and then look at each other. I don’t know if it’s a game to them or they just want me miserable because it makes them feel better about themselves.

My husband doesn’t know how else to be but friendly. He’s afraid it will make the holidays not enjoyable if he shows up and grey rocks them. He doesn’t really even know what that means when I try to explain it to him. He’s extremely kind by nature, he doesn’t really have a mean bone in his body. He used to have a temper before we went no contact with SIL and BIL/ quit taking his mothers feelings into account. He was always afraid of what his parents thought or if they’d be disappointed in him. Now he doesn’t care. He hasn’t had one temper outburst since this change and that’s been almost 2 years. We have been so happy since we decided to live for each other and our kids.

So that’s what I try to tell him, let’s continue to be happy and have our own Thanksgiving and invite your parents and grandparents here. It doesn’t even have to be on Thanksgiving. He says he wants our daughter to experience seeing her family, not SIL/BIL in particular but his grandmother and other aunts/uncles but they don’t usually come. But we could invite them to our house if he wanted.

I don’t really know what he’s afraid of. Maybe he’s afraid of his parents’ reaction if he tells them we want to do things differently this year. I do know he said he feels like he will blow up on SIL/BIL and doesn’t want to start that kind of drama or let our kids see that. He’s afraid he won’t see or catch their passive aggressive comments because last year he didn’t catch the ones they threw at me at Christmas. I told him he can go see his family if he wants and me and the kids will stay home but he said he’ll never go there without me.

I struggle with deciding on what to do because on one hand, I don’t want my children around them. I feel sick bringing my youngest around SIL/BIL because they told MIL while I was pregnant that they didn’t care how stressed I was from them being mean to me and it potentially causing me to lose the baby (I had a miscarriage scare and had to go to the hospital because I was bleeding at work, luckily he was ok). Last year BIL made fun of my daughter’s shoes and she looked at him like she didn’t know what to say. I felt so sad in the moment because it seemed like he was doing that to hurt me.

But then I also think I could go and tolerate the treatment for the sake of my husband and children so that he can spend time with the family he wants and the kids can play with their cousins. I don’t want my husband to resent me in the future and I told him as such. He said he wouldn’t ever resent me. Or maybe my kids might. I can’t predict the future.

I just don’t know what to do. If y’all could kindly tell me what you would do in this situation, maybe it could help us make the decision. Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment

My husband and I have been together for over 15 years.
Over the past 7 or so years we have had some pretty rough patches, over the past couple years my husband and I have been working through our issues relatively successfully with some hurdles regarding his side of the family still not being felt with.
About 7 years ago we bought a house with his parents. At the time, I didn’t realize the complexity this situation would cause. The legality of the property is really messy. I also realized that his family is enmeshed and when tension started between me and his parents he dug his heels into avoidance.
I believe that a lot of the tension between his family and me truly comes from him not standing up for me, or following through with boundaries that we both agreed to with his family.
His sister (who lives in a different country) is particularly intense.
I have limited my involvement with his parents, though, with us being on the same property and his parents getting older and possibly needing assistance, I have kept “emergency” access open.
We have kids, and they do interact with their grandparents.
The grandparents have said inappropriate things to our kids in the past, so my husband is normally with the kids when they visit their grandparents.
No one has really complained about this, honestly, I think the grandparents like their space.
Without going into too much of their history, his father was/is financially, emotionally, verbally abusive to his mother for their whole relationship.
We didn’t find out about the financial issues until after we bought our house together. And a few years into us all living together it became an issue again. And a genuine fear that I had, was their financial issues impacting us.
My husband and his parents and I talked about reasonable responsibilities each family has, and agreed to a fair and reasonable monthly [rent].
(Note, the mortgage is in my husbands and his parents name, all of the utilities are in mine and my husband’s name, and we have all bills and loans come out of our accounts)
It was a bit of a rough start, they didn’t make full payments sometimes or missed the odd month. I would have to remind his parents on our agreement.
I get it, they don’t have much money because of the father. I honestly think that if we didn’t buy a house together they would have lost their house they were living in before.
During this period of rehashing our living situation, and my husband and I having our hardest season in our relationship because of it, his sister encouraged my husband that I wasn’t a “forever person”, that this is the parents house and I should live somewhere else (at my brothers over 2 hours away, and possibly see our kids in the summer), she told me that I was taking whatever little money her parents had left, and that I will never be on title to the property, she’s said “I’ll fight to the death”.
That conversation with his sister was over a year ago. She hasn’t acknowledged my existence since, and she has occupied very little rent in my brain as well.
During our relationship repair journey, I did express to my husband that I don’t trust his sister, and I don’t want the kids to be around her by themselves when she comes to visit. My husband understands where I’m coming from and says he wants to support me - a move away from the family enmeshment and dysfunction.
He’s had a lot of opportunities over the past year where he could have clearly communicated to his sister and parents, but his avoidance had gotten the best of him. These were all small things, and I’ve stopped pushing the “repair” on him.
I feel better when I don’t have to think about his family, or talk about his sister. I’m a more present mom and when it comes to just my husband and I I feel like I’m a more present wife.

So yesterday, I grabbed our mail. Letters for our town elections were there for his parents (which I always leave their mail in the mailbox for them to grab), for my husband and I… and for his sister.
This raises so many questions for me - I am anxious and working on my over thinking, but I am also studying law).
I probably would have had a different view if it was regular mail. I often think about if I was in their mother’s position. I would be okay with our children sending mail to us if we shared a home with the other sibling.
But this is a registered election letter. Even if the town used data from elsewhere, she would have claimed to live here in (changing our countries government documents to our address as her residence) order to qualify to vote.
And I’m not comfortable with that.
She doesn’t live here.
Not to mention, we’re hovering on the grey area of what’s legal and what’s not. She hasn’t lived in our country in decades, she permanently lives in another country.
I briefly talked to my husband about this. He doesn’t see the issue, and doesn’t think it needs to be brought up, but did say “I’ll do whatever you want me to do”.
We left if at, let’s let this marinade and we can think of our options tomorrow.

Okay, so legalities aside, I understand why she used our address, it’s not just my home, and it’s also not just her parent’s home.
I don’t feel comfortable with her using our address at all, but can I let it go because her parents are okay with her using our address?
What happens when there are no more parents?
We can’t really stop her from using the address, without escalating the issue.

I do want to call the town to get more information.
I do want my husband to ask her about the election letter and what else she’s using our address for (is that appropriate?), maybe we come to an agreement when and how our address is used.
Am I over reacting?
I feel like I’m caught between my feelings of mistrust in her and what is genuinely inappropriate.

Hi, my MIL seemed fine when I met her, then she became weird when her son and I decided to live together, and worse when we got married.

She expected to control our wedding and we put her in her place quite firmly.

She has always been subtle or has made comments about things she disliked when my husband was not in the room, and has shown favoritism towards SIL and her family in several occasions.

She made some comments in the past that gave me the impression that she would not have been enthusiastic if we had children. After 5 years of trying we finally got pregnant via IVF.

When we told her she was so happy, but not invasive.

We sent her a picture of the last ultrasound and she was overjoyed.

She called me today to check on me (never done it in 15 years).

She said: " I am so glad that everything is going well. Are you going to find soon if it is a boy or a girl? Not that it really matters, what matters is that baby is healthy. It's great that new tests and ultrasound machines can tell you so many things, things have vastly improved since my time".

Is she a new woman? Is her happy about a second grandchild (the older one, SIL's son, is a teenager now)? Has she been replaced by aliens? Is this a strategy to make us feel that she is ok now?

I am wondering if someone else had similar experiences, and what happened after baby was born!

Just looking to see how people would handle this situation.
I moved to a mostly rural state and especially rural area with my fiance a little over a year ago, because she wanted to spend time with her extended family that lives in the area. I wasn’t excited for the move but I wanted to support her. They’re going to be my in laws in a month. I’ve spent a considerable amount of time visiting them at their home and having dinners with them, trying to be respectful as I can.
Anyway, her grandparents were very judgmental towards me from the beginning. I grew up next to a major city and I am what they would consider a “city slicker”. It didn’t bother me that they were into hunting, fishing, shooting, but they were bothered that I would rather take my fiance to the nearest major city to go see live music than go ice fishing up in their cabin in the woods with them. They made some comments towards me in the beginning of our move here to the effect of “they’ve given up on trying to like me, they’re just going to accept me” and “i don’t seem like much of an outdoorsman” (I’m not, to their degree. I like hiking, running. i like music, electric guitar, vinyl records. I hate hunting).
One of them has also made some disparaging comments about my profession (I’m a schoolteacher) and said that with my job “I don’t live in the real world”, and make comments about the amount of time off I get as a teacher. I’ve been nothing but polite towards them, despite the fact I can’t talk rural outdoorsman talk.
My fiance and I decided we are moving back to a more densely populated area in a year. However, her family’s treatment of me has caused some resentment on my end and has made me sometimes not be the best version of myself. I’m always polite to her family in front of them, but sometimes I’ll make comments towards my fiance about them that hurts her feelings.
I need to get over that to be the best person I can be for her. However, I don’t want to participate in her extended family’s country activities like hanging out in a hunting cabin in the middle of the woods or driving a 4x4 atv around. I just don’t like it. It’s not me and it doesn’t interest me. My fiance doesn’t care and isn’t into that stuff either, and her other side of her family isn’t like this and really likes me. She just wants me to be polite and participatory with her extended family we’re geographically close to now, which is tough when I’m not interested in their lifestyle. I just want to know how I can get through this next year with them without being insulted about the fact I don’t want to drive a tractor or hang out in the woods. Her extended family here weren’t a concern for the first couple years of our relationship until we moved to their state, and they won’t be a problem when we move because they’ll be largely out of the picture and not motivated to visit us because they hate cities with a passion.

*one other thing to mention- they like golf and I’ve recently gotten into golf so that has helped

For the past 2 years my partner and I have been renting from his parents because they didn’t want to sell their house and wanted to be closer to his brother and the grandkids, so they moved to SoCal, we moved in. Recently, his dad had brain surgery for his Parkinson’s and has been dealing with a lot of new mental symptoms. He has become manic some days and is definitely not himself anymore. Because of this, it has become very stressful for his mom to manage alone so she felt like moving back was the best option. I totally understood that especially because his dad was so sweet and quiet. Now he’s not. We now have to live with his parents until we can move into our apartment which won’t be ready until December…

The issue that I am having is that we were told completely last minute that they were coming back to move in. They called my partner at work and basically said “we got you a plane ticket, you have to come now and help us drive back home”. We are gone 11 hours a day and commute. We have 3 dogs and get 3 hours a day to ourselves. Our routine and deep cleaning happens on the weekend. This was so unexpected and last minute, so I mentioned to the mom that the house was messy. She said she understood and felt bad for imposing but wanted to come home right away. Again, I completely understood that. I just wanted to make sure she knew she wasn’t walking into a clean house.

The 2nd day she called my partner to pretty much scold him about how dirty the house was. He was getting stressed out with no sleep and having to fly. I was upset because she said she didn’t care when she obviously did. I texted her separately and just told her that next time I wish she would tell me first so that she doesn’t have to stress out my partner. I’m the one that cleans and I’m also here to help. I explained that he has enough on his plate at the moment. Instead of understanding what I said, she blew up and told me that she felt unwanted at the house and was going to call her other son to come get them. Totally escalating the situation. I explained that I am not attacking her, simply asking for a favor for the sake of everyone’s sanity.

Day 3 I was thinking about coming home from work early to talk to her personally and explain the misunderstanding. TELL ME WHY I came home and she had my furniture outside. She decided that my bath and kitchen mats were trash and put them in a big pile along with other trash. My table outside (which one of the leg pieces broke off and now it wobbles), my plants that were propagating inside, outside. She had the nerve to remove one of my vases to put one of her plant clippings in. Then removed and replaced all of my kitchen items and decorations with her things. Set mine in a box on the floor. I was livid and so upset, yet I didn’t say anything to her because I am trying to keep peace and not cause stress for the dad in his mental state and for my partner being in the middle.

Today is day 5. I haven’t left the room. My partner has been very understanding of my situation and totally agrees that his mom was way out of line. He spoke to her yesterday in hopes things would get resolved, but instead she got defensive. Saying that she doesn’t see anything wrong with having the house cleaned and that the table was in the way of his dad and causing him to trip. All of this happening I would have been okay with had I been notified or asked. Literally just to be fucking considered. Instead she is mad and saying why does she need to consult with me. Then got super dramatic saying that she doesn’t feel comfortable because of the tension in the house. Mind you, I have been in the room and quiet. Trying to stay out of the way and because I’m upset. I don’t understand how someone could be so inconsiderate. She apologized to my partner but not to me. She said she would buy me a new table, etc. That’s not what I want! It’s easy for her to just throw things away as she pleases and buy new things. Not for me. For her to act like this is beyond me. There’s nowhere that will let me rent temporarily on short notice and staying with friends or family is not an option. What would you do in this situation?

My in-laws were from a lower middle class family. My fil used to run a road side shop. They have two sons.my husband is the eldest. My husband studied in a government school and completed college by taking an education loan. Then he got placed in an MNC. His first month's salary is 23k. He started taking care of his parents right then. He used to give 10k every month to his parents. Now he is earning 80k per month.My husband's family is in a third tier town . So the cost of living is not that much expensive. They were living in their own house. But his younger brother is so irresponsible.my in laws started looting money from my husband to settle down their younger son. Whenever i cook a special dish for my husband ,my mil asks me to do the same for my brother in law. If i praise my husband ,she expects me to praise her younger son too. She always says i have to take care of her younger son as my own child. They even demanded us to buy a house which was 60lakh on loan so that their two sons could live together but we denied. Whenever they come to know that we have money they come with commitments. If we do anything for us, they feel insecure and demand something. If we plan a trip as a couple, they come with the idea of buying a new car .when we got pregnant, within three days they arranged their younger son's wedding and asked us to take care of all his wedding expenses. This time i spoke to them directly that we have commitments ahead so we couldnt take his wedding expense. For our wedding expense ,we took a loan and took care of it by ourselves. So it's your younger son's responsibility to take care of his wedding expenses like that i said. They got offended . They stopped talking to us and never visited us and my baby. I heard they cursed me and my baby. Did i do anything wrong? Please tell me.

And it is, not surprisingly, creating problems.

My husband is extremely kind and loving, which is definitely a good thing. He has a hard time implementing boundaries.

I, on the other hand, am over her behavior. There’s a laundry list of things she has done recently at the bottom.

I have chosen to go NC with her. My husband has not, but he tells me he respects and understands my decision.

Today, she invited herself over for Thanksgiving. My husband told me I was being unreasonable when I said I would leave if she came over, and because I wasn’t going to be around her, she could not come on Thanksgiving day. I want to be with my kids on Thanksgiving, and I won’t let her take that from me. I told my husband she could come over on a day before the holiday, and I would leave, but that I wouldn’t see her.

It really upsets me that he acts all supportive of me until the rubber meets the road, and then he thinks I’m being unreasonable. I told him so. It also annoys me that she’s invited herself over. I don’t know what she’s expecting—we live 8 hours away from her, we have no guest room, and my husband works all week days except for the holiday. With the exception of whatever day they celebrate, she and FIL won’t have access to me or the kids.

This boundary is important to me. I don’t trust this woman. I don’t like her. She doesn’t treat me with respect, nor does she treat my husband with respect. She takes advantage of him constantly (he has a very useful skill set thanks to his job). My husband has tried talking to her about everything in the past, multiple times, and nothing changes. Most of the talks end with her saying that I’m doing something to cause all the problems, (which isn’t true, according to multiple people, including my husband). She is a volatile and controlling woman who has no ability to hold her tongue or respect other people, their homes, or their roles.

Anyway, I guess I’m here looking for validation or helpful advice.

Recent laundry list of craziness:
- my husband and I were going to take out a heloc because we were going through a bad financial moment. She and FIL offer (we did not ask) to loan the money for a much lower interest rate. We declined the bank loan at the last minute (which had taken YEARS to obtain because we had just started a small business and needed two years of tax returns), and the very next day she says, “never mind!” She said she wasn’t comfortable with the amount. Turns out she needed money to pay for BIL’s divorce attorney because he cheated on his wife.
- she told me I needed to bounce back when I was 3 days post partum
- when I was 10 days post partum, she came to visit and was upset that I took a nap while the baby napped. Apparently I was supposed to be entertaining her.
- she sends me and my SIL (who also married in) parenting “tips” about not using screen time. She doesn’t include the fathers on the texts.
- she lives far away, and she doesn’t bother telling us she dropping by until she’s about 30 minutes away.
- she criticizes every single parenting decision I make
- she monitors what I eat when I order food
- she gives out my number to strangers so they can text me with advice about whatever situation I’m in, which means she’s telling everybody my problems
- she got mad at me when I wouldn’t watch her neighbor’s kids because they had some sort of emergency. Apparently she’d told the neighbor I could watch them without asking me. I was across town and at a doctor appointment for my own kid. (This is when she lived down the street)
- she favors the younger son, who is a terrible human being. She bought him a house, while the loan she was about to give us had to be paid with interest.
- she makes every event about her and her problems.
- I had a baby during Covid, so the baby shower her daughter was going to throw was cancelled. She said she’d throw me one for the second child. I kept waiting and waiting and waiting for her to say something. Finally, at 7 months pregnant, my husband asked about it, and she snarled at him and acted like he was incredibly rude for asking.
- when my mom threw me a shower for #3 because I hadn’t had one at that point, we only invited local family. MIL threw a fit because only half her family was invited. Keep in mind, I had no local family. MIL kept whining and asking for more people to be invited, which I refused. Finally we learned that she only had wanted to invite all these people because she owed them favors.
- she harassed my mother about the guest list until my mom had to send a polite “fuck off” text
- she showed up unannounced to the hospital with number 3 while I was breastfeeding.
- she questions my parenting decisions in front of the kids.
- I once won a year supply of Chick-fil-A gift cards, and she was upset that my husband wasn’t giving them out to her family members. He had to slowly explain that they were my cards to give out, not his, and even if they were, he wouldn’t give them away lol
- she brought dinner over after the baby was born, which is nice, but she would only bring things she thought I should eat, not that I wanted to eat. I know this sounds bratty, but who wants quinoa and steamed veggies while recovering from a c-section? Who wants pasta and marinara with veggies in it? I know this makes me sound bad, but when she had her knee replacement, I made that woman pescatarian food for a solid week. I knew and made what she liked.
- she will text me to ask if my husband is working like he should

I could go on. Thisf is just off the top of my head. She is mean, critical, loud, controlling, untrustworthy, and dishonest. She has no emotional maturity, and when she doesn’t get her way she throws a fit.

I’ve been thinking about something that’s been bothering me for 15 years… just one nail in a coffin full of nails…

My husbands parents don’t really recognise me as a person in my own right when they talk to us or talk about things we’ve done as a family. Everything gets attributed to my husband.

Some examples for context

I had this wellness product (worth £250) and it didn’t work for me, I offered it to my MIL and she ended up getting loads of use out of it. But when his parents passed messages about it afterwards, it was essentially “thanks John, brilliant”… rather than thanking or recognising me.

And it happens with other things too.

If they come for dinner and I’ve cooked a big meal, it’ll be “thanks John, that was great” rather than acknowledging me. I find it very rude and it happens repeatedly.

Even when we visit as a family (we have 2 kids), there are things like, “we’ll do this in for John” or “we’ll get that packed for John”, when actually it’s for both of us.

It’s very rarely framed as something for both of us or in any way framed to recognise me.

What makes it harder… I don’t think they do the same thing with their other DIL. They seem to recognise her as their own person.

My husband just says that’s just how they are… because I know that’s probably the easiest explanation for him.

Unfortunately this is just one very annoying pin in the coffin of a much wider history of their dislike towards me.

It reminds me of an interview clip of meghan markle once voicing her opinion to ask if she can have a voice now too… and I know that people hate women that stick up for themselves, and we are expected to basically put up with it. I’ve put up with a lot from my in laws, but it’s these little things that really just pile on the worsening of the relationship.