To think my MIL is trying to break up my marriage

Just read this update, so he's verbally abusive too?

Honestly just leave now. He doesn't love you, he only wants a live in servant.

He clearly doesn't care about his dc either.

You don't have a mil problem, you have a dh problem.

Your mil wouldn't be able to do a thing if your dh was loyal and loving.

You could consider couples therapy, but I don't understand why you would have ever accepted a situation where you both work full-time but he doesn't cook or clean? How dare he treat you like a skivvy!

It sounds like the issues in the relationship, and his lack of care for you, go back before mil's visit.

If you both earn about the same, surely you can also skip everything around the house so that you can fully focus on work?

Whatever you do around the house, make sure that it only benefits you and your children. No cooking/laundry/cleaning and tidying for him. Stop sleeping with him and certainly no sex with him.

He and his mum sound utterly toxic and you will probably eventually come to the conclusion that this behaviour is marriage ending. He is an awful father and terrible husband. His work is no more important than yours. He cannot hide behind this ridiculous 'breadwinner' smoke screen in order to jettison all his responsibilities as a husband and father.

Time to see a solicitor unfortunately

OP this will only work for him as long as you accept it. Make it really clear you won’t accept this behaviour and your marriage is over if he chooses to be like this. You can’t continue this way for the sake of your kids and yours. It is not an overreaction. It is up to him to decide whether he wants to be some sort of manosphere arse (with his mom’s approval, but his and only his choice) who ends up alone and with no relationship to his kids. He wants to be that and have a ‘happy’ family at the same time right now. You and your kids can’t live like that.

Sometimes there is no other way, even though you share a large mortgage and a life and all that. It doesn’t end it from your side - it gives him a chance to save it, if he has it in him.

You need to get angry Op. Lay down the law to him - he either snaps out of this weird behaviour he’s all of a sudden displaying, or the marriage is done. Hopefully giving him a bit of a shock will snap him out of it. Tell him what your DS said about Daddy not reading to him.

You have a DH problem not a MIL problem.

What "type"? The magical type of human that lives on fresh air and generates no mess? Come on, don't put up with that. (Do you get to decide that you're not the type to feed your kids or keep their home in a hygienic condition? There you go).

Tell her that her marriage and yours are in no way comparable - you work. If she tries to make out that he's the "main" earner or his job is obviously more important or something, say "oh no, we earn the same" in a "huh, surprised you didn't know that" kind of tone.

And tell him if he wants a stepford wife you'll quit work to devote yourself to that and he can figure out how he's going to pay all the bills. He's being a total arse.

I'd sit him down and say "honey you have a choice. You can make your mother happy or you can make me happy. If you chose your mother and all the batshit crap you are coming up with since her visit - not rearing your children/lying about me etc. then you'll be on your own. Make a choice"

This sums it up for me OP.

Name changed to share this as combined with my other posts it would be identifiable.

Theres a weird dynamic in my dh’s family that is really hard to explain to people who haven’t experienced it. Mil has an odd effect on her adult dc (my dh, sils and bil) that seems to shut down their capacity to think clearly. She will say something that’s an outright lie, or just obviously wrong, in the face of incontrovertible evidence, and instead of being able to challenge her, or dismiss or disregard her something just sort of shuts down in them.

It took me a long time to see this. The level of gaslighting and FOG was very intense, and I take people at face value and assume they mean what they say (I’m probably autistic so a bit overly trusting and literal) and I found it really bizarre and unsettling how my dh would be reasonable and normal and then come back from a visit to his dm, sort of brainwashed.

Fortunately my pils spend half the year in their other house in Spain, which is probably why we didn’t end up divorced - they always left for a couple of months before I reached tipping point. I genuinely think that living with me, and not having to navigate weird games, power trips, mental gymnastics and guilt trips, helped dh build some resilience and he spots the more blatant manipulations now.

I’ve never spelled it out for him how weird his family can be, because I genuinely worry he might have a psychiatric breakdown. Two of his siblings have spent periods in MH units, and one is completely nc with the family.

DH is a really great husband and father and all round man, and over the years he’s very firmly established where his priorities lie, and even though I don’t understand why he has this weird blind spot thing I feel that it’s something along the lines of a psychological defence rather than evidence of bad character or poor choices. So I cut him slack for it.

I’ve held very firm boundaries both with them and my dh and “grey rocked” myself as much as possible around pils. I’m alert for the nonsense when he’s spent time with them and don’t get drawn into arguments with dh. Earlier in our marriage I’d have defended myself, or a decision we’d made, and now I let it wash over me. Sometimes he talks himself back to normal if I don’t say anything much. Or I just wait a day or two before responding to let the fog clear.

Dh doesn’t have many memories of his childhood, which I also think is a bit odd and I wonder if there’s something buried.

I’m probably projecting too much of my experience onto yours op, but sharing because I can relate to some of it.

I think your problem is with DH not your MIL.
How you bring up your kids is up to you and DH- but his lying about the nature of your relationship and shrinking responsibility for stuff he doesn't fancy doing, that is the heart of your problem, this has probably been fueled by MIL, but you need to ignore her and concentrate on DH and thrash out what his problem is and make sure the division of labour is fairer.

Your DH has fallen back into a child-like position of wanting his Mum to approve of him and be proud of him. This is - to a point - understandable.

However, the sort of man his mother would be proud of isn’t the sort you’d have fallen in love with or married or chosen to raise kids with.

So he has a fairly shitty decision. (Shitty but obvious IMHO!). He may need a therapist to help talk him through making it. He can be(come) the person his mother always wanted him to be. He can get a job that pays twice what his current one does and either pay you to be a SAHM (if you can live with that) or pay enough child maintenance you can (both) afford to live comfortably but separately. Or he can tell his mother that he has a collaborative relationship where you both work and both take care of the house and kids and if she kicks off well at least you and the kids will still love him.

I never understand how spouses think getting involved in a relationship they aren't a part of is a good idea.

This has definitely bit you on the arse big time.

You need to lay this all out for him and tell him you will not hold him back.

Good men do not behave like this.
He is more like his mother than you realised and now you have allowed the genie out of the bottle, you have a huge problem.

Do not tolerate this any longer.
His mother never, ever comes near your home again and you tell him you will not tolerate his treatment of you going forward.

You now are seeing the real him and know he is a liar.
Protect yourself.
This is the real him.
Not a nice man.

A lazy selfish arse that is causing pain and upset to his child.

You need to reach out to your family for support and tell the truth.
He's a nasty arsehole and you need to protect yourself and the children.

Get rid of the spineless husband and the MIL problem will sort itself. Not a marriage that sounds like it’s worth saving, in my opinion.

It sounds like your DH has always held the same views, he never did any chores or did much to raise his own children? And now you’re blaming MIL during a relatively short stay?

He needs to have a serious think about which woman he wants to be married to!

Honestly I'd leave. Sell your house and get a flat for you and the kids if that's all your finances would allow but not a fucking chance I'd be tolerating this. Have your spoken to him about his nonsense? He needs to realise this will end your marriage, go to counselling with you or fuck off.

YABU to have ever accepted a situation where is does no housework and not much childcare tasks when you both work full time. Whilst his mum has exacerbated his behaviour, this has clearly not come out of a vacuum. Why do you think it is appropriate for you to bear an unequal workload? I will never understand this.
I’d wait for his mum to go - cant be much longer - and then have the mother of all rows with him about this. Accept you made a mistake to encourage her coming and you won’t do it again, but make it clear you are his equal and won’t stand for being treated as lesser ever again and if he doesn’t like it, he can fuck off.

Sounds like your DH is trying to break up your marriage to me…..

But what have you got to lose? Either you confront and repair your marriage or confront and he ends it (highly unlikely, I'd say) or you live in misery and resentment. I doubt the old him is very far away. He's probably miserable as hell trying to live up to his mother's ideals. He does need a rocket up him about what he's doing to you and the kids but if you can communicate some empathy for any conflict he (hopefully) expresses when pushed I think your marriage is recoverable. Use a 3rd party and insist on couples counselling if he doesn't snap out of it quickly. BTW, he does need to learn to clean and cook but perhaps leave that for another day.

Tell your DH you've handed in your notice so all bills are on him now. See how he reacts

To be honest, you need to sit your dh down and tell him what a toxic influence his mother has had on him and how miserable she has made you. She may come from a regressive, patriarchal society but you do not and you won't be living in the subservient life she demands. You said your dh wasn't keen on the idea of her visiting, so this and her behaviour may not be a surprise to him. You do have to tell him what you expect from him, which he seemed to be doing prior to the visit from the dragon. I wouldn't let her back in my home.

I’m not really surprised this has happened because I think men have similar sorts of relationships with their mums as fathers do with their daughters. Every time I’ve either dated or been friends with a man who has a poor relationship with his mum, there are always issues there. He’s succumbed much faster though, from hardly any contact to turning his life upside down just on her say so.

Put the DC to bed so they can’t interrupt and ask him what’s going on. Tell him that you married a normal man and he’s now two minutes away from throwing his entire marriage, his children, his home and all the plans you made for the future down the drain, all on the advice of someone he wouldn’t have given the time of day to only a few weeks ago. Point out that if he wants a wife who stays at home to care for the children, does all the housework and fawns over what a brave and hardworking man he is, then he’ll need to be earning a lot more than he is currently. Tell him that you want to work together with him so that you can achieve that together for the future, but that there’s no chance of him achieving that life without you, and there’s no chance of you staying to be his wife if he carries on the way he’s going. Tell him you are both parents, you both work full time, so childcare is 50/50 and housework is 50/50. Non negotiable. Tell him you’ll take his continued refusal to engage in family life as notice that he wants to end your marriage.