mother in law coming for christmas - help

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Yesterday in the car with husband (sleeping) children I had confirmed to me what I have suspected all year which is that (i) my MIL dislikes me, my initial reaction was that she hates me (ii) it is her intention and has been the precedent for more or less every single christmas since i met my husband 10 years ago, to be with us on christmas day.

I am now dreading this christmas as it is the first where it is totally clear she intensely dislikes me before she even arrives. Any strategies for how i should cope with her being here (and for every christmas between now and eternity)

A bit of background:

• Have been married to husband for 7 years, two children 3 yrs and 18 months
• MIL and FIL divorced due to MIL going off with someone else when my husband was about 13, followed by (as i understand it, I have not asked the details and its just the gist i have got) several unstable years for my husband with various new partners for MIL resulting finally in MIL settling down with a very nice man 10 years her senior (he is no about 75 or 80, MIL is about 65)
• MIL lives on her own with a cat having refused numerous marriage proposals from about mentioned new partner, they see each other every week but live apart (some small distance about an hour in the car I guess)
• not sure what kind of role my husband played when MIL left FIL all i know is that he hated it and it left a lasting impression on him although he since has said things like all women are evil (he has stopped saying that kind of thing since I picked him up on it) and is alternately very close (almost inappropriately so) and then does not want any contact with his mum
• when we first married MIL asked a lot of questions about how close I am to my family and was glad to hear that I am not particularly close to my family - i thought nothing of it at the time but now it all fits in
• we live about 4 hours away from MIL so visits are infrequent although obviously husband speaks to MIL on phone - this year she has seen our children once so she has a very justified complaint that she has not seen our children enough although son is now resistant to this
• in summary I think MIL tolerated me when we first married but now she hates me and has made it clear

The phone conversation was yesterday on the loudspeaker in the car - they raised the issue of Christmas quite agressively saying they had booked a hotel and after my husband said we (husband our children and me) wanted christmas day on our own as a family and could they come boxing day onwards, they both (MIL and her partner) got very pushy and agressive with MIL grabbing the phone and shouting - "is all of this [MY NAME i.e daughter in law]'s doing?"
It is not my doing infact apart from the conversation about us spending christmas as a family i have had no other conversation about christmas with my husband at all

My husband replied "[my name] is sat next to me in the phone you know" - short pause, then MIL says "fine" and slams down phone

There is other background to all this but husband (on his own initiative) admits MIL has been rude and that she must not come - husband seemed angry - after that he phoned MIL leaving a message saying the invitiation generally to come to christmas was cancelled

However knowing how things go with his family MIL and her partner WILL still come for christmas and 3 days afterwards

MIL regularly bitches about my housework (i can say with hand on heart my housework is good, not perfect but our house is clean and regularly kept that way by both me and husband - MIL makes comments that husband has to do far too much due to my laziness because i work 4 days per week)

How will i cope - i can only imagine she will arrive but not speak to me for 3 days and this will be the case for every christmas going forward
Do I just keep my head down in the kitchen. this is my current plan

Mabel you are right
At least in words my husband has replied to an email from me to him today as follows so he appears to be saying the right things to me. But no I dont know for 100% certain what goes on in phone calls between husband and his mother, I can hardly ask to control these can i?

HIM
Our marriage and family takes priority over any relationship with my Mum. She'll be OK.

Xx

ME
But i dont want to be the cause of that
I want you to have a good relationship with your mum and i want her to see her children
I accept that not all MIL get on with their daughters in law but i would always like to be polite and kind to her and facilitate her seeing you and the children
I do not want her (or my family) to break up our marriage (or be a factor in it)
i will leave you in peace now

HIM
I have never spoken to my Mum about our marriage or will ever do so.

As regards Christmas I have told them they can;t come on Christmas day and, frankly, I'm not sure I'm going to let them come any other day either. You need to be at home on Christmas day

let him cut off contact with his mother if he wants. why in your email are you telling him not to? the bottom line is if he continues to see her a lot it will destroy your marriage.

oranges, yes i am scared of that
i have told him i think that is a possibility that her contact might result in this

If she cuts contact, you won´t be the cause, she will.

TBH I think that adult men should be left to decide for themselves if/how often they want to see their mother & if they deserve contact with the GC.

IMO not seeing GPs is better than being forced to see bad ones.

Thanks for everyone's messages
Inspite of my husband telling them not to come I think they will still come and I will be ignored by MIL. My husband will keep the conversation going with them and MIL will play with the children. I know they will turn up at the last minute unannounced (or my husband might not tell me till the last minute even if he knows).
MIL is not really the kind of person who wants to help. I think she would see it as disrespectful to her if she did do something like taking the children out although she would like to play with them for a bit with me in the (far but close enough to do any caring) background. Last year she bought her cat with her because she did not want to leave it in a cattery but I felt guilty about the fact that it had to live in an ensuite which had some unreliable heating, I got an extra heater to try to keep it warm but I am not sure it was the right solution.
To be fair to her whenever we have stayed at her house (my husband's business arrangements) she has always been extremely kind, polite and a great hostess, faultless but I was there because my husband wanted to be there for his own business arrangements and even then i felt uncomfortable like there was a slight edge, I cannot explain what. I have felt more comfortable since we have not had to stay because husbands business arrangements have changed. So in some ways I feel indebted and guilty but now I feel like the spotlight is somehow on me and that I am being accused of taking her son / grandchildren off her (I am not, provided she is not actively trying to destroy my marriage)
I feel encouraged by my husbands words but i am not totally certain - maybe he just thinks all women (his mum, me) are just "stressful" but I never wanted to be in this situation in the first place

Just to clarify previous questions, yes I think they had gone some way to just booking the hotel before the conversation and so far as I know my husband did not know about it. During the car phone call my husband said "can you come on boxing day" Father in law "whats wrong with christmas day" Husband "we wanted christmas day as a family" MIL grabs phone and shouts about is this my [i.e Daughter in law] idea. The tone at the end was (in my opinion) bullying - even of my husband but I would not say that to my husband. I told my husband I thought his mother was scary after the phone call and that MIL hated me - husband said "I dont think she hates you" I said "Yes I think she does". Since then I have left husband to it and not said much more to him although on one level i feel sorry for husband stuck trying to please MIL who maybe has much more of a hold over him (or has previously had much more of a hold over my husband than I realised) only now I am wondering how worried I should be about this and trying not to get paranoid

Well if your husband has told them not to come & they do & your husband lets them in & talks to them as if nothing has happened, then that´s where your problem is.

And if he might know & is hiding the fact that´s even worse imo.

If they turn up I´d have coats on the children & be out the door!

I don't see why you can't say to your husband that his mother is bullying him. He isn't a child and although people behave differently with family that doesn't mean that they should have no boundaries or not respect other people's wishes. Ring her up say that you want christmas to yourselves and she is very welcome boxing day. I'm afraid that you need the bollocks to do this or she will shit on you and your family forevermore.

Ice the garden path so she breaks her neck leg or sommat.

Either that or dh needs to not let them in.

During the car phone call husband also said "what about the days towards new year" i.e. 29th 30th - but step Father in law said "we already have a party booked for new year". In other words reading between the lines, MIL got step father in law to have the "difficult" conversation with son, step Father in Law probably does not give a monkeys and would be happy not to come down anyway, step Father in law quite likes the new years eve party and does not want that arrangement interferred with. MIL wants to keep her relationship with her son close but hates me. Son has since said things like "they both have cars, why could they not have come down to see grandchildren during the year and, if necessary, stay in a hotel" (this would have been fine with me) - so son has his own anger about the sitaution, however I still think MIL has a very big hold on son.
Cannot decide whether to wade in with my deep water waders and risk the collatoral damage of confirming MIL's suspicions that I am "withholding" her son from her or just staying in the background. I think as my husband probably wont tell me till the last minute what is going on I am just going to have to make my own plans to go somewhere else and take the children when they turn up (unbeknown beforehand to me)

You simply must get this cleared up. How can you prepare for and enjoy Christmas if you're terrified that the doorbell's going to ring at any moment and you'd have to paste on a smile and lay two extra places and eke out the potatoes to stretch further?

Your DH needs to phone again, within your earshot, and make it plain that you're not available. And if he won't do that, why not email yourself and lie say that it's a shame you won't be seeing them on Christmas Day but that the kids are looking forward to seeing them Boxing Day instead. If you can't get this confirmed, then I'd seriously plan going out (although why should you?), otherwise they'll just turn up and you'll be a seething mass of resentment all day.

arrange to be out

can your visit your parents for Christmas day, and leave either the night before, or v.v.v.v.v early in the morning?

clam and piglet - being out is my current plan as I am not 100% sure my husband will tell me what is going to happen before it happens
This is shit because being out will indeed reinforce MIL's attitude towards me. My husband is the kind of person just to let things carry on and bury his head in the sand so if they just turn up (with my husbands prior knowledge or not) and I dont go out there is a likelihood this will become a precedent

So,. for the 10yrs that you´ve been together, you´ve seen MIL at Christmas for almost every one?

I think that that gives you the nest ten yrs off tbh!

Did/do her ILs spend every Christmas with her??!!

Diddl - no, she is divorced, she ran off with another man when my husband was 13. Her original husband (my husbands father) and my MIL got divorced. Even now MIL bitches about my husband's father's new partner. But now I am beginning to think that if she ever did like me in the first place it was because she thought i was a push over

You are being a pushover, this is why she is delighting in bullying you. For the love of god, ring her and ask her if she is coming for boxing day, tell her that she cannot come for christmas day. If she won't talk properly just leave a message. If she accuses you of it being your fault say NO, that it is her fault! Tell your husband that he is really upsetting you and you need to know what is going on and that it is your home and that they need to respect your wishes!!!

MIL has pushed you away from HER and therefore any claim of you taking away her son is a crock of shit!!! He isn't a possession and the are 364 other days of the year!!!!!

If she really gets shitty, point out that if she does destroy your marriage she will see her grandchildren even less so she should start giving you some fucking respect! Can I do it for you?

Yes, but when your husband was small, were his paternal GPs always there?

If not, why does she think she should be?

And if they were, you don´t have to have her there.

Your husband has to tell her that it isn´t convenient & that´s that.

If they come Boxing Day her husband will still be back in time for whatever he wants to go to, won´t he?

ohanotherone your post made me smile
thanks for being on my side (yes I guess that sounds a big childish of me, i know i need to grow a backbone but want to know if there is a way of doing this diplomatically and without implying I dont trust my husband)

diddl - I dont know whether my husbands paternal grandparents were always there - there is a chance they did get to see my husband (their grandchildren) every christmas - they come from a close knit community in yorkshire. Ironically my husbands paternal grandmother who is 92 regularly gets her son (my husbands father) to bring her down from yorkshire to oxfordshire to see us. She seems to weild a similar kind of power as a matriarch figure but I have not got on the wrong side of her yet and (maybe as I have had the only surviving male "heir") she seems to continue to like me. However she herself is horrible to husbands fathers new partner.

Why am I suddenly in the middle of all of this - i never asked for it, i have never (to my knowledge) deliberately been offensive to MIL - yes I would like my husband to have a quite family christmas with us at home but no I am not actively trying to stop family see our children. It all just pisses me off

You seem to think that you do not have the say in your own home though and you are pussy footing around. If she comes from Yorkshire maybe it's the old speak as you find issue in that she sees you chipping away from behind the scenes rather that just saying what you want in which case she knows where she stands. You can do this assertively.

"I would like one christmas day with just my husband and children as we have never done this....I'm sure you understand that!!!"

Maybe it's difficult to sort out in the time available now, but honestly you need to get this resolved as you should not be having to go out on Christmas day, unless that is what you really want to do, just to avoid MIL.

Sitting at home with a guest ignoring you is horrible. I've been there with my MIL on many occasions - but as she is as bad with DH he has always pulled her up on it. This could be your chance to sort things out for the longer term. Good luck.

ohanotherone "We would like Christmas day just as a family" were the exact words my husband uttered on the phone to his mother - followed by her grabbing the phone and shouting "this is all [MY NAME] idea"

yes maybe in Yorkshire there is no difference between (1) not pussyfooting around and (2) accepting that everyone will hate you and telling it like it is - i.e me speaking direct to my MIL and saying "back off, i have married your son, leave us alone".

That in itself will not solve the issue of whether my son is still talking to his mother in an inappropriate way about me but that is a separate issue I guess as to whether my husband is going to go the distance or is going to end up divorced from me back in yorkshire living close to his mother and all of the venom

You´re in the middle because she can´t believe that her darling boy doesn´t want to see his mummykins on Christmas Day so it must be the fault of the nasty DIL.

Even if you love each other to bits you don´t have to see her every Christmas Day!

Most couples have other family "obligations" & also some-radically-have Christmas Day just themselves & their children!

Not "she can´t believe that her darling boy doesn´t want to see his mummykins on Christmas Day"

Maybe just "she can't believe her darling boy has got married and it is not unreasonable (notwithstanding that I have clearly gone with the flow for far far too many years and let MIL do her own thing) for my husband to spend time in his own family home with his own family"

The problem with me is I don't want to see MIL as a threat but she so clearly is and she so clearly does and always has disliked me

Well you say it´s not that she can´t believe that he doesn´t want to see her, but her first thought was that you were forcing him into it, not that he might want Christmas Day with just his wife and children.

Anyway, you´ve offered her Boxing Day, not refused to see her over the Christmas period at all!

Stand firm, I say!

My mother in law is the same. It's just jealousy, I'm lovely, why wouldn't she like me....but she doesn't...it's her issue not yours but she does need to respect you. You do need to make this clear to your husband.