To feel utterly depressed about my MIL?

[Crystalballs]

I'm afraid this is long but I should give some background to put things into context.

DH and I have been together 8 years and have a child. My mother in law pretends to my face that she loves and supports me but it has never felt very genuine. Despite this, over the last 2 years I have started to trust her and believed she had grown to love me in some way. Obviously I'll never be one of her own and I know that, but I felt we had a good relationship.

Yesterday my friend and I overheard her making some bitchy remarks about me (we had taken my DC to visit her at her place of work, and she thought we had left when we were around the corridor after using the bathroom). We overheard MIL speaking to her sister (my Aunty in law), she said that I wasted her son's money (I don't, and one third of our household income is from my earnings), and that I should be more than happy with my lot as I've done so well in marrying her son compared to the rest of my family who have nothing.

Just 5 minutes beforehand MIL had told me she loved me. I feel so hurt and depressed by all this. It's as though we've regressed back to 6 years ago when I first became pregnant and had DC. MIL found it very difficult when DC was born and accused me of keeping her from DC because I wouldn't let her give DC first bath, let her look after DC alone and stay the night at her house at a couple of weeks old etc. I felt at the time very threatened by how much MIL thought of herself as 'mother' to my child. She even referred to my DC as her 'firstborn'.

DH is very supportive of me however it's difficult for him to act on this. The last time he did catch MIL speaking in this way about me, he confronted her but she burst into tears and basically sulked for one month whilst we had numerous phone calls from my sisters in law pleading for DH to apologise to MIL and stop her feeling so sad. In the end we gave in.

If DH or I confront MIL with this latest event it's 100% likely she will again sulk and make herself the victim. I obviously feel like I want I give her a very wide berth for a while but there's only so long I can do this before the sisters in law get involved and all side with MIL because they feel sorry of her.

I am completely fed up and feel so stupid for believing MIL thought well of me. I can't cope with this stupid childish woman any longer.

You don't get invited to family events revolving round the Queen Bee.

So, make yourself the centre of family events you've organised. Invite DH's siblings along. Occasionally invite MIL if you like - if she refuses to come, even better.

This is a power struggle OP. You have it in the form of your DC, she doesn't so she is running the entire spectrum of attention seeking behaviours to try and wrestle it from you.

She is trying to buy your kids with secrets and sweets. She is emotionally blackmailing your husband via her winged monkeys. She is painting you as the big bad to anyone who will listen...and they will listen, unless they have outside experience of a manipulative cow they will not think to question it.

She is trying to isolate you for one reason: she fears you.

You have what she wants and she is trying to take that away and leave you out on your own.

You could ignore it. You could rise above it. You could also face her down and turn the games back on her. When she grabbed you and then ran out to tell everyone her side of the story? That was your mistake. You let her get her version out first. In future, when she oversteps verbally or physically you need to respond loudly and immediately before she can spread misinformation.

You are letting her set the tone and that is why you are always playing catchup. If you are going to keep contact you will need to learn her game and outplay her. It is exhausting and far easier to go NC but if that is not an option you need to put her back in her box.

You are not powerless in this; if you were she would not be fighting so hard. You hold all the cards and you need to realise that. Her behaviour will then seem more amusing than upsetting and that little bit of distance will make her much easier to deal with.

"DH finds it very difficult when they withdraw their love from him."

They don't love him, otherwise they wouldn't be able to withdraw their love.

I really feel for you, it's a bloody horrible situation to be in (I have very limited contact now with my own mother, so I do understand the complex family ties)

It is gut wrenching, and very scary to begin to stand up for yourself and your children, and to take control back for your own lives, I know!

But. It can be done it's difficult, and emotional, and will probably cause a lot of arguments before it's resolved, but you must put yours and your children's best interests first. You must.

If you continue to enable the cycle you will be so miserable, you will in time begin to present your DH for not standing up to his family and it will be so very unhealthy for your children to be embroiled in it all.

You cannot change others, only how you react to them. Support your DH to understand that his family are a damaging influence on your own family, and encourage him to think of the welfare of his children.

Stand your ground. You will regret it so bitterly if you don't.

He doesn't have to agree to it ,he just needs to be told it's not happening.

These are my thoughts about what will happen.

Mil will , if she can , enroll your Dh to abuse you and manipulate you on her behalf. This will be a test of his character , watch out for him employing similar tactics to her or claiming he is the victim or stuck in the middle . He might try to blame you for putting him in this position or claim if you loved him you would cave.

The vandalizing and smear campaign against you will escalate. You'll get desperate yourself and will want it to end.

Flying monkeys will come screeching through the skies , with the appearance of being concerned about mil. Don't be fooled , they don't like her any more than you do , they don't want to be stuck with her and they haven't got the balls to stand up to her. If you don't comply they too will turn on you , they will be angry that they have to return to mil empty handed as this means they don't get monkey treats.

Your mil, like mine , May even try to coach your Dh into a divorce , with the idea she will look after the dcs .

Crystal, I don't know whether it would help you or your DH to know this, but this is something that has caused me 37 years of heartache and months of therapy to understand.

I was conditioned to see Dad as the victim. From a very young age, I understood it was my job to protect him from all the awful ills in the world. he was clearly the victim, and I needed to love and protect him and fight on his behalf. From very young - we're talking 4 or 5 here, my job was to protect him. Poor old Dad. Poor, poor Dad.

I look at my children now, and understand that I would never put them in that position. I had children and woke up to the fact that there needs to be a parent and a child in the relationship, and Dad took the wrong bloody role. I was not protected, because I was too caught up in protecting him.

If he looks at your DC now, could he ever imagine guilt tripping them to the extent that they felt cowed to his whim? Does he feel that that would be appropriate in his relationship with them? Or does he feel that he should be the grown up, and want them to have happy lives of their own?

Little grey, yes, I completely agree. I am really not interested in playing her game and getting better at it than her. Far too exhausting to contemplate, and going down this road would leave me filled with negative emotions every single day.

It would have to be NC.

your DH wouldn't be OK with her never being allowed to see them?
I'd be telling dh that if he is happy with your DC being in a room with an unapologetic person who assaulted you whilst you were holding one of the DC then I strongly need to evaluate whether he was fulfilling his duty as a father protecting his kids.

then I'd point out it doesn't need to be forever as long as mil takes responsibility for her actions and apologises. if she isn't able to do that then she needs to be seen as both hostile and dangerous and does not get to be around dcs for their own safety.

because, let's face it, if she actually cared for them she wouldn't have done that whilst you were holding one of them.

Looking, that resonates with me because DH and DSIL have been conditioned from young ages to be responsible for MiL being happy. She has always had an unhappy marriage which she chose to stay in. So her unhappiness has been paid for by her children.

Exactly. Playing her game makes you as bad as her. It takes balls of steel to go NC though. She will escalate her campaign to the max as will the monkeys because they know she always needs a scapegoat.

If you are out of range she will turn her gaze on one of them.

Remember though; she is going after you because you hold all the cards. Don't let her make you believe you are weak and powerless. You are the gatekeeper so she needs to learn to show you some respect.

I wish you well. You will get through this but you might have to do it without your husband.

Before I came along, MIL blamed FIL for all her problems. Now he is one of her flying monkeys.

I bet he is super relieved about that and her most outspoken voice now. That is how the monkeys work; scrambling to be the most favoured in case it all goes wrong and they become the enemy.

Pathetic behaviour but incredibly common.

Horrid situation. tbh I would stand my ground and give her a wide berth. There's no point worrying about the SILs..you sound focused on what they will do and think; you're an adult how many people are you going to take into account here, before yourself? What's happened is unfortunate but at least you know how your MIL truly thinks about you now..although I suspect you would have known long ago, and have been trying to make her like you. Sadly, we may think people SHOULD like us, but we can't MAKE them like us. You've a life to live and hard as it is she's your MIL not your mother, so you can't give her so much prominence and the power to make you feel like rubbish. Give her a wide berth, get your DH to speak to her about it, and then leave it.

Honestly, I think your main priority should be to protect the kids from her. My mother didn't protect me from someone like this in the family, and I actually resent her for it now. She was conditioned to tolerate this crap, so also tried to enable my relationship with my father, despite leaving him because he's deeply emotionally and moderately physically abusive so she didn't feel like the bad guy, denying a man his kids. As an adult, I've cut him off. When I had kids, because toxic people don't need to be in their family circle. DS knows my father is not a nice man, and is disinterested in him, though very proud of the rest of "my family" (including my father's kids by his second wife, who are lovely, and my godawful, PITA, but not actually toxic MIL). Kids accept the reality they're given, if adults are matter-of-fact and undramatic about it. I don't feel any concern at all about the set-up, because I know what it was like having trusted adults be toxic arses, and their presence in my life enabled by my mother due to her own insecurities and anxiety to be a "good person". Not happening with my kids. Annoying relatives are no problem, they have plenty of those. Genuinely disordered ones, no way are they being exposed.

It still sounds like you want her to approve of you, or at least to prove you aren't all she claims you are. But you will never be able to achieve that, because her opinion, and the monkeys blind swallowing of it, is not based on reality. It doesn't matter how much contact you gave or how much humble pie you swallowed. You will always be the bad guy. Just walk away - don't try to placate her, because she could take over your kids completely and have your husband under her thumb again and it would STILL change nothing - nothing - in how she sees you. You can't apply logical relationship methods to this. You can't say, well, I'll allow X amount of contact and she will see I am not stopping her from being a GM, because no matter how much you give, it'll never be enough. The problem is your existence, and her crazy, and neither have solutions open to you.

Crystal, Ballerina has sorted it out because she herself said no more she would not waste any more of her life going through this crap, she was clear on this.,

you need to be!

Crystal you have had some amazing support here and people opening up themselves to try and help you.

It's helped immensely, thank you again everyone.

It's to add to others, do not go this weekend.

Maybe explain it to your dh like this. If your dc have tantrums to get what they want, what do you do? Give in to them? No. What about if they sulk or cry? Still no.

She is behaving like a toddle and she should be treated like one.

And you talk about wanting your children to have a relationship with their gm, what you want is for them to ave a normal relationship, this isn't ever going to happen, what on earth would you want them to become conditioned to her like everyone else in the family.

You get to decide when she sees them, by all means invite her over, but have the visits on your terms not hers

Crystal I'm sorry to hear of your troubles. I have a very similar MIl and FIL and I just wanted to add my thanks to everyone on this thread it's been fantastic . I particularly love the idea that living well is the best revenge

Sounds easy written down , but it's taken years and balls to get to this stage. I think I used to be a narcissist magnet , now I'm a narcissist repellent , they tend to stay away from me , probably because I've no qualms doing it back.

Sam vatkin has a extensive website on the subject. His advice is to mirror their behaviour ,ie if they cry , cry back , if they rage , rage right back in their face. I've adopted this as standard , there's no reward for putting up with abuse.

My mil once told me an elaborate story about how someone had helped her out , let's call them Fred , they had done a, b and c , they couldn't do enough for her , they'd have gotten her the moon if she asked . Fred thought the world of her apparently. On and on she went trying to make us feel guilty. My partner was rigid with anxiety .

I absolutely knew she was lying as her lips were moving I was tempted to say , oh yes mil I know , I saw fred earlier and they told me all about it , they also said they were going to start taking you shopping every week , how lovely.

Imagine her face

Instead my partner contacted Fred who hadn't had any contact with her in months. He asked her on a later visit why she had lied. She denied ever having said it .when pushed further she said she had said it but she didn't know what she was saying . What sort of adult makes up these stories??

I still say my way would've been more effective.

Ballerina - our MIL's could be the same person. So similar.

I will give you a brief overview of my relationship with my MIL:

All sweetness and light until I fell pregnant.
Ruined pregnancy by asking to come to my scans (erm, NO!), telling me she hoped I was giving her grandchild the best start in life (whilst I was in hospital with cronic nausea!)
Ruined birth/newborn phase. Arriving at hospital and hogging baby, assuming her and FIL could take baby out 24hrs after we got out special care (nutter!!!).
Called my house around 9pm on all occasions to prevent DH and I spending time together - Hogmanay, Valentines Day, Wedding Anniversary etc (WEIRD!).
Lying to DH that she didn't know we had plans/arranging to visit then being pissed off we were busy/trying to make us cancel other plans etc

This then led to downright lying about me with tales such as - I shut door on her face, refused to let her see DC's, drew her dirty looks etc.

I was a shadow of my former self, nervous and timid. I hated everyday life for fear of the next incident.

In the end I told my dad everything and he encouraged me to speak up. I got DH to summon a family meeting (in my home, my rules!) and had it out. She lied to my face, cried etc and I maintained she was wrong. DH stuck up for me and I gave the PIL two options... leave permanently or play nice and continue to see DC's.

Soon after MIL went to be rude to me so I nipped it in the bud and announced 'oh do be a dear and fuck off' with the sweetest smile I could muster. She told everyone and no one believed her as she was the old dear (early 60's) who cried wolf.

So I am afraid that is my nasty secret but MIL has calmed down a lot and I now simply put up with her for short periods of time on my terms.