It is absolutely ghastly to bark at someone who has been 'institutionalised' by her own admission, over 14 years of marriage to an abusive jerk, to hoik up your big girl pants and try acting like a wife & mother and not like a little girl seeking love etc.
Do husbands need to be told that their homes have problems that need to be fixed?
Do husbands need to be asked by their wives to fix up the homes where their wives and babies and small children live?
Do they need to ask their husbands not spend so much time with the MIL while their wives juggle care of babies and small children at home alone, far from family, and isolated?
Did you read the parts where Lonely appreciated her MIL?
she offered two perfectly good solutions. My DH was a stubborn arse in refusing to change the plan.
...and...
MIL also very kindly offered to swap days so that we could spend Christmas Day with my family and then have Boxing Day with her. This was entirely husband's fault for being stubborn and refusing to alter his plans.
Did you read the parts about their relationship?
What you describe as the H who made the effort to sort out a decent Boxing Day for HER mother and then the woman decided to change everything AND not include him or the kids is a man only willing to give what he wants to give, on his terms, to the OP, and what she actually wants is immaterial to him. This is not generosity of spirit. This is him showing the OP who is boss in the home. Everyone else was perfectly happy for Lonely and her mother and sister to go out on Boxing Day together, but the DH would have none of it. It was his way or the highway. Husband had a meltdown - remember? This despite the fact that he had spent the whole previous day in his mother's house with wife and children while his SIL and MIL were stuck at home, all day Christmas Day. At the very least it was a display of rudeness worthy of a complete boor to do that to them. I suspect there was more to it, however.
Mum and sister came round at 6.30am because mum was desperate to see present opening. Which was nice. I'm glad she got to see the excitement. We left for MIL's at 11.30. I was hoping to be back home for tea with my mum, but we didn't leave MIL's until 9.30pm. Husband settled in for the duration.
So the children were up before 6.30 and were still celebrating Christmas at 9.30 pm? This is the act of a man determined to punish his mother in law for visiting and make her feel most unwelcome. I would hazard a guess that most fathers of young families would see the need to get home for children to unwind, bathe and get into bed at a normal time even on Christmas Day. Not this one apparently.
On communication:
We used to talk about hopes, dreams, fears, ambitions, the past, friends, family, everything. Then I began to realise it was really just me doing the sharing. I would walk away from interactions feeling confused and hurt by whatever responses I'd got out of him.
You can't clap with one hand.
DH is snappy and sarcastic. He snaps at his own mother all the time. It comes quite naturally to him take verbal jabs at people. Then he says "I'm an arsehole, I know." I trust him to him to always be there for us as a physical presence. Its a shame he's grown up with an acid tongue, because it spoils every opportunity for communication and pushes me further away from him emotionally. He knows that.
He is not prepared to do anything about the hurt he causes. This is because the relationship is giving him what he wants, i.e. the chance to hurt and humiliate.
Have you seen that poem by Pam Ayres about husband who is always right. It's him to a T. "Prefers to be right than be kind" is an excellent description. Actually "prefers to be morally superior" is even more accurate.
Lonely, I don't know if you have ever come across a book by Lundy Bancroft entitled, "Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men" - if you have not read it, I highly recommend it.
My mother stayed here for two weeks when my youngest baby (17mths) was born. He was overdue so her stay was longer than expected. He was nearly climbing the walls by the time she left. Not because she was difficult or mean to him, just because she's his MIL and was in our home.
Climbing the walls to such an extent that it is noticed by someone you should be supporting does not equal being a good husband. It is the behaviour of someone who is bent on creating such an unpleasant atmosphere when a relative of your victim is around that the victim thinks twice about extending another invitation. Or the visitor thinks twice about 'imposing' on someone very difficult. Assuming the mother isn't a lump of wood, I would hazard a guess that she sensed an atmosphere when she stayed on the occasion of the birth of the youngest baby.
He has told Lonely that he wished her mother was dead.
I suspect most people would sense it if they were around someone who hated them or resented them so much.