To look crazy and send this text to my mil

[AllTheGoodUsernamesTaken]

To look crazy and send this by text to my c**t of a mil:
Who we send cards to, gifts to and what gifts we send is non of your business. Trying to micromanage our life's to this level is bonkers and I'm at the end of my tether with it. You don't get a say in how much we donate at our sons Christening, or a say in how much my engagement ring is or whether or not we have children (if dh had listened to you dc wouldn't be here would he) , what job dh has (you got fil to do that. Who thinks they get a say in what job there adult children have, very entitled and crazy, that and was crossing the line and the straw that broke the camels back with putting up with your controlling interfering behaviour for the past 10 years).
You don't get a say in when and where I give birth, and if I want to tell my parents I'm in labour and not you its my decision, so sending my parents a patents a passive aggressive text because didn't betray my trust is bang out of order. You don't get a say in if I breastfed my child, just creepy how opposed you where to it. You don't get to talk to me or dh like 5 year olds (surprisingly I know you give a sick child water) or micromanage us in front of our son! Stop throwing emotional blackmail tantrums when you don't get your way. I will no longer be putting up with it- who thinks they can micromanage there adult children's lives to this level is very entitled and crazy. Ps I know you stole my dress dh got me and gave it to sil

Really want to send to her or is it a stupid crazy idea

You need to spell and grammar check it first otherwise you'll lose all credibility! Which you are likely too anyway sending that sort of text. Sending a text is not confronting the problem at all. You need to have a good chat with her

And ha ha I should also listen to my own advice and type with much less haste 😂

*to

Just echoing what many here have said, don't send it. You are playing directly into her hands. My MIL is a professional victim and if you give her hard evidence of how she makes you feel she will just use it as proof of how nasty, aggressive and hateful you are etc compared to her - quivering with fear and being terrorised by you. I blew up at mine once after years and years of passive aggressive comments and outright interference. I objected to a comment about how I didn't seem to love my children and she actually pretended to have a heart attack because I had upset her so much. Fast forward a few years, my children are moody teenagers and you can't get them round to hers for love or money so I never see her. If I do then it's in a large group so we avoid each other, to me it's like she never existed so hold tight and you'll get there.

I have a similar MIL (I've been told off for wearing my slippers wrong - who knew that was even possible?) and after she started picking on DD, I took a huge step back and have told DH that I will never again visit her unless he's there and he needs to handle all phone calls etc.

And suddenly now, she's as nice as pie. Super nice. Buys me lovely presents and always asks after me.

It has coincided with her falling out with her own sister and now declaring the entire family as 'dead to her' so she has no-one but us. If she falls out with us she will be completely alone (she's previously fallen out with other branches of the family so is now totally isolated from everyone, by her own wishes). But I think she's got the message that I'm just not going to take it any longer. So she no longer picks on me as much, although there can be comments made if DH isn't in the room.

DH thinks she's changed and I should relent. I say she had 25 years to be nice, and I'm not falling for it. Sooner or later she won't be able to hold back any longer.

Why would you tell your family you're in labour and not his?

Well that's a mass of blether. Why would you send something so badly formulated? Get a grip eh?

I'm glad you're not sending it. It will just make things worse.

You should consider going very, very low contact with her.

Tell your DH he can see her if he likes, but you're done. And he needs to stop looking for an easy life with his mother by trying to guilt you into dealing with her, because you're not going to. She's rude, bossy, interfering, manipulative and completely out of order the way she treats you and your family, and you're not having it. If he can't stand up to her, like he should, then at the very least he should be standing firm that she has to deal with him, not you. from here on out on everything. Because you're not going to spend time with her any more.

I would also suggest that your marriage may be in trouble long term if he can't grow up and stand up to his mother and her crazy. He chose you. He married you. He has a family. He needs to act like a grown up and stand up for you and his family, even if that means distancing himself from his mother if she is behaving like this.

It’s your twat of an H you need to go NC with. She’s just a by product of allowing him to treat you like this.

You can't send that without your dh's approval

🤣😂🤣😂🤣🙄😂🤣🙄😂🤣🙄😂🤣🙄

She’s a grown woman, in 2019, she doesn’t need anyone’s ‘approval’.

Jesus wept.

Low contact is definitely the answer here. Tell DH to deal with her

Intentionally or not he’s made his mother your problem - that stops now.

She rings - hand straight to dh ‘oh hello, I’ll just get Ian for you’

She texts - forward straight to dh ‘message for you’ and you don’t respond.

She invites you to something say to dh ‘are you going to tackle her behaving like xyz?’ If no, you and ds don’t go.

Dh has to deal with this and he won’t while he can make it your issue.

Your OH should be doing this.

Your job is merely to tell your OH what the situation is. ie, that you don't want anything to do with her. You might want to try to be diplomatic, depending on whether he is already sympathetic to your POV.

You're venting, because quite understandably you've had enough. But this isn't giving DH information he can work with. Spell it out in terms of specifics. When MiL does X, it makes me feel Y. What I'd like you to do if this situation arises again is Z. I.e. he needs to have a conversation with her, tell her this level of interference is inappropriate and makes you uncomfortable, and that she should stop. Then, draw attention to it every time she does this and impose sanctions (you go home, short time-out from visits, longer time-out for any repetition etc). Unfortunately she's nurtured this nasty habit over a long period of time, and unless she feels real consequences things are unlikely to change.

Your DH has a tough choice to make. Either let her carry on, or risk eroding the fabric of his marriage along with the respect you had for him. And you do need to let him know it's that serious.

If that doesn't work, you can tell him he's at liberty to have a relationship with his mother (you can't stop him; don't try) but you don't want one, and from this point onward she'll no longer be welcome in your home. Explaining that one's going to be tough for him, but he shouldn't have allowed the situation to reach this point in the first place.

Don't send the message. It isn't your place to sort out your MiL's behaviour. She's DH's mother: high time he stepped up to the plate and did that.

I highly recommend Susan Forward's excellent book 'Toxic In-Laws'. I found it a life-changer.

Good luck!

Obviously you can't send her that text but you can stick to your guns about not going to any part of her birthday trip.
If DH wants to carry on letting her walk over him that's his problem. Just keep saying NO. Loud and clear.

Have you ever asked her outright why she behaves the way she does?
What do you do when she “micromanages” you? Do just go along with her?

No good will ever come of putting it in writing. I still have the horrible letter my aunt sent me when my daughter was born over a decade ago, and I still hate her for it. Please don't send it. Address the issues in a positive way instead (one thing at a time / learn to be assertive / set ground rules etc)

You can hate her all you want but you are failing to see the real problem here - your dh!!.
To solve your problem you need to deal with your DH and why is he ok with allowing this to happen.

It's one thing for him to accept her behavior but expecting you to comply as well is not ok. He cant have it both ways. It would bother me alot if my dh allowed even half of that to happen to me- bother me to the point where I would even want to be with him

I know I’m in the minority here but to some degree I would send it. But I’d do it over the phone and not by text.

I kind of think that life’s too short to put up with people who treat you like this and make you miserable. Arseholes get away with being arseholes because nobody says ‘pack it in’ to them. Everybody puts up with it saying ‘well you know what they’re like just ignore them’. That permissive stance helps nobody.

But if you decide to call her out in it you have to be happy with the fallout. When I did this with my step mil I was more than looking forward to the fallout which meant I wouldn’t need to speak to her for a good while. It was a bonus. DH was fully on my side with this though so it helped.

Good luck either way.

Op, I've been where you are and I'm pleased you're not going to send the text because it won't make her have an 'aha' moment but will give her ammunition to play victim forever.

The aha moment really does need to come from DH.
For us, the problem was that mil still saw DH as part of her primary family and refused to accept me in that.
It took DH a while to realise that his primary family were now his wife and dc (too long to realise in my book) but once he did it was like a lightbulb went off and he very quickly started standing up for us.

I was never rude to her, refused to get drawn into any arguments and when the ridiculous commments were made I pretended I thought she was joking 'no of course our 2yr old DS can't have chocolate for dinner and stay up till 10:30 - oh you are funny mil' - you get the gist. I just made everything his problem, she insisted on doing some childcare for us one day a week and when she kept cancelling the morning of I made him take the days off work, when dd was born and she wanted to see her everyday, I made DH take both DCs, when she phoned to criticise me about her not bonding with DD because I was hogging her by breast feeding I made DH take the call and talk to her etc etc etc

The exhaustion of bending to her every whim and trying to be a good father and husband was too much for him and he realised that his priorities needed to be with myself and the DC. Not running round after mil every couple of hours.

She never changed her position or outlook and maintains to this day he betrayed her and abandoned the family (she actually stole a significant amount of money from us which was the final straw for DH and we've been no contact for 6 years now)

Sorry that was a long post

in 19 and half years of being together ive never had 1 problem with my mil but if yours is that bad bugger it and send it to her

her batshit behavior will only carry or and escalate if you dont nip it in the bud

myself i would have stopped in on the very first incident or comment though and not let it get this far

I'm glad you've decided not to send that text, OP. But it obviously helped you to write it, as it was a way of venting. And it's one of the benefits of Mumsnet, being able to vent freely and then when necessary get talked out of making a big mistake in the heat of the moment.

Your MIL sounds awful. She sounds like my DM, who also has a tendency to treat DH and me like children. In her case, I do believe she means well, but we're now low contact with her because it's just too much stress dealing with her. (There are more complex issues connected with an abusive childhood, but not relevant to this thread.)

PPs are right, you have an OH problem rather than a MIL problem. He needs to start putting you first not his mum. And he also needs to stop telling you what his mum has said, why does he think you need to know the negative things she's said about you.

And no, you mustn't let yourself be pressured into going to her birthday weekend.

I know I’m going against the grain here but These types of threads make me feel sorry for the mil. Your text is so ranty but a lot of the problems are probably het up completely as you clearly can’t stand her. She wants you at her birthday party but you won’t go and she’s upset as most people would be when their closest family won’t go to a milestone birthday surely? My entire family suggested that my brother perhaps shouldn’t have kids with his wife but that was because they argued all the time and she treated him like shit (domestic abuse). They are now getting divorced and dn is right in the middle of it and being treated like a pawn. We have to tread on eggshells and one wrong word we get rants like yours for really no reason at all. My mum is terrified that she’ll lose contact with her gc but it’s hard to stay reasonable when stbxsil is demanding 75% of his wage and leaving him with barely anything. Considering a lot of women on here have sons and will be mils one day, I’m surprised at the number that immediately say go nc despite only hearing one side of the story and none of what she’s said and done seems that horrific. Giving a sick child water? Really? That’s not bad advice! Any dr will say to try and keep sick kids hydrated. Sounds like you actually need to have a good heart to heart with your mil and clear the air. There’s definitely been times when my mil has pissed me off and it does build to the point that even a look can be highly irritating but there’s a lot we have in common and I much prefer to get on with my mil than not. My ds is too young to get married but I’d be gutted if he stopped contact with me because I wanted his whole family at my birthday.

Do you realise you have a dp problem? This is really about him.

I'm a MIL with two DDs and a DIL. When I suggest things to DIL that she thinks are bollocks she listens politely and ignores me. I get the hint! We have a good relationship.

This sounds like my DM. You can send the text, but she won't understand, she'll think you're the problem and it won't change things. I didn't send a text, but I basically said what you've typed and DM didn't get it and couldn't see that her unreasonable behaviour was wrong.
You'll feel better for a few hours having vented, but then you'll get frustrated that MiL still doesn't see that what she does is wrong.
I'm trying to live by the saying 'do you want to be happy or do you want to be right'. Venting and trying to get through to an unreasonable person may feel needed in order for you to be seen as 'right', but you won't be happy, you'll just be further frustrated. Instead just go NC. If she or DH asks why just say that you're not prepared to tolerate disrespectful, rude people and leave it at that. The absence of her in your life will make you happy.