Mil told me being hospitalised with pneumonia was a social snub

[DoneWithMIL]

I wasn't able to go to my brother in law's wedding because I was really ill at the time and 25 weeks pregnant - was physically exhausted and struggled to do much. My husband went to the wedding. A week later I was hospitalised with bacterial pneumonia for a week. Felt reduced movements and my baby had to be monitored daily.

Now after an argument with mother in law over something trivial she sent this massive email with everything I have done wrong - one of the things on the list was me not attending my brother in laws wedding. I reminded her about the pneumonia and she said well you didn't communicate this. We did.

She also said that I broke her dying mothers heart because I didn't bring my newborn daughter to see her mum. As well as the pneumonia my daughter wasn't growing in the last week, then she almost died during labour - I had an emergency c section. Then she had seizures at a few days old.
Excuse me for not prioritising people that live 60 miles away. Husband cant drive so would have had to be public transport.

I sympathise, my mil is pretty awful with similar issues bit not as extreme (attention seeking, triangulation, manipulation, hysteria, dramatic crying etc)

I'd go with
"Confirming I've received your email and that you've made your feelings very clear’.

Get into couples counselling and spend every hour of it talking about him and his mother.
Make it non-negotiable. You cant change her but he can change.
It's the best money I ever spent (if you have Private health care you can generally access for free)

I'd go ultra LC and just grey rock her and ensure there's a crowd to dilute her. (I.E. birthday easter christmas)

Do not let your children have any unsupervised contact. If your dh tries tell him its not happening and tell him EXACTLY why.
Including his parts in this nonsense.

He is failing you horribly.

If i had no kids i'd be NC with my mil as it is she is okay/has "good intentions" with them so I tolerate it. I am LC and supervise them. I dont leave them alone with her and dh any more as she is so demanding of attention it somehow fries his brain and its just not safe.
E.g. Our 2 yr fell off a 5 ft platform in a playground he didnt even see it apparently 🤬 and after that I said enough...

Bluntly your husband cares more about her being upset than you being upset.
That needs to be reversed ASAP.

If this (totally inappropriate and misjudged) email isnt the catalyst for change in your marriage - God knows what is...

Having contact with her is a choice so choose not to.

As for your husband, I would lose all respect for him for not sticking up for you especially on such a a sensitive subject like you and your baby nearly dying.

Tell him if he wants to have a relationship with his mum to get on and do it but you won’t be involved and you don’t want to even hear about her.

In my case it was my mother I had to protect my children from. I simply stopped visiting. If she came to see us, which she rarely did, she was never left alone with either of the children. TBH her interest in them disappeared very quickly with only minimal roadblocks put in the way.

I'd get hold of my DH phone and block her number. Certainly block her on your phone @DoneWithMIL .
We had a sky contract they had a facility for blocking numbers on the landline so I blocked her on that.

She got a friend to lend her phone so I blocked that too.

You all need a complete break and some peace.

Yes...!

all visits on your turf.

Oldest is coming up 4 and has never been to my mils house.

How did your husband react to his mum about this?

'She also has also blaimed us for our autistic son's language delay. Called his behaviour not normal and once pointed out what he couldn't do infront of him.'

If he has accepted and not challenged her hideous views about his own child, he really isn't a safe person for your children either.

You need to tell your husband that you and your children won't be in her company again. He can visit but if he insists on taking your children, that should be the end of your marriage.

Your DH needs some therapy to help him get out of the FOG (Fear, Obligation and Guilt) which stops him challenging his mum's horrible behaviour towards her DIL and her grandchildren.

I should've said, I didn't let the children stay with her either. She was only willing to have one of them stay (not one at a time, which I would have understood, but her preferred child). I said both or neither, and she opted for neither. Her choice.

Oh please do.

She is an awful person. Your dh is weak around her because he never learnt to stand up to her nasty toxic ways growing up.

If she were my mil I would have as little to do with her as possible and pull her up every time she acts the cow. I think maybe your dh needs some counselling to learn how to tell her to fuck off.

She is emotionally immature & I just wouldn’t have the argument with her, never argue with an idiot they pull you down to their level and beat you with experience. Arguing over who had pneumonia worse is mind boggling. The 2 things are not comparable & not because you think you had it worse. I’d have said it was a moot point. You were very poorly at the time which ended up with you in hospital. you was neither well or selfish enough to attend a wedding where you would have passed the germs around.
if your hubby isn’t putting down boundaries with his mom then I suggest you stop seeing her. You can drop hubby off to save her coming to yours and pick him up after. You can put your boundaries down without making him choose. Stop arguing with her, I suspect she enjoys the drama and revels in it & you keep playing into her hands.

Your husband is the problem here. He either stands up to his mother or your marriage is doomed surely?

It definitely sounds as if she has narcissistic traits at the v least and in your later post, you confirmed this.
There will be no reasoning with her. Your DH may just be emeshed in his abnormal upbringing. You need to speak to him about it, show him information about this, buy him a book or show him some YouTube videos about narcissistic parents. He needs counselling.
Don't respond to her. Refuse to have any future contact with her. Please don't allow her to mess up another generation.

Ignore the silly woman. She sounds off her rocker & a control freak.

I doubt her friends would be the slightest bit interested. The MIL
wouldn't be in fear either, it would be used as an example of how crazy her DIL ithe OP is.

I'm constantly amazed at the enmeshment of grown adults on here who have children of their own to protect. Bugger the MIL, bugger any parents or relatives who are so vile. STOP LETTING THEM TAKE SUCH AN IMPORTANT ROLE IN YOUR EMOTIONS.

Get on with your own family life. If any DH or wife or DP insists on letting their kids down and failing to stand up to the antagonist then bugger them too. Get rid of the rubbish in your life.

Sounds a lot like my MIL, she cut contact with us initially, and about 3 years later wrote a letter saying she probably shouldn’t have, followed by 3 sides of a4 about what a terrible person DH is. Letter went in the bin and we’re still no contact. She said many bizarre things over the years, one gem was that we’d forced DS to be right handed, she said he was left handed as a baby (he wasn’t, but she’s left handed) and that we’d clearly forced him into using his right hand!

OH I used to get those letters. A sentence saying that she was sorry. Then pages of diatribe and nonsense.

Oh, OP. WHY must you have to tolerate this? You have the right to expect far better for yourself than this.

You can't control what your husband does and it will lead to nowhere good if you try; especially if he's still neck-deep in the FOG. But you can control what you do. And you do not have to sit back and accept this sort of treatment. From now on I'd let him maintain a relationship with her as he chooses. But you are not compelled to see her or have any contact with her that you don't want.

You can't break your DH out of this pattern overnight: it's been conditioned into him from birth. This dynamic won't change, and your in-laws won't change, because the status quo as it currently exists suits them perfectly. You're the one suffering as a result of it, but the only person whose behaviour you can change is yours.

It will be tough. You can expect pushback, and this will get worse before it gets better; especially if your MiL is used to speaking with you in the disgusting tone in which she addressed you. But it will get better once it's seen that you're resolute and are giving back nothing but silence.

In your sort of situation I can't recommend Susan Forward's book Toxic In-Laws highly enough. It's a game-changer.

I'm sorry you've been having such a rough time.

Don't. Really don't.

You're not going to be able to make her see this from your perspective. It will be taken as just one more example of your 'disrespectful' behaviour (people like this always use that word). You'll be the aggressor and the one in the wrong. Guaranteed.

Given the way she domineers over your DH and thought she had the right to speak to you, there's unfortunately only one way to deal with such a person. That is to step back and leave her arguing with herself.

She sounds absolutely vile. I'd tell H I'm not willingly seeing or speaking to her. Unless she profusely and sincerely apologised. Which I doubt she'd be capable of. I mean if she wrote those things she can't say she un- thinks them.

What kind of response did she expect from an essay entitled '101 reasons why I think my DiL is a useless twat'?!

I do hope you’re going to send a list back to her of her faults 😆

And the OP not engaging will be far more aggravating. Much better to leave it so that the next move needs to come from her MIL. Or there's no next move, ever.

Could you move a significant distance away?

My grandma was like this. Mum spent 25 miserable years with her in her life, until grandma went into a home.
Just keep away. Let hubby take children for visits, keep out of her way. Hubby MUST put you first though in things. If she wants to complain about every single thing you do then stop doing anything that gives her something to complain about.

All the best OP, it's very difficult being in this position but she's poison, she won't change.

If you must reply (can't resist) just say 'thank you for such a clear email - I completely understand why you don't want to see me or the children again given your views.' and then block her on everything.

I can't imagine your non-driving DH is going to make much effort to take an autistic 4-year-old and a newborn to see her on public transport. He can make whatever arrangements to see her himself he likes.

What an actual cunt she sounds. Please show her that. Then never have anything to do with her again. She's unforgivable. Don't make excuses. Just drop her.

Please post her email so that we can help you draft a detailed reply. Nasty old witch.