AIBU to hate my mother-in-law after this?

[Sunshine231]

AIBU to hate my mother in law? She has always been fairly unpleasant to me and made it quite clear she does not like me. Early in the relationship my partner told me as much and that it was apparently out of character for her to not like anyone (something I later discovered to be untrue). She interferes with our relationship constantly, basically forcing DH to tell her every minor detail of our arguments but if I ever try to defend my side she says I am an awful person for “causing her stress”. Anyway I try to have as little to do with her as possible: I am civil and always make sure she has a gift from the kids on special occasions but that’s it. This weekend she arranged a “family” dinner and invited my husband and the kids but not me. DH and I decided together that they would not go and he politely declined. MIL then sent him a string of messages saying that I am coercing him and isolating him from his family. That he’s changed since meeting me (for the worse) and that she finds it “disgusting” that I would stop him coming for a “lovely” family dinner. When DH tried to defend me she got her other son to message him which culminated in him calling me the c word multiple times and DH having to block him. I now really want nothing to do with MIL and really feel she is a horrible self centred individual who I don’t really want around my kids. DH is very very close to her so he’s worried about damaging his relationship with her. AIBU?

Your husband is the problem here.

I wouldn’t have my kids anywhere need the toxic witch. She has serious problems and your DH and BIL need therapy to be able to deal with her. I would go absolutely no contact!

I would stop the child care and pay for wrap around. I'd tell your DH 'Your DM is an utter bitch who doesn't like me and has repeatedly caused toxic problems in our relationship. I'm not having her poisoning my childrens minds. You can obviously visit her as much as you like, but neither I nor my DC are going'.

And I'd mean it. I wouldn't get involved in any more discussion with him, I'd simply keep repeating, 'I've told you my stance. It's not going to change'.

Your mother in law is a nasty bitch and your husband is a pathetic limp dick.

How can he be "so close" to someone who treats the mother of his children so appallingly?

Ok but me saying the kids can’t go there is exactly the kind of thing that fuels her to say I’m coercive and controlling him. The kids like her and so does DH. I don’t want to stop them seeing her but I’d like to not have anything to do with her (not even just a civil hello) and I’d like her to stop bad mouthing me and on special occasions like Easter she should understand we will be spending it as a family

She would only threaten not to pick my child up from school once before never getting the opportunity again because I would book them into wrap around care going forward so she couldn’t play that game.
A grandparent who uses their Grandchildren, their poor health etc as weapons to get their own way is diabolical.
Your DH needs to grow a backbone, and tell her to keep her nose out.
If DH and I have a row, neither of our families hear about it because we don’t feel the need to blab…. If one of us is out of sorts and someone asks if we’re ok, if we say we don’t want to talk about it, then that is respected.
If my brother in law called/sent messages containing profanities about me in it, my DH would be furious.
It’s one thing being family oriented, it’s another to be controlled and manipulated. I wouldn’t have anything further to do with them and I’d be looking at DH to not be so pathetic I’m afraid, his family is you and your children. He needs to put you first.

I disagree. He is triangulating you with her when you two fight so that he can throw more ammunition at you to put you down, destabilise you and win the fight.

He is using her by proxy to gang up on you.

He doesn’t need to go to her, her doesnt need to tell her. I doubt she has to force it out of him - he’s actually running to her - which just escalates and inflames YOU even more. He knows what he’s doing.

Do either of you have any conflict resolution skills - or are you both from dysfunctional backgrounds where you discharge and fight regularly in a reactive and volatile way?

Are you a partnership? Do you have each others back? Are you a unit? If so a basic boundary would be that you don’t facilitate, tolerate or enable someone else to disrespect and belittle you.

If he was discussing your rows with a female work colleague it would be called an emotional affair - HE is crossing boundaries here. HE needs dealing with.

Your mother-in-law sounds like a nightmare. Your husband is consolidating his mummy son relationship, by complaining like you’re a big, mean school bully.

She may be digging to fulfil that mothering urge, but he is gifting her with it and probably boosting his own family man endorphins along the way.

@Sunshine231 if you can afford it, pay for wraparound care. Your kid, your choice

Not a chance my children would be spending any time with someone who speaks to me or about me like that. How long do you think it will be before she’s talking to your kids about you in this way? Have you considered that? The position that would put your children in to have nanny calling mummy all those things?

Your husband needs to grow up. She can’t “make” him tell her anything, he can walk straight out of the door and leave without telling her all about your marriage. If I were you and he can’t learn to do that then I’d quite happily pack his bags for him so he can walk back out of my door and go back to mummy himself.

Your children are not benifiting from seeing their mother being treated with contempt and bad mouthed by their grandmother, while their father does nothing. If they see her in your absence, what do you imagine the conversations will centre on?
You and your husband need to think about their long-term emotional wellbeing and protect them from people who abuse their parents.

Your husband most definitely needs therapy to unpick this awful wreck of a mother-son relationship.

Your DH is handing his DM the bullets to shoot you with - and he’s loving it - because he can’t engage in healthy conflict resolution with you directly - so he runs to his DM downloads all his shit and whips her up into a frenzy and comes back to tell you all about it!! He’s loving it. HE’s putting the boot in to you by proxy.

You have a DH problem.

Not only is it not normal to be arguing so much but it’s ridiculous that he goes running to mummy and then spills your private things to her.

If he needs to get away from you after an argument then why not just go for a drive or walk, why go running to mummy.

Sorry OP but your DH is stirring the pot and he loves the drama.

She actually sounds quite unwell, but why the fuck is your DH repeating all her nasty comments to you? The whole lot of them sound like a pack of nutters.

I would certainly not he letting my kids go anywhere where someone mother be badmouthing me to them / trying to turn them against me. This sounds awful. I don't care what she said, I would NOT allow it. No idea how you have enough trust in her to keep your children safe. Put a stop to that right away! Also. Move away. Like REALLY FAR away.

"DH is very very close to her so he’s worried about damaging his relationship with her"

Your dh is the problem here unfortunately. She's doing this because she knows he will let her away with it. He has no business running to her with any disagreement you may have. He's betraying your trust and privacy as his wife and he's allowing you to be abused by his family.

There is no way someone who can speak that badly of me would have unsupervised access to my child. I'd be paying for the wraparound childcare.

Dh problem you’ve got.

ETA: you keep saying she she she. It’s he he he. But you don’t want to admit it.

This. Being with a man who won't stand up to his mummy in case she squeezes out some crocodile tears is a massive turnoff.

It’s our kid though. My DH has as much right as I do to decide on our child’s care. It’s important to him that his parents have a good relationship with the kids. It’s a difficult one for me because if DH told me I had to choose my mum or him I would say he was being controlling. I don’t want to prove MIL’s point by doing that

You're child shouldn't be around let alone looked after by anyone who speaks this way about their mother and believe me that includes your own mother not just a mil, speaking from experience!

Does she badmouth you to your children? Because it is incredibly damaging to children for one caregiver to badmouth another in front of them. Borderline abusive I would say.

You can’t win here. Going no contact will do nothing- your DH will continue to see her like today and you’ll be wound up from a distance. She’ll control your life and you’ll always be unhappy.

i hope you end up ditching the husband. If you are close to your family and particularly if you’re controlled by them it’s really important to marry someone they like, it doesn’t work otherwise.

unless likely to be dead soon. But then you still have the BIL anyway.

But we’re not arguing “so much” it’s just normal disagreements. It could be something as simple as I have gotten upset that he’s forgotten to do the dishwasher on a morning. In fact on occasion we haven’t had any disagreement at all and he’s gone there in a bad mood due to work or something and she will pester and pester him to tell her that we’ve had an argument. She will say you’re only ever in a bad mood when somethings happened at home which is ridiculous because there are all sorts of reasons someone might be feeling a bit off. In fact this weekend came out of the blue after him having literally nothing negative to tell her about our relationship for months, it was quiet a shock that she’d not only left me out of the family meal but then started bad mouthing me to the whole family for no reason

You two have a row and he runs to mummy so she can tell him how wonderful he is and how she was right all along how evil you are etc. Your MIL and her two sons are involved in emotional incest, mummy dearest tells your BIL she doesn’t like you so he isn’t allowed to like you neither and when your DH displeases mum she then she sets your BIL off to sort out your DH.
You need to stop your MIL looking after your child once a week because she will try to turn your children against you too.

He shouldn’t want to be around someone who speaks about you like that. I find it weird he even wants to spend time with her tbh