It's a very long story and I'm going to split it into three posts so it's easier to read.
But the short version is that I have not willingly had contact with my in-laws since the end of 2010, which they cannot accept. And yesterday they sent a message to DH threatening to just come to our house as they had nothing to loose, even though they have been asked many times by me, by DH and by various other family members, to leave me alone.
I'm asking now if I could get some kind of order to stop them coming near me but it's a long and complicated story and I'm not sure if I would be able to get one.
We've had a difficult relationship from the start. I met DH in 2000 and married him in 2001. Even before our wedding things were difficult with them sometimes and we had our moments of not getting along.
Under other names I've posted about the problems I've had with them but although we had our ups and downs, mostly over the way they tried to control us and the way they treated DH like a naughty child, we were able to maintain a reasonable relationship most of the time.
However in 2007 we lost a baby to stillbirth and in the very first days following his birth, MIL was exceptionally cruel. She is known in the family for 'speaking without thinking' but in this case and at that time, what she said to me more than once went beyond casual, accidental cruelty and into deliberate cruelty of the worst kind.
She continued to make these comments on and off each time she spoke to me but I was in a state of shock and grief and didn't feel able to confront her, so I tried to ignore her and carry on to keep the peace.
However we then lost another baby later the same year, this time to prematurity, and again MIL continued to make hurtful comments about both babies.
I was still trying to ignore her and let things go, but I found myself distancing myself from her and avoiding PILs when possible. DH was aware of some of the comments but has spent his entire life being told he must never upset his mother as he will be responsible for her mental breakdown, so he finds it hard to stand up to them and he and his siblings prefer to ignore even the worst behaviour rather than confront it.
Things came to a head in 2009, when we had our DS. MIL finally went too far, made a comment that was the final straw, and I found myself telling DH that I wasn't able to spend time with her alone anymore. She had said something terrible about our premature DD and then told some lies about me to our SIL, and I found out. To protect myself and our new DS, I told DH that I wasn't prepared to be left alone with PILs, that I would only see them if he was with me and that I wanted him to make sure I wasn't even left alone in the room with MIL, he had to be there, because the things she was saying and doing were too awful.
DH said he understood and told me he was going to speak to MIL about it. I asked him not to, because I knew that within days of him confronting MIL about her behaviour the situation would somehow be turned on it's head I would be to blame.
Which is exactly what happened. MIL convinced herself and several other family members that I had lied about the things she had said and done to try and force her out of our lives.
At this point I wasn't even thinking of going no contact, but PILs seemed to take my distancing myself as a personal challenge to force me to see and speak to them.
They were coming to the house every day, several times a day, calling repeatedly on the phone ten, fifteen, twenty times a day, sitting outside the house in their car to watch me, they followed me along the road in their car while I walked with DS in his pram, followed me to the shop to check I was really going where I said I was going, drove onto the pavement to block my path as I was walking with DS.
I felt like I couldn't go out without being watched or come home without having them turn up just moments after I'd walked through the door. They always had an excuse, they were passing and they saw me, they had been visiting someone further down the road etc, but it was too often to be coincidence every time.