how do you stick to your guns? i mean how do you stay 'in the right' when you know the other person has been emotionally abusing you or the people you love, and will never change? MIL is no longer a part of our lives which is actually her choice.
I'm glad not to have to deal with her. I'm glad she's not inflicting her poison on my children. But I worry about dh and how he feels about it. I have told him I don't mind if he wants to get in touch with her, especially as she is now quite ill, but she has made her decision to walk away from her grandchildren, she refuses to accept me or apologise for the pain she has inflicted on me so she can't just occasionally issue demands to see one of them (not both, it would be unlike her to treat any two individuals equally) without having made any attempts to undo what she has done.
Somehow, even though I know she is to blame, that her hatred of me is based on envy and snobbery and not really anything i've done, I feel as though I am to blame.
She has SIL totally on her side (despite SIL having no real knowledge of the facts.) She's sided with her mum because she's her mum, she told me during a rare conversation, (neither of them have even met our youngest child) and has even managed to win over her divorced husband, who she barely speaks to!
How do I stop feeling this way? How can I become firm in my convictions, rather than ashamed and apologetic about the situation? How does this woman always seem to end up on top, no matter what she does? She doesn't seem to care that she doesn't see the people she loves (if she's really capable of love?). Because she's so utterly convinced I'm to blame, she feels she has the moral highground. I feel like i'm lost in a madwoman's dream, or something.