am i being oversensitive about mother in law

[mpi]

my mother in law seems to be negative towards my relationship with her son....before we married last year my husband was divorced for 13 years and during that time i think she came to rely upon him for going out for drinks, meals, etc (she has been divorced for 30 years and doesnt seem to have formed more than casual partnerships during this time) - totally understandable then that she might need time to adjust to the fact that her son is no longer single and has less free time to do such things with her. but she actually seems jealous, when we do go out with her, she likes to touch and stroke his leg to such an extent that we have to try to arrange the seating to avoid this happening. when we redecorated his flat ready to live together she got upset and said that we had excluded her and that she wanted to be involved and she didnt speak to us for a short while. when we tell her about holidays we have booked she tries to invite herself along. when there are the 3 of us, she talks to my husband and about matters which dont concern me.

I take the approach of not mentioning the situation and what i have noticed too much...but it is so noticeable it is hard for us both to ignore.
my husband doesnt want to spend too much time by himself with her because he thinks this will just perpetuate the problem...and as a result we are begning to avoid going out with her.
Has anybody else experienced this type of behaviour? will she change and become used to the new situation?

I doubt it, she is reliant upon him.

He is the one who needs to set the physical boundaries though, not you. With regard to things like decor, just don't bite.

However, the best thing you can do is makea friend of her, you see her alone without him. That makes you individuals and not a package deal.

The holiday would be a big no-no unless it was to visit family far far away!

Hmmm I had a similar problem with my ex boyfriend's mum (although we had been together since we were 16) she became desperate to reinforce her relationship with her son, not so much because of me but because her divorce from his father (who had an affair).

It depends if you like her as a person and want to improve things. If you do, you could try spending 121 time with her yourself and try to get your relationship back on track independent of her son. If you dont particularly like her then you could just keep your distance.

Be sure to be honest about it (mainly your partner that needs to do this as pp said) because if she asks and gets the response that everything's fine or an excuse like works hectic then she wont know that her behaviour has been putting you off & wont know that she needs to sort it out!

Good luck x

Has he tried setting specific limits - like, I can come over every Tuesday evening for tea; we can set up a weekend once/year to go away on a mother/son trip? (Or however much contact he wants and you two feel comfortable having.) Maybe the promise of regular get-togethers will reassure her? Maybe not, of course.