I am beginning to lose respect for DH because of what he lets MIL get away with. She has had a difficult life (extreme poverty, DV, lost youth) and it is used widely as an excuse in DH’s family for her incredibly rude and obnoxious behavior towards other people. She insults people to their faces – mostly women, because she’s a misogynist, but men get it as well. Because of her hard life she tends to think that she is entitled to luxury and special treatment, and DH and his siblings spend their time running around for her, buying her presents, plane tickets, holidays and going into debt paying for her extravagant life.
How does it affect me? She expects me to behave in the same way as DH: Cooking for her, cleaning for her, giving her the best of everything, telling her she’s beautiful, intelligent, well-loved. Nobody is allowed to tell a story at a family gathering unless she plays some starring role in it. She likes applause when she enters a room and toasts to her during meals. She likes to repeat stories of her youth where she was deemed “exceptionally beautiful” and things that were apparently said to her and fights that were apparently had over her. DH and her other children pretend they pander to her in a tongue-in-cheek way, but I can see that they all take it deadly seriously and that they all become like little minions when she is around. They are afraid of her.
DH excuses his and his siblings’ behavior around her by portraying her as a comical narcissist, as if everybody is in on the joke that she thinks very highly of herself, including her - but it really isn’t like that. There is no irony. She is a bona fide narcissist.
Our wedding day was about her. Our DC’s birthdays become about her. Christmas is about her Or she sits in a corner and sulks until enough people come up to her and ask if she is okay, at which point she will launch a scathing attack on the event, how it doesn’t cater to her at all, and her children including DH will spend the rest of the time with their tails between their legs, not enjoying themselves. Dh and his siblings are performing marionettes who will willingly make her the centre of anything and are constantly leaping around to measure the emotional barometer of the room she is in to avoid upsetting her.
She tries to teach her GC including our DC lines to recite like “I love you Grandma,” and “You are beautiful Grandma.” Sometimes they say it because she repeats it so much (so she likes these GC ) but the ones who won’t repeat it get the cold shoulder.
Anyway it’s all come to a head for me over something on facebook and I can’t look Dh in the eye anymore I am so angry:
There is a close friend of mine who doesn’t buy the applause and the toasting and the everything relating back to MIL, so MIL uniformly hates her. Today this friend looked after one of our DC and posted some pics of DC doing an activity on facebook with my permission. She tagged me in them, so the photos appeared on my timeline. MIL saw the pictures and wrote in a comment underneath how dare my friend have her DGC without her (MIL’s) permission and a series of other comments criticizing my friend and the activity she was doing with my DC. Criticisms completely unfounded and quite insulting.
Next thing I know DH has jumped on the comments tab too and has piled on with MIL against my friend., telling my friend that MIL is right, he agrees and she should be ashamed of herself. I was absolutely shocked
When I got home (an hour after this all happened on facebook) DH was waiting at the door with a guilty face on, ready to “manage” the situation. I was fuming. Dh went into full damage limitation, said he had texted MIL and told her not to post comments like that in the future, and proceeded to beg me to not post anything on facebook and not tell MIL off. He was like a desperate child.
I asked him why he posted in support of such a stupid comment from MIL and he said he wanted to “protect” her. I told him it was MIL attacking other people that was the problem. He said that he thought that MIL was provoking my friend by attacking her, and so he wanted to shut down any potential counterattack on MIL before there was one…
We were supposed to go out for dinner together tonight, the first night we haven’t had the DC for 9 months, but I have come home because I cannot sit across a table from him. I can’t even look him in the eye. He was sheepishly trying to get me to hug him and kiss him but I cannot even touch him for being such a fucking coward.
My life cannot be like this forever, but I don’t know what to do. (And yes I have spoken to my friend and apologized for MIL’s comments.) I am still considering commenting on the status but DH is begging me not to.