How to move on from MIL's bitch-rant with dignity and integrity

[MmeCC]

I need some advice on managing a difficult MIL/DIL relationship.

MIL launched an unexpected attack this morning about what an inadequate mother and wife I am. She refused to acknowledge that she only sees a small part of our family dynamics and couldn't possibly judge, but later on when DH set her straight on it she conceded that she doesn't actually know how we divide parenting (DH told her it's fairly split). However, she's too stubborn (and possibly narc?) to admit to me that she was wrong and/or apologise. It's not the first time she's been unbelievably rude to me, but it is the first time she's come right out and criticised the role I play in our family. She's been stocking up ammunition for quite some time and I feel utterly betrayed. I try so hard not to rise to her insidious, sneaky shit but in a way I feel vindicated because now that it's come out I know I was right all along about her sly digs (which DH didn't notice and thought I was imagining).

There's such a lot more I could add, and I don't want to drip feed, but I also think this will be long enough for an OP!

My question is about how to manage things going forward. I've wondered before if she's a narcissist - she tells everyone she's gorgeous, sometimes insists they call her "goddess", goes on ad nauseum about her birthday and counts how many cards she gets so that she can compare to my DC who was a birthday close to hers (and is 6!!)...

She's incredibly stubborn so although my DH has set her right on the crap I've received from her, I won't get an apology or any admission of wrongdoing. I have my pride and self esteem too though, and can't let someone treat me like that.

What do I do about her so that I can find a way that's liveable for me, allows me to have dignity and integrity, and allows DH and DCs to have a relationship with her?

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Why would you encourage your dc to have a relationship with that

MIL doesn't like you. Don't take it personally, you take her son's attention away from her and she probably hates you for that. Perhaps she does have a personality disorder...borderline springs to mind and the bad mother stuff she spouts is probably projecting as she may not feel like a good parent herself deep down. Your DH seems supportive of you, so why not let him and the kids have a relationship with her that excludes you. Sure she can come around the house when you are not in, and they can call at her home? I appreciate this may seem like giving-in to her, but it is harm-reduction for you. If you are not around to hear her nasty jibes then life will be sweeter for you. It doesn't sound like she will change, so may be this is a good compromise for your family. My mother has a borderline personality disorder. She hates my DH to the core, and won't allow him in her house. He loves being excluded though, as it gives him free time!

I would go no contact, why would you put up with that and expose your kids to it?

Sounds like you've triggered a nasty narcissistic rage. Not by doing anything wrong but due to her own issues.
Thankfully DH has backed you up. In some ways she has gifted you an opportunity to go NC, as she is clearly in the wrong here.
I would highly recommend you do. In my experience I could be a happier more positive parent without someone continually eroding my self esteem.
I can understand that you want your DC to have a relationship but I would recommend that DH supervises this as she is toxic and could do a lot of damage.

Apologies if this sounds glib but this is great news!

You never have to have anything to do with her again! 🎉

Tell your DH he is welcome to see his mother any time he wants. But you're not going to see her and not is she welcome in your home. It's up to you if you want your children to have a relationship with her.

You're doing a great job OP, enjoy your new peace!

You do not have to manage this at all going forward and you never have to see her again. She has indeed gifted you an opportunity to go no contact.

It is not your fault or your DHs that she is like this and you did not make her this way. Her own family of origin did that to her; what if anything do you know about her own childhood?.

You likely come from a nice emotionally healthy family so would ideally like the children to have a relationship with their grandmother. Those relationships work best though only if the grandparents themselves are emotionally healthy and your MIL is clearly not. She has certainly let rip at you as their mother big time and abuse like this is insidious in its onset. Toxic people never ever apologise nor accept any responsibility for their actions.

Your DH can continue a relationship with his mother if he wants but it does not mean that your children also have to see her particularly as their mother has been so disrespected. I would not want your children to see MIL either because your DH has not been able to see the dysfunctional behaviours from his mother till recently and thought you were imagining it. He has grown up with her and her conditioning and regards her behaviours as "normal". He could very much be in his own FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) re her as well. She trained him to serve her and he still wants her approval on some level.

(BTW you do not mention FIL; is he still around?).

She was not a good parent to your DH and she is not a good grandmother figure to your children. Do not let her emotionally poison your children, they will not realise that they are being manipulated by her. She could well go on about you in their hearing and your DH would not be able to defend you out of his own fear of her. This is why he is not the best person here to supervise any relationship between your children and his mother going forward.

Would you have tolerated any of this from a friend, no you would not have done. I put it to you that family are no different.

IMO you were wrong to explain your division of labor to her
Your DH should have calmly told her it is non of her business
If you really want contact that's what you should do to move forward. Your DH should tell her he will not tolerate comments about your family and how you both choose to manage your family is none of her business
They keep a pleasant but distant relationship and tell her nothing

Pride and self esteem are different things.

You KNOW you have nothing to prove, and who cares what she thinks?

Maintain your dignity by rising above it and refusing to engage.

Apart from anything Narcs love the drama of a battle, and feed off it.

Just collect a handful of 'deflect and ignore' comments to have at the ready. All delivered with a calm smile "0h well, we'll have to agree to disagree on that, never mind", "interesting opinion ". , "I'm the wrong audience for that conversation " etc, all followed by a very swift subject change. If she goes back to it "oh, sorry, I thought I made it clear I wasn't going to pursue that conversation".

I have mil issues too and have received great advice on here. One thing someone wrote which has stuck with me is that dc are precious (in my eyes more precious than me or dh). If I was considering nc with mil because of her toxic words and behaviour how could I let my precious dc have access to that without me to help protect them? Buy your dh the book toxic parents.

Also dc shouldn't think it is OK behaviour to do the things your mil does. Dc learn by watching adults. If you and dh don't have clear boundaries and consequences for mil there is the risk that dc will think it is OK to treat people that way.

Good luck

My paternal grandmother was a nasty old cow. She was vile to my lovely DM so she kept away from her. My DF, however, would drag us to see the unpleasant piece of work and I can remember the cold dread of a trip to gran's house even now.

My DGM wasn't a narc but she was bad enough. Please make sure she's not allowed to distress your children.

Thank you to those who have replied so far.

I feel really confused about what to do. If she was out and out horrible to everyone and all the time, it would be easier to see that NC is an option. But she can actually be a nice person, I thought she was lovely at first (just a bit full-on), then I gradually started to see other bits of her.

Unfortunately it's just me who's on the receiving end of this. She and her sister are extremely close and run a joint matriarchal family. Everyone has to fall in line with what they want - which is fine (or mildly annoying) if it's all nice and friendly but quickly turns pretty shit if an outsider like me challenges it.

Take for example a holiday a couple of months ago. We were there to see BIL (her other son) get married. His new wife has a 12yo son whom she had to leave in her home country to be raised by her own mum from a young age so that she could earn money abroad and send it back. So it's not exactly been an easy ride for her and her son. One night at dinner without BIL and SIL and her son, MIL and her sister start bitching about the 12yo boy, repeatedly saying that he's "weird". That poor kid had no-one there to defend him. I spoke up and said "I'm really not comfortable with this discussion, can we move on?" and MIL and her sister jointly rounded on me. DH and his uncle had to intervene and tell them to move on, I had given up and was concentrating on fighting back tears without them noticing because they'd been so rude to me and about the child.

MIL has a completely different take on what happened that night and blames me for making an issue out of it. I asked DH to set the record straight with her on that, which he did, and whilst she doesn't think she did anything wrong she did admit she wouldn't have been talking like that in front of BIL. She instead blames me and says "my sis was really taken aback by the way you were that night" etc etc. New SIL seems to adore MIL and even calls her 'mum' as a mark of respect but she has no idea that MIL bitches about her son behind her back I'm proud to have stuck up for him but it's another thing that's being used against me because I dared to speak out and I'm being painted as quite an awful person by her among her family.

The criticism of my parenting came about because I had made the mistake of confiding in her about something I wanted her to support DH and I with (it's a binge drinking problem that he's been trying hard to address and although she tried to minimise it in the past, he insisted a couple of years ago that there was an issue and she accepted that). She led me to believe she would support us (but in her own way), so I confided, then when I saw her face to face she pretty much said she was never going to speak to him about the impact that his drinking was having and instead was going to tell him how proud she was of him (fine to defend her son, even if it is shit for me that she enables his drinking) but then she went on to say "there's a lot I could say about you..." and started her rant about how I don't do enough and I undermine him. DH and I are in agreement that she's wrong about that, we don't even recognise the incidents she was giving as examples.

Sorry for the long post and if I sound all over the place, it's just - argh!

Being confused by this is not unusual at all; their behaviours are always confusing to the outsider and especially to people who have come from an emotionally healthy family.

Narcissists like your MIL and your sister rule their families with a velvet glove wrapped in an iron fist. They are "nice" but will readily turn on a sixpence if things are not going as they desire.The simplest everyday way that narcissists show their exaggerated sense of self-importance is by talking about family, work, life in general as if there is nobody else in the picture. Whatever they may be doing, in their own view, they are the star, and they give the impression that they are bearing heroic responsibility for their family or department or company, that they have to take care of everything because their spouses or co-workers are undependable, uncooperative, or otherwise unfit. They ignore or denigrate the abilities and contributions of others and complain that they receive no help at all; they may inspire your sympathy or admiration for their stoicism in the face of hardship or unstinting self-sacrifice for the good of (undeserving) others. But this everyday grandiosity is an aspect of narcissism that you may never catch on to unless you visit the narcissist's home or workplace and see for yourself that others are involved and are pulling their share of the load and, more often than not, are also pulling the narcissist's share as well.

Do not give MIL any more of your precious headspace and do keep your children well away from her from now on as well.

Would narcs normally include their direct family in the grandiosity? DH is her golden child and can do no wrong - she's all "poor Daddy he does so much" when he's doing normal parenting like taking the kids to the toilet or carrying the youngest when she gets tired, as her way of letting me know how wonderful her family is and how inadequate I am (I never hear "poor mummy" when I'm the one doing things).

Late FIL described it as "pulling their wagons in a circle" - i.e. MIL's family are very very tight knit and will group together against any outsider who doesn't slot in to their place in the weird hierarchy they have or who doesn't like doing things their family way.

Also - on the subject of my family history - it had its troubles (quite a lot of them at times!) and I used to think my family was the dysfunctional one and his was the normal one. However, on my side we act with honesty and integrity - we won't question each other with the aim of collecting things to use against them, we don't pretend we're doing or being something we're not, we don't store things up to rant, we'll have our disagreements and usually move on without grudges.

Someone said that generally the more closed a family is, the more unhealthy they are.

The real question here is, can your husband step back some way from her, if he's Golden Child? Not all the way, but some of it.

Her way of doing things is pretty awful, there sounds little genuine kindness or honesty. You aren't going to change this, plus you are quite deeply offended by her rants. (And she'll have been bitching a long time behind your back before bringing it out in the open. You can't trust that someone who bitches about other people won't do it about you!).

So I really think that the best thing you can do is step back, see her less and most of all don't feel betrayed by her again because don't trust her again. "Matriarchs" generally expect to be in control and win arguments. You don't have to play along with that but the consequence is that you have to step back a bit, certainly emotionally.

Thanks so much for the helpful advice and insight.

Ok so once our "break" is over I will need to be ready with some strategies and things to say that will help me to keep my distance and not inadvertently reveal anything that'll be used against me.

Does anyone have any "ready phrases" or strategies that I can keep in mind? I need to be ready to deal with not only the insidious remarks and/or meanness but also the "innocent" questioning which is really probing to try and glean some information about me in order to bitch about me or criticise.

Thanks everyone, this is really helpful, if you can offer more suggestions about keeping her at arms length I'm really grateful.

she tells everyone she's gorgeous, sometimes insists they call her "goddess"
Wow - just wow.
I'd have to cut her out.
Just me though. Not DH or the DC.
Let him visit with the kids etc...
I'd be keeping well away!

I'm in a very similar situation, OP, also on a 'break' at the moment. Our plan is to ignore PIL for a few weeks, politely decline any invitations etc. Then, when we feel ready to see them again, behave civilly but leave (taking children with us) at the slightest dig. Your DH will need to be on board with this approach. Our strategy has always been to 'punish' by withdrawing attention/contact with DC, and has worked very well for the last couple of years to the extent I'd fallen into a false sense of security before the most recent blast of bad behaviour. Moving forward, we will be much more sensitive to the slightest hint that things are going that way, more 'trigger happy' in our withdrawal strategy. I like TestTube's phrases above, particularly the one about being the wrong audience for whatever she wants to bitch about.

When probed for answers you can always do the counselling thing -

where you turn it back into a question about the person asking the question

or look thoughtful and go along the: 'Do you think so' - 'it is interesting that you think like that' ect.

I like testtubeteen's ideas too.

The most important thing is to keep the fire out of it. Seem unmoved and provide no drama at all. You will be an unrewarding target.

"Thanks everyone, this is really helpful, if you can offer more suggestions about keeping her at arms length I'm really grateful"

If you do want to keep her at arms length do not see her at all under any circumstances. Do not have any form of contact. Seeing you also gives her a form of narcissistic supply, it will not benefit you at all.

And yes narcissists would normally include direct family in their grandiosity. Your DH was the golden child; itself a role not without price either. Someone in his family of origin was the scapegoat as well and those roles too are interchangeable. Your DHs family of origin remains deeply unhealthy.

Do not subject your children to her either; your DH is simply not able enough to stand up for you in her presence and if she starts on your children (as she will) he will not necessarily always step in and defend yo against her because he is still her golden child. He is still very much an adult child of a narcissist, still wants her approval and still very much in his own fear, obligation and guilt state re her. She was not a good parent to your DH so she will not be a decent example of a grandmother to her grandchildren. She will likely repeat a similar sort of dynamic your DH was himself subjected to.

DH's family had a touch of this in them. I told his StepDM that she was nothing to me and if she continued acting up she could fuck the fuck off. Oddly after that she was fine with me and stopped thinking she could rule over me.

I also limited time DD spent with them as that kind of negativity is never good. Better no family than toxic family.

The dynamics and analysis that Atilla describes are very much my own experience with exH and his family.

NC, whilst being the only sensible solution can be very hard to establish, expecially where DC are concerned, since MIL/PIL will regard them as 'theirs'. Hard but not impossible - and certainly worth the battle to protect them from the dysfunction and toxicity. Be prepared for a dirty fight.

This is my situation in reverse. I'm the MIL and a DIL gradually started showing her discomfort with me despite me doing everything I could for her over the years, my son and grandsons [who are both lovely]. I always invited her to tell me if there was anything I was doing wrong or that she wished to change.

Then one day I saw her true feelings of resentment and criticism of our family and her MIL [me]...posted online for all to see. I was devastated, my son was very angry about it.

I don't engage. She would only twist everything round and always thinks she is right. I just want an apology, and she refuses to give one.
It's for the best that I do not see her.

She has always been narcissistic but I've understood her insecurities, however she is an unhappy person and lashes out at anyone who she thinks has a better deal in life....money/looks/achievement/skills. It's very sad.

So there are people you just can't help or reason with so to preserve dignity don't react, but disengage to a greater or lesser extent. Let them wonder but this personality type really doesn't care...about how you feel or about anyone apart from themselves.

yes, unreasonable people step into all sorts of roles don't they ... Im certain there are as many awful DILs as MILs, and just as many awful mothers and awful daughters. The DILs just don't post as often on Mumsnet!

I hope you're able to see your son and grandchildren, beachcomber. The DIL does hold more power in some ways in that they have the final say about the grandchildren ...

SeaEagleFeather yes I still see grandsons. One is old enough to see me on his own and we text too. My son comes over with the younger and I often pick him up from school for tea/evening. I often go to my sons place of work for a chat.
My son has always says that whatever happens I will not lose him or the children. Difficult for all but we agree it is the best solution, she is a difficult personality and never interested in our side the family whatsoever.
When they married she welcomed me into their family! Amazing.

it does sound very difficult :( Glad that at least you won't lose your son and grandchildren.