Sorry this is quite long.
My MIL lives abroad and has come to visit. I have always felt that she is quite overbearing but am feeling now quite uncomfortable about the relationship between my husband and his mother and am not sure if I am overthinking it/paranoid or if something is off. Perhaps I am in the wrong. I am unsure. My husband is one of two sons. My husbands older brother is 45 and lives with his mother and does not work. She makes his dinner/lunch, cleans his clothes etc. and takes great pride in being the best mother ever. He came to live with us for a period and had a girlfriend but the mother was constantly on the phone and offered him a job in their country so he left and went back to live with her (he left the job shortly after). I took the view that this is none of my business but it is very clear to me that they are totally enmeshed with each other. The father lives there also but he seems largely ignored. The problem is that I think that she and my husband are also enmeshed and that I just haven't seen it or accepted it but then I think that I am only thinking it because she is enmeshed with her other son and am thinking it is the same but it is not. I just don't know.
I would love the view of others and would be quite happy if people said it was perfectly normal and I am just being paranoid. For context, I come from a completely different family. My parents have their own lives and are not that involved with their childrens lives. They could be more involved so they are the other extreme. Some examples are as follows:
Since she has visited, she has not left my husbands side except to go to the toilet and go to bed. He was washing the car and she stood there the whole time watching him. Between hoovering and hosing it was too noisy to talk so she just stood there looking at him. every room he is in, she was in. I have kept myself very busy because when she speaks with me it is constant critism. My husband laughs at this and I think acts as if two woman are fighting over him. When I have visited, she won't allow us to go to dinner alone or anywhere alone. She must come at all times. this included when we were very young and just dating. She talks on a permanent basis about what an amazing mother she is, how much she did for her children, how she is a better cook than anyone else, how she does more for her children than anyone else. it seems to be all she talks about and my husband seems all his time with her talking about what an amazing mother she was/is. She can be very rude to me and my husband never corrects her. I caught my husband looking at softcore older women videos. He is not that interested in sex. I am just starting to think this is all connected. Everytime she visits she makes an issue of something that I do to create a pick me situation and my husband always picks his mother. My husband can be cold and unsupportive and seeing him dance around her makes me think that it is not necessarily his personality. I don't know. I know his brother could never have a relationship with a woman because his mother would never facilitate it, everyone knows this and it is big joke in his wider family. I am now beginning to think that we are not as different but the physical distance has meant is is not as obvious. Maybe I am too controlling/difficult and he just has a good relationship with his mother which I don't understand because my own mother is not that involved with her own children.