I’ve been in a physically, financially and emotionally abusive marriage for the past 15 years which I have plans to get out of this year. I have had quite a rough time and I have been working hard to get the money together to go with my young DC and it’s looking like it will be in September / October.
StbEXH is from a different culture to me and from an ultra conservative and religious background which has been a source of many of our problems. He has had many affairs, slept with prostitutes, physically assaulted me, tried to stop me from working and to control the money I earn. Every day is a battle. His family have witnessed and been complicit in his treatment of me over the years and see it as a normal part of marriage and my complaints about it as the problem and me not understanding the place of a woman.
In July his entire family (8 people - MIL, BIL, SIL and their adult DCs) are coming to stay with us for two weeks. None of them are nice to me but MIL has always been the most toxic. She expects me to be home with her all the time, help her with her personal care (washing her, helping her to the loo - stuff she has two staff members in her home country to do 24/7,) cook for her, clean for her and make the DC perform for her (give her compliments, sing, dance, sit on her lap when she requests, be out of sight/quiet when she wants them to be.)
I work full time, half from home, and she is completely intolerant of this. When she stays and I am out of the house in the office or when I am working from home she will complain every moment very loudly that I am a “terrible mother” for putting my selfish ambitions before care of my children. She will tell my DC that I don’t love them if I work.
If a nanny or a cleaner comes to the house to help me (paid for by me as STBexH will not pay for this) MIL will openly try to turn them away, or substitute them for her staff in her home country by requesting they help toilet her and dress her, and no visit is complete without her accusing one of them of stealing from her and insisting on having them fired, which STBExH dutifully does.
Every visit, MIL, BIL or SIL will always take me to one side and tell me how I need to be more caring and attentive to STBexH, how I need to work less, how they feel I am not being a good mother by working. They tell me I need to make the home environment nicer for him so he’ll want to spend more time with me. (!!!!) I am used to these lectures by now, I don’t believe them, but they still drain me and the judgement and ganging up on me makes me ill and depressed.
anyway; all the background is to ask your help for their visit. I am hoping this is the last time I ever have to spend time with them. I wondered if you had any ideas for things that I could arrange to keep them busy, ways I could distract and avoid them, things that will pass whole days that will look like I am dutifully “looking after” them during their visit without me having to speak to them much, be with them, or spend much time with them. I don’t mind throwing money at the problem.
In the past to make my life easier I have invited friends around to sit with me while the family is there to not make me outnumbered but the friend often ends up getting targeted and ostracised / abused too. MIL has form for openly accusing my female friends of “making eyes” at STBExH or BIL and then when I refuse to throw my friend out or I fight back, she will accuse me of cheating on STBexH because I “obviously don’t care” about her made up accusations about my friend. Many of my friends will willingly be the sacrificial lamb for a day or two but they cannot tolerate the personal attacks for more than 24 hours.
we are in London. MIL is virtually immobile and needs a wheel chair / car to get most places. She is most happy being cooked for, cleaned after, being wheeled around like the queen mother and publicly passing searing judgements on random strangers, friends and people she considers below her (which is about 99% of the population.) She, BIL and SIL need food, drink, titillation and entertainment, basically, but wrapped up in the guise of “quality family time.” If I am perceived to have arranged it, be constantly in giving mode, all the better. The best scenario would be then disappearing for a day or half day at a time watching a performance or a private tour or a picnic which I arrange and get catered but spend all my time with my DC. And stuff I can distract MIL with on the days that I am working.
Any ideas?