Fed up wife wages war against MIL; says, 'you will never EVER see this child.' UPDATED
This one is a true doozy.
Grab a drink, buckle up and prepare to be incredibly upset.
One woman shares the intimate details of why she will never, ever agree to let her mother-in-law be at all a part of her's or her newborn son's life.
"My MIL dotes on my son but wants to act like I don’t exist"
I seriously need some advice on how to approach this situation. Long story short (probably not), my husband and I got married quick and had a baby not long after. I have absolutely no regrets! I love my husband and adore our baby, I have such a wonderful life with them. The problem is my MIL.
She 100% has bipolar or borderline or something, but won't seek treatment. Everyone in the family knows something is wrong, but they tiptoe around the issue because she's a ticking time bomb 90% of the time.
She disapproved of me from the start, and I don't know why. I like to think I'm nice, people have told me I'm funny, my husband has always adored me, and I did my best to be polite.
My husband says she's never liked any of his girlfriends, it's some complex she has about her precious little boy, no one is ever good enough for him. But he said he didn't care what she thinks because he knows I'm perfect for him (so sweet).
She surprised us by showing up to our elopement. We both invited our parents and my sister last minute and everyone except my MIL was thrilled. She was quiet and scowled the whole time. I didn't let it get me down though and I had the most wonderful day!
She's a NICU nurse and travels for work as we live in a rural area, so she (thankfully) wasn't around a lot. Whenever she would visit, I would try and extend the olive branch and see if she'd like to hang out and maybe try and connect.
I grew up with my grandmother (my mom's MIL) living with us and her and my mom had such a wonderful relationship, I thought that if I got to know my MIL, maybe we could have that.
Nope. Half the time it was an excuse about being tired and the other half the time she wouldn't even respond. She actually got in the habit of not telling us when she was in town.
I brushed it off, I can't force her to be my friend. I know it makes my husband sad that we aren't close, but I can't help that the woman doesn't want me around. I mean, in the 2 years my husband and I have been together, I've seen my MIL 5 times.
The big issues started when I got pregnant. My husband and I had been trying and we were over the moon at the news! We were both so excited and ready to be parents.
My parents were overjoyed at the news and have been so supportive and loving the whole way. When we told my MIL, she was AWFUL! We had prefaced seeing them with the fact that we had news we wanted to share with them.
She postponed us coming over twice and when we actually arrived, she was still in her pajamas with unbrushed hair ( a minor detail that just ticks me off in hindsight).
When we shared the news, she said, 'I was dreading that this is what you'd say.' And then proceeded to go on a rant about how we're too young (we're in our 20's and both have good, stable jobs) and we won't enjoy it and won't make it as parents. I was mortified.
She looked at me and flat out told me she wished I wasn't pregnant. My husband and I quickly made an excuse to leave. We were both crushed, but we were determined to not let it get to us and focus on our new, growing family.
My FIL (who I won't talk about a lot, but is a total doormat) texted my husband some half assed apology saying his (my husband's) mom needed time.
After about a month, she sends me a long winded text that was less of an apology and more of an excuse. She brushed over her cruel words and said she was simply blindsided by the news and now is SO excited to be a grandmother. I didn't respond.
The next interaction came on the 4th of July (we told them I was pregnant in April). I was several months along and was SO hungry all of the time, but the smell of cooking meat would make me so sick, it was awful!
Also, I have celiac disease so I'm used to bringing my own alternatives to people's houses to accommodate my food restriction. My in-laws, SIL (who lives in Arizona, many hours away from where we live), and a couple of SILs friends were in town for the 4th.
My parents invited us to their house for the 4th and we happily accepted. In laws never reached out to us about plans. My husband texted them the day before to see what their plans were and FIL said a BBQ and they wanted us to come. My husband asked what food would be served.
With my dietary restriction, the only thing I could eat would be a plain hamburger patty, but I was worried it would make me sick with the pregnancy. My husband (I didn't ask him to do this, he was just in protective-of-my-pregnant-wife mode) asked if there was anything I could eat.
MIL responds by saying she didn't really think about me and was more concerned with catering to my SILs friends. My husband asked if we should bring some food for me and they said no, that the BBQ was supposed to be a special thing and they had some chips I could snack on.
Keep in mind, I'm 4 months pregnant at this point and my choice was a whole meal that my parents made that I could eat, or chips.
I texted my MIL and politely declined the invitation and told her that in the future if she wanted me to attend events centered around food, to please either provide something I could eat or give me some notice so I could get some food together for myself. She LOST it.
She didn't respond to my message (which my husband agreed was appropriate and polite) but texted my husband non stop about how I was so cruel and cold to her and how I ruined her holiday. I texted her saying that if she's upset with me, she can talk to me about it, not my husband.
Furthermore, I told her that she has established the precedent that we aren't friends and I don't want to be her friend, but I want her to be nice to me. I went so far as to say that if she wants to have a relationship with my kid, she needs to behave.
Is this blunt? Yes. But I didn't curse or say anything derogatory, I said what she needed to hear because no one else in the family will check her behavior.
She never responded to my message and I don't recall her texting me to this day. She ended up making a groupchat with me and my husband months later, but she'd never talk to me, just my husband (she'd specifically address him in the messages).
I didn't speak to her for many months. She never checked on me during my pregnancy, didn't even ask how I was doing. She'd feign interest and text my husband about how I was doing though, which I found very performative.
If she genuinely cared about how I was doing, she could have texted me ONCE in the whole 9 months of my pregnancy.
My baby was born big and healthy in December! He's the light and joy of my life. By this time, my MIL and FIL had moved down to Arizona because the warmer weather agrees with my MIL more. And the distance? It agrees with me.
They did come to visit after my son was born and I endured an awful visit. My MIL wanted to cuddle and love on my baby and give me endless unsolicited advice, but I had promised my husband I would play nice. I was polite, nothing more.
I can't get the image of her telling me she didn't want me pregnant out of my head. It was the worst thing to hear as a new mother. And now she wants to cuddle on my baby. Speaking of unsolicited, she now sends packages of sh*t to my door that I don't want.
She sent a bassinet that was too big for our small bedroom. She sent a noise machine that didn't work out of the box. She sent a huge wipe warmer that didn't fit on my changing table. She sent clothes that were too small for my son (he was 11lbs when he was born and he's grown fast). But my MIL wouldn't know that I don't need any of these things because she won't talk to me.
And she sends all the packages anonymously to my door (I know it's her, my husband texts her about it) with no return slip. I've either donated everything or gifted it to a pregnant friend of mine.
Lately, my MIL has taken to facetiming my husband to see my son. If I'm in the room, she won't talk to me. She won't say hi. She won't ask how I'm doing, even though I'm only 4 months post partum after an insanely traumatic birth where we could have lost both my son and I (we're blessed that he's okay, but 11lbs is a big baby to push out!).
She acts like I don't exist. It drives me nuts. And she knows I'm in the room when she facetimes because she can see I'm the one holding my son!!
She says she wants to visit soon, but I don't want her to see my son. I told her that if she didn't want to be amicable with me, she wouldn't get to see my son. I don't want to be close with her, but some common decency would be nice.
If I'm around when she's calling, I just try to be polite and say hi. And then tell her to please STOP sending all this sh*t to my door!
I've got enough on my plate working full time with a special needs 4 month old (he's healthy, like I said, but is partially blind and requires specialist visits and a bit of extra care), having to deal with giant shipments showing up to my door with no notice is an extra task I DON'T need.
You want to know what the cherry on top is? I had told her at one point when my husband and I were dating about my grandmother who had recently passed. She was the one that lived with us, she practically raised me.
She passed right before I met my husband and I feel like I'm still grieving her loss. I called her my gram and grammy. And what name did my MIL choose? Gram. I feel my heart break a little bit every time I hear her say it because even though it's been two years, I'm still grappling with the loss of my grandmother.
She had dementia before she passed and it was hard on all of us. I'm still trying to cope with watching my beloved gram literally lose her mind slowly over the course of several years. And my MIL knows this and chose that name.
I think I'm mainly looking for some advice on how to approach this situation. She's not the WORST MIL ever, but she drives me up a wall. I just want some common decency and respect, I deserve that much if she's gonna play grandmother to my kid.
What would you do? What should I do? I constantly feel moments away from losing it when I'm around her but don't want to start a fight for my husband's sake.
The OP returned 16 hours after the original post with an update.
I completely forgot about something!! We live in a small town so it’s not unheard of to run into literally everyone you know in public. When my in laws were still living in town, I would see them every so often with my husband.
MIL was always so sweet when DH was around. But one time, I saw her at the grocery store by myself. I smiled and waved and started turning my cart to go say hello and she glared at me and stormed away!! I couldn’t believe it!!
My husband and I were already married at this point and this was after masking restrictions were lifted so she knew it was me.
Three weeks later, the OP finally returned with an update for frustrated readers:
Hello all! I want to thank everyone for their love on my last post! It helped ease my mind a bit that I'm not totally crazy and my MIL's behavior isn't okay. On to the update:
After my post, I thought on everything y'all said and talked to my husband. Family is very important to him and he definitely had a bit of pushback on the idea of our son not being allowed to see his family.
We got into a bit of a back and forth about it and I finally told him I was fed up with him not defending me in the face of obvious disrespect. After a long while, I finally think I got through to him and he agreed to speak to his parents.
I'm on the fence whether I should be a part of the conversation. Here's my thinking-- If I'm not there, then my MIL has the opportunity to twist my words and worm her way back into my husband's head.
When we first got married, my husband often sided with his parents, saying that I 'didn't do enough to form a relationship with them' and 'just need to forgive MIL and let it all go'. It was awful and I hope it doesn't start up again because it was hard feeling like my husband wasn't on my side.
If I am in on the conversation, I worry I'll totally lose it on my MIL and nothing productive will happen. Like I mentioned in my last post, I've never spoken a cross word to this woman, even when she told me she wished my son didn't exist.
I've bit my tongue and played nice for years now and I'm so sick of it. Apparently, she's been putting on the waterworks for my FIL and I worry she'll cause a scene to try and get everyone on her side and I just won't stand for that. I know I can be civil, but it would be the ULTIMATE test of my patience.
In better news though, the facetime calls have ceased and my husband is no longer sending pictures and updates of our son to her. He does send them to his sister, the SIL mentioned in the last post, and I don't mind that.
She's a total sweetheart and I really adore her. I don't know if she shows anything to MIL. I don't even know how much she sees MIL, honestly.
They had a terrible relationship growing up with SIL being the scapegoat for MILs abuse and my husband being the golden child. She's also said that MIL and FIL fight so often now that they're almost impossible to be around for any length of time, which also doesn't fly with me.
I grew up with a younger sibling that suffered from some severe emotional delays, leading to hours of screaming, crying, and violence every day. I'm sure MIL and FILs fighting isn't so extreme, but it's important to me that my son not be exposed to loud, aggressive behavior when possible.
In slightly worse news again, my husband is a bit upset again about our son not being allowed to see MIL until we (or just DH) talks to her. He started throwing things around about grandparents rights, which he doesn't understand. Grandparent's rights are typically only evoked in custody battles, which DH and I don't have as we're married.
Also, they don't apply to children under the age of two (our son is 6 months old) and require an established relationship (MIL has seen my son once when he was a newborn). Even IF (strong if) any of them try and bring me to court over this, they will lose.
MIL has a history of abuse and mistreating me (relationship with the parents is considered in grandparent's rights cases) aside from the fact that my son is an infant who doesn't know this woman and wouldn't care either way if he didn't see her (for now at least, the only thing he cares about is milk and chewing on things while he's teething).
We got into a bit of an argument last night where he said he had decided that he wouldn't be keeping his son from his parents. I stood firm on what I was comfortable with: MIL is not allowed to see my son until DH talks to her and she's only allowed to have supervised visits after the fact.
I spoke with my husband over text this morning (he works 5-2 and I work 8-5) and let him know that I hope he will stick with our original plan of talking to his mom. I also reminded him that we need to be a team on this, like in all things. I also reminded him that we're in this situation because of her and her behavior, not because of anything I did.
Another issue is that my husband wants his parents to babysit since MIL is coming to visit some time in July, and I'm just not comfortable with it.
My MIL has a sorted history of not listening to me. I just don't trust leaving my son with her because I have no way of knowing if she will respect what I ask of her to do for him.
Furthermore, my son has special needs and is teething (poor thing is just beside himself most days right now). I've only ever seen MIL a few times in person. I wouldn't leave my son with an unstable woman that I'd only ever met a handful of times that disrespects me.
I guess I'm just looking for a bit of reassurance that I'm doing the right thing. I hate 'rocking the boat', so to speak, and I just want to move past all this. I hate conflict. I just want to go ahead and figure out if she's in or out of our lives and be done with it.
Here were the top rated comments after this lengthy series of updates:
You have a husband problem that needs to be fixed before anything else. Honestly it seems like he doesn't respect you.
I wouldn’t be pushing husband to have a talk with his mother until he is completely out of the FOG (fear obligation guilt). This talk will go nowhere because he’s been conditioned to accept her behavior as normal.
I can see this backfiring onto you. I’d insist that he gets therapy or, at the very least, does some research on the fog, emotionally immature parents, boundaries and consequences.
You are totally doing the right thing. If you don’t do something, you would have to spend the rest of your marriage miserable because MIL mistreats you. Please don’t let people talk you into thinking that setting boundaries, expecting a caregiver to follow the rules of the parent, and asking for some basic kindness and respect are unreasonable expectations.
I just saw your last post, but OP your Hubby is off his damn rocker.
'I want my argumentative, alcoholic, and abusive parents who don't respect anything my wife or I say to them to babysit a child who can't defend themselves or speak! Because Faaaaamily.' Is the gist of what your husband said regarding your In-Laws babysitting.
He needs to wake up, yesterday. I feel insane just reading those posts because even if he still wants to baby to have contact with his parents supervised visits are fine. There is literally no need for ANYONE other than the Parents to be alone with a young child.
Does your husband want you to be abused? Or your baby? Cuz him trying to strong arm a relationship with these people is careless at best and suspect at worse.
Allowing a relationship with these people who have obviously shown that they are not emotionally regulated enough to properly raise children (look at your hubby's reaction to healthy boundaries you were trying to set) and your Husband is just fine with that.
I will give him some slack and just say while WE can all see the abusive behavior for what it is, your husband was raised to believe this is normal. So I can see why he's pushing back a bit.
If he doesn't stick to ya'll's original plan though.. its a big red flag that he's more worried about Mumsy's Fee Fees than protecting you and a literal helpless infant.
Two hours after the update the OP returned:
Thank you for all the replies to far, they’re fanning the flames of my righteous fury! Though, I will remain civil. Below is a text I sent my husband, I had too much on my mind to wait until after work. I will update in the comments again when he replies. Our sons name has been replaced with “baby”.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about the situation with your mom. I keep thinking about how I don’t want to cause problems, but I realized that I haven’t done anything wrong. I haven’t done anything to her. I’ve never been anything but nice to her.
The bottom line is that we had an agreement. Your mother is not allowed to act however she wants to me. She disrespected me and treated me like an incubator for “her grandchild”, whom she has NO relationship with. And she will not have a relationship with him until she begins to behave differently.
Your parents will not be babysitting baby yet. When he was born, you didn’t feel comfortable with my parents babysitting until we had seen them around baby for a while, the same will stand true for your parents.
We can consider letting them keep baby after they have a while to get to know him and we see how they interact with him. He’s more aware than ever now and, especially with his teething, it’s not a good idea to leave him in a strange environment with strange people that he doesn’t know.
Baby isn’t allowed to be with anyone we’re not both on board with. If I came to you and said “hey I’m going to leave baby with an unstable woman you’ve only met a few times and there’s nothing you can say or do about it”, you would flip sh*t, understandably so. You can’t do that to me. We are supposed to be a united front on our decisions with baby.
It’s completely unfair for you to flip flop on me like this. One minute you’re the supportive husband who has sympathy for my position and wants to put our family first and the next minute I’m a witch who is “incapable of forgiveness” and the whole situation is my fault.
You need to pick a side. It’s either me and baby or your mother. I’m tired of waiting for you to defend me. I’m your wife and he is your son.
At the end of the day, YOUR MOTHER is the problem, not me. SHE caused all this. Her behavior. Her actions. She’s an adult and she made her choices. Now she has to live with the consequences. I’ve been patient, I’ve been polite, I’ve been flexible.
I allowed her to see him when he was born and that didn’t change anything. She needs to figure herself out before she’s allowed to see our son. “
Again, thank you everyone! It feels good to feel less alone on this issue.
My husbands response can be summed up as this:
• He thinks the relationship between me and her can be repaired. He didn’t say anything about her responsibility in “repairing” the relationship.
• Apparently, he “never agreed” to keeping our son from her, which isn’t true. We had a long discussion about it and both agreed it would be best to have some distance between her and our son until we have a chance to speak with her.
• My solution of keeping our son from her forever (which isn’t true, I told him that if she turns her behavior around, she can see him if we’re around) is no solution to the problem. Again, glossing over everything.
• He agrees that his dad (never mentioned his mom) won’t babysit until we have some time to see him with our son and let our son get to know him (the separation anxiety is kicking in for our baby).
That’s all that was said. I’m hoping we will have a conversation tonight.
Here were the top rated comments after this final update from the OP:
This… doesn’t seem like it’s going to get any better thanks to the husband. Hope OP can either get through his thick skull or leave him.
I was hopeful the husband was one of the ones who stands up for his wife but as OP posted more updates, it’s clear he’s still very much entrenched with his mother.
Went through OP's profile and saw a post she made about how her husband used to sleep around to deal with bad home life and addiction and he ended uo giving her STD.
So not only he's a momma's boy, not only his mom has a history of substance abuse and abuse in general, but he does too?? That whole entire marriage is a dumpsterfire, i hope OP leaves and takes her son away from that ugly family.
I started nope-ing when I got to his text response. He is a golden child mommy's boy who engaged in self sabotage to cope with his home life growing up.
To the point he gave OP an STI and she STAYED?!?
throw the whole marriage away. OP is becoming bitter and resentful. Hubby is not a prize and if she stays, she risks a similar dynamic being formed in her son.
What an unsatisfactory ending. OP seems somewhat blind to hubby's uselessness in the marriage and standing up to MIL. Golden children seem to turn out to be useless partners constantly sticking to their parents even when wrong.