Not everyone will get along with their mother-in-law. These people share the reason why they lost all respect for their mother-in-law. Content has been edited for clarity purposes.
“So Who Did My MIL Attack?”
“My MIL is just plain nuts and she cycles through the family as to who she will attack next.
She commented on a page I had submitted a photo to with a back story, attacking me. She said some very personal and insulting things. I deleted her comment and I haven’t spoken to her since.
My husband only calls her on holidays. Her youngest son, who can do no wrong according to her, is nuttier. He went out west to live with the middle son’s family because he was getting into trouble here. There, he stole from them. My BIL almost lost his house because of all the kinds of drama his younger brother caused. Eventually, they pressed charges on him. They had to recover their money. So who did my MIL attack?
The middle son and his family. She called his wife a ‘sleazy woman’ and called the kids terrible names too.
She’s a toxic woman and it never ends with her. I honestly think when she finally dies, she’ll haunt each of us with the same cycle.”
The Date Set Up
“Before my husband and I got married, we had been together for about three years and had made the move to live closer to his parents. We had arranged to stay with them for a few months until we found our own place to live. Something they offered and seemed to have no issue with, maybe even be excited about.
To give some background, we moved for my husband’s work. So I was on the job hunt myself to find something in the area, so I was at the house all the time until about two months in when I started my new job. I never had a negative relationship with my in-laws prior. Staying at their home, I tried to cook meals and offered it to everyone since they didn’t cook. I also made sure to clean up, walk their dog, and be respectful of space.
My mother-in-law (MIL) for I still don’t know what reason decided she wanted me out of the picture. Maybe my lack of employment at the time? Or maybe because she only had one son and he was the baby?
For whatever reason, she began inviting one of her female employees over to the house every day to work from her home for about a week. It was very odd as no other employees ever came to or worked from the house. My MIL told me she wanted her son to date this girl if it wasn’t for me. Each day this girl came over, my MIL tried to convince my husband to come home on his lunch break. Once during the week, he did.
After they met for the first time, my MIL afterward would say things to him like, ‘so what did you think of Jane? Wasn’t she so nice?’
My husband is oblivious to things like this. But it was so rude. I told him what his mom had said to me and he didn’t believe his mom would ever do something like that.
In addition to trying to set him up with not one, but two girls, she made a point to insult everything about me. She insulted the state I am from on multiple occasions and that she would never go there. She insulted my food, and what a waste of time it was to cook. Also insulted the fact that I liked to travel and explore because it was a ‘waste of money’. And the list went on.
After three months of this nonsense, my husband recognized his mother’s behavior and believed all that I had told him. Quickly from there, we moved away and no longer lived near my in-laws.
It took about a year for things to calm down with her. I never once confronted her about her rudeness, and so I still have no idea what her problem was with me. She seems to like me now, though. Of all of her children, I am the only one to buy her birthday and Christmas gifts. I call her on the phone to ask how she is doing, etc.”
Doctor’s Note
“After marriage, my in-laws would visit us every year and spend seven to 10 days with us. At that point in time, my husband was working with a bank and I was associated with a nonprofit hospice.
In our third year of marriage, my in-laws came to visit us. By then, we had started talking about planning a family and I was consulting a gynecologist. A few weeks before their arrival, we found out my husband was highly diabetic with sugar levels as high as 500. The doctor categorically mentioned forget about any children and the first priority should be controlling his sugar levels.
I came back from the office and my mother-in-law out of the blue blurted out that since I was too modern, that was why I didn’t want to have any children. I did inform my mother-in-law about what the doctor said but she refused to budge saying, ‘Diabetes doesn’t interfere with pregnancy.’
I gave up and never bothered about her opinion.
Her statement didn’t hurt much because my job was very demanding and I would witness people succumbing to cancer on a daily basis. That job taught me to be grateful to be alive and healthy.
After this episode, I maintained my distance from my in-laws. There were other incidents that made me lose respect for them completely. It’s been three years since my last conversation.”
“That Child Is Not My Grandchild”
“I have been married for 36 years, and she started with her antics before we were even engaged. I can write a book, but looking back, love is blind. I should have never married my husband. I should never have gotten involved with him or his family, but then I would not have four wonderful children, and a loving husband either. You see, we have a bond that cannot be broken by the mere interferences of his meddling mother.
The first incident happened on the day we wanted to inform his parents that we intended to get engaged. At the time this discussion happened, it was the morning before our announcement, and she was unaware of the facts.
She said, ‘You know, my son is 23, he is nowhere near settling down to get married. In fact, he has another girlfriend and two illegitimate children.’
Ironically, my husband and I had actually discussed the girlfriend, as well as the so-called illegitimate children to which he was quite happy to have DNA testing done to prove he had not fathered the children. In fact, he never hooked up with his ex-girlfriend.
The second noteworthy incident was when we had set a wedding date. The wedding was going to be a small affair and only direct family were invited since I was paying for it. My parents could not afford to and my salary at the time could not afford anything lavish. We had not even invited friends, literally only our parents, siblings with their partners and children, and grandparents. As well as two of my cousins who were ‘maid of honor’ and ‘best man’. Then we invited three old family friends as one had gifted the wedding cake, another had gifted the floral arrangements, and the third had gifted the photographs and was the photographer. We also invited my aunt who did the catering. From there, the guest list was secured.
The day before the wedding my mother-in-law announced, ‘I refuse to attend the wedding if my friend and her husband do not get to attend with us. And they must sit with us at the table of honor.’
This was an absolute slap in the face. It was the 100th change to the guest list which I had to clear with my aunt to make sure there would be enough catering, etc. I was not at all impressed but we made hasty arrangements to rearrange the table settings. However, we did not allow them at the table of honor, simply because it was limited to the bridal party. We did rearrange the tables though into a U-shape to get the additional couple sitting at a right angle to my parents-in-law.
The third noteworthy incident was shortly after the birth of our first child. He was just a few weeks old at the time when my mother-in-law announced to everyone in the family, and everyone she knew, ‘That child is not my grandchild. It’s the child of someone she is having an affair with.’
She went on to say, ‘You’ve been cheating since before your wedding. You have not been faithful for a single day.’
This was repeated at the birth of each of our four children, and considered as proof of infidelity within the family. It was not helped by the fact that my husband had a vasectomy after our third child and several years later, I became pregnant again. At the insistence of my doctor and mother, my husband had tests done, which confirmed the procedure had reversed itself.
My mother-in-law does not recognize any of my children as her grandchildren. She does not give them gifts on their birthdays, or Christmas, and will not even contact them with a birthday wish on their birthday. She spends lavishly on the children of her daughters though. I have never had an affair since the day I met my husband, and I am willing to have DNA tests done to prove his paternity.
The fourth incident was when my second son was about 18 months old at the time. We had just relocated to another city because my husband had been transferred by his employer. I was currently unemployed, but job hunting. At the time, it took six to nine months to find employment in our country. I had a nanny who would come in twice a week, so I could arrange interviews and job hunt on these two days. This was before cellphones, and we did not have a landline so I had to use a public phone.
One Saturday morning, my MIL walked in unexpectedly. Almost immediately, she started throwing her weight around in the house, physically pushing me around about how useless I was as a wife and mother and did not deserve the title, and accusing me of having affairs.
When I asked her to remove herself from my home before I called the police, she had the nerve to say, ‘This is not your home, this is my son’s home. He pays the rent, he pays the bills, he puts food on the table, and you make no contribution. So until my son asks me to vacate the property, you can go get lost.’
The next thing I remember through a haze of tears was me holding my husband’s sidearm in my hands, fully loaded and safety off, ready to shoot someone.
I said, ‘If you don’t get out of my house, the mortuary will be collecting your body.’
I would have happily shot her at that point, but she left.
The incident that had me completely riled up was when she was evicted from her second old age facility for bad behavior. Now she couldn’t get placement anywhere else. My husband’s siblings have all broken all ties with her as she is too disruptive in their lives. It was either she move in with us, or she live on the streets.
She is currently living with us and being as disruptive as ever. She does not greet me or talk to me, and when she does talk about me, she refers to me as ‘the thing’.”
“Humiliating Tantrum”
“My MIL and FIL’s three sons gave them a 50th wedding anniversary party. The event was big and lavish, as it was held in the ballroom of a Manhattan hotel. Each son and his wife helped with the planning and contributed a few thousand dollars for the costs.
When the party was well underway, my MIL approached me and shrieked, in front of a group of people, ‘WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME?’
All I could do was stare at her, stunned because I had no idea what she was saying.
Her next words were, ‘WHY DID I HAVE TO FIND OUT THIS WAY?’ as she looked at me hatefully.
She proceeded, still with an audience, to berate me about how my husband and I weren’t prepared to go to China, how our home wasn’t right for a child, and how we were wrong to adopt.
My MIL had heard a rumor about how my husband and I were about to go to China and adopt a little girl. This bit of gossip was completely untrue; we had never discussed or considered adoption in any manner.
So, instead of dismissing an outrageous rumor, or perhaps asking my husband or me about it, my MIL attacked me with a humiliating tantrum as a large number of people witnessed, at her anniversary party that I’d helped plan and finance. I tried to get her to stop ranting, but she wouldn’t do so. She kept raging at me until I walked away.
That was 2006. During all these years, my MIL has never apologized for her behavior or even admitted how wrong and inappropriate she’d been.
This wasn’t the first time she’d treated me in such rude and insane ways. She wonders why I don’t like her and want nothing to do with her.”
Don’t Tell Me How To Discipline My Child
“My mother-in-law told me how I was disciplining my child incorrectly. I quickly informed her it was not her place to tell me that and just because she did not like my approach, did not make it wrong. She raised her child and I would raise mine.
She then tried to make a financial threat as she did buy lots of clothes and other things for our child.
I said, ‘Go ahead, our child will do fine with what we can provide by ourselves.’
She certainly wasn’t going to hurt me by doing that. I then explained how I was open to her input but she could ask politely if I would like to know her approach. Instead of demanding how I was wrong and telling me as if I was her child to follow what she said.
We’ve gotten along fine since then. On top of that, my wife backed me up like she should as I would for her.”
Did She Really Get Mad Over This Dance?!
“My husband had told me his mother was prone to anger surges, or some such euphemism. I’d never seen it until this one incident.
My husband grew up mostly in Los Angeles but moved to the east coast in his early 20s. So when this incident happened, my mother-in-law lived in California, and we were in North Carolina.
Our then 10-year-old daughter had flown out to California to visit her grandma. The two of them did some traveling and ended up visiting family in Texas. During that visit, my MIL broke her arm. Another daughter-in-law, who’s an RN took great care of her. So, we all convened in San Diego to attend a family wedding, and our daughter was a bridesmaid. Our daughter had been with her grandma for a week or two at that time.
Well, a night or two before the wedding, we were all hanging out at the motel where the bride and groom had arranged for us to stay. It was reasonably nice and had an open courtyard and restaurant. My husband and I were still on eastern time, and around, I guess, 9:00 pm (midnight eastern time), nobody had made any plans for dinner. So, we just sat down at the restaurant, which blended into the courtyard, and ordered something to eat.
As I recall, we had just ordered when my MIL came over to our booth. She started kitchen-sinking my husband, and me by association. I can’t even remember much of what she said, other than it was anger-laden. In the middle of that, I asked her if she’d like to order something to eat and join us. She proceeded to tell us how rude we were to eat by ourselves, though she did thank me for asking her to join us, which she declined to do.
Anyway, this was a serious anger outburst, and some of the rest of the extended family witnessed it. Again, I can’t remember exactly what she said, but it was laden with criticism and outright rage.
Anyway, the wedding was lovely. My husband’s dad, my MIL’s ex, asked me to dance, and we danced for a number of songs. I had a great time, but not sure that sat so well with my MIL.
The next morning, we slept in. When we eventually got up, she was gone. She left a critical note for us about the sloths we were for sleeping in so late, even though we probably didn’t get to bed until two or three a.m. We, along with our daughter, caught our flight home, back to the east coast.
Nobody ever said anything about my MIL’s behavior toward us, at least not as far as I know. I never understood it, and she has since passed away. And yes, I think she had been drinking a little, but I don’t think enough to totally explain how angry she was. I’m sure my husband and I had made at least some contribution to whatever she was so upset about because that’s how those things usually work. But to this day, I still don’t know what that was or what caused her to be that angry. It could be that she never got over her son moving across the country like that, making it hard for her to visit her grandchildren often. I’m still not sure, though.”
Death
“My husband, our one-year-old, and I moved from the middle of nowhere to the east coast after his ex-wife moved their son and her daughter to Texas. We also ceased contact with his mother and his sister just two months prior to our cross-country move.
Three years after we moved, we found out his ex went through a stop sign and they got hit. The boy died at the hospital, his half-sister had a very minimal injury, and his ex was unharmed. My husband’s mother had the audacity to tell him it was ultimately his fault the boy died because we were not in the same city as the boy and his half-sister. As if us being stuck in the same vicinity would have made his mom stop at the stop sign.
Kim only had the courage to say this via social media since she has no balls outside of a keyboard. She made a big show of ‘Mamaw’ losing her grandson, but taking her anger and pain on her own son. Not once did she tell her son she was sorry for his loss. It’s always been about ‘Narcissistic Kimberly’ and ‘what Kim needs, what Kim wants.’
My husband has no desire to ever talk to his mother again. Obviously, there are many other factors in my husband’s demand to never bring her back into our lives, which is fine by me.
Many other lines were crossed by her, but this was the most despicable event. There are different levels of disgust and she definitely has hit every level in her life.”
Stolen Checkbook
“My mother-in-law was elderly. I always tried to be nice even though I knew she disliked me.
One time, I stopped by to visit her and just say hi. She lived close by, so why not. As she poured me coffee, I thought it was a nice visit and I was making some progress.
About half an hour after I left, she called and said, ‘Nancy, after you left, I noticed my checkbook is missing. I’m sure it was right there on the table where you were sitting. Did you see it?’
I said, ‘No.’
She said, ‘Well my checkbook is missing now. You know Nancy, the bank will notice if somebody tries to forge my signature.’
I told her I hoped she’d find it and told her I was busy making dinner. I was beyond hurt and upset. I have never stolen anything in my life.
My husband called her after I filled him in and she said, ‘Oh I found it! Tell her not to worry about it.’
No apology, nothing.”
The Baby’s Name
“I had just come home from the hospital after giving birth. My son and I were not well after the delivery, so we were in the hospital for two weeks after his birth. My in-laws came over and were very angry at me that I would not name my child after my father-in-law.
Naming my child after my father-in-law was never an option as they offered me money to abort my baby.
My mother-in-law cornered me while I was holding my newborn baby in my arms and she started hitting me. After I got away from her, I called my parents and they came over to get my in-laws out of my house.
Then when I decided to divorce their son three years after I married him, they were mad at me for leaving him and divorcing him. My mother-in-law would call me and harass me day and night. She had her adult sons follow me around and threaten to beat me up.
This family was a few bricks short of a load.”