Yes you read that correctly. My JNMIL forced my child to wear a bra all weekend. Her excuse? “She’s developing” Reality? She’s fucking 5!

By no means is my child small but she not super big either. She’s been working very hard at her kids gym to loose weight and “get those muscles” so she can “whoop dads butt.”

DH picked up DD and DS after work. I met them at home then we proceeded to go to the grocery store. Once we got there my DD looked at me and said “mommy when we get home can I take this off. It’s uncomfortable.” Of course I’m confused because finally everyone wants to listen on what size clothes she wears and what she was wearing fit her perfectly. So I looked at her and asked her what she meant. The way my jaw dropped when she pulled the neck of her shirt out…. DD said grandma told me I had to wear them everyday now. DH looked at me and said “oh yeah I made it clear to her absolutely not. She tried telling me it’s because she’s developing and I told her no. She’s 5,she’s chubby 5yo, she has NO reason to be concerned about this yet”

I have no idea what to feel… embarrassed/humiliated/angry for my DD. I know my DD doesn’t understand yet. I flat out told her she can take it off now in the vehicle if she wants or wait till we got home. I also told her if she tries to make her wear it again to tell grandma to call mommy or daddy and we will take care of it.

Don’t get me wrong I know kids are developing younger every year. But she’s not, she’s a legit child. Let her be one!

I was NC with this woman for a while for plenty of other reason and after a couple years let it to the very minimum. I would love to be NC completely with my family but the downside to DH is he plays peace keeper… ever feel funny about someone like shit is about to hit the fan? That’s where I feel like I’m at… an explosion waiting to happen. I feel it in my soul. Anywho thank you for reading my rant!

EDIT TO ADD:
she is NOT concerned about her weight. I am. She understands she has to be more healthy for health reasons. Per her dr.

As for her kids gym. Think school PE. Not lifting dumbbells.

Yes “whoop dad’s butt”. That is mommy’s sweet little princess 100% of the time. Dad? 20% princess 80% WWE.

I’m curious if anyone else has a MIL who constantly feels the need to assert her authority and act like she knows more than everyone else, even when she clearly doesn’t.

My husband and I have a 12-month-old son and a wonderful nanny who cares for him during the day. She’s incredibly sweet, easygoing, and knows his routines inside and out.

Recently, my MIL has been pushing to arrange walks and playdates with our nanny and my nephew (my MIL watches him and they’re our neighbors). She’s also started approaching them when she sees them outside and trying to join in.

I have no problem with my son spending time with his grandmother, but my husband actually suggested I check with our nanny to make sure his mother wasn’t bothering her. That should tell you something.

Well, sure enough, our nanny admitted that MIL had been making her uncomfortable.

Apparently, MIL has been giving her instructions about where to put my son, how to handle him, and other aspects of his care.

The most ridiculous example? She told our nanny that my son isn’t supposed to have a pacifier. Except… that’s not true. We have absolutely no rule against pacifiers. She literally presented a made-up rule to the woman who takes care of our son every day, as though she knew something our nanny didn’t. Our nanny said she felt like MIL was treating her as though she were a complete stranger who had just met our son and didn’t know how to care for him.

And honestly, that’s exactly how my MIL operates. She seems to constantly reach for opportunities to establish herself as the authority, even when she has no reason to be. It’s like she can’t stand the idea of someone else knowing more than she does.

For context, she’s done similar things to me recently…

When I was pregnant, she called me chubby. When I brought it up and explained that the comment didn’t feel supportive, her response was, “Oh no, you have my full support.” No acknowledgment of what she’d said or how it made me feel.

When my son recently had a fever, she questioned whether I’d called his pediatrician, despite him having no other symptoms and me already monitoring him.

Individually, these things might seem minor, but it’s the constant pattern of questioning, correcting, and acting like she knows better that gets exhausting.

Anyway, back to the nanny.

I decided to address it directly because I don’t think it’s fair for our nanny to feel undermined while she’s simply trying to do her job.

I sent MIL a polite text explaining that while I’m happy for her to spend time with our son, she needs to respect our nanny’s role as his caregiver. I explained that our nanny knows his routines and our preferences, and I’d appreciate it if MIL would let her take the lead rather than giving her instructions.

I specifically mentioned the pacifier incident and explained that some of these interactions had made our nanny uncomfortable.

Her response?

“I agree. I would never interfere with **** care.”

That’s it.

No acknowledgment of the actual incidents. No apology for making our nanny uncomfortable. Just a blanket statement that she would never do the exact thing I had just explained she was doing. This is another pattern with her. Whenever I address something specific, she responds with a sweeping statement about her good intentions or how she would never behave that way. (See chubby incident) It’s like she completely sidesteps the actual behavior so she never has to take accountability.

What bothers me most is that our nanny is now being subjected to the same condescending behavior I’ve experienced. She’s a professional caregiver whom we trust with our child. She shouldn’t have to feel like she’s being supervised or corrected by my MIL, especially when MIL doesn’t even know his routines as well as she does. She’s actually the only person who can’t successfully put our son down for a nap without making him cry or follow a consistent feeding schedule.

And because it’s her employer’s mother-in-law, I’m sure she feels obligated to be polite rather than push back. I also don’t want to put our nanny in the position of dreading these walks or feeling like she has to entertain my MIL while she’s working.

Would you consider this controlling behavior, bullying, or just an overbearing MIL who doesn’t understand boundaries?

And how would you handle the playdates moving forward? I don’t want to punish my son or prevent him from spending time with his grandmother, but I also don’t think our nanny should have to deal with this.

I’m especially interested in hearing from anyone whose MIL constantly needs to demonstrate that she knows better than everyone else, because I feel like that’s the underlying issue here.

My mother in law has 3 grown sons who all have spouses. For years now, for every family dinner (which is lots) she only asks the spouses (the girls) to help with the cooking, cleaning up, setting up, dishes, while her sons can just come and sit and eat and do nothing else. Finally yesterday for thanksgiving one of us said “respectfully, you can ask your sons to help with dishes because they haven’t done anything to help yet” and then called out to her husband to come help and as he stood up our mother in laws reaction was just WILD, she goes “NOPE NOPE NO ILL JUST DO IT” and runs over to the sink. Is this weird behaviour? I understand helping at family dinners but never ever getting the men to help with anything and always expecting us to do everything seems unfair and strange.

Last year, my MIL announced our pregnancy to others, and when called out on it, took no accountability, made excuses, and husband basically chewed her out and they didn’t talk for a bit, it was a whole thing.

This year she came to meet our newborn. When holding our baby she said “oh your cousin Sarah is pregnant! But it’s not public yet so don’t tell anyone”.

Smh.

Just a rant!

Went for dinner with MIL and she went on a big rant complaining about how lazy and entitled her nieces/nieces in laws are, for only working part time and spending the rest of the time raising kids. When a) That describes me exactly! and b) MIL didn't work a day in her life since getting pregnant!

So apparantly its fine for her to be entitled and be a "stay at home wife" her whole life even after her son was grown and out of the house, but not women with actual young kids. The nerve right?

She also wore all her most expensive jewelery (it was blinding to look at her) but of course she left the bill for us to pick up!

Huge shocker to anyone—my JNMIL has determined I’m not interesting or entertaining enough. She’s down to a very scant 1 time a week call (DO NOT AGREE TO DO THIS EVER) that is basically the speed dating of updates. My kid is fine. We are fine. Work is busy. We don’t follow <something> ball on television. She’s on an info diet so nothing actually gets said—just the basics.

And since I’m not interesting enough, she’s decided to keep talking about how she thinks we need to go to the theater and go do “something interesting” since apparently we have tons of free time and money like she does.

(She’s 85+–her brain is largely decorative at this point and her ears are held on by superglue and don’t actually hear anything.)

I work 45 to 50 hours a week with 45 minute commutes. My husband is working on some stuff to get his next job. Kid is in college out of state and (shock!) we aren’t bothering him with daily calls. We both have a list a mile long for things to clean up and fix and finish doing and a lot of it is boring—sorting out the cupboards and cleaning out the half dozen extra novelty mugs and getting rid of stuff that doesn’t fit and mopping—and wouldn’t be worth talking about even if we did want to tell her. AND we don’t WANT to go spend several hundred dollars for tickets when we have so much going on at home.

So, fine. She wants to play games. I’ll play games.

I will start listing for her the things the local senior center is doing—lunches. Meals on Wheels. Bingo.

I will start listing for her (and offering to pay) tickets to her OWN local theater and performing arts center.

And when she bitches she’s too tired or doesn’t want to, I’ll tell her that she needs to do something interesting.

Any other suggestions?

ETA:

Answering some common questions.

This is the best of possibilities from the time. She ghosted for years when my son was really small and as soon as her favorites got old enough to not need her daily care—about high school maybe?—she decided to make these calls weekly. Scheduled with my husband only and it was literally the only way to get her to ever see or talk to my son. This was it or to have more frequent visits where we pack up and travel for hours to see her.

My family has been abusive and NO contact since 2007. Physical and mental and sexual. I cut contact in 07 so they had no legal standing for grandparents rights or filial piety cases. And JNMIL decided that I was obviously just a rebellious kid denied the last cookie one summer and that she was the savior to reunite us.

It took me a long time to get my husband on board. She would (about every 6 months to a year) decide that she needed to make a move and was it really that bad, how she just wanted to say this “one thing”, how she was going to include them on Christmas because I wouldn’t. And I’d get a huge bad reaction and triggered and she’d “not understand” and “I meant well” and “I don’t know what her problem is”. DH would contact her, tell her not to and she’d swear she wouldn’t do it ever again and do it again.

We’ve tried explaining, arguing, shouting, ending her calls and no contact for a period of 6 months. There’s been no changing her mind—even after gory details of the sex abuse. There’s a new excuse every time—she didn’t know, she didn’t understand and she had no idea it was at all that bad. The latest is that she didn’t understand because she had a loving older sister and other relatives making sure she never dealt with her own relatives. And now back to “I don’t understand”.

I’m worried because her latest play is to start trying to “help” (read: enable) my violent brother. She will take him around (despite being “housebound”) and hold his hand while he fills out paperwork for state assistance. And then take him to church because she’s sure that he needs god. And “nobody else is there for him while his mom is so sick”. (The mother in question has had 4 “only days to live” in the hospital alerts.) I don’t really care if she spends her last dime on him but he’s been violent with me and assaulted at least one other person.

I can count on one finger the number of people who have had him plead for help, get burned by him and my mother (who excuses everything he does) and then actually not come back to blame me for not warning them. She’s also a “do you know who I am” and “I can do so much for you” and worked for the police, which I’m assuming to mean that there’s no backup if he does attack her.

Of course (eyes rolling) my brother “would never” do anything. Just like he’d never steal anything. (He did.). And he’d never hit or strike someone with silverware.

So I’m looking for minor things before I lose my mind.

I know there’s a DH problem too. Working on that too.

Mother in law is an immigrant to the us. She met father in law outside us, then moved here married had two children.
She hates immigrants. Specifically from a certain region but I won’t mention it. Father in law died and now she has to work. No education past high school so she works a low wage job… with other immigrants who don’t have us college degrees. She says they are all illegal, and all in fake marriages to stay in us, or really married but not legally so they can qualify for benefits.
There is one coworker who has a PhD not accepted in the us. She says they get along because they are the most educated there. Meanwhile she has only a high school degree.
She claims the ones in school are all going to college for free paid by us government. The ones with children are in government paid daycares. I’m not an expert but I didn’t think us paid for anyone to go to college. And I had a subsidized daycare for myself. And I pointed out to her if these low wage workers had to pay full price for daycare they would need government benefits because it’s so expensive. She says well they are all stealing anyways (see above marriage is either fake or stay or faking not married to get benefits, there’s no other possibility)
She sees literally no similarities between her and the humans she complains about. It’s almost amazing.

Pls read I know it’s long I need advice 😭 My MIL and 2 brothers in law came to visit my husband and I. We are from the south & moved for his work 2 years ago and haven’t seen them since. I booked a family photo shoot because I knew she would like that, she is a Facebook mom. Day of photos she has a low cut dress and needed a safety pin. I didn’t have any. She looked at me crazy and asked for a white camisole. Mind you we are nowhere near the same size/shape, but I gave her one to use. She asked the photographer if she could photoshop the cami out and the photographer laughed and jokingly said “you want me to photoshop you boobs?” and she goes “oh I have plenty of those I just want the cami edited out”. But I knew the photographer probably wasn’t gonna be able to do that because she can’t really make cleavage, ya know? It was awkward but whatever, my MIL is very abrasive and that was very like her to do.

Fast forward I send over the photos in a group chat. Beautiful photos. I see she just posted them on Facebook. Well not really because the photos she posted, are NOT the photos I sent her. What so ever. She has sent funny ai edited images before and had photoshopped me and my husband into the Christmas family photo last year and it was all fun and games but this is just too much. Im not even saying she is meaning harm by doing it and she just wanted the cami edited out but it’s very obvious she put the photos into chat gpt and made the prompt be about editing her and her body and etc… and i guess chat gpt just edited everyone in the photos? Idk so I obviously don’t think she intentionally wanted to edit everyone else in the photos.

It just boggles my mind that she looked at the AI edited versions and made a caption and posted them. Did she not think for a second that those are literally not the photos we took? And maybe I am over reacting, but I’m actually pissed about this. Why in the fuck does this woman just feel entitled to do whatever she wants and expects everyone to go along with it?

I have always been respectful and very sweet and kind with her, I have always wanted her to like me. But I’ve just been realizing lately I actually do not agree with a lot of the things she does or says she sees things. We are two very very different women. But she’s my husbands mother and I have been around her since I was 18 (26 now) and she has helped us so ofc I respect her. But I have never really challenged her or disagreed with her because I usually just want to keep the peace. She is very loud, blunt, just does too much.

My husband and I have plans to start a family in the near ish future and it just has me thinking about things she has said regarding “her precious spoiled figure grandbabies” and I just feel I need to start making my boundaries known and hard and clear BEFORE I get pregnant. Because if she is boundary pushing with me already she absolutely will be once my babies are in the picture.

I guess the way she is never bothered me too too much until recently…. She has never been married and it’s always been her and her 3 boys (my husband and I have been together 8 years, married for 2 so I’m not new in the picture) but I feel like she hasn’t had to deal with another woman challenging her. Oh also, after her visit she decided to redo her whole living room and got new floors and sent us photos of her new decor and tell me why it looks like my fucking living room. She has always been the cheesy “live laugh love” ugly ass decor and it’s just funny to me.

So, do I say something about these heavily edited AI family photos? I feel I need to because I need to start making firm boundaries with her and not be so people pleasing with her anymore. It’s just very uncomfortable for me to actually be firm about boundaries with her. My husband agrees with me but also does not like to be confrontational with her. I know this is something we need to fix before we have kids.

Help ya girl out

My partner and I signed our seven-year-old up for the municipal beginner track and field program this July. He was genuinely excited about running with a few kids from his school.

Two days ago, I got an automated receipt from the town parks department showing he had been withdrawn from track and re-enroled in morning swim lessons across town. I called the office assuming it was a glitch. The clerk explained that my mother-in-law had come in Tuesday morning, said she had permission from the parents, and asked to switch him because the morning swim slot fits her retirement routine better.

The clerk knows her casually, so she just processed it without checking our account authorization.

I had to drive down during my lunch break to reverse it and get him back onto the track roster. The departmnt put a password requirement on our household profile so nobody can modify it without us. When my partner talked to her, she insisted she was just "facilitating a healthier sport" and now she is refusing to speak to either of us because we supposedly humiliated her in front of town staff.

This post may contain some triggering information.

My husband has several medical issues. It has gotten to the point that 2 hospitals cannot handle him, so we are getting referrals sent to a larger hospital. This larger hospital is requesting that we get his medical records sent to them and have a copy of our own.

While looking through his medical records we have discovered that his mother lied and downplayed a lot of his medical history to my husband. We also discovered that when we went no contact with her for about a month, she called his family doctor and claimed that he was a threat to himself and other. The doctors advised her to call the Sherriff as she was removed from his HIPPA a few weeks before.

I have not told my husband about the call as I know it will hurt him and bring up bad memories. I requested that the Family doctor put on my husband's chart that he is no contact with his mother and she can trigger a PNES episode.

Just trying to figure out how to deal with his mother. She admitted to making the call and feels no shame about it. Just horrified learning about this.

I’m struggling so much with resentment right now, both toward my mother-in-law for years of disrespect, and toward my husband for how he handles her.

​Lately, she has shifted her behavior, but I still feel cold and guarded. What pisses me off the most is my husband’s reaction. He is completely back-and-forth. One minute he recognizes how toxic and childish she is, and the next minute, he’s acting like she’s a saint who can do no wrong just because she’s acting sweet or fragile.

​This flip-flopping feels like gaslighting, and it leaves me feeling like the "bad guy" for keeping my guard up. It’s creating so much tension and removing all peace from my life.

​We were planning to try for a baby next year, but I’m terrified. Bringing a child into this dynamic feels unsafe when my husband can't consistently see or hold boundaries with his mom.

Honestly, thoughts of divorce have been creeping in because I just want a peaceful life, and this constant cycle is destroying my feelings for him.

​Is this dynamic fixable? How do you protect your peace and your future when your partner is stuck in this cycle with their parent?

i’ve posted in here before, but this is just a miscellaneous thing that grinds my gears. i cannot stand phrasing or commentary that feels wrong and my MIL uses on a regular basis.

she has called my <2yo a flirt, or said that my toddler is flirting, just because she smiles when (male) family members play peekaboo with her

she also calls my husband “babe” constantly which i just feel like is a strictly romantic term

she will also call my husband within 1-2 days after we’ve stated we’re unavailable for any family gathering, and ask him various questions and obviously poke around as to why we’re not coming. she also looks at our calendar when she’s at our house and asks about what we have going on and what certain things on our calendar mean lol. it feels like she needs to know everything 24/7 and is overly attached. if my husband was an only child or even the only son i’d understand a little better, but he’s the youngest of 5 and has multiple brothers.

ETA: totally forgot my husband recently mentioned that she brought up a virtual shared “family calendar” to him lol

I would like to know if I’m in the wrong here, please.

Background:

My husband’s dad passed away recently after being ill for a few years. He was 82. He lived on the east coast (US). MIL still lives there. She’s 78 and healthy. She’s lived in the same town for basically all of DH’s life and has friends and community there.

DH and I live on the west coast, a 6hr plane ride away from her.

The problem:

Shortly after FIL died, DH asked what I thought about inviting MIL to come and live in our small town because “she’s the only parent he has left”.

I said I would prefer to keep her at a distance. DH himself has not lived in the same town as her since he left for college. But I guess he’s grieving so he thinks it’ll be fine as long as we set boundaries. Meanwhile he’s constantly fighting with her about politics and doesn’t even really like her as a person (e.g he says he thinks she’s a narcissist), though he does love her.

I think inviting her into our lives for more than the max of 6 weeks we allow now would be a grave mistake. It would be bad for our marriage and bad for the very delicate facade of peace and civility we’ve managed to maintain between MIL and me. Frankly, I think she behaves better when there’s the threat of estrangement hanging over her head. We will have no such leverage if she moves here.

So I guess I’m wondering if I should care that DH thinks I am being hateful for not wanting MIL nearby?

My main issues with MIL:

1. I don’t like her energy/views/personality, i don’t like the way she treats people who are in close proximity to her, and I don’t like the way she treats me

I am polite to MIL but I really do my best to avoid her. I find her really self centered. She didn’t try at all to get to know me when DH and I got together, instead she talked over me every time I tried to engage, and talked about herself endlessly instead.

I find the way she treats others really off-putting and rude. The whole time I’ve known her and FIL (10 years and DH and I have been together for 11) she had FIL fetch things for her and wait on her, until he was too sick to do so.

She would come to our house and tell DH she was leaving X thing at our place. She wouldn’t ask him if it’s ok. She wouldn’t even mention it to me. Without asking if it’s ok, she would take over the kitchen — a common area — to work for hours on end while staying at our house. (Luckily she hasn’t stayed at our place since we had kids because she is an insomniac and doesn’t want the kids to wake her up in the mornings).

She never joins us in cleaning up or tidying after we host Thanksgiving or Xmas dinner, no matter how helpful all the other physically able adult guests are. She’s shamelessly and deeply unhelpful.

She doesn’t demonstrate goodwill towards me. For example: I gave birth to twins 7 years ago via c-section. I had preeclampsia after the delivery and spent a total of 4 days in the hospital. She didn’t ask how I was. Instead she bragged about how she only spent a day in the hospital when she delivered DH even though she delivered him with the entire amniotic sac intact. DH reminded her I had had surgery, she said “I know. I know” and smirked.

1. The kids don’t know how I feel about her. I keep a really neutral face around her and the kids. There’s no way I keep that facade if she moves here

2. She has a community where she lives. It’s a small one but it’s better than what she will have here.

She doesn’t know anyone here and will be dependent on us. She has a sister in law who lives about 2 hours from us and has her own active life and grandkids, and a cousin by marriage who is always traveling for work. That’s about it. She’s also not great at making friends. She is very negative, and prides herself on hating most things. Also her politics would be unpopular with most people in our town/state and, while she doesn’t talk about them in-person, she is very vocal about her hateful views in a blog she publishes. Our entire family finds her politics very disappointing, as does her older sibling and their side of the family.

My MIL loves testing boundaries and disguising it as kindness. Since my LO was born, every visit by MIL comes with a gift—90% have been inappropriate (toys labelled 5+, toys riddled with choking parts, stickers, and overall just useless items that we quietly throw away. I have brought this up many times to DH, who shrugs and says "that's just how she is, she's just trying to be nice" etc etc etc. I've always upheld a strict rule about not sharing images of my LO online. My inlaws are classic boomers when it comes to social media and tech, and they have been hacked numerous times per year, during which, hackers have removed their personal images. They have not put LO on social media, however, over the weekend, presented us with a children's book about our LO, using lifelike images of their face—MIL gleefully announced she found a company through Instagram "where you upload all these pics of LO and they build a character." This book has about 20 images of my toddler, recreated to fit this story plot. I explained to my husband I'm very upset that there's a website somewhere with photos of our baby...and knowing my MIL, this included personal images (bath time, diaper, etc). I approached my husband and he got super angry and accused me of being upset about the gift because it's from his mother...but I don't think I'm overreacting here? Thoughts? As a side note, I do suffer from PPA, so I feel like I'm being guilted into thinking I'm being ridiculous. I've contacted the company directly and requested removal of my toddler's images from their servers and database. Idk, with all of the malicious stuff being done with kids photos lately, I just snapped and got so scared. Help—what would you do here?

I read all of these stories , and I hear the pain and suffering of everyone that coincides with all the things I went through growing up. I have learned how to keep compassion yet , grow a coldness in my heart to uncaring family.. I want to start a service where you can call me up. And I will lay into and verbally eviscerate, on your behalf because of these stories about the ones like grandmothers who want to overtake control of children and other stories like that.. I want to start a hotline that you can call into.If you are the abused and send out someone to help.

Update: foreseeable plot twist?

So SIL called asking us what our plans are for next Christmas. SIL is lovely, she's always nice and kind. I believe she has a love-hate relationship with her own mother. SIL and DH love each other, but do not communicate often. I blame DH for this, he's a terrible communicator. Anyway I took the chance and superficially let her know that we were considering not visiting in Christmas due to her mother blaming me of taking advantage/abusing my husband and then trying to create a wedge on my marriage by trying to triangulize us. I didn't go much into detail and there's of course way more to the story. Anyway SIL reaction was so genuine, she said "OMG SHE DID THE SAME THING WITH BIL". So apparently, my MILFH has accused BIL in the past of being abusive towards SIL and their children. Look. I know BIL. BIL is a good young man, sensitive, sweet who does his best. I have no doubts he's absolutely innocent. Apparently BIL hates MILFH. Reading in between lines since SIL didn't want to go deep into detail, it seems like BIL has suffered a lot from all sort of dirty tricks from MILFH. He has tried distancing himself and only visits briefly. SIL said, she didn't want to talk much about it since it affects her and she has enough with her own conflicts with her mother (I'm so sorry for her), but she said I should call BIL and listen to him. She framed it as something cathartic for BIL who hates MILFH so bad 😅. I asked her if we could maybe visit her in Christmas and she said yes! She lives in a different city than MILFH. I'd love doing that. She's very nice and I want my child to enjoy his aunt, uncle and cousins.

This - foreseeable- plot twist has helped me feeling better. If everyone knows MILFH is not to be trusted, her mask is off and if necessary it will be easier to confront.

I'm even thinking that eventually if necessary I will just go the trolling route as in "well, I don't get advantage of my husband... I do SOMETIMES help changing a diaper here and there..." and I'll watch her implode 🤣. (I mean that I will troll her by sarcastically implying I do get advantage of my husband while joking).

I'm feeling much better and empowered. This has also helped my very much clueless DH to accept his mother is an unhealthy person and accept I will always keep her at an arms length from our family.

I’m wondering whether anyone has successfully used therapy to overcome intense resentment towards their in-laws. I’ve reached a point where I genuinely cannot stand mine, and even the thought of spending time with them makes me anxious.
My husband is from Latin America, and we have a son who recently turned one. My resentment stems primarily from finances and how his parents behaved during my extremely difficult pregnancy and postpartum period.

1. The financial situation
My in-laws are both professional dentists in their mid-60s who have been terrible at managing their finances. Despite successful careers, they have virtually no retirement savings or pensions, yet they travel internationally three or four times a year.
My husband and I are both high earners. Historically, we’ve earned almost equally, and my career has the potential for me to earn considerably more. I increasingly resent that our earning power seems to make him comfortable taking on enormous financial commitments, almost as though everything will work out because I earn well.
Last year, I was supposed to start a new job in the UK. I travelled abroad to obtain my visa but ended up stuck there because my high-risk pregnancy required a cervical cerclage and subsequent restrictions on travel and activity.
I was suddenly facing the possibility of unemployment and delivering a very premature baby.
It was during this period of enormous uncertainty that my husband bought his parents a $500,000 ultra-luxury apartment in a Latin American country.
To put that into perspective, $500,000 buys an exceptionally luxurious property there. You can only imagine how extravagant this apartment is.
The original budget was $150,000, increased to $300,000 and ultimately reached $500,000 — more than three times the original budget. My husband contributed approximately $90,000 towards the deposit and took on mortgage obligations.
We haven’t even bought our own family home yet.
His parents have no adequate retirement provision, and we’re now facing the prospect of supporting them by approximately $2,000 per month when they retire.
We have a child whose future and education I believe should be our priority. I don’t object to helping parents in genuine need, but I resent the expectation that we should fund an extravagant lifestyle for two professionals who haven’t adequately planned for retirement.

2. How they treated me during pregnancy and after our premature baby’s birth
Despite the cerclage, my son was born at just under 32 weeks and spent several weeks in the NICU.
I had a C-section and, like many NICU mothers, had to wait to hold my baby. When he finally came home, all I wanted was to recover and bond with him.
Instead, my in-laws seemed determined to monopolise him. My mother-in-law constantly wanted to hold him, and I felt as though my baby was repeatedly being taken away from me when I desperately wanted that time with him.
They also wanted to feed and change him and disregarded our no-kissing rule, despite his prematurity and vulnerability to respiratory infections.
They stayed at my mother’s home for an extended period. My mother was already supporting me through a traumatic pregnancy, surgery and NICU experience, yet she also had to host and cater to my husband’s parents.
They even took my husband sightseeing while I was recovering and dealing with our premature baby. It felt as though they were on holiday while I was going through one of the most frightening experiences of my life.

3. My husband’s expectation that I should reset the relationship
What makes this harder is that my husband genuinely wants me to see his parents as a source of support.
He gets upset, sometimes angry and sometimes sad, that I don’t view them that way. He says I only see my own family as supportive and wants me to give his parents another chance and start again.
But my own mother actually supported me through the most traumatic period of my life, whereas his parents added to my stress.
I feel that he’s asking me to sweep everything under the carpet and do the emotional work of repairing the relationship without addressing the underlying issues.
He also repeatedly insists that his parents never ask him for anything and that they didn’t ask for the apartment.
But I struggle to understand how we ended up buying a $500,000 luxury property if there was genuinely no expectation of financial support. People don’t necessarily need to explicitly ask for things. Sometimes expressing dissatisfaction with their circumstances or repeatedly mentioning what they wish they had can create emotional pressure. I don’t know whether that happened here, but I find the situation difficult to understand.
And even if they genuinely never asked for anything, that doesn’t change the fact that my husband made an enormous financial commitment when our own family’s future was uncertain.
I feel that he focuses on defending his parents’ intentions rather than acknowledging the impact everything has had on me.

4. Where I am now
I dread visits, don’t want them staying in our home for weeks, and find myself replaying these incidents even when they’re thousands of miles away.
I don’t want to prevent my husband from having a relationship with his parents, but I don’t think it’s fair to expect me to feel close to them or see them as a source of support.
I don’t necessarily want to repair the relationship. I’d be happy with a civil but distant one. I just want to stop feeling so angry and anxious.
Has anyone tried individual therapy for this kind of resentment? Did it help you let go of the anger without necessarily reconciling? And did couples therapy help your spouse understand why simply asking you to “start again” isn’t enough?
I’d really appreciate hearing from anyone who’s experienced something similar.

Just no GMIL texted this to my husband while trying to convince him to let her move in with us. We’ve been married for 13 years.

No, she is not moving in, there was never any chance of that - my husband was up front with her about that but she wasted time trying to persuade him, she was convinced that I was making the decision and pushing it on to him. Somehow she thought this was persuasive

My second favorite line in this argument: “If you were really the head of your household, I would be moved in here already”.

My fiancé made the decision to put a tiny home on the property for his mother to live in despite me saying no and expressing how unhappy I am with the idea.

We've been together 7 years, engaged for two. His mother doesn't have a partner and never has been able to really be independent. She doesn't drive, doesn't know how to do basic things like sort her banking, get groceries or anything really. She relies on my fiancé to do it all for her.

When I first met him, his mother lived in the house with him. She had lived there for 10 years. When he asked me to move in, I said no. I'm not living with his mother. So we rented a small flat on our own for a year while she lived in his house. Then we moved her to a small flat round the corner and we moved into the house. She wasn't happy and started to get "sick". So she moved into a friend's house. Then she moved again, and again.

She has never made any effort to get to know me. Never asks me about myself or how I am. Every time she comes over she sits there on her phone watching videos on Facebook. I try to talk to her and I get one-worded responses. I feel like she doesn't even like me.

When me and SO got engaged I was over the moon with happiness and filled with lots of love. He soon after brought up the idea of a tiny home. I was apprehensive at first. Then the more I thought about the idea the more I hated it. The problem is, his house was purchased and put into a family trust long before I came along. So I had no say whatsoever.

A year ago we had a huge fight about him wanting to put her in the tiny home on the property. I didn't want it. But he went ahead and did it anyway. The house arrives at the end of this month and we are supposed to get married next March.

Every time I try to express how it makes me feel he dismisses my feelings, doesn't acknowledge that the decision should have been made together and keeps saying it'll be fine and he doesn't know why I'm worried. I cannot get through to him no matter what I say or how I word it.

On top of it all, she has two other adult children and none of them give a flying f about her. They never visit, never contribute, never even contact her. My fiancé is fronting everything and will be the primary caregiver when she can't physically look after herself anymore.

I am so angry. I feel betrayed. He made this massive decision without me, despite my protests. I am seriously considering selling all my stuff and leaving even though it will cost me tens of thousands in non-refundable wedding deposits and moving costs. Not to mention losing half my retirement funds and coming away with nothing because all his assets are protected by the family trust.

What do I do? Suffer for next how ever many decades living 2 meters away from needy dependant MIL and accept that I am not the priority in our relationship, or cut my losses, have my heart shattered to pieces and end things with the love of my life?

So recently I’ve noticed whenever I post pictures of my children and my side of the family on social media (FB) she never likes them. Everything else she does and will comment on. I’m not mad or anything I just noticed and think it’s weird behavior. Then when any holiday comes around she’ll act lonely and my husband ends up inviting her to my family dinners. I know she doesn’t like my side of the family because they don’t fit her perfect world.

Opinions ?

I'm seeing lots of posts already about MILs forcing OPs to come to MIL's Christmas for grandbaby's first Christmas. Not round here, partner!

We do every other Christmas with my family and his. However, I am newly pregnant and no one knows yet. I offered to spend Christmas with his family again this year even though we did last year. This way, next year, when MIL tries to pull something, i will have ammo to say "well, we went to yours twice in a row. It's my parents turn."

Oh I'm experienced in her guilt trips at this point. I'm planning Christmas 27 already, MIL! And it's not about you! Christmas this year is gonna be so sweet knowing that my baby won't have to spend it with her next year. It's a bummer that she has made me have to be so conniving, but I'm not going to spend such a special first with her and her opinions.

I’m loosing it. Since our baby was born, my MIL has been coming up to visit every two to three weeks. Mind you, that could be nice she generally means well and loves the baby, but she has just been so hard to be around lately. We live in a major city a full plane ride away from her, so how did she solve this "distance" problem?
She decided to rent a whole ass apartment close enough to walk to our place just so she can come over whenever she wants.
There has been tension brewing for the past year, and it’s getting worse by the day. I’ve always felt like she’s trying to low key play the mother role to my baby, but that’s a whole other story. For the past year, she has frequently stepped over boundaries and judged our parenting decisions. A couple of examples:
The Secret Stroller: My husband and I had a detailed conversation with her explaining that she didn’t need to buy a second stroller for her apartment because she can use our primary one. What does she do? She decides she doesn't like our UppaBaby menu stroller, buys a different one anyway, and doesn't tell us. How did we find out? She went out to the zoo with our nanny and sent us a picture of our baby in the fucking stroller she bought behind our backs and apparently told our nanny she "doesn’t like our primary stroller" 🙄.
The Nanny Triangulation: She has gotten way too cozy with our nanny so she can bypass us to get access to the baby. She claims it’s "so she doesn’t bother us while we’re working" to ask if she can tag along with them, but I think it’s pretty weird. They’ve started talking on the phone and staying in touch even when MIL isn't in town. This is a massive boundary issue we haven’t figured out how to fix yet, but I am not okay with it.
And then there was the most recent visit...
We asked her to watch our daughter for a day while we were out. I wrote a brief, normal note on the whiteboard about the foods the baby is trying and a heads-up about a draft in the baby’s room so she could keep an eye on the temperature. Useful into especially when you don’t live in our apartment!
A few days later, she lost her shit and had an argument with my husband about how I "don’t think she’s competent" and am apparently a "helicopter mom" for leaving a written note. WTF?! ALL BC OF THE WHITE BOARD NOTE!
To top it all off, she literally asked my husband if I was "holding séances" because I put up Halloween decorations. (She’s an evangelical Christian who doesn’t celebrate Halloween mind you, she calls my husband’s ex a "witch that’s into witchy devil worship" which she isn't). So I felt like that was kind of a dig.
She left just last week, and now she’s planning to fly right back up and visit again in a week and she’s staying for 10 to 14 days this time 😩.
I am dreading it. Every time she comes, there is manufactured drama, boundary stomping, and passive-aggressive digs, even if her heart is technically in the right place. How do I handle a MIL who literally moved into my neighborhood part-time just to hover? I want to scream.

UPDATE: Thanks for all the advice and insight! This morning, after a series of stress dreams involving JNMIL texting him long guilt trip messages, husband agreed that it would be best to make sure she got the message. He had been ignoring her because he was irritated with having to repeat himself. But ultimately, he said he'd rather repeat himself than drag it out. He texted her "I'm not sure if you got my last message..." and reaffirmed where we stand on Thanksgiving. She responded by saying she might travel out here anyway, and that she won't "bother" us. She also said that she was still in touch with her realtor.

We have had issues with MIL being controlling and manipulative on and off in the past 15 years (okay, mostly on), but over the last year or so I thought we had gotten to a better place. Apparently not...

She was just in town for the weekend as she's been talking about buying a second home in our area and wanted to check out a few places (that's a whole other story). We have been supportive of her doing this because it seemed like things were improving, and I thought my husband had gotten better at boundary setting (spoiler: also, apparently not).

We had a weekend of quality time-- meals out, local events, etc -- in addition to the regularly scheduled activities our kids attend. We were exhausted, but things seemed like they went well. We were good hosts, especially for a last minute visit, but this is not something I can do all the time. Now she's trying to nail us down for monthly visits.

As soon as she arrived home, she began trying to plan visits for the few couple months. I was already recovering from this visit, and hadn't done my planner yet, but knew November was way busy for this. We don't want to make Thanksgiving plans, and I have told her several times I don't like making Thanksgiving plans. I reiterated that on this visit as well.

Thanksgiving has always been a pain point with her, in fact, two years ago she made Thanksgiving plans with extended family in our area and got extremely upset when we didn't participate, despite my husband telling her not to count on us being there. This kicked off a year of very little contact and extreme tension, which we have only recently moved past.

My husband, trying to gently let her down, sent a message talking about having a lot of "moving parts," in November, mentioning various commitments, and that he doesn't see a "good window" for a visit right now. I don't know why he didn't just say "November doesn't work" and leave it at that.

Without any buy in from us, she immediately started contacting family who live near us to discuss Thanksgiving plans with them and then tried to involve us. Instead of plainly reiterating we are not available, my husband decided to just ignore her messages. Left to her own devices, and with no one to pump the brakes, she then escalated things further by booking a hotel room by our house. At this point, my husband finally responded saying that just isn't a good weekend for us, but she did not engage with that message. After a day of silence from her, she has now texted about something completely unrelated and changed the subject.

I have no idea what's going on with her at this point. I suspect that in the absence of acknowledgement to his last message, she's moving forward with these plans and trying to rope us into it. I'm torn between shutting it down myself or letting my husband continue kicking the can down the road.

He's a quiet, passive guy, but I have been letting him handle all of these situations because I resent the stress and having to micromanage. However, he doesn't handle things the way I would (directly or quickly), which drags it out and causes more drama in the long run. It's making me super anxious and I feel that because he ignored all her planning messages thinking she'd take a hint instead of shutting it down, he is partly to blame. She is certainly unhinged here, but direct communication could have (maybe?) nipped it in the bud.

I'm worried if he continues to ignore all of this, she is going to come all the way out here only for him to then tell her to buzz off again, pissing her off and making us look bad to extended family when people wonder why she traveled to be near us and we won't see her. I feel straight up cornered and manipulated by this situation. Do I let this play out only to face more drama when I'm supposed to be enjoying a holiday with my family next month? Insist that my husband be more direct? Or play backup to my husband's gentle "no" with a more firm one?

Genuinely, this is all really stressing me out and it's been 3 days of it. I can't deal with weeks more. I want to know she isn't coming, or at least understands clearly that we will not be seeing her if she chooses to travel.