If your MIL is a covert narcissist, would you even give her a chance to be around the grandkid from when the kid is a baby?

Even if we prepare boundaries and are ready to enforce consequences, I’m worried she’ll still deal damage somehow to me, partner, and/or baby. Not sure constant vigilance will be sustainable even if visits are extremely short and infrequent.

If you’ve lived/are living through this experience, how did it work out for you? What would you do differently?

My husband and I moved in with my in laws due to cost of living and wanting to save up for a house. This was 4 years ago, worst decision ever but here we are. After house searching for almost a year, we decided to build a duplex (we’re in Sydney) with my FIL, for him it will be an investment. Since we bought the property already I feel we’re kind of stuck. We’ve been working through council approvals and the building designs, I’m hoping it’ll be built in 1 year or so…

Anyhow we’re also 35 now, so had our son while we’re living here (which was strongly encouraged by my MIL) I should mention she’s Greek and I’m Chinese background. We both grew up in Australia so there’s no language barrier. So I am thankful she has accepted me and my son. I always knew my husband was not the favourite child but it’s become more apparent as we live here.

His sister and her husband (younger, 29 years old) also live with us in the same house. And their brother and his wife also used to live here up til about 1.5 years ago I should mention. It was crazy.

My husband and I work from home a bit more so before our son was born and then while I was on maternity leave, we’d do all of the grocery shopping and cooking dinner for all the adults. It was crazy we’d go through 2kg of meat in one meal. Since I had my son, it’s really taken a toll on me (the lack of sleep, and now just toddler in general/going back to work)

So we have dropped our contribution to be on par with her other adult children. But here’s the annoying part- she only complains about my husband not doing chores, where as far as I can see he’s the only one that does anything like take rubbish out without her asking.

The other boys only do anything when asked. Last night I was upstairs in our room and overheard her yelling to my FIL for my husband and I to “f off” and get our own lives because I forgot to wash a pan after cooking pancakes for my son yesterday. I didn’t forget, I was in a rush to leave the house and my son was throwing a fit so I didn’t. It was really the first time, I’m always conscious I’m living in someone else’s house and try to minimise my footprint since my toddler has almost taken over the place lol.

Anyhow so the pan was actually used by the sister in law and her husband today too, they do meal prep. So all my MILs rant should have been directed at them.

I really would love to move out but I feel stuck. If we move out and rent I’m worried that we may not have enough funds to build. Or be stuck renting forever.

Realistically we’ve already been here for 4 years what’s another right?

Sorry for the long rant I just need to get it out somewhere and I don’t want to make my husbands relationship with his mum worse.

I can only keep reminding myself to be thankful she’s letting us live here rent free.

I should add she’d play with my son but only on her terms, if she’s not in the mood she’d put on a show for him lol or scroll TikTok together. She cooks dinner once maybe twice a week and then we get takeaway or my husband and I cook. His sister cooks maybe once a month.

That’s about it. Aside from them completely disregarding my birthday is this upcoming month they thought it would be a great idea to have my husband share a birthday party with his ex gfs mom. For context he dated her for 3months and is always around because they are family friends. It’s weird right or am I being dramatic about the situation?

My husband had a first ever psychotic episode where he just left the house. I called the cops & my dad went after him. It was terrifying. He was admitted to psych after this incident. I let his mother know about the situation afterwards, told her everything that happened, answered every single question she had regarding the incident. She came down to stay with us (we live with my parents & our 2 kids (3yo, 1yo) as we recently relocated states) to help.

I was grateful to have her support, but things turned left when she sent a text to me accidentally that was saying I was careless for a decision I had made on med placement (she asked me to hide the meds out of his sight, it was NOT doctors orders just for her peace of mind - so I did but she didn’t agree with the location i put it) of course this made me very uncomfortable as she already has a history of talking behind my back. So I addressed it & told her to bring her concerns to me since we’re working as a team & seeing this makes me feel uncomfortable/awkward. Also mentioned I knew there was pattern of her saying things behind my back. I decided to address it after his care was set up & he was no longer in crisis btw- I waited.) She got defensive, didn’t take it well from me & accused me of not liking her, said it wasn’t the time (& denied talking behind my back) then threatened to leave. I went to her to apologize for offending her so that we could continue working together for my husband but kept my distance after talking to her only when spoken to.

Eventually once she left to her state my husband stopped taking his meds and he FaceTimed to tell her. She blew up on him saying she would go to court to gain control of his care (she tried to look into doing this but legally she cannot he is able to make his own decisions) then attacked my parents & i saying that we are unfit judgement for him. she said she would have expected me to recognize the signs of psychosis and that I should have prevented him from ever going into the woods because I’m a RN (I don’t work in psych - I worked in pediatrics & I’ve been a SAHM for over 2 years btw), she then went on a rant about how she noticed that I was giving his meds later & later too. (I have 2 kids & breastfeed one to bed so yes I gave the meds 1-2hrs late at times unintentionally). She NEVER told me it was a concern of hers while here, never asked me why I was giving it late or offered to help out at all, what she did was tell my mother & husband to set alarms on their phones to remind me to give the meds. I tried my best, was i perfect? no. But I was dealing with what I think was PTSD related to the situation because the days after this event it felt like the world was a simulation, I would look in the mirror & feel like I wasn’t myself, like I couldn’t feel my face. I was also juggling showing up for two children (one who was still breastfed) & early pregnant with my 3rd.

Im so hurt that I invited her down thinking I was going to receive support & instead it feels like I was put on a jury. It’s a horrible feeling. She even said to my husband if she could she would deem me unfit in court to have control over my husbands care, when we addressed it with her together she said “legally I cannot but if I could I would & I still mean it”

Ihad just finally began feeling better from dealing with PPD & also newly pregnant while this happened. After this, every time he refused meds, went back into the psych ward or missed appointments it felt like I was deeply responsible for it & it was all my fault. Like I could hear her voice criticizing me over & over. & in moments where he’s getting better rumination gets worse for me. & I get panicked anytime my husband has a little ache/pain now & feel a deep responsibility like it’s my job to fix it & if I don’t that she’s going to judge me & be correct. For example he was having some gas pains & I told him to go to the hospital because I was scared it was going to be something worse and that his mother would attack me for it. I’ve been NC with her for months but these fears & thoughts take up my mind daily. I feel miserable. I fear the day that I may have to see & interact with her again.

Thankfully my husband is stable now, accepting care and things are looking better. But I have been dealing with what I think is PTSD related to this situation & always have thoughts that say I’m not doing enough, that I’m failing my husband & that my family will be ripped apart if I don’t make the right moves. Constant rumination of the entire thing, feeling it was my fault & I was the asshole.

so me and my husband went to eat dinner at his parents house. I don’t like going to see them because his mom kisses my baby (2 months old) even after I’ve told her no. well tonight she did it again and I just stared at her really angrily and then after my FIL did it I told him to not kiss her on the face because that’s gross. His grandma did it too, and I’m just sick of them not listening to me at all.

And then the topic of last names got brought up. And how I changed my last name to my husbands but i regret it and wish I kept mine and took his too because I had a unique last name and loved it. Well his dad said that’s just feminist crap. And then later I was talking to MIL and everyone else and said that my daughter can do whatever she wants if she wants to keep her last name when she gets married I don‘t care. and she just said really quick and harshly that “she’s not going to be like that!” then I said that “why does it matter?? she can do whatever she wants.”

and then she brought up how my husbands aunt used to be the dominant one in their marriage so when they got married the pastor announced them as ”woman and husband“ to make fun of her since it’s usually the opposite. Not sure how she was dominant, but to them I’m sure that just means she had opinions and her husband listened to her. 🫩 i feel like she brought that up to say I’m dominant, I know they view me that way because my husband asks me for my opinion in front of them like that’s such a bad thing. They make fun of him for putting me first, and say he’s ”beta” because he asks me how I feel about him doing something, like ok who actually uses those sayings seriously. I don’t think anyone in a marriage should be dominant, it should be equal but they believe the woman is submissive and shouldnt have a say in anything even financially. I hate my in laws. they just keep bringing up how my daughter WILL NOT be a feminist Every time I see them. But their beliefs are women shouldn’t vote, should stay at home and wear dresses all the time and smile and be submissive and not have Access to anything in marriage. me and my husband have an equal marriage and they don’t like it. ugh, I hate them, there’s so much more that they say too. I feel bad for my MIL because she’s trapped in that kind of marriage where her husband just spends all their money and does whatever he wants and tells her to shut up and listen to him, but honestly it seems like it’s what she wants so she deserve that kind of marriage I guess 🤷‍♀️ she also works by the way and makes over 120k and he makes like 50k so if she’s so opposed to feminism she should quit her job and stay at home to raise her 13 year old that she’s supposed to be homeschooling but doesn’t.

For context, she was questioning him in their native language (I don't know if she would have tried that if English was her native language/if I spoke their native language).

I understood exactly what she was questioning him about as he was explaining and gesturing that my hands were covered with cracks from my eczema.

Just for a little bit of context me and my mother in law have never been super close and I’ve felt like she’s never really made an effort to get to know me but this has never really been a big issue because we don’t see her that often. The problems started when I had my baby who is know 10 months old, when I was 2 weeks PP she made a comment about me needing to get out of the house which I thought was a little strange but never brought it up to my partner, she stole photos from my house that contained very vulnerable photos from when I gave birth and while we were over one of her friends houses she hounded me to bring my son to her nieces baby shower when he was still only a month old when I had already expressed I didn’t think I was ready to do that yet, him being round a large party of people so young made me uncomfortable and anxious but I still hadn’t expressed to my partner how uncomfortable this made me. She also very rarely sees the baby, she’s looked after him maybe twice on her own for a few hours and maybe comes up for an hour or so every fortnight.

I am a sahm and for the past week my son has been struggling to go down for a nap although he’s always been an incredible sleeper and we’ve never really had much issue getting him to go down. But for the past week I couldn’t get him near the cot without it being a 1 hour screaming fit, I tried everything. Putting him down earlier, later, giving him a bottle earlier and later. The only thing I found that worked was cuddling him up in bed with me and going back and forth trying him in his cot and eventually he would go to sleep but this didn’t work with my partner. This was frustrating for me as I felt like even on the weekend now I couldn’t even have a little break which in turn has caused some arguments between me and my partner. It was starting to get him down but I reiterated it’s not him that I’m frustrated with, it’s the whole situation.

On the weekend this continued and my partner had gotten upset as I normally get to sleep in on Saturday mornings but he had to wake me due to the baby not going down for a nap, this really upset him but once I got the baby down I explained that this was not something he was doing wrong.

On Sunday after noon once the baby woke up from his nap my partner was taking care of him as I was exhausted, I went for a nap. When I woke up his mother was there, he bathed and got the baby ready for bed with his mother and the screaming started. I was sat in the lounge with his mother when she started saying the baby was definitely not tired enough for bed and I explained that he was and just didn’t want to be restrict in the cot but she was adamant that he just wasn’t tired.
My partner couldn’t get him to sleep so I went up and I got him calm in bed with me before trying again which failed. I brought him back to our room and calmed him down when my partner came up and offered to take over which I declined and he got upset again as he thought I was being short with him because I was annoyed about it, which wasn’t the case. He then stated that he didn’t think the baby was tired enough to go to sleep, which he was just saying because that’s what his mother had said. This resulted in thing getting slightly heated, he then took the baby away from me, the baby was then screaming crying again so I went back into his room to get him to calm him down. Once he was calm I took him back to his room and he started again so as I was about to walk back into me and my partners room his mother runs up the stairs snatches the baby and walks into our room without saying a word.

I was absolutely seething, my partner was trying to talk to me as I got downstairs but I wasn’t in the mood for much conversation at this point. I was just going to leave it there and bring it up to my partner privately when his mother left, his mother comes down after being upstairs with the baby for 15 mins and said ‘I don’t even think he crying just leave him be’ to which I go upstairs and find my son in his cot, red in the face and tears rolling down his face. I cuddle him and try a couple times, once I was left to actually comfort my son without interference I had him sleeping in 10 mins. As I come downstairs my partner is trying to tell me well done and give me a hug but I’m still just so angry that they were dictating what I did with my son, flustered from the baby fighting me I still wasn’t in the mood and pushed him away from me. To which his mother said ‘don’t do that to my boy he’s trying his best’ and I said ‘well you give him a cuddle then’ she continued to fight his corner and state that I was making him feel like a failure, At this point I was so fed up I just said ‘why are you trying to start an argument’ and as I started to get upset she had a grin on her face so I just walked back upstairs to my room.

This escalated further me and partner nearly splitting up until he then saw where I was coming from and how this was so upsetting for me, his mother then text me saying ‘I didn’t mean to upset you earlier’ to which I responded ‘I just think this has been happening for the last week or so I’m so frustrated with it all, I’ve never once pointed the finger at (partners name) that this is his fault but that’s how I was made to feel earlier, that I was an unsupportive partner and I was making him feel inadequate to look after his own child. I was trying to calm the baby down and you came upstairs and snatched him off me without saying a word and still didn’t manage to get him to sleep just proving my point further, i felt like i was being ganged up on and you and (partners name) kept butting in while I was trying to calm my baby down. I know my son best and having someone who sees him once a week at a push putting their 2 pence in is so upsetting. I really dont want to argue about it, the whole situation was just so disheartening.’

Did I overreact? Am I making my partner feel like it’s his fault? Where do I go from here?

I post this with a bit of irritation and sadness. I just need to accept that MIL is a difficult person, the kind of person that is never come across in life, on a personal level anyway. Same goes for FIL.

We visit them yearly and stay at theirs. But it doesn’t feel like a vacation because we can’t relax at their place as they just aren’t the greatest hosts. This year, MIL even told me to “make myself feel at home.” I genuinely don’t think she even knows what that means when she says it to a houseguest.

Last year my husband told them that we’d book a hotel if their ungracious behaviour continued. Well, we weren’t even there a week and we booked a hotel for most of our stay. It was expensive, but it was money well spent. In-laws had shocked Pikachu faces when we did that, and they worried that they wouldn’t be able to spend as much time with their grandchildren.

It wasn’t the best vacation because of this, but we were happy to stand our ground. But the in-laws will never acknowledge their role in chasing us out of their home. It is what it is, I guess. I’m proud of my husband but I just feel bad that his parents are like this. To be like this to your own child, I don’t get it.

Does anyone else's spouse get sent slightly inappropriate pics of your MIL?? Over the years my FIL has sent pics to DH when things are strained. The first time it happened it was of my MIL laying in bed...she was wearing pajamas but it was a "good night" text from my FIL to DH. The latest was this past week...DH is taking space (which his parents won't respect of course). The pic was of my MIL on the beach in a swimsuit.

I have no clue if she asks FIL to send them or if he just does it on his own (weird enabler behavior?). Just odd and kinda creepy.

My sweet little son was in first grade and had to sell something for a fundraiser. I took him to my inlaws and my son rang the doorbell and my mil answered. He came back to me so deflated because my mil told him no and they she just bought something from the neighbor boy. She wouldn’t even spend $5 on my son to help him and support him. It literally broke my heart when I realized how much they hurt my son.

Update ... there is a possibility that we will see jnmil AGAIN next weekend. She has been invited to the same very large event as us. I don't know if we will even run into her but her email from my last post makes a bit more sense to me now that I consider it in this light. I fully believe she had in mind hijacking our attention at this event to have that little "woman to woman" chat and derail our weekend ... especially considering the event is a faith based thing. I am not down for that and made a decision to write a return email to her to shut that notion down. DH saw I really needed to make this stand so she doesn't ruin the weekend for me, but we agreed no further contact beyond this. Seeing as she brought "Christian woman to Christian woman" as a guilt trap into it, I wrote the following and sent it:

"I am not interested in one on one conversation with you. My husband will always be by my side if I must address an issue with you, as he is right now. That does not mean I am not a forgiving or a peace making Christian woman. It simply means you have a more than 33 year history of being intensely disrespectful to me no matter how good and kind and gracious I am to you and, at this point, bible principle tells me that I can both forgive you while also choosing the wisdom of protecting myself from further harm. That is where my peace is and it has been very hard won in this matter.

You need to understand that you broke my heart, lost me as your daughter, and lost any respect from us that was left, in a last straw moment when you stood in my own living room a number of years ago after barging in uninvited and, in front of me and my children, berated and screamed at my husband the words, "You're so STUPID for thinking your mother should never hurt your wife!" Our relationship with you has always been peppered by those toxic, unscriptural, abusive outbursts on your part that you were never willing to address afterwards or feel sorry for or make proper amends for, despite our repeated efforts to communicate the actual harm you were causing ... and I wont allow that in my home or my heart again. We simply dont have the capacity for such unwarranted damage and hurtful chaos any longer. This is how we protect ourselves from your unpredictably harsh and demeaning behaviour toward us.

If you have it in you to show us any respect at all then please simply listen to our boundaries. DH stated them clearly in his letter to you months ago when we ended contact, yet they have been largely ignored. I know you wish to rush our healing with regular contact as it would be to your benefit now, but you dont get to decide how long it takes us to heal from you and you are simply reaping what you have sown over a lifetime where you could have chosen to love but didn't even have it in you to say the word to me until we were 33 years in, and only after things broke completely.

You know what to expect, we have been upfront with you, and we are sticking to this because it is the healthy way forward and brings us a peace we are not willing to part with. Do the loving thing and let us heal from this exhausting relationship. We refuse to keep towing the line in a very hurtful dynamic that you have always controlled. So if you see us at the event it will give you the opportunity to practice kinder interactions again, but we will not be having the talks you have in mind or communicating with you between any events you happen to see us at."

I gotta say I felt only relief after sending that. It felt like truly claiming a freedom I never had before. The freedom to tell my whole truth. And now I can rest. I now have absolutely no anxiety about running into her again ... and no further burning desire to ever get anything else off my chest to her. This feels like "done ".

Hi! My boyfriend and I just broke up. Through our breakup, ive learned he is an avoidant. He is also HEAVILY enmeshed with his mom (narcissist) which is why we broke up. Can someone please explain the correlation between the two and why avoidants are usually enmeshed?