I guess I’m lucky. I’ve got 3 mother-in-laws - my wife’s mom, her first stepmom who she’s quite close with, and her last stepmom, who my wife isn’t close with, but who was married to my FIL when he died earlier this year, so we’ve been around her a lot. But all 3 of them put together don’t sound nearly as bad as some of your MILs. Plus, my “real” MIL lives in Hawaii, while the other two are 2 hours away.
The worst I can say is that 1st stepmom is a bit adrift and bitter since the divorce over 10 years ago, and she’s always looking for someone to help her financially (she doesn’t make a ton of money, but she also smokes a ton of weed, which ain’t free last I checked). Top that off with the fact that she works at a budget craft store, so every Christmas and b-day, our kids get crappy Chinese-made craft kits that we have to put in storage or throw away for fear of tainting our children with lead poisoning. I keep trying to tell her “It would mean more to all of us if you spent the money on yourself”, but I know that doesn’t really help.
And it also doesn’t help that MIL #2 is relatively well-off and gives the kids pretty cool gifts, so MIL#1 is always feeling she needs to compete.
But still - these are the worst of my MIL problems, so I count myself lucky.
Did she ever volunteer to help you pay for a cleaning lady? My MIL and her mother both offered to help us pay for one the first time they came to visit. Granny offered again the second time they came. When we moved back into the same state as them, they cleaned windows my mother had just cleaned and demanded to know where I kept gardening tools that were still on the moving van so they could do something about those horrible plantings along the walk. Granny routinely weeded my flower beds and raked my leaves until the years she got into some poison ivy and I left a rake out and ready for her, respectively.
But that kind of thing I can put down to an honest, if ineptly expressed, desire to help. They’re like that with everybody
It was the year I was on call and they moved Thanksgiving dinner from our house to somewhere an hour away without telling us that got my goat. Actually, the moving the dinner didn’t bother me that much. It was when my husband told his mom I couldn’t come because I was on call and she said “But you’re still coming, aren’t you?” that pissed me off. :eek: :mad: :rolleyes:
To state that his wife spending 4-5 days a week apart from him, with a woman who is apparently hostile to him (she views him as the Antichrist), does *not * impact him as the husband is not entirely correct, imho.
While my ex and I were married, before I was aware there was anything wrong, my husband went on a vacation with his parents. I didn’t think anything of it, I had to work…
They brought his girlfriend. Who I didn’t know yet existed.
When your husband can do no wrong in the eyes of his mother, it usually doesn’t extend to going on vacation without his wife, but with his mistress.
I am too, and since my MIL and I have different senses for where things go and how things work, the kitchen and cleaning/putting stuff away in it is off limits to her when she visits. I will, on the other hand, clean and put stuff away in her house because I can adjust my behavior to fit her kitchen, which she is apparently incapable of doing. ::shrugs::
OP’s MIL and wife need to sit down and have a discussion about how it’s not okay to behave like OP is the antichrist if wife misses a day of church. If the church thing is recent, check to see whether MIL is using it as a tool to make wife miserable about her choice in marriage or whether she’s gotten more fervent about her beliefs as of late.
