Freak out
Partner has a very difficult mother who has taken a long time to set boundaries
She thankfully lives abroad so we don't see her that often
She was suppose to come for what I thought was a month (has her own house near where we live)
I discover today she is coming for three months !!!
Literally nearly had a heart attack - I can bite my tongue for a month to get through xmas but three months of torture???
Ah!!!!!!!
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I sympathise- my sister who I
I sympathise- my sister who I love dearly is staying for a month- two weeks in and I can't wait for her to leave! But, she is my sister not my MIL, so I will grin and bear it.
My advice to you is to keep telling yourself this woman is not your mother, so it is your place to be polite but distant, and your SO's place to spend time with her. At least she is not living in your house!
So, I would play it cool- be nice but find lots of things to do that can be extra to your usual routine so that you are as busy as possible.
If she is staying for three months then she will have things of her own to do- look up old friends, sort out business matters etc- encourage her to do things in the locality that you don't have to be involved in.
Then, when things are getting to you come and rant on here- that's what I'm doing!
I wish when I had first met my DH that I hadn't got so involved with his family- I suggest you do the same if you're there for the long term!
Thanks fairyo I will have to
Thanks fairyo
I will have to try and grit my teeth and avoid her
The problem is that literally when she comes she tries to take over
I will finish work call partner only to find out that dinner has been moved to mil house (even tho we have previous plans) and I am now expected to drive there
Or she will turn up to the house cook in the kitchen and cook stuff she knows I don't like
Then she will get offended and worked up when I don't eat it - while I get frustrated cause the kitchen is now dirty and I can't cook until I clean even the necessary tools
She also tries to control how skids look and has tried in the past to blantantly block me when I had been previously doing stuff (back before skids were like they are now)- would debilerately ring up and demand the kids when we had something planned
The only way I finally got my partner to do anything was when she managed to really step over the line and I completely blanked her and refused to be in the same room as her until there were boundaries. Partner didn't believe it but when I refused to attend event parties he knew the foot was down and had a chat with her. His dad now tries to keep peace and keep her in check but as soon as you give her an inch she takes a mile! I try very hard not to say anything but more and more it's getting harder and harder
Oh and the thing she did that pushed me over the edge;
It was xmas a few years ago and we had to attend a conference. Partner asked mother to buy a few of the big santa presents so I looked up the presents there names and their numbers in the toy store and sent it to her as a text and as an email. there were two presents sd wanted but one was more important which is specified in both the email and text. I also included the things I had bought to prevent double buying. She rang me and told me that the books I had bought were too high level and she knew cause she knew there reading level. She then proceeded to buy the wrong dolll for sd and then lied and said I never told her. When the written evidence appeared she became really agitated and screaming down the phone at us and made me cry in the middle of a cafe in the city centre !
As soon as partner got off phone I was done.
Partner thinks that now he has talked to her and she tries to be nicer that I am mean to not give her another chance- how short his memory is !!!
It is hard dealing with such
It is hard dealing with such control freaks- I do enjoy contradicting my sister and pointing out her little mistakes sometimes then when she apologises I say, 'It's ok,' in a very condescending voice. However, I appreciate MILs are not the same. I get the impression that regardless of what you do she will be one up on you- and that can be very wearing. I think you should tell her what you really hate to eat but secretly like it- then when she's cooked it and thinks you'll hate it just gobble it down then ask for more.
There may be many similar tricks you can think of- just to keep your spirits up- otherwise just keep leaving the room because you left the cooker on and you think the house may be burning down...
Here are some others: leave some bad smells around the house so she'll not want to stay
turn the heating up/down so she becomes uncomfortable and leave
get a neighbour to bang on something so she can't bear the noise or get the neighbours kids to play loud
music or practise their violin lessons
take some screws out of the chairs so she falls when she sits down
hire a pet for the day, maybe a snake or a sabre toothed tiger...
ask the lonely old man down the road for tea one day and leave them to it!
finally tell her you're only buying charity gifts this year and give her a goat in South America or
somewhere
Good luck and try to beat her at her own game!
My MIL is awful at boundaries
My MIL is awful at boundaries too... likes control... Drives me insane... We currently live with her, so I just try and avoid contact most of the time... She keeps trying to tell me how to run our house when we get it... And that the ex should be invited to all or holidays, etc,... Makes me cringe. If she’s anything like that I super sympathize! PM if you just need to vent about the mess during it!
My MIL ran roughshod on BM.
My MIL ran roughshod on BM. She would go through her mail, search her laundry and report to my DH what was in it, wait for her to go to work and let herself in the house to "clean", make fun of her if the sofa had pet fur on it (my DH's cat and dog btw, not BM's). MIL made a living as an office manager for a lawyer and ran the office much like a concentration camp. It wasn't a good day til she made one of the younger girls cry. I take it back, the day was a failure if she didnt make someone cry. She will become overtly proud when she tells victory stories. Being a complete a$$hole is an integral part of who she is. For a wedding gift she completely redid my kitchen, an extremely generous gift. Except that she went to lowes and changed the dimensions, leaving a 4 inch gap in my cabinets. I had no idea it had happened until I went to Lowes to figure out what went wrong. The woman remembered my MIL and her handyman and told DH and I that the measurements I gave were modified. Ten thousand dollars frittered away just to get her spite included in the kitchen. She also goes on the internet and meets an unending array of foreign scam artists who pretend to be American military officers. She tells things about us that would get us killed in other countries: our religion, my husband's job and rank, my volunteer work. I'm pretty sure she embellishes the truth, too, making my DH more important than he is. What if someone takes me and the baby hostage for ransom or political gain? It wouldn't work, of course, but she might make someone out there believe deeply enough that it would work.
I'm done. She's banned from the house, she doesn't see DD. I don't acknowledge her on holidays or birthdays. She's crazy and dangerous.
Is in law disengagement a possibility for you, OP?
Mil did the same to bm- she
Mil did the same to bm- she would complain about the house being clean the kids clothes etc
Sometimes I think no wonder she left because that woman drives me to want to leave too
I do my best to disengage and avoid but it drives partner crazy
As I say it drives me crazy to not be able to function as a unit for the period she is here cause he can't put his big boy pants on
The last time she was here she came to the house twice after I had been on a night shift and came in screaming hello hello and woke me up
Also managed to terrify me as you know I woke up to someone in the house
I lost it with partner and apparently she claims she didn't know and is sorry - I explained the schedule to her after the first time so like he!! She did not know!!!
I will just have to avoid as much as I can - but it's hard when no where is safe !
It's your house. Set strict
It's your house. Set strict boundaries and let the MIL know that she is a guest and nothing more.