First time posting – MIL Issues

Hi everyone,

I am married to my husband and we have two children together. When we first started dating my MIL and I seemingly got along well. I could sense an undercurrent of judgement but I ignored this. For instance when we first met and my husband asked what she thought her response was “she’s real.” My MIL started snapping at me from very early on which I ignored.

For the most part I just respected her opinions and didn’t contradict them. However, when wedding planning I did something different with my invites that she didn’t think would work. When I showed her they did, she went quiet and then left the house immediately which I thought was odd but didn’t worry too much.

There has been a lot of other instances too, like when she came over for dinner I mentioned I still had something left to do for her special dietary requirement and she laughed and said “that should already be done.” I had a newborn at the time and had been all over town to get their requests (they requested a roast dinner).

When I first had a baby it took a while for my husband to adjust so I took on most of the responsibilities. One night he went out for the night to socialise at the pub, without giving me the chance to have a shower, something to eat or even a nap. This came up in conversation and she just said how glad she was he was finally getting a chance to do something for himself as he works so hard. There was also the time my MIL decided formula would be better than BM for our newborn daughter which my husband agreed with.

There’s been a lot of other little things like that, my husband usually says I’m taking it out of context, she’s joking or doesn’t mean it that way.

A big incident that happened was when a holiday came up that they wanted to go on with us, which is fine. Turned out MIL and family couldn’t afford the tickets at the time and my husband and his mother organised we would withdraw off our mortgage to pay for it. This was done without my input and I was sent a message from MIL telling me to book the flights (business class) and giving me the details. My husband is also owed money so I was not sure this would be repaid. I obviously was not happy with this and had words with my husband (and a lot of couples counselling). This also led to my husband stopping her having access to his emails and stuff like that. I initially said let’s postpone until we can all afford it but this was not good enough so I ended up deciding I would no longer attend. I felt validated for not agreeing to this as MIL came into some money and has not paid my husband back for the previous amount.

Since this my MIL will not acknowledge me, even to say hi, though she will in the family group chat. For instance at my birthday she ignored me all day and eventually I politely said hi which she responded to and went back to ignoring me. The next day in front of my husband I asked her how she was and she said good and went back to ignoring me. That night I ordered pizza for the whole family and took their personal orders and added my own. I ordered myself a pepperoni pizza and she went through and handed everyone’s out and named it normally and when she saw mine she said “and whatever this is.” And asked if anyone else would eat it (in a way that implied no one would). Everyone else including herself had individual items for themselves that they weren’t sharing and if I had know I was sharing I would have ordered something everyone else liked but I was not told this.

Anyway that has continued and last time I saw MIL, I was tired but wanted to be polite. I didn’t deliberately not make an effort, but she did not say hello or goodbye to me and snapped at me once. So I just stayed quiet and thought I contributed to the conversation when polite to do so. This was apparently not good enough and she messaged my husband enquiring about my wellbeing and commenting how quiet I was and offering me support. Noting MIL did not once start a conversation with me or even greet me.

There’s heaps more incidences but hard to put it all into words haha. I don’t know why I’m posting, I think I’m just frustrated and I can’t really talk to my husband about it.

Edit: When I was pregnant with our first child she also said there was no point of my husband being there with me as he would be bored with nothing to do so he should be working. My husband did work the whole time I was in hospital which caused lots of resentment for me. Luckily he didn’t do this the second child.