Mummy’s boy – had enough

TW Eating disorder, violence

No advice wanted, just here to vent and show my partner it’s not just me that thinks she’s a bad person.

Myself (29F) and partner (33M) have been no contact with MIL for 2 years now. We have 2 children, aged 3 and 1. I also have a daughter from a previous relationship, she is 6. Every time someone brings up the fact that he isn’t talking to his mum, he reacts very weirdly and starts pacing rooms announcing he is leaving me/us. She has lots of money and as such has done nothing with her life apart from go on lots of holidays, and dislikes anyone who asks for any favours which get in the way of her leisurely life (eg occasional basic grandparent duties). I have tried to explain to my partner that THIS is his family now, and that we should be the priority, and not the family he was a child within.

A bit of background: My partner was hugely physically neglected as a child, which isn’t something he would like to admit, but the facts are there and MIL has openly admitted to them. Looking at his childhood pics, he literally looks emaciated and despite advice from dieticians and diagnosis of failure to thrive, she thought it was ok. She didn’t bother to get him vaccinated (which we only found out when my partner started a job where exposure was likely and therefore vaccinations required). She also left my partner with lots of random strangers for ‘childcare’ and as a result my partner was sexually assaulted as a child. My partner’s siblings seem to think she should be forgiven for all of this because she took them on lots of holidays, and his brother even went so far as to say “you are only alive because of her” – I didn’t like to point out that he was also very nearly NOT alive because of her too.

These are the lesser reasons we have gone NC – I’m aware each of these individually may not be a reason to go NC but in total and alongside the bigger reasons, they amounted to enough to make me want to protect our peace.

She clearly has body image issues herself and felt the need to project these onto my 6 year old. We stayed at her house once and my daughter had 2 weetabix for breakfast, and she felt the need to loudly comment on how much food this was and how she was going to get fat. During the same visit, we were at the park, my partner reached up to hang off of some monkey bars and his belly showed slightly. She poked him hard in the belly and stated “you need to lose weight, you’re so fat, you look like your dad” – for reference he was underweight when she had seen him previously, and he had put on maybe 2kg since she had last seen him making him normal weight but borderline underweight still. My 6 year old heard all of this and I was appalled that this was an attitude/thought process she wanted to instil into a young child. My partner fully believed that he was fat and made repeated comments that he needed to ‘diet’ and ‘lose weight’ when he was still borderline underweight.

My 6 year old is basically never ill, so when she is acting ill, she really is ill. She was curled up on the sofa crying and holding her ear, and so I took her to the Dr, and they confirmed a pretty bad ear infection and prescribed antibiotics. MIL came round, took one look at her, decided she didn’t have an ear infection and told us not to give her the medication. I told her in no uncertain terms that this was not her child, not her grandchild, and none of her business. She also tried to imply that we had caused my 6 year old’s asthma by living near a road. Basically anything health related is pointless with her because she’ll believe clickbait over actual studies.

When she found out we were expecting our first baby, she incessantly referred to the pregnancy as “ours” (as in including herself), and would say things like “we went to the scan” – no “we” didn’t, you weren’t there. She would attempt to touch my belly without permission and would act very offended when I asked her to not do this. My partner would say things like “leave it, she’s just excited” when I asked him to set boundaries. I did leave it, but I wish I hadn’t.

Her house is always piled high with dirty dishes, dust, mud, animal excrement. She doesn’t shower often, and her shower itself is incredibly dirty. She also has fungal toenails which make me very uncomfortable with this – she took our baby into her (very dirty) bed without permission one morning. Even not considering the dirt/infection risk from the toenails, she did not follow safe sleep guidance, and did not appear receptive to feedback to not do that again. Again, my partner did not want to set boundaries with this.

On multiple occasions she would visit and just walk in without knocking etc. Whenever she did this, she would usually stare at my breasts and laugh (they were usually out due to breastfeeding). We reminded her to please not do this, but it kept happening. My partner said “she’s used to being part of a community where that’s normal” (no she isn’t, she is not well liked in her neighbourhood and complains she is always left out of social gatherings, clearly not understanding this is because of her unwanted opinions and weird behaviours), well sorry but I’m not, I value privacy, and we live over an hour away so it’s not like she just decided to pop round, it’s a long drive here so plenty of time to reconsider and either send a text asking to visit, or turn around.

When she used to visit us, she would leave her dirty items everywhere and never tidy up after herself. Even when we had a newborn, she would sit down and expect cups of tea to be brought to her while she sat and did nothing, and would complain she was ‘bored’, would complain the house was a mess, while I was run off my feet doing housework, caring for a newborn/breastfeeding, catering for her needs, all while recovering from a caesarean. She never helped with housework, she never brought us a meal, she always simply came round, expected us to cater for her, treated it like a cafe and napped in the garden or on the sofa while I struggled.

And the bigger reasons:

Our youngest was born prematurely and we were transferred to a hospital quite far away which was able to cope with the severity of her care needs. She was in a coma for 3 days at birth, and had a 14 day stay in NICU in total undergoing various invasive treatments, including brain scans – she does have brain damage from lack of oxygen at birth. We were openly told within this time that at any point she might not make it, and to stay close by at all times. I also had complications from birth, and underwent some pretty intense interventions too during this time. While this was going on, since MIL doesn’t have a job and lives a life of leisure, we asked MIL to housesit and look after our oldest, given that he is scheduled to be in nursery 8am-6pm so ‘looking after him’ is really just putting him to bed and staying in the house while he sleeps. She brought her daughter (my partner’s sister) with her, who is also an mid 20s adult. She complained she was ‘bored’, ‘wanted to go home’, and claimed she needed to go home to do things at home – we suggested the adult daughter to home to do these things, or why don’t they both go during the hours between 8am and 6pm to sort this, and be back in time for pick up. This wasn’t good enough and they demanded to take our oldest back to their completely child unfriendly house, over an hours drive away, with no car seat, and no plans to take him to nursery each day – and who knows how they were planning to housesit to ensure we didn’t get burgled! When we pointed out these facts to them, it didn’t seem to register that it wasn’t possible for this to happen and instead they just kept pushing to take him to theirs. I eventually said you can either listen to the answer, which is no, and we’re all good, or you can keep pushing, the answer is still no, and I’m gonna think you’re a c*** for still pushing when I’ve said no. They then both went home crying claiming I called them a name (I didn’t, I gave them an option of stop asking and we’re fine, or keep going and I’ll think you are one), and abandoned our oldest at nursery with no plans for anyone to collect him, and left our house unlocked for whoever fancied it to just walk in. This was after probably 4 days. My mum and partner’s dad then had to take unpaid time off of work to pick up the slack. I wanted to go NC at this point as how dare you put stress on us when we are trying to focus on our potentially dying child, and how dare you float about in your life of luxury and feel like you’re bored and want to go home when someone is potentially dying, and expect other hardworking people who are objectively poor to take unpaid time off work to pick up your slack. That behaviour does not show you’re a good, supportive person when your son and his family are going through a horrific time. My partner was adamant that she get one more chance, so I agreed.

A few months later, we invited her to come and watch the local carnival with us. I didn’t want her there but I thought hey, if we’re giving her another chance let’s do it properly. Our youngest was around a month old at this point. The carnival is in the evening in November, and it was delayed by around an hour but if you want to be able to see it you need to sit/stand holding your place in the crowd, so of course myself, my partner, and our 3 children sat out there holding the place. It was very very cold and we were all wrapped up in multiple clothing layers and blankets. MIL complained she was cold and went back into the house and told us to phone her when it had started. Of course we’d have all liked to do this but she did not offer. So we, including our newborn baby, continued to wait outside while she enjoyed her cup of tea inside. And no, she did not offer to bring any warm drinks out to us. Then the carnival started and out she came, then upon seeing the carnival she complained about how everything was ‘tacky’ within earshot of all the locals – bearing in mind this is something the community give up their free time to fundraise for and work very hard on for this once per year celebration. Afterwards she went back to the house and made herself comfortable on the sofa reading a book while we ran around struggling to get 3 overexcited and overtired children to bed. In the morning, she was expected to have left by around 8 or 9am as we had informed her we had moved one of our cars to the neighbours parking spaces to enable her to have a space on our driveway. Also, I don’t like coming downstairs to get ready when visitors are still present as I have a lot of medication to take and she is very anti medication, so I was upstairs waiting for her to leave before I came down. For some unknown reason, my partner had given her our newborn to hold despite the fact I was breastfeeding. So my partner was getting on with housework, and she was lying on the sofa with my baby, while I was upstairs with no medication, no breakfast, and boobs that felt like they were about to explode because I needed to feed my child. Eventually I came down anyway, very pissed off, and hinted it was time for her to go, which she didn’t listen to. Then the neighbour came around banging on the door shouting that our car was in his space, which it was. I told him don’t worry she’s leaving now, and he continued to get aggressive and threatening legal action so I eventually told him to get off my property and FO. MIL then started shouting in my face that this was rude and I should apologise to him, so I told her to FO too. She continued to be up in my face spitting at me and shouting obscenities about what a horrid person I am, and my partner kept trying to pull me away from her, grabbing at my body and clothing, but she kept advancing towards me shouting and spitting, leaving me nowhere to go. I kept asking my partner to stop pulling me and grabbing at me and he didn’t listen, so eventually I slapped him to make him stop – yes this was a terrible move but at the time I was cornered by this spitting shouting woman and being pulled further into that corner by my partner who wasn’t stopping despite me asking multiple times. MIL then grabbed me round the throat and continued to spit forcefully into my face, shouting I am ‘not welcome in this family’ (it’s my family, these are my kids, you’re in our house, fym??) ‘I wish he’d never met you’ and various other very kind statements, at which point I needed to get out of being strangled so I headbutted her, quite gently but enough to make her stop, right in the nose. This made her let go and she left quite swiftly after. We haven’t spoken to her since.

Initially we had planned to rebuild with her once she had apologised and realised her wrongs, but it has been two years and it has become clear through the grapevine that she feels she has absolutely nothing to apologise for. Since she’s been out of our lives, our lives have been infinitely better, but she is like a dark cloud still in the background as she has spun the story to other family members that I am some sort of Disney villain and she has done absolutely no wrong. The ongoing issue is that every time someone mentions her to my partner, he goes into this headspin of wanting to leave our family forever in favour of his mother, and we have the same argument with the same facts each time until he finally claims to see sense, but really I don’t think he sees sense at all he just sees it’s a lot of effort to leave me and the kids.

I am planning to stay NC with her forever, and the kids will be NC with her until they are 18 then they can make their own choice, if she’s still alive. My partner, for some reason, wants to rebuild with her even though she has assaulted his partner, abandoned his child, and abused him as a child too. He can’t see how that would be incredibly disrespectful to me and the kids.

So… SO problem or MIL problem? I suspect both.