After being 17 years of being gaslight, Accused of cheating and slandered with no help from STBX I’m telling him I want a divorce.

I’ve been with my husband for 20 years , Married 16 years ago but had our first child 17 years ago which is when the trouble started. I at the time wanted to keep the piece I just had our first kid and wanted to give everyone their time with the baby.

I learned real quick I was very disliked by MIL. Everything I did was wrong even the simple things of putting a cup on a table and it was wrong . A couple months after have our first I went to the gym but when MIL found out she started telling people and my husband I was doing it for attention or possibly cheating. My husband knew I wasn’t cheating, I never gave him a reason to believe so and I wasn’t going to either. After a couple months I quit going to the gym and started going on morning jogs which turned into ‘ Your an awful and selfish human being for going on a run and leaving the baby behind’ and ‘It doesn’t matter it’s not like you’ll get rid all the baby weight anyway. I always felt the need to apologise because she made me feel crazy.

Baby 2 was mainly the same about everything I did and about exercise. After having baby 3 this was when my oldest had started cheer and I had made some friends with the other mom’s. We occasionally had a night out leaving our SO’s with our kids. Again MIL told people I was attention seeking or most likely cheating (Because that’s what women did on their night outs.) In MIL words it was most likely true since how I treated my husband. Not true at all in all honesty given the state I was in at the time I thought I marriage was great we had a pretty good relationship. But after her slandering again I stopped changing our with my friends because I didn’t want them to be dragged into anything. Instead we bought gym equipment and I used it regularly MIL hated I kept myself in shape always saying ‘Well you won’t always be skinny, So enjoy it while you can.

Now 4 years after that I had our forth this was at a point I had started fighting back, Anything I said as fact, MIL would argue I’m wrong and I’d bring up my phone and read the fact out loud. Every single kids birthday she tuned it into a competition of how much more money she spent or she’d look at me raise and say ‘You sure your kid wanted that’. Yes MIL I’m sure, Since you know I asked. Shed argue over every holiday making sure she got to see the kids. She would bad mouth me to my kids then get mad at me stepping it and confronting her.

Every visit with her I now no longer prepared my house since it was never good enough for her. I always was in a bad mood when she visited because it was just a ‘Mom is visiting today’s My husband never argued with his mom, never let me get a say in if she visits. She always would tell me I put on weight every visit then say ‘Looks like the exercise isn’t helping’ truth was I didn’t actually put weight on, if I did it was barely noticeable.

Lastly and the thing that broke me is this week at FIL’s birthday when talking about happy memories MIL randomly brings up how I never went to her birthday 5 years ago, Then again claimed I must have been cheating and claiming how I unfairly I treated my husband. I know she was Gaslighting me but I asked her when I had ever been rude to her son her excuse “Well how could I not, Look at how you treat me”. Then she brought how the kids didn’t really look like my husband. I told her I’d get a DNA test then cut her off from the kids. She scoffed, So I brought up how she believed I was so rude to her when she’d done nothing but slander and say I had been cheating for years, And she denied it all.

This is when I made my family leave. On the way home I let everything out in front of my husband and told him off for ever standing up for me. It wasn’t the best idea that my kids heard me talk to MIL that way or my husband but I couldn’t help myself. I’m done I’ve been put through years of abuse from this woman. I went from a young woman trying be nice and get her to like me to some who doesn’t care anymore.

I may have thought years ago my husband was great but now looking back it has become obvious and from what he had previously told me his mom has always been this way, He never has stood up for himself. I can’t stay married to him because it’s damaging mentally as well as the kids. I need to protect us not let them go through this anymore. I no longer feel attracted to this man it isn’t worth fixing things over. I’m telling him I want a divorce to night.