I have never had an issue with my MIL until the past few years. It started two years ago after she never offered me ANY condolences after my father passed away. My parents actually lived two doors down from my in laws, a transition that took place several years ago when both sides relocated due to getting older and wanting to be close by my husband and me. I am not exaggerating when I say she offered zero words of sympathy, despite being friends with my parents and spending much time with them. He died on her birthday, which meant we obviously didn’t celebrate her day as intended, then two days later she insisted we go to her house for cake, and even then she said nothing to me and offered no condolences, no hug, not even a “how are you doing?” So admittedly I do have a bone of contention with her.
Fast forward to this June and my FIL passed away after a gradual progression of dementia. Since then she has been texting my husband every morning to let him know she is “OK” – he says he told her to do this. Times have ranged from 0430, 0530, 0630…every day of the week. The texts wake me up and most of the time I can’t go back to sleep, especially if it is 0500 or later. The kicker is my husband doesn’t wake up, just me…he just keeps snoring away un-phased. I have asked him to consider texting her when HE wakes up instead, since he doesn’t even seem to know when she texts him. I have asked him to turn his phone on do not disturb, or even reduced distractions, but he can’t because of his job he has to be available if needed (though rarely) in the middle of the night (he has a hospice job). If he isn’t waking up when she texts him, I don’t get the point of her texting him at these hours. During the week I can tolerate it, as I am up by 0615, but on the weekends I would enjoy sleeping in a bit…even if just until 0700, but the MIL alarm keeps on ringing. I have even tried ear plugs, but I really hate sleeping with ear plugs, one always falls out – and honestly, why should I be forced to sleep like this when a simple solution would be for him to just call or text her when he wakes instead? He is refusing to budge on this at all and gets annoyed when I even suggest he call her in the morning instead. AITA for not wanting to be woken up every morning by my MIL who is not actively having an emergency?
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I have never had an issue with my MIL until the past few years. It started two years ago after she never offered me ANY condolences after my father passed away. My parents actually lived two doors down from my in laws, a transition that took place several years ago when both sides relocated due to getting older and wanting to be close by my husband and me. I am not exaggerating when I say she offered zero words of sympathy, despite being friends with my parents and spending much time with them. He died on her birthday, which meant we obviously didn’t celebrate her day as intended, then two days later she insisted we go to her house for cake, and even then she said nothing to me and offered no condolences, no hug, not even a “how are you doing?” So admittedly I do have a bone of contention with her.
Fast forward to this June and my FIL passed away after a gradual progression of dementia. Since then she has been texting my husband every morning to let him know she is “OK” – he says he told her to do this. Times have ranged from 0430, 0530, 0630…every day of the week. The texts wake me up and most of the time I can’t go back to sleep, especially if it is 0500 or later. The kicker is my husband doesn’t wake up, just me…he just keeps snoring away un-phased. I have asked him to consider texting her when HE wakes up instead, since he doesn’t even seem to know when she texts him. I have asked him to turn his phone on do not disturb, or even reduced distractions, but he can’t because of his job he has to be available if needed (though rarely) in the middle of the night (he has a hospice job). If he isn’t waking up when she texts him, I don’t get the point of her texting him at these hours. During the week I can tolerate it, as I am up by 0615, but on the weekends I would enjoy sleeping in a bit…even if just until 0700, but the MIL alarm keeps on ringing. I have even tried ear plugs, but I really hate sleeping with ear plugs, one always falls out – and honestly, why should I be forced to sleep like this when a simple solution would be for him to just call or text her when he wakes instead? He is refusing to budge on this at all and gets annoyed when I even suggest he call her in the morning instead. AITA for not wanting to be woken up every morning by my MIL who is not actively having an emergency?
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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> I am concerned I may be the asshole because I am asking my husband to tell his mother to stop texting him every morning, early in the morning. I have offered him what I believe to be reasonable suggestions for alternatives to this situation, but he refuses to put a stop to this behavior.
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Contest mode is 1.5 hours long on this post.
NTA.
Your frustration makes sense. Your MIL is not wrong for wanting reassurance and contact after losing her husband, but the way it is being handled is unfair to you. The texts are not serving their stated purpose anyway, since your husband does not even wake up when she sends them. Instead, you are the one losing sleep while he remains unaffected.
You suggested a reasonable compromise: he could reach out to her once he is awake. That way she still gets her check-in and you are not waking up at 5 in the morning to notifications meant for him. His refusal to even consider alternatives shifts the burden entirely onto you, which is not fair.
You are not asking him to cut off contact or ignore his mother. You are asking for boundaries that let you sleep without disruption. Wanting to protect your rest and peace of mind does not make you an asshole.
This is ultimately a problem between your husband and his mother. If he wants daily contact with her, it should be on terms that do not cause you to suffer for it.
NTA, she could simply text him in the afternoon instead of the forenoon and the problem would be solved.
YTA – just put his phone on do not disturb, or mute her number, or have his phone on silent. you’re an asshole bc regardless how you feel about your MIL that’s still her son and they have their own relationship and it’s not your concern if she texts him. and you’re lacking brain cells if you don’t know how to silence a phone.
Why can’t he setup a nighttime mode on his phone that lets through work calls (are they from a small number of contacts he has listed in his phone, or could they be from any random number?).
Or can he mute his mum only, every night until eg 8am?
These days phones have a lot of options. Surely there’s one that would work for this scenario.
NTA, but this can be solved very quickly and easily. Either turn off the ringer or set to do not disturb during sleeping hours. If necessary, you can set certain numbers to “break through” the do not disturb (I have my spouse, sibling, parents and in-laws for emergency and it’s for phone calls and not texts).
NTA but her texting isn’t the issue here. Your husband is the issue for refusing to sort out the noise HIS phone makes.
It’s so easy to set text messages to silent. He could still then hear a phone call in an emergency.
NAH for lack of a better voting option. You’re asking about yourself and your MIL as to the texting issue, but it sounds a lot more like a husband problem.
NTA. I was gonna say just silence the phone, but if he needs it on for work that changes things. However maybe there’s a setting where only certain numbers are let through or only certain numbers (his mom) are silenced?
Your husband can 100% shut this down but for some reason is choosing not to. All he needs to say is, “Mom, I love the morning text but would appreciate it if you could not text before (whatever time the two of you decide) because it wakes me up and then I can’t fall back asleep. The lack of sleep is really starting to catch up with me at work.”
I guarantee if he did that she’d stop the early texts.
NTA though I think for your own mental health you need to let her bad manners when your dad passed go.
Can’t he put his phone on DND until 630?
NTA I would make him silent notifications from his text thread with mom. I’m not sure if Android phones can, but on iPhone you click the text thread, then click the name at the top and toggle on “Hide Alerts”. Although sounds like he might be weird about that too?
Time for separate bedrooms.
(Until he figures out how to fix this.)
NTA. Much as you have valid issues with your MIL, Husband and his (in)ability/unwillingness to change his phone settings is this problem.
Ignoring the paragraph of irrelevant gripe that adds nothing to this, but anyhoo…
NTA, though I’m not sure why you’re making this about your MIL when your husband is the one who 1) apparently asked her to text and 2) won’t do anything about shutting down his phone at night because “he has to be available” despite the fact that he’s not waking up for his phone anyway.
I’ll offer this for a solution – there’s no reason married couples have to share a bedroom. Married couples with radically different sleep habits really *should* sleep in separate rooms for their own health and that of the marriage.
There are so many solutions, you can turn off notifications just for text but key calls go through.
Honestly though if he refuses to budge, tell him on weekends he can sleep in another room if he doesn’t want to change. If he refuses than when the buzz happens shake him until he wakes up and say hey you have a text, make sure it isn’t work. Make sure he doesn’t just go back to bed.
If he can’t understand your issue than he can suffer the consequences of less sleep too
ESH. If he has an iPhone, it’s very simple to set a “nighttime mode” so that his phone doesn’t ring until he needs it to ring for work (7am, 8am, 9am, whenever- he can choose the hours it goes “quiet” and when turns back on). Even if he doesn’t have an iPhone there is probably a similarly simple solution with his phone settings. Honestly this sounds like a non-issue and I don’t get his reluctance to help.
I also don’t understand what this has to do with your father dying. It may not be a good time to do this right now since her husband just died, but you haven’t mentioned how her behavior hurt you for two whole years but you are letting it make you resentful and reading bad faith into small things she does like send check-in texts to her son. You should eventually have a heart to heart with her.
No one is really acting like a reasonable adult here.
NTA though your problem is actually with your husband. Your MIL is likely up that early and if anything like my grandma doesn’t think it’s early!!
The problem is that your husband is being unnecessarily obstructive about the solution. He could mute the text noise for her, only overnight, ask her to text later.
Instead, he’s being an asshole because it no way affects him. I’d start waking him up ‘by accident’ so that he understands what you’re talking about given that you’ve tried asking nicely.
Your MIL is an insensitive witch just to be clear, but your rage is misdirected in this instance
So how is your husband on call, needs his phone on during the night, but is unable to wake up from his phone?
You are n t a for the Q in your last sentence, but y t a for the Q in your title if that means you talking to her about it, bc as you said
>he says he told her to do this.
So the problem isn’t her, it’s him.
So, INFO
NTA- your sleep also matters
NTA
If he wants to share room? He either mutes her number for the nights, or get a separate phone for work and one for family. Sleep deprivation is devastating for your health long term.
NTA
He can set a single contact to do not disturb, each evening. Then take it off in the morning. Like when he brushes his teeth. He’s being selfish about this.
There’s a fix, if he were motivated to find it.
NTA I’d first try to work out a way where you can find a mutually-satisfying compromise. You could ask him that if for some reason he feels his mother must be able to send him these texts from her side early in the morning, even if he doesn’t ever wake up to read them until he wakes up at his normal time, what solution does he propose so you are not chronically short of sleep due to being woken up early almost every single day? You want to understand why this is important to him, but he needs to understand that this is affecting your health and making every day that you have to soldier through sleep-derived worse. It’s not a small issue because it’s ongoing and the effects are accumulating.
If he doesn’t come up with a workable solution that respects how you are being affected I would then escalate to telling him that if he refuses a reasonable compromise you are left with having to force the issue because he obviously doesn’t get how much this affects you. He can’t just blow this off because you won’t let him.
He can call her as soon as he wakes up, get her to send him a message/email that doesn’t have an audible notification he can check and reply to as soon as he wakes, or he can sleep in another room and sleep through the messages there so they don’t disturb you — anything that allows you to get a proper night’s sleep again. What is not going to continue to happen is him sleeping through the messages while you miss hours of sleep every day. That’s insane. In fact, from now on every time you’re waken up you’ll be making sure he is woken up and stays awake. That might sound extreme, but if he can’t understand sleep-deprivation by being told about it, he needs to understand that it’s serious by experiencing it.
ETA: I honestly think the reason your husband thinks things are fine the way they are is that for him personally it’s optimal. No effort or trouble for him. He wakes up normally, well-rested, and checks the message from his mother at his convenience and feels reassured. He also probably wants the illusion that she can contact him 24/7 and that he’s always there for her (even if in reality he sleeps right through it all).
If he were single or sleeping in his own room it wouldn’t matter, but the fact that he can’t get it through his head that it’s making you sleep-deprived, and that’s a real issue for you, must be maddening.
NTA. He’s an AH for not caring about you losing sleep. Tell him that from now on, whenever her text wakes you up, you will wake him up so he can lose sleep with you. Or he can tell her to wait until a reasonable time to text him. His choice.
NTA.
Time to buy crash cymbals: I’m awake = We’re awake.
NTA but you have a husband problem. I mean what partner is okay with a text waking up his wife every morning? One that could wait and that he doesn’t even read till he wakes up? He’s TA.
Nta this sounds like a husband problem
Why are you asking him instead of telling him?
“This needs to stop now, so either you tell her or you can sleep in the couch with your phone, or even better yet, go sleep at your mother’s house”.
If he doesn’t then go to your parent’s house. If he complains just say it is the only place you can get some sleep.
Don’t be a push over. I swear 99% of the women on here have no spine or self respect.
YTA, he ITA, mil ITA
MIL- for not giving you sympathy when your father passed
Husband- should learn how to use his phone and designate a personal notification for his mother that is silent
You – asking her not to text your husband just sounds like a stereotype of the insecure wife. Be the bigger person.
NTA. He needs to mute her while he’s sleeping. That’s ridiculous that you have that waking you up everyday. He sounds selfish and I’m guessing he gets it from her considering the background.
Wake him up every morning when she texts. Don’t let him go back to sleep. He’ll figure it out pretty quickly I suspect.
Also Nta.
There are noise-cancelling headphones especially made for sleep. They are available on Amazon for about $25. You can find ocean sound videos on YouTube for 11 hours uninterrupted or other soothing sounds, and not be bothered by these inconsiderate AHs.
NAH, but personally would want to say YTA for sounding a bit entitled in this post. The entire “my father died during MIL birthday” is irrelevant and felt more like a low key accusation that your MIL hated you?
And even if she does hates you, how does this connect to her texting your husband?
While texting someone during the early hours is wrong, your husband is okay with it. There’s nothing wrong here. The only problem is that you are affected because of the notification. In this case, you can do the following:
Use DND setting where any important calls must be called thrice to reach. (Do not block your MIL in case of accidents)
Request MIL to schedule texts
Have a different phone for personal life that would be silence during sleeping time.
Have you tried waking him up?
Not in a passive aggressive way, but clearly communicated and warned way? Maybe he needs to experience it for himself.
NTA. Is your husband inconsiderate in other ways? This would be really simple to fix if he would just speak to her about it.
NTA.
why don’t you just talk to your mother-in-law about it?
“Hey mother-in-law, I want you to know that I love you and I understand that losing your husband husband really hard on you. We want to know that you’re OK, and if this is something you need, we can work with you. However, you need to be texting us after XYZ hour, because you were waking me up and it is affecting my health and I don’t want there to be resentment.”
You need some kind of noise canceling headphones or good earplugs. And he needs to tun the notifications off on his phone when he goes to bed. If her texts wake you up again, wake up your husband and say “Your mother just texted. It must be urgent because it’s 5 a.m. so you had better call her.” Then go back to sleep with a smile.
NTA for wanting to be able to sleep in the morning, but soft YTA for being upset with her about it. He’s the one who told her to text. He’s the one who refuses to set a time boundary with her. He’s the one who sleeps through the noise. He’s the one who won’t mute his conversation with her or adjust the settings on his phone. Her text messages waking you up in the morning are HIS fault, not hers. He’s the one who should be modifying some behaviors.
Make him wake up, and tell him his mom has texted, every single day.
You are bec with her and trying to solve the wrong problem. This is a husband issue, not a mil one.
NTA. Your husband is, though.
NTA, pre-set ‘do not disturb’ or ‘sleep’ hours from 4am to 7am, with selected work numbers as favorites able to go past the ‘do not disturb’ setting. If your husband is not willing to do this simple, 2min solution, then you have a husband problem.
NTA. But your husband is!
He can set a do not disturb/focus time on his phone for a specific contact. He can just silence his mother’s text until a reasonable time.
Eta: on Iphone he can even allow phone calls from his mom even if he schedules her other notifications to be silenced on a set schedule. So not being available to her in case of emergency isn’t a reason not to do this.
Make it his problem. Every time you get woken up, you wake him up to check his message. He has to suffer the same as you. If he’s unhappy about this, divorce. NTA.at the end of the day, he doesn’t care about you.
You can mute individual contacts on your phone. You do not need to mute everyone. You can even set the hrs. they are to be silent. I have it on different people, for different reasons, at different times.
Is there a way to set your husband’s phone so that it rings for a phone call, but doesn’t beep for a text? I’ve never tried this myself because a simple beep from a text message doesn’t ruin my sleep.
Sounds like he should start sleeping on the couch with his phone so it doesn’t disturb you. See how long that lasts before he tells her to stop.
Can’t he block his mom when he goes to bed and unblock her when he wakes up? Alternatively (if it were me) every time I woke up I’d start screaming (not at him just loud at the top of my lungs beside him) until he was up and out of bed. You have a husband problem when there’s so many options with technology to handle this but he chooses not to.
Wear earplugs or something. A single ding or buzz on a phone shouldn’t be waking you up.
Wake your husband up every morning. Shake him, pull the covers off, whatever it takes, but make it as jarring as possible. “I’m sorry, I thought you needed to see that text every morning so you know your mom is ok”.
YTA.
I can understand the issues with your MIL, but can’t your husband just put the notification on silent or something?
This isn’t a problem with your MIL.
Let’s remove the entire backstory that justifies your feelings. (Adding that your feelings about her are completely justified)
Your husband won’t silence his phone when he knows his mother is going to text early in the morning. He also doesn’t hear his mom’s text tone. So then ask him why he leaves it audible.
For his job, he can leave that phone number on bypass, so he will get notifications on that regardless.
Your husband is not being a good partner to you. He is being selfish and self serving.
You are NTA, but your husband is being TAish.
NTA, but your husband kind of is. It makes was more sense for him to text her when he gets up, not the other was around. If you can sleep in different rooms I would do it and tell him that until he changes his communication styles, it will stay that way
NTA. Can’t he just put his mom on DND until he wakes up? There’s an emergency override so if she calls twice it’ll go through. This seems like a weird thing to be upset about if there’s a super easy solution,
Nope, that’s a husband problem. When she wakes you up, wake him up every single time. Tell him if you have to be woken by it, then he needs to also. He will get sick of it real quick and do something about it. If he doesn’t, that shows your husband doesn’t care.
Make husband sleep in the living room until he changes his phone settings so your sleep is not disturbed by these texts.
Husband problem, not MIL problem. If the texts are waking you up he must have them on a crazy loud setting.
If your husband has a nightstand, try putting the phone in the drawer. That should hopefully muffle the light and noise from a text but still make any alarm audible but less abrasive. That’s what I do, anyways.
Seriously, though, he needs to reduce the volume or change the noise on his text alerts and keep the phone face down.
NAH. Tell hudband to put his alerts on silence at night. It’s awful she didn’t support you during a loss and I’d feel just like you but that doesn’t mean her own mourning now and daily Quick chats with son is wrong either.
My mom is also my best friend, we talk almost daily to a small degree either via text or a call. Now if she is constantly taking up his time that would be different.
NTA but not sure why youre making this into such a big problem. Set his phone so that it silences only her texts or set the alert sound to something less intrusive that doesn’t wake you. That way he can get all his work calls/texts but hers don’t wake you. Since he doesn’t see her texts anyway, it shouldn’t make any difference to him
I’m sure his mom is holding some weird ass grudge against you since your dad had the nerve to die on her birthday. I’m guessing she thinks she owns that day and that nobody else is allowed to do anything on that day except celebrate her highness.
Wake him up when it wakes you up. “Sweetie, your phone is going off” NTA He shouldn’t get to ruin your sleep and if it’s so important, he shouldn’t risk sleeping through it himself anyways.
NTA, he can mute her text notifications
YTA, albeit a mild one, because yes, being awakened that early is annoying.
He told her to text when she gets up. He can easily set his phone to silent or vibrate so that her texting in the wee hours doesn’t disturb you, while allowing work calls to get through. Him calling her isn’t the same—when he gets the message, he has peace of mind that she hasn’t died in the night. Good lord.
It’s really not that big a deal. You don’t say that you get bothered if one of his work calls wakes you. It seems more like MIL annoys you because you don’t like her for not giving condolences when your own father passed.
Your husband is the problem here. He’s the one that told her to text every morning and he doesn’t even get the texts. If you have told him you’re being woken up every day and he doesn’t give a damn about it then he doesn’t give a damn about whether you get enough sleep or your feelings. Tell him separate bedrooms are coming up very quickly if this doesn’t end because everybody needs their sleep and they need that sleep in order to heal and feel rested all day. The fact that he doesn’t care about that or perhaps doesn’t want to stand up to Mommy is extremely problematic.
Have you asked her not to text so early?
You are NTA for not wanting disturbed sleep.
But if you gotta wake up, so does he. Wake his ass up and tell him his mother texted.
Maybe it’s time for a light bit of vacuuming the bedroom, or changing the sheets. I mean sure, he’s rather sleep. So would you.
But since you are up, might as well get a start on those annoying chores.
The problem is your husband, not your MIL, but I’m curious: Have you ever told her what the issue is and asked her to wait to text after a specific time on weekdays and after 9am on weekends?
If you’ve had that conversation and she’s still doing it, you must make this your husband’s problem. Wake him up every single time. He will have to be inconvenienced before he will be willing to make the change. Besides, if he’s on call, he needs to be waking up every time his phone goes off. You’ll just be “helping” him.
NTA
Wake your husband up every time his phone goes off
This has to be a joke? Listen, please tell him one more time that this is going to stop TODAY or else. Leave him already if he continues this shot show. This isn’t even a MIL problem, this is a husband problem. NTA please realize that this sleep deprivation is going to fuck up your hour health massively! Not to mention that neither your husband nor your mother-in-law have the slightest respect for you. You are actively shortening your life expectancy for these people. You realize that?