Three’s a crowd. These annoyed spouses share the offensive things their mother-in-law has said or done to them. Content has been added for clarity.
Invitation Only
“I was newly married in an arranged marriage.
My husband and I had a courtship of a few months and we liked each other. After we spent the first few days in my parent’s place for some rituals, we went to my in-laws’ place. There were a lot of guests to be accommodated since my sister-in-law and her husband were also present.
In their family for some reason, the son-in-law was treated like royalty. It might have been because this particular one had an ego and he got offended too often.
I didn’t know.
Anyway, my family was very open-minded and I wasn’t brought up to be less than any man.
So, that night all of us could not be accommodated in the three bedrooms. My mother-in-law asked me to adjust for one night by sleeping in the living room along with the other girl cousins and aunts so the old people could take the two other rooms and their precious son could be accommodated in our room. To his credit, he said he would find a hotel.
But it was very late at night.
I was really offended as this was my first night in their place and there was no way I was going to sleep in the midst of a bunch of strangers.
And as their daughter-in-law, I expected the same respect given to their son-in-law.
My husband was generally a very calm and soft-spoken person.
That night, he was so stubborn and told his mom that this was not going to happen. She tried convincing him multiple times and he was just so firm in his decision.
He said, ‘No. She will not sleep outside. If you can’t accommodate, we will go out and find a hotel.’ The sense of security and protection I felt from my husband when he stood up for me, I never forgot.
He set the tone for his family on how his wife was to be treated. From then on, I had been treated like a queen by my in-laws.
I didn’t hold anything against my mother-in-law. She was like a mother to me.
I think she just panicked and did not know what to do because of past tantrums thrown by their son-in-law.
But when it happened it was very hurtful.”
Monster-In-Law
“My mother-in-law, where to start?
I always compared her to the mother in ‘Everybody Loves Raymond.’
The comments that came out of her mouth over years!
To start, my husband and I were living in London during the early ‘90s and we always received bomb scares on the underground.
So large sections had been closed down.
Sometimes not too bad.
Sometimes it was very chaotic.
So one evening while my mother-in-law was staying with us, it was massive chaos on the underground.
I was quite pregnant at the time and getting home from work required walking, buses, and more walking.
The same for my husband and his mother.
We all got in quite late.
I walked in the door five minutes before they did.
My husband was exhausted and grumpy, so he went to bed.
My mother-in-law informed me I should have had his dinner ready for him and it was my fault he was in a bad mood.
He heard her and told her not to be stupid.
Some of the other gems included when she climbed on a chair to check for dust on top of a cabinet and then complained. She also brought some of her friends around to show off the house.
At the time we were renovating.
She had apologized for the color I was painting the bathroom and constantly referred to our house as her son’s, even though I had inherited it from my Grandparents. She told me someone had told her the only thing wrong with our kids was everyone raised their kids better than we had raised ours.
There was nothing wrong with our kids.
We took her to the Victoria and Albert Museum for an exhibition of kimonos and Japanese art, (she had been to Japan and did Ikebana).
She told us she was not interested and she made us leave.
A month or two later, her niece took her.
She came home raving about the wonderful exhibit she went to.
It was the same darn exhibit!
I offered her a book after I read it. I thought she would enjoy it.
But no, she was not interested.
Her niece gave her the same book for Christmas. And she said it’s great and asked if I would like to read it!
There were loads of little events like this.
The absolute worst thing she ever did was refuse to look after our two eldest sons when they were toddlers so I could go visit my dying Grandfather in hospital.
She preferred to clean her ex-husband’s house.
Apparently, she was too old to look after toddlers but she looked after our nephew who was the same age all the time.
Six months later, she retired as a nurse and started looking after a toddler daily.”
She Loves Me Not
“My mother-in-law can be a wonderful woman and I know that if I ever really needed her help, she would drop everything to help me.
But she had consistently made rude and insensitive comments to me and they are the type that was hard to forget.
When my husband and I first moved in together, (our first time moving out of home) I was talking to my mother-in-law about how different it was going to be living on our own and to be deciding what to have for dinner every night.
Her response was, ‘Yes, it must be really hard to decide between McDonald’s and Subways.’
She told me straight to my face that it’s different when your own daughter has children, as opposed to my children who were fathered by her son.
But apparently, it wasn’t as important as her daughter’s children.
When my younger daughter became constipated she said, ‘Maybe you should try giving her some vegetables.’
When she arrived at another family’s house and saw we are already there, she had come inside and said, ‘Oh yes. I knew you must have been here, from all the noise we could hear from outside.’
She told me my children had too much imagination and therefore were too overactive.
She had told me how my husband used to be thin and active until he moved in with me and I started cooking for him. Which is ridiculous. my husband’s family has all had weight problems for most of their lives including my mother-in-law.
These comments among others made me really shake my head and wonder what she was thinking.
I believe that she loved me, her son, and our children.
But when she acted this way, I really wonder why.”
Sharing Is Not Caring
“Ever since I had given birth to our beautiful son, my mother-in-law literally disregarded my existence on this planet.
My son had his second doctor’s visit and our car was being repaired. She offered to drive us there.
When we got there the doctor said my son was going to have his first round of shots and as I was about to answer back, my mother-in-law had cut me off!
She started going on about how she thought it was best if my son should only get one shot and how we should have rescheduled the next ones separately.
The pediatrician then said, ‘No.’
Because, duh, they were very busy and it was just standard procedure. It was also very quick.
Then my mother-in-law had a tone and said she didn’t think it was best.
The doctor said, ‘Everyone gets the shots.’
My mother-in-law had kept going back and forth with him until the doctor just told her to stop and it didn’t concern her. He also told her it was not her decision because she wasn’t the mom.
Then the doctor turned to me and said, ‘Let me ask you some questions.’
I said, ‘Thank you,’ because I had thought that put my mother-in-law in her place.
But no.
After my son got his shots, he cried. As I was about to pick him up to comfort him, she shoved her way in front of me and grabbed him. She behaved like the nurse had done something horrible to him and she was the only one who could comfort him!
I was beyond aggravated with her. It took me about point five seconds to take my son back from her and she stepped back as I was doing so!
On the way home, she was quiet.
When we got home she told her ex-husband– my boyfriend’s dad– that I ‘stole’ him from her.
After that, she sent her daughter one day unannounced to come and get my son because she wanted to have him for a night. She didn’t even think to ask me. He was two months old!
Why did she do that?
Everything she did made me feel like she wanted my son to be dependent on her, not me.
It was annoying.
I had to tell her off because my mom had cut his hair a little too short, but I already had dealt with it.
It was over. My son was nine months by then.
My father-in-law had either sent a picture or told her. I wasn’t really sure, but she had called my mom and screamed at her on the phone.
My mom had texted me to talk about it and in the midst of our conversation, my boyfriend’s phone started ringing from both of his parents.
I had known it was bad because first, it was his mom, then his dad. The calls were consistent and went back and forth from his mom to his dad. I had ended up blocking them on his phone and started texting in a group message and said my piece. I told her everything I had ever been frustrated about all these nine long months and finally said what I’ve always wanted to.
She was not his mother.
I was.”
A Little Too Far
“After about two years of marriage, we moved into a bigger home.
The following Christmas, we decided to host at our house to invite both our families. I was excited to show the moms I could host a big dinner. They asked if they could bring anything.
I said, ‘Maybe a side dish or dessert or something, not a big deal.’
Low and behold, later in the afternoon, my mother-in-law showed up with tin-lined boxes filled with an entire cooked turkey dinner. My dinner was almost ready but she insisted on hers. She also brought all her dishes and place settings, a centerpiece for the table, glasses, and anything else you could think of.
She placed her hand soap in my kitchen to go with the tea towels, kitchen rugs, and other kitchen decors from her house. She insisted everyone wear their slippers in case my floors weren’t clean.
Which they were.
I was infuriated but let it go.
Then, my own mother who also thought it was all weird as all get out, came to me and asked if I’d seen my washroom yet. This woman went as far as to redecorate my entire bathroom right down to the shower curtain with all stuff from her house.
I was flabbergasted.
I’d never seen anyone behave this way. She told me she wanted her husband to feel comfortable. He was pretty laid back and lost in the sauce. He probably didn’t even care or notice.
When she left that night, she re-packed all of her boxes with all her items and left.
I told my husband he needed to talk to her and that it couldn’t ever happen again.
Low and behold, come Easter, the same thing happened.
I’d had enough.
She could do it at her house from now on. The following Christmas, my new son was nine days old. She showed up at seven am with a camera and a tripod. She insisted we were doing a family photo right then and there. I kicked her out of my house that day and never looked back.
Needless to say, we got divorced.”
Enough Is Enough
“When I first started dating my current husband, she would purposely keep his ex-girlfriend around her house so I’d never come over.
When I did finally come around she had pictures of his ex everywhere.
When he and I started living together she would only come to visit if she knew I would be gone for an extensive amount of time. Fifteen years later and nothing has changed.
Any questions she had for me she’d tell her son to ask me. This included a recipe, a job opening, or the name of a store.
I mean anything.
One good example was Christmas.
She’d ask her son what I would like for Christmas every single year.
He in turn would ask me and usually sent her a few things I had written down that I needed. Every Christmas I watched my sister-in-law (her daughter) open every single thing I had on my list.
I would get some ridiculous gift I never even knew what to do with.
When we got married she wore a black funeral dress to our wedding.
When I was in labor about to have our first child, she was in the hospital room with me, my husband, and my mother.
As time dragged on, the doctor decided to go ahead a prep me for surgery.
And she said to my husband right in front of me, ‘You don’t need to stay here overnight, it will be so uncomfortable. Why don’t you come back to my house and play video games?’
I could have blown fire because I was so mad!
Yeah sure go ahead and leave me to go through this alone! That one really, really hurt.
Years went by and we had two kids by then.
She demanded to have Christmas with his side of the family on Christmas Eve like she always had. I’m talking eight pm we would finally eat and by ten pm we opened gifts. By We would finally leave around midnight!
I had two toddlers in the middle of winter, my own Christmas morning to prepare for, and my own Christmas Eve traditions I wanted to start with my children.
So by the time my oldest was four I knew I couldn’t keep doing this so late at night on Christmas Eve anymore. I asked if we could simply have it earlier around four pm. Apparently, I had ruined her life and I had the entire family yell at me for it.
Finally, I had enough and we stopped coming.
They all still had it and we were the black sheep for it.”
No Friend Of Mines
“Oh, I used to have the mother-in-law from my worst nightmare!
Picture this, I was an Army wife and I was pregnant with our first child.
During this time, my then-husband was in Afghanistan for 15 months and I was by myself. Although we were hoping he would make it home on time since he scheduled his leave to come home around the time I was set to deliver, nothing was guaranteed.
Luckily, he literally made it just as I was delivering our daughter.
Hours later as I sat in my room looking at our baby, I decided to call my mom and let her know the good news. I knew that she would tell everyone in the family and I was too exhausted to call everybody one by one. I had a very large family.
My ex-husband decided to call his dad and let him know.
Some hours later, I was dead asleep when my husband woke me up and told me that his mom wanted to talk to me. She and I had never got along due to the fact she hated I was actually married to her son.
Not because I was a bad wife or a bad woman, but she thought that she should always be first in her son’s life.
‘Why didn’t you call me and tell me that you gave birth to my granddaughter?’ she asked me.
I couldn’t believe it.
When I told her that it was not my responsibility to call my husband’s mother to make sure she knew, she had the nerve to blame me.
She stated that if I was any type of a ‘real wife and woman’, I would have made her son call her to let her know.
By then I was heated!
I just had a baby!
Seriously?
So I finally told her, ‘Well considering you’re on marriage number three, I don’t think you should really be giving me advice as to how to keep a husband’, and hung up the phone.
She was a living nightmare!
Every day I am thankful I was no longer related to her or have to deal with her in any capacity.”
Wolf In Sheep Clothing
“Thankfully, it’s past tense.
I had a mother-in-law that must have been evil incarnate but she is now my ex-mother-in-law.
When I first met her, I thought she was amazing – silly, naive me.
I really believed she had an amazing memory but it turned out to be an amazing imagination and a predilection for gross exaggeration and flat-out lying. She didn’t like me, which is fine, but the problem was she never said or did anything overtly to make me realize this. Instead, she would undermine me in subtle ways that I could not address directly.
Her favorite game was playing both sides against the middle and she caused so much damage in my life for over 20 years.
I was no match for her psychopathic ways.
What made it worse was other people would tell me how lucky I was to have her and I couldn’t explain how wrong they were without sounding rude.
When my first born was two, my father-in-law told my husband and me she wanted to adopt her! My blood ran cold.
She then told my sister that she would finance a second child. Who does that? It wasn’t like she was rich anyway. I was appalled.
Later, I discovered something she had written where she said she just wished C (my husband) would just divorce me. Her weird little dream was that they (C, her, and my kids) would live happily ever after.
After my son was born, I told my husband I was done with the pill/IUDs/pregnancies.
It was his turn now to take responsibility and get a vasectomy. He hummed and hawed and the next thing, when my son was seven months old, I was pregnant again. The husband didn’t speak to me for three days like it was all my fault. The mother-in-law actually wrote down I had tricked my husband, like some gold digger or teenager wanting to trap a man.
We had been married for five years and in a relationship for over 12 years.
Bizarro.
Long story short, my husband passed away unexpectedly when he was 47.
After 19 years of a manic depressive marriage – lots of high highs and even more low lows. I really did love him but it was a codependent and unhealthy relationship. Of course, the blame for his death fell squarely on my shoulders.
I am fairly certain he had borderline personality disorder and I do not doubt that his mother had a great deal to do with that. It was a horrible time of my life and the only bright spot was when someone mentioned that my mother-in-law was now my ex-mother-in-law.”
Three’s A Crowd
“My mother-in-law has done countless things to offend me, but perhaps the worst was when she forbade me from having additional children because of how it affected her son.
We had two children and I worked part-time at home while my husband worked full-time and often traveled for work.
Most weeks I was completely responsible for managing the kids, house, bills, and anything else entirely by myself, since we didn’t live near any relatives and didn’t have any family support.
However, my husband badly wanted a third child and mentioned this to his mother when she visited. Immediately after he left to run an errand she turned on me. She told me she forbade me from getting pregnant again because her son shouldn’t have to work all day/week and then come home only to have to help me care for more children.
She said he worked too hard already and I demanded too much of his time. She also said he needed more time to relax and I wasn’t doing enough as it was to support him.
Her comments were offensive because she completely and utterly discounted my contribution to the family and assumed it was actually my desire, not my husband’s to grow our family. She believed his needs for balance and stress reduction were more important than mine.”
Cinderella
“We used to live in a joint family with my parents-in-law, brother-in-law, his wife, their two-year-old daughter, and my husband’s cousin.
From the very first day of marriage, I took up all kitchen responsibilities.
In the first six months of our marriage, I took up freelancing for my previous job since my organization was based out in Pune and our residence was close to Mumbai. During the entire six months, I alone handled all the kitchen chores, even when we had bulk of guests for dinner/lunch.
I never allowed my mother-in-law and sister-in-law to do any kitchen chores and never had they offered me any help.
Fast-forward to another six months, I joined a new organization. My working hours were from ten am to seven pm.
Since it took one and a half hours to commute from my workplace to home I used to reach home by nine-thirty pm.
With this schedule, I couldn’t help my mother-in-law with making dinner. However, I used to help my mother-in-law with all morning kitchen chores such as lunches, cleaning, washing, and post-dinner chores.
Again on the weekends, I wouldn’t let my mother-in-law and sister-in-law do any kitchen work.
Yet I always felt guilty whenever I noticed my mother-in-law alone preparing the entire dinner during the weekdays. My sister-in-law hardly helped her.
After two months I got my working hours adjusted in a way that I could reach my home by seven pm and with these new working hours, I had to reach the office by eight am. This meant I had to get up by five-twenty-five am to complete the daily chores and reach my workplace in time.
Having altered the working hours, I again handled morning and dinner chores. I had done it all despite being drained out of sleeping less than four hours a day and exhaustive travel coupled with working nine hours a day.
During the beginning of my new schedule, one day I was too drained to wake up early because I had to leave for work to attend an important meeting.
As a result, I left without performing my daily morning kitchen chores. And since I was two hours late, I couldn’t leave the office before seven pm.
It left my entire routine out of schedule.
Naturally, I reached home late.
The very next day my mother-in-law scolded me for not doing any kitchen chores the day before and said I should at least handle early morning chores every day. She further stated that my sister-in-law made an issue with my previous day’s behavior.
These statements of her hurt me a lot because she hadn’t tried to understand that my health wasn’t good.
I was expecting her concern instead I got scolded.
Ever since the day of my marriage I never skipped my duties even in times when my health wasn’t good, she never asked my sister-in-law to help me.
My sister-in-law was always treated like a daughter and was often given more priority over me. Despite being older my sister-in-law never took any responsibility. In all family events, she was the one who just enjoyed the event and I was the one who voluntarily took up all responsibilities.
I didn’t hold any grudges against my mother-in-law.
She was a lovely lady.
I knew she always appreciated me in front of our relatives and friends. I didn’t perform my responsibilities for praise but I performed them out of love for my family. All I expected from my mother-in-law was equal treatment for both of her daughters-in-law. Instead of receiving praises and a little understanding that though I voluntarily took up all responsibilities, I am a human being and I do get tired.
Though I never asked, a little assistance from her and my sister-in-law would be really great help.”
