I am one of the lucky
ones - I have a MIL from he!!, but her son has "divorced"
her. She emotionally abused and manipulated him far longer
and far worse than she ever did me. Anyway, I grew up in an
emotionally healthy family, so I was far more resistant to her meanness.
Nevertheless, she got to me. And I am extremely grateful,
for my sake, but much more for his, that my husband has decided
to sever his relationship with her. We've both been far happier
in the three years since he made this decision. Here are just
a couple of things from a long list that my MIL pulled: The
first time I met her, my husband (then my boyfriend of 8 months)
took me to her house to visit for four days (she lives a 10 hour
drive away, so a brief visit was not practical). I did my
level best to be charming, polite, and pleasant; she never rose
above civil. I noticed, during that visit, that she thought
it was lots of fun to insult her son in front of me. One night,
during dinner, I was searching for a light topic of conversation
and mentioned that he and I had been to a wedding recently.
I joked that we'd done our best not to be more adorable than the
bride and groom, since it's very bad manners to be more adorable
than the bride and groom at a wedding. She replied, "Well,
that can't have been hard for DS." I picked my jaw up
off the floor, and said, "On the contrary, the first time I
saw him I thought, "Gee, he's the cutest guy here."
Her response? "If he'd only get rid of that awful posture."
I rapidly learned that this is a lifelong pattern with her!
She lives to criticize and to find fault. The poor man's been
living with this all his life. He's her only child.
His folks broke up when he was tiny, and she's never remarried.
He's been the sole focus of her warped attention for decades.
After we got married, she sent us a cute card with a note inside
about how we obviously had the same interior decorator as Ma and
Pa Kettle, except for the chickens in the kitchen and the old refrigerator
on the front porch. And, she said that she didn't know how
two people who loved each other so much could be happy living in
such squalor. I am, it is true, a pathetic housekeeper.
But, the house had been cleaned before the wedding guests came.
Oddly enough, I didn't have a whole lot of time for housekeeping
that weekend, however, and was too busy and happy to care.
It is also true that our furniture is shabby and old - we prefer
to live with what we have than run up debts. She has written
my husband letters referring to me, variously, as loud, sloppy,
alcoholic, etc. I'm loud and I'm sloppy. I'm not an
alcoholic. I consider none of this her business. She
has then been terribly put out to discover that my husband told
me of the nasty things she wrote. Apparently, she hasn't figured
out yet that his primary loyalty is to *me*. We went to visit
her, one year, for my birthday. Since I eat a restricted diet
(I'm low carb), she asked him what I could and could not eat, so
that she could cook me a birthday dinner. He told her that
I ate no sugar or starch, but that I loved lamb. She served
a leg of lamb, which I ate happily, and with many compliments.
However, she also served me twice-baked potatoes and ice cream cake,
and was terribly angry and insulted when I simply would not eat
them. She knew ahead of time what my dietary restrictions
were. He!!, she *asked*. This isn't just a weight issue
- although I have no interest in gaining back the 40 pounds I've
lost. The diseases associated with carbohydrate intolerance
are rampant in my family. She has repeatedly insulted my diet.
I once did eat some potato chips in front of her. I hadn't
deviated from my diet in over 6 months, and I had *planned* for
that "indulgence". She was terribly angry, and called
me a hypocrite, whatever. That same visit, my husband and
I asked if we could invite his grandma over. Now, admittedly,
grandma is MIL's ex-MIL herself. But she is an absolute dear,
and she is my husband's grandma, whom he rarely sees. MIL
said that it was fine, so we invited grandma. We asked to
borrow MIL's car to pick her up, since we had come in a pickup truck,
high up off the ground, and grandma is quite old and frail.
MIL said she was trying to restrict her weekly mileage to a certain
number - she is *not* hurting for money, BTW. But, grudgingly,
she let us take her car. After dinner, we went to take grandma
home, and told MIL not to wait up for us. It was already after
9, and we said we thought we'd stop in at grandma's to have a cup
of coffee and chat for a little while. MIL said, cheerfully,
"Oh, no, I'll still be up when you get back." We
said, okay, but don't wait up or anything. She insisted that,
no, she'd be up. It turned out that, "I'll be up,"
meant, "You'd better get your butts back here damned quick!"
We were gone, oh, maybe 1 1/2 to 2 hours. When we got back,
MIL was so furious that she wasn't speaking to us. How warped
do you have to be to be jealous that your son spent an hour or so
with his grandmother? Four summers ago, MIL called to let
us know that there was going to be a family reunion of her side
of the family, about midway between our homes, at an old camp one
of her relatives owns. And, she asked, "Wouldn't you
like to meet up there?" We said, "Sure," and
made our plans, which included taking our tiny little pop-up trailer
so that we could have some privacy at night (instead of sharing
a cabin with cousins). MIL called and wanted to know if she
could sleep in our pop-up with us? Apparently, the idea of
sharing a bedroom with her son and his wife didn't strike her as
the tiniest bit inappropriate. My husband said, "No,"
because the camper was pretty small. And, he suggested that
we lend her a tent plus one of the foam rubber mattresses so that
she'd sleep comfortably. Alternatively, there were cabins
available (the same ones we didn't want to share with cousins) with
heat, and lights, and hot running water. There was also a
motel five minutes away that some family members were staying at.
But, no, nothing else would do - she wanted to stay in our camper.
She begged and pleaded and *cried*, but my husband, bless him, stood
his ground. She then called, a week later, and did the whole
schtick again. Once again, DH said, "No."
The upshot? The day we drove to the reunion, we called home
from the road to find a message on his answering machine from MIL
saying that she was staying home with her "four-legged family"
who "loved her". We had a fine time without her!
This is only a brief list of a few of her games. To give you
an idea of how toxic this woman is, my FIL is an ex-CIA and NSA
agent. He divorced MIL 30 years ago, and has been happily
remarried for almost 25 years. Yet, he still gets nervous
and uncomfortable when he talks to MIL on the phone. Yep,
she even scares him. My husband has been far more the victim
of her meanness than I. He grew up with a mother whose greatest
joy was finding something, anything, to criticize. It wasn't
just that he had to jump through hoops, it was that the hoop was
always moving. Or, even that he'd jump, and she'd hold up
the hoop afterward and say, "No, you missed!" This
is a man that is as near-perfect a guy as God ever put on this earth
- intelligent, hard working, kind, compassionate, honest, caring,
even-tempered, good-humored. Yet, I have NEVER heard her give
him a single unalloyed compliment, and have known her to tell him
she's ashamed to be seen with him in public because he doesn't look
like "Joe Prep". He has been through A LOT of therapy
getting over what she's done to him. And, he is far better.
But, we live in fear that she'll decide to move to town (she played
that card several years back, and we said, "Gee, we aren't
sure we are going to stay here.") We also fear that she'll
play the invalid card, which she's already tried once. Oh,
did I mention that she lies like a rug? She tried to convince
him that her hysterectomy was emergency surgery because the doctor
suspected cancer, and DH decided, with GREAT anguish, that he had
to go be with her. Next thing we know, she's leaving chirpy
messages about how much fun we'll all have while we're there.
And, we found out that this was elective surgery, and there's no
chance that there was anything seriously wrong. Anyway, he's
a much happier man since he cut her out of his life. I grow
weary of people who try to convince us that it's terribly important
to reconcile with her. She's a nasty, evil, dishonest, manipulative
person. And, he's far happier without her in his life.
Further, she's never been willing to accept that she's done a single
thing wrong. She brushes it all off with, "That's just
how mothers are (my mother's not like that! DH adores her, and so
does my brother's wife)." Or, she says, "You're
making mountains out of molehills." And, my favorite
(the outright denial), "I never said that!!" I feel
for all of you whose husbands value peace with mom at any price
(including the integrity of the marriage) over your feelings.
That my husband has been strong enough to walk away from a seriously
dysfunctional mother, is one of the many things I admire about him.
BTW, if this sounds like your MIL - the constant criticism, the
need to be the center of everything, the lying - do a web search
of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Especially, look at
Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited, by Samuel
Vaknin. It really helped clarify a lot of things for us.
This has been fun. I may not see her anymore, but she's still
a miasmic presence in our lives, and will be, I fear, until she
dies.
Signed - Out From Under
Up until recently, I
thought that my MIL really had problems with the people she did
not get along with. But, recently, I found out that they are
all LIES. All the lies are told to us (DH ) to make him feel
sorry for MIL so that she can keep him on her side. A while
back, she had issues with my family in which I believed her, and
I felt badly about my parents. After that, she had issues
with one of her relatives, and we felt sorry for her. But
all this did not end here. She had issues with her daughter,
son-in-law, her relatives, and, again, with my family. All
this happened while we were not there (we were moving all the time
because of DH's job). Then, there was the time when I had
to stay with her for a couple of months, and I could not go with
DH due to some reasons. What happened???? I got my first
taste of MIL's lies. I saw her telling the truth, but not
the whole truth. The first time I realized that she was not
telling the truth was when she told me my sister called when I was
sleeping, and that she said some bad things about me. Did
she think I would not verify that with my sister??? I asked
her, in the afternoon when I was out shopping with her, and she
told me what she said (and there was nothing bad about it).
So, my MIL twisted what my sister said, and made me mad to think
that my sister could do that. The second time MIL did something
like that, was when my DH complained to MIL about something that
had happened between MIL and me. Then, again, she straight
away lied, and said that it did not happen at all. Further,
she told six more lies to DH about me and my family (I came to know
about all this later on when I joined my DH). Then, again,
she lied to us a month back, when she said she personally went to
my friend's house to deliver my Christmas gift to him. Well,
I found out the very same day that she had mailed it to him.
Now, I am convinced that she has lied about all the things.
I think the complaints about people not treating her well and stuff
was also a lie, and all the times when I agreed with my MIL about
what someone did to her are all lies. Well, she lied about
me to DH. And, DH knows about it. Did she think that
we would not discuss it???? Well, I am really scared of her
and her lies. I never know when she will start manipulating
the situation according to her requirements. I want to confront
her with all this, but am scared that she will come up with more
such lies. What should I do? Should I confront her now?
Or should I let it go for now, and wait for something to happen
in the future before I confront her?
Signed - She Does Not
Tell The Truth - Should I Confront?
RESPONSE: She Does Not Tell The Truth - Should I Confront?
YES! By all means, confront her now, before it grows into
something much worse. We didn't confront my husband's mother
for 23 years, thinking it better to play along with the "big,
happy family" farce, rather than make any waves. Everything
just escalated over time, until she managed to plant herself between
us and one of our teenage daughters during a very difficult period
in our lives. I mistook her queries into our personal lives
as genuine concern, and gave her all the information she needed
to hurt our family, in much the same way she had hurt other families
in the past. We didn't confront her malicious interference
then, so we ended up getting exactly what we let her get away with
when it involved people we didn't know. I wish we had spoken
up twenty-three years earlier, because our "pretending"
for the sake of the whole family has gotten us nothing. We
now have no contact with her or any of her four daughters!
They all went along with the lies and secrets aimed at further separating
our daughter from us. And, we are desperately trying to rebuild
our own little family in spite of their ongoing negativity.
RESPONSE: She Does Not Tell The Truth - Should I Confront?
Kick this liar to the curb!!! Do not associate with her.
She will only continue her lies, and they may get a whole lot worse!
RESPONSE: She Does Not Tell The Truth - Should I Confront?
Guess what? You can't win with pathological liars. Confronting
her won't put an end to it. People like her have no conscience,
even if she's caught in the act of lying. She'll only break
down into phony tears, become hysterical, blame YOU somehow, and
plot to destroy you later for exposing her, instead of feeling remorse!
I have a SIL like that. I confronted her with her pathetic
lies, only for her to lie in wait and make anonymous calls, months
later, to my boss. She pretended she was an ex employer of
mine who, in "confidence", wanted to fill him in on me.
In other words, she wanted to get me fired. THANK GOD I had
a good relationship with my boss over the years, and he knew all
about her. When she called him, she'd blocked the number.
But, the next day, under the pretext of asking her about something,
I dialed her number and asked my boss to listen in on another line.
Afterwards, I said, "Was that the voice you heard yesterday?"
And he exclaimed, "Without a doubt"! It turns out,
there's usually nothing one can do legally against vipers like this.
Confrontation only makes victims into targets. You'll have
to be clever. Maybe you can lead her into a conversation where
she lies and lies, and BADMOUTHS lots of people? I don't know.
In that case, you could keep the phone on speaker so you can record
her lies. Gather together everyone she's badmouthed for a
brunch at your place, then play the tape. Something like that.
Be creative! And best of luck.
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