Family Matters
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Mother in Law Manifesto - very very very long
REMOVED
Re: Mother in Law Manifesto - very very very long
No, you did not NEED to do this, this was a CHOICE. You could have continued to do the wage donkey thing and rented an apartment.
No way in hell would I have married a man that expected me to live with his mentally healthy mother, much less an alcoholic abusive hoarder.
Your H can't control her behavior, but the two of you can control where you live and how much contact you have with her. You have significantly more control in this situation than you realize. Start using it.
I didn't get past the sentence quoted above. You made a choice. You can change it. I don't care what your MIL has done to you or how she behaves. If you aren't happy with the cost, be an adult and move out.
DH and I's
Man, this is annoying. Why can't people just say "our"?
Back OT, what does your DH do when she does and says all these horrible things to you?
Wow. You're living in her home because you cannot support yourselves. And while she doesn't sound very pleasant, she raised your dh and other children, apparently did well enough with one of them that you saw fit to marry him, and just watched her dh die. So you come on here and insult her in every possible way, but she's still good enough for you to suck off of.
Get out of her house. You don't belong there.
Could not get through with the entire thing ...
What I did glean was that the two of you are both using her and have no respect for her.
You need to move out and live on your own means.
I got the awkward heebie jeebies just reading about the dance!
Aside from that weirdness, she honestly sounds depressed. It seems like she has a lot of regret about the way her life turned out and now that her kids are all (essentially) grown she feels she has no real purpose.
Was her house always this way? I imagine in 10 years together you would have noticed if mold was growing in her fridge before you actually lived with her.
If you don't want her going through your things don't live with her.
I am judging you for living there more than I am judging her crazy behavior.
Move. TODAY.
The two of you can get a roommate from craigslist if you need a roommate to make ends meet.
As to the issue at hand, OP, you have much more control and choice here than you think you do. You can't change her (and likely, no matter how hard you try, the harder she'll fight you on it) but you can change your living conditions, the amount of time you spend with her, the things you tell her, your reactions to her, etc. IIWY, I'd move out TODAY and figure out another way to pay for the house (if, indeed, you're even approved).
1) You are living with her so YOU can save money. First of all, you're mooching off of her, second of all you chose to live in the squalid filth and subject yourself to her nastiness 24/7. If we had chosen to live with MIL or my Dad, sure we'd have more money and might have been able to start the business DH wants sooner BUT we're grown ass adults who can support ourselves financially so we don't. You made your own bed.
2) Second, this is a horrible reflection on you : "DH (thankfully) fully acknowledges what a terror his mother is, but it nonetheless wears on him to hear me complain bitterly about her, especially when it would be easy to do that on a near daily basis (though I have tried to restrain myself to as little as possible)." What a horrible situation to put your DH in. No matter how much you dislike her she is his mother and she is doing YOU a FAVOR by letting you live with her. Get a grip, you're being a cr*ppy self absorbed wife.
3) Your DH needs to stand up for you and stop some of this stuff but seeing as you complain about his Mom non stop I can kind of get where he is coming from.
4) You can't change her, but you can refuse to let her get to you, destroy your life, and can limit contact. Some of the things you're complaining about or more egregious, some less (a filthy house is her business, nobody made you live there. Being overly attached to your DH is not great but not horrible if he's not letting her meddle. Trashing you to acquaintances is awful). You need to learn to let the stupid stuff go and focus on addressing the awful stuff when it affects you. Her filthy house= not worth complaining about, her telling people your DH could do better should be addressed by your DH directly to her.
You should have never moved into her house. Never. You loose all credibility to complain. ALL.
I get that she's this hugely inappropriate, self-absorbed, mean, horrible person - but you CHOOSE to live with her and that means YOU are the mooching looser. Get out immediately - to ANYWHERE and get the hell away from her.
This is the most riduculous thing I've ever read. You waste all this energy b*tching about your depressed, widowed MIL and yet you and DH have been living off her for a year and a half! Even if you two are paying her anything for rent, she is helping you out, not the other way around. Biting the hand that feeds like you're doing here, I'm not surprised MIL doesn't like you.
You speculate on her mental health for her claiming to be a victim, yet you ignore how you are making yourself the victim in all this. I'm not saying she's a saint; she definitely needs help, so help her now by moving the f*ck out of there! Jeez. An efficientcy appartment is worth my self-reliance and sanity to me!
I understand 100% what you are going through. Thank GOD I am not the only one dealing with something like this. Of course, the situation is different, but yes our MIL's act the same (mine without the alcohol, and she's not dirty). Just a giant, rude pain who lies about and twists around what people say so they will pity her.
I agree with this depressed part. My MIL's youngest son just married me not even a month ago, and even though this has been going on forever, now I'm added into the pot of ***. This behavior makes you feel degrading, even if what she says isn't true. It's like 'why do you think this about me' and 'what did I ever do to make you feel like this towards me'? I don't get it.
I do believe that you need to get out of that house immediately. My husband and I moved 1000 miles away for a year so we didn't have to deal with that crap and it was AMAZING! Such a relief to be able to enjoy eachother's company without having this family member stressing you out and putting strain on the relationship. So any kind of distance for you will be great at this moment. Do maybe try and get out sooner than your house will be available.
I think that some people's comments on here are quite rude and you shouldn't listen to them, because even though some things you say may be questionable, they don't seem to understand how this all feels. I feel for you in this bad situation, truly. We are currently thinking of an intervention or family counseling, it's gotten so bad. Very hard to deal with.
Thanks for the comments everyone. I'll see if I can respond to some of the recurring points....
1. We are not mooching. We pay rent and a fair share of other household bills. And we clean up after her. And it's absolutely true that we could have chosen not to do it. But, especially starting in this economy, we didn't want to be locked into a crazy expensive lease, mortgage, etc. if the business struggled at any point.
2. Had the first house not fallen threw after an extended nightmare with the seller's bank short sale approval, we would have been out months ago.
3. We're (hopefully) counting the days to closing and being out for good. Here's hoping this seller's bank comes through....
4. Had I omitted that we lived with her I wonder what everyone would say? The bulk of the issues are unrelated to the present living conditions.
5. She does seem to be declining recently, but I honestly don't know how much of a fall it's been.