Women who have had difficulties with their mother-in-law, how did it happen and how did you cope?

4 comments

1. We just never saw eye to eye on a lot of things. The way she raised my ex husband contributed to a lot of the emotional detachment/communication problems he had. We never had words or anything but I never looked forward to seeing her either. Thankfully she lived quite a distance from us.

2. My MIL never welcomed me as a daughter, she already had two. She has tried to pull some sneaky shit behind our backs. I’ll never trust that woman and I hope god can continue to help me to forgive.

3. My ex-MIL was horrific. She was awful to me, and I went no-contact with her for several years after a particular incident involving her cornering me in her kitchen and screaming at me – I was a terrible girlfriend for not keeping her son’s apartment (that we leased together, it was never just his) to her standard, I was low class, awful things about my family, etc. I stayed that way for about three years before she decided she wanted a relationship and extended an olive branch.

   I kept a low-contact relationship going forward because I didn’t trust her. She was also one of those people for whom snide and backhanded remarks were just part of her vocabulary. My ex hated that I avoided her even though she drove him crazy too. He said any issues she and I had were between me and her (I am well aware I had a boyfriend/fiancé problem as much as a MIL problem). I shared as little as possible with her to give her less to judge and I avoided gatherings outside of birthdays and holidays.

   Never having to see her again was one of the many blessings that came with leaving him.

4. The only difficulties I’ve had with my MIL is that she is very closed off and hard to get close to. She doesn’t like to show emotion and I can never tell if she’s happy, sad or angry. She also has never taken much interest in our kids which bugs me especially given the fact that my husband is her only living child. Therefore I just don’t deal with her unless I have to because she makes me uncomfortable. I feel like I can’t be myself around her. My husband doesn’t have the closest relationship with her anyway and she lives in another state so it’s not that hard.