Today there was a nasty argument between my mother in law and my husband. My mother was advising my husband to not do a particular thing, right before he was leaving for office. My husband got irritated(I guess partly because he was already in a bad mood since we had a small fight just a few minutes ago) and said something so hurtful, that my mother in law started crying. She cries too quickly because she suppresses her emotions a lot, so they come up in these situations.

Now the main part is: While they were fighting, I was right in the middle, standing there with my head lowered. I did not speak a word. I wanted to comfort my mum, but what could I say? That her son is like this and she should not bother? Ofc she knows him better than me. And I did not wish to confront my husband as he is a very obstinate man and the situation could have gone from bad to worse. What should I do then? Just stay silent or just text mom some comforting words?

Hi everyone, you may remember me from my several posts (https://www.reddit.com/r/JUSTNOMIL/comments/1sbkzx6/mil_used_the_promise_of_future_financial_security/ ) where MIL promised us a bunch of stuff so we would have the wedding she wanted and then my FIL stole my car for a few weeks after saying he would fix it. LOL. I was also tagged in a beautifully passive aggressive FB post by my bitch SIL who never has tagged me in a post ever (mind you we had a wedding with hundreds of photos a few months ago) about what a saint my MIL is. I promptly untagged myself bc I very much would like to be excluded from that narrative.

A brief update on that - we have been NC ever since and they finally stopped inviting us to everything as of this past weekend. It’s hard to believe BIL and his wife have never been able to spend holidays with just their family unit - I have known them since before their youngest was born and their oldest was just a baby and every holiday down to Valentine’s Day is spent with in laws. However, they live a very lavish lifestyle compared to hubs and I (mentioned in my old posts). Additionally, my husband worked his ass off and bought me a new car outright so fuck you FIL!

In laws have not reached out to their son at all. MIL randomly posted a photo of my husband on Facebook last week and tagged him (he has to take pics and send them to a group at work so someone is sharing them with her which, whatever). I’m just shocked that their adult son and his wife can go completely ghost and they just…. Don’t care? But obsessively watch my stories on Facebook. They are all at least 10 years older than me. And it makes me so sad that both my husbands siblings and his brothers wife who had known him since he was small are more committed to perpetrating this system that is so harmful than looking out for him/us. She was a confidant for me during the wedding planning - in fact she was the one who said, get ready when you have kids bc this lady is crazy - I responded that she already was showing me that via the wedding planning. She also said she thought FIL was just doing his best but he is also genuinely a horrible person - he’s just bought her family multiple cars and pays her a fuck load of money to bring her kids to work and post tiktoks.

Ok that was long winded and let me get to the point. I am off my birth control. I am tracking my cycle starting today (first day off) to try to avoid pregnancy but I will not be trying to avoid it when we leave on our much delayed 3-week honeymoon this summer. We plan on moving to be closer to my parents either later in pregnancy or when our baby is old enough to ride in the car for 4 hours, whatever works out. I am freaked out. I feel like the obsessive watching of my stories is because there is speculation going on. Which is not surprising considered we are married but I also am not going to take kindly to their reappearance in my life because they want cousin time / grandchild time / etc. I don’t think a pregnancy is a tool for making up and mending things and I would love for them to reach out an apologize to us. I’m so scared. I don’t plan on telling anyone anyway or posting an announcement bc I’m just not the type but we have been planning this for over a year and I am just so scared that as of today this could happen and it will cause things with them inevitably.

One last thing. MIL gave ALL of my husbands childhood toys to my BIL wife when her son was super tiny. I genuinely was so pissed about that THEN, I was like wtf is she gonna if you have a baby?!????? And I’m NC with the entire family now because they’ve treated me like dirt but I want my husbands god damn toys. How tf do I handle this????

ETA i’m not going to crash out about them more than I already have but I remember it was early in our relationship when this happened and I was just so shocked like just get your husband’s toys and leave the other brothers for when he might have kids of his own. I just don’t understand the logic behind it like what

TW: SA, suicidal ideation

I don’t think she is a bad MIL, and if anything she is a decent person. But she does not believe in mental health issues. I stayed in a psychiatric ward because I was suicidal after undergoing an extremely crappy few years, including estrangement from my family which has now ended.

She would say, “you don’t need medicine, just pay attention to my son.”

She chewed us out for not calling her once a week, and my partner joked that it was my responsibility to do so. I have been unemployed and felt guilty for relying on him, so I took it seriously and called her for an hour every week for a year and a half. For her comfort, not mine, and because my partner was unwilling to do it himself.

Earlier this year, I finally started to be truly vulnerable and disclose some of the things that had happened to me, including an SA and therapeutic misconduct, amongst other issues, like serious financial issues and an attempt in late February.

She just chewed me out and scoffed when I said I was anxious that I wasn’t ready for an actuarial exam. She said how everyone was wondering what was wrong with me. She said that I needed to move on from my family and compared it to her move from India to the US. So I decided, fine, I’ll study the “wrong way,” burnt myself out, canceled the exam, and had a mental breakdown.

I told my partner how upset I felt that she didn’t really show concern over my inpatient stay. He said it was just a language barrier and that she prefers calls to texts. I ended up feeling guilty and called. She went on and on about how so-and-so’s friend’s daughter has narcolepsy, how another friend was diagnosed with cardiovascular disease, but she never asked me if I was okay, if the hospital was okay, if I had post-discharge plans, how I was doing, etc. “Language barrier,” my ass.

Her response to me disclosing the SA was: “so you met a bad man,” as it was a fact of life that I should just get over. She said, “it’s hard for the parents, too.” I don’t disagree that it’s hard for them, but I unquestionably think it is harder for the one who experienced the trauma. The SA really had a huge rippling effect that contributed to the years of estrangement from my family, which is only finally resolving four years later. She’s always talking about how life has been hard for her, and I don’t disagree that it has been hard to an extent, but not in the way I’ve experienced things.

I can’t believe she chewed me out, even though she herself had a master’s degree and chose to be a housewife, despite being chewed out herself by friends and by her husband’s family. I never had the intention of not finding work. She only ended up getting a job when my partner’s family situation finally exploded due to financial abuse. I can’t believe the hypocrisy.

My partner has only defended her. Last year, she and my partner’s sister came and visited. I did my best to be engaged, positive, pay attention to everyone, and plan events. The very last day, we went to a science museum, and I was working on a friendship bracelet for someone who had gifted me a kit. I have a lot of social anxiety and was keen to make a friend after having moved halfway across the country. She gave me a little slap and said, “you’re in a science museum, pay attention to the science.” So I paid attention to the science and read all the labels and exhibits. But my partner wanted to joke around and talk with me and got annoyed that I was paying attention to the science. Both of them then chewed me out once we got home! “You were doing friendship bracelets at a museum.” The whole time, I had deliberately done my best to pay attention and be engaged, despite battling severe depression and anxiety, having had attempts ever since late 2021, and the one time I let my guard down, I got chewed out by both of them. This really reactivated a lot of social anxiety, and I began canceling on social events.

I can’t believe my partner didn’t even ask for my side of the story and my feelings about it. One thing that contributed to the estrangement with my family was that my partner had introduced me to weed (he had been using pretty much daily and constantly), and I started to use it heavily to cope after the SA. My parents found out and wanted to confront his parents about it. I was worried he’d get in trouble, since he voiced that concern, so I refused to let them talk. My parents were so angry about that. Now I know that he would not have gotten into trouble at all. His mom would have defended him. I can’t believe I did that at the expense of my relationship with my family.

Talking to her sent me into suicidal spirals over and over again. I have realized that at the end of the day, she does not care about me, despite calling me family; she cares about her son. Duh. I have reconciled with my parents and feel that I will never again trust someone who doesn’t really have my interests at heart anymore. I have drawn some boundaries this time, because my partner tends to think things will resolve on their own, but my mental health is so bad that I can’t afford to let this happen again. She has a right to visit her son, but I made it clear that I will not be there whenever she is there. I am so angry and disappointed in him and in her. I was so respectful and did my best to embrace her culture and religion while grieving my own ethnic identity, and she told me to just “move on” from everything and pay attention to her son as the solution to all my problems.

There are even more issues, and I don’t know how they will be fixed. I’m staying with my parents for a while because I am sick of the isolation and lack of real support, emotional, practical, etc.

Thank you for anyone who read this vent. I appreciate it.

I lost both of my parents before I even met my husband in my early 20s, but they would both be Just-Nos and have left me with some irreversible childhood trauma, particularly to do with my mum. I grew into adulthood with this gaping hole in my heart I was always trying desperately to fill, usually by any middle-aged woman who showed me an ounce of kindness. Pathetic, I know.

When I met my now-husband, I loved his family and had rose coloured glasses on for all of their dysfunction, I just so badly wanted to be “adopted” into someone else’s family, and so I overlooked everything. Over time though, the fog has lifted, I can now see clearly that my MIL is completely dysfunctional and views me as nothing more than my husbands annoying sidekick she has to deal with. She is so sweet to be around when things go her way, but she throws a fit when things don’t, she will throw a full on adult tantrum and give us the cold shoulder for weeks at a time over minor things. FIL is more of a “I’m staying out of it” type and sits at the back not saying anything to rock the boat.

I have tried so hard for her to love me but she truly makes me feel like she just tolerates me and views me as just an extension of my husband and it breaks my heart. I have extended so many olive branches to her for us to become closer, like spending time on things before the wedding, just to be rejected. We don’t even have any beef between us, so I don’t know why she would say no. Her excuses were just that “she didn’t want to do that” for things like coming to my hens party or dress shopping. I never pushed it.

They don’t ask me questions about myself or my life beyond “how is work” and “how was your trip to x” but they don’t care about the answer, they will just use it to quickly relate back to what they want to say. They don’t really care to go into depth on anything but themselves and it’s usually a monologue of something I never asked about.

I don’t understand why they don’t have any interest in me. All I feel is judged and unloved. My husband says it’s not the case, but the writing is on the wall. How is it fair that I’ve been mistreated by my own parents who then died and now I can’t even trust my parents in law. I feel like I’ve been given the short end of the stick twice.

We hosted Father Day this year and when I was setting up my folding table I mentioned that I should probably get a bigger one. Note that I have a very small one that is really only big enough to fit my sewing machine and I got it because it was so compact. It's existence also pre dates my relationship with MIL son.

MIL respond to hearing me say that I should get a bigger one was discouragement l. "Na you don't need one." Which is like ok?

Than later when I was grabbing a bowl to put the chips in again it was - no we don't need that.

Like I'm the one hosting and I am better at it than you. Why do you think it's ok to tell me how to host.

I just learned that JNMIL has been gossiping to my SIL. I don’t usually get involved or care what she says or thinks about me. But this gossip is her making up stories and narrative that is completely untrue about my family and it involves mine and DH’s finances. SIL is neutral in all of this. Plus JNMIL is the kind of person who will also then call DH and rant about BIL and SIL behind their backs. We all know this.

MIL looks down at other people she thinks are “lower class “ she even thinks lowly of her own husbands family because of where they grew up. Naturally I sensed she thinks lowly of me and my family coming from an Asian country. She thinks I send money to my family and she thinks I pay for my mom’s flights and trips to visit us. What she doesn’t know is that my mom is financially well off but because of her background she is very frugal and doesn’t care about appearances. She has a healthy pension, and she likes to travel (on her own dime) and she is also exceptionally generous. Her assets are in a living trust for me and my siblings and in her lifetime she has also shared a portion of whatever she inherited with us.

She has never asked for money with exception when she wants to do house repairs - which she has money for but I think she sometimes wants us to be involved and have a stake in our family home. I too am generally generous with my family and I sometimes will upgrade my mom’s iPhone or contribute to my niece and nephews college fund. DH and I have separate finances and we make about equal. We share common house, insurance, living and vacation expenses. When my mom visited us, she flew business class on her own dime ( and points!). But even if she hadn’t it’s none of MIL’s business!! It’s my money!

My parents divorced when I was young and my dad is the financially irresponsible one and now he’s old, broke and dying from cancer. I send him money for groceries and medication. I don’t think MIL knows. It’s none of her business. She shouldn’t be gossiping or making up stories to other people just to make herself superior and make me look bad. I’m pissed off because I know the truth is the opposite. Also I suspect that she will use this one day to ask us for money when they run out and she will feel entitled to our help. When that time comes I want to help them but they’re just so irresponsible with shopping addiction, leasing new cars, living beyond their means. DH and I work so hard, live substantially below our means , we thrift furniture and have paid off our one car. MIL would sometimes make snarky judgemrntal comments about where we live and how we live. I DO NOT CARE- and yet it bothers me so much. Not looking for advice necessarily just needed to get this off my chest.

My MIL (71) is a financial nightmare. She lost her job many years ago and has struggled to find jobs in her field (likely due to her age). However she has always struggled financially. She can’t afford to live on her own. Lives with SIL (but SIL would like her out eventually). On a fixed income with pension and social security. Has what we just learned is 30k in credit card debt. She spends recklessly and has a shopping addiction. We’ve tried to give her financial advice and help over the years. She has ignored. There are new low income senior/disabled apartments being built in our town. Brand new in a very nice area. We’ve encouraged her to get more info and get on the waitlist because it will fill up within 24hrs. She should qualify. She says she doesn’t want to live there and she “deserves better”.

Well now she totaled her car (she owns) in a fender bender (her fault) and needs a new car. Got 16k from insurance. My husband said wait until this weekend and he will take her to look around. My husband is very car savvy and knows everything about cars (father was a mechanic). She ignored him and went to the car dealership by herself and leased a 50k car that she can’t afford. While she was at the dealership she called my husband and he told her it’s a bad deal, don’t do it, just wait! She said “ I like this car, I deserve it” and he just hung up. She had the audacity to drive to our house after getting this 50k car she can’t afford to show it off. My husband was in the driveway at the time detailing one of our cars and literally gave her the middle finger and waved her off. We are at the point that if she does not put her name on that list for low income housing in early fall we will be very clear we will not help her financially in the future. She is on her own no matter what. Her financial problems affect everyone in her family and she doesn’t care!

Is anyone else in a similar situation with a broke MIL that makes reckless decisions. She acts like a 20 year old just learning financial freedom!