'My MIL has been terrorizing me for years. I decided finally I'd had enough.' UPDATED

"I started a resistance against my mother-in-law."

Sorry this is a long post but it’s all relevant to the “resistance”. A little background before I get to the nitty gritty. I (26 F) have been with my husband (27 M) who will call Jake for 5 years, Married for 2. My MIL has a baseball team worth of kids. She has been a stay at home mom for the past 40 years with the youngest kids (in their 20s) still living at home.

MIL the kind of person who inserts herself into everyone business and always has something to say about other people. She is a classic narcissist manipulating her children for her gain, can’t take criticism, and the entitlement of this woman is just on another level.

She has been creating drama with all her children’s spouses for the past 20+ years. MIL treats everyone in the family that is not her blood like second class citizens including her son’s step kids that he raised from babies. She believes that her kids should worship her and neglect the families they have created.

Up until recently I have been very cordial with MIL never having a major issues. I have always tried to lay low and keep my distance because I don’t need that negativity in my life. But coming from a normal-ish family that loves unconditionally into this mess there is only so much you can take before you finally lose it.

This is where everything really starts to buildup. So earlier this year Jake was working out of state and got into an accident. He had a broken bone and had to get stitches and staples but no major or life-threatening injuries. I work in the medical field so it was easy for me to understand everything that was going on.

Jake and I have lots of animal and don’t make a lot of money where I can just drop everything in a second (as much as I wanted to) to jump on a plane. I was trying to make arrangements if I needed to be there but he was going to be released from the hospital before I could even get there. My sister’s husband had flown into the same state Jake was at for unrelated reasons.

But we had him pick Jake up from the hospital and put him on a plane back home. Which MY FAMILY helped me pay for his plane ticket home. During everything that was going on the only person from his large family that offered any help or support was one of his brothers and his wife.

The first day he was home my mom came to our house with groceries and spent a few hours helping me clean his wounds and washing all the dried blood from his hair. I had 9 days off (just how my schedule works) so I had lots of time to make special meals for him and cleaning his dressing everyday. My MIL had only called to get information so she could spread it to the family.

She was telling everyone that I would not allow them to come see him which she never once asked. The first time after the accident she came over she forced my SIL who will call Lacey (because she’s important for the story) to make him food that we didn’t need so she could bring it over. Not asking to come but making an excuse for her to come over.

So one of Jake’s best friends had called me out of courtesy to let me know that MIL was bad mouthing me. He said she asked him if Jake and I were having problems. She told him I was a horrible wife and after my husband was fully recovered she was gonna have words with me. To say I was looking forward to that day would be an understatement…

I prayed she would come and say something to me because I have been holding back for so long. But that day never came like she does will only talk s*** behind your back but will never say anything to your face. I just let it go because I didn’t have time to deal with her as I was taking care of Jake, all our animals, and working full time. Jake has pretty much fully recovered besides occasional pain from the trauma.

Now for the nitty gritty. A few weeks ago we were going on a weekend vacation with Jake’s family. Jake and I took his sister and niece on kind of an excursion you could say. Jake is a wonderer and he had left us for about an hour so I was a little upset. When we got to the end and finally found Jake the girls were ready to go so I was trying to get everyone ready to leave and we lost Jake again.

I was getting all our stuff together and both of my shoes broke so I was standing on burning asphalt and by this point I was so frustrated. Which I had first degree burns on the bottom of my feet from this. When I finally found Jake I had hit him with my broken flip-flop not hard but to get his attention. Yes probably not my finest moment but I was in pain and seeing red.

Jake took off to the car and the whole ride back to the house was just berating me in front of his sister and niece. That’s not normally like Jake but when we are around his family for too long he goes into defensive survival mode because that’s how he had to be growing up in such a toxic environment.

When we got back to house we had stayed outside for a minute and talked out what happened and were good after that. I wish I could say we enjoyed the rest of the vacation but we had to endure one of Jake’s drunk brothers starting fights with everyone.

After this trip MIL was at Lacey’s house and started talking about how the trip went. (Because Lacey was smart and didn’t go on the trip.) Lacey is my only confidante in this family because she married in and has been through it worse than I have. I go over to Lacey house at least once a week so she has already heard what happened on the trip.

MIL told her that it was great vacation except for the mishaps of the drunken brother and the “fight” between Jake and I that his young niece apparently told everyone about. Lacey knows how MIL like to twist things and deny what she said so Lacey started discreetly recording. MIL said that Jake and I had gotten into a fist fight and just talking bad about me.

The next day Lacey shows me the video and this just pushed me over the edge. I told Jake I can’t take it anymore and I was done with MIL. Jake has always used the excuse that all his siblings use “that’s just how she is” or “she’s always been like that” but I was done. I told Jake it’s because they let her act like that. She has so many kids what does it matter if one stops talking to her.

My family has never talked bad about Jake behind his back. My family has treated Jake better in the past 5 years than his mom has his entire life. When Jake heard what she said he went to confront her. Jake recorded the conversation because we are so tired of her not taking accountability for her actions.

And we are glad we did because when he told her to keep my name and our relationship out of her mouth she didn’t hold back. First of all she of course denied everything she said. When Jake called her out she started saying derogatory things about almost every one of her in-laws basically saying we start all the drama and are ruining her family.

She brought up Jake’s accident and how me not going up there showed my true colors and that my parents should have paid for me to go. Jake finally got tired of listening to her BS that he just walked out. After this we let his brothers listen to all the horrible things she was saying about me as well as their spouses.

Two of Jake’s brothers have agreed with us to basically cut her out and not attend any of the family functions that she will be at. We have also blocked her number. I have told my sister in laws I don’t know how they have put up with her for so long. But I think they just needed another ally because she is so manipulative and will turn all the other siblings against you.

Honestly I don’t see her changing and I don’t see having a relationship with her in the future. I hope she will see the way she treats people and finally see the consequences of her actions for the sake of her kids that are still tolerating her mistreatment. But for now Viva La Resistance!

This is what people had to say to OP:

Some-Ad-3705 said:

She will never change this sounds just like my mother and she enjoyed this stuff too much

RedMoji5928 said:

Good for you! Behavior doesn’t change until people start calling it out. Just stay kind to Jake. He’s going to waffle and have guilt not speaking to his mom. Give him the grace to choose what he does. You can only control yourself.

And 3bag said:

Wow! Good for you for being assertive and standing for no more nonsense. La resistance is going to be a very difficult time for Jake's family.. Hopefully MIL will be confronted by all her offspring and told that she needs to change before they will allow her into their lives again, but more, hopefully she will change.

Underneath all the nastiness and name calling is a woman who has deep rooted fears that she's not good enough - that's why she puts down the partners, because she wants to be seen as better than them. It's going to take a lot of self work for her to change. My hubby always says "You catch more flies with honey than vinegar." Let's pray that she becomes less acidic and more sweet.

Three months later, OP shared this update:

Oh boy, do I have an update for y’all. It’s been a couple of months since my first post, and a lot has happened. First of all, we are still no contact with MIL, besides one Facebook comment we’ll get to.

One of my BILs and his wife (Lacey) have completely cut contact as well, but they have not been as fortunate as us with avoiding MIL’s guilt trips. MIL started by contacting Lacey’s church pastor—we assume to tell him her distorted version of the story—because one day after church, the pastor went up to BIL and told him he needed to make amends with his mother.

After that, MIL messaged Lacey on Facebook trying to apologize for calling her a fat*** (which is not the major issue any of us are upset about). This is how her “apology” went:

“Hey not sure how to put things into text messages but here goes I’m so sorry for what was said and never ever meant what I said in that manner at all I feel so awful that my own child could do this to me and create more chaos.

But it is what it is and I truly need to stop using that word I use it on myself and I feel that it slips into other conversations as it shouldn’t but just know I’m very sorry and never intended for anyone to hurt😢.”

The only thing that text did was fuel our fire to stay away.

We have also been getting messages from the half of his siblings who are still completely brainwashed, trying to guilt-trip us, saying that my FIL misses my husband (Jake) and Lacey’s kids. We have been very clear that he is welcome to call or come over whenever, as long as MIL isn’t around. But he has not tried to contact BIL, and the only time he calls Jake is when he needs something.

So shortly after we went no contact with MIL, Jake’s family started making plans for Thanksgiving, which is normally held at my in-laws’ house. This year, they decided to have it at my SIL’s house, who lives 3 hours away from the rest of the family. I really believe they chose to do this so MIL won’t feel bad when half her kids don’t show up.

But now even fewer of his siblings are going, because instead of 5 people traveling to the county the entire rest of his family lives in, they think it’s better to make 30+ people travel to them. What kind of sense does that make?

We had been staying out of the drama pretty well up until last night. MIL has been constantly sharing things on Facebook about how you should love your parents and how all parents want is attention from their kids—things we know are targeted toward us.

So last night, we were at a birthday party for our niece (that MIL wasn’t invited to), and once she found out about the party, she posted on Facebook asking why people who claim to be Christian act in a way she knows is wrong and said she wanted answers.

She wanted answers, so I gave her one (with the support of Jake and his brother). I basically told her that if she was talking about herself, the solution is simple: we don’t judge—we step back and let them wrestle with their own reflection, because a mirror gives a better sermon than we could.

After that, one of Jake’s sisters started blowing up his phone, telling him to control me and take my comment down, and started threatening to air out all of our dirty laundry. Which we were fine with, because it was all lies. So she posted a long comment about our “horrible marriage” and said she would keep going.

Then she commented that we need to fix our “PERFECT MARRIAGE.” So Jake commented if she wanted to talk about “perfect marriage” we could talk about her affair and the paternity tests, which she denied. Then his mom deleted his comment real quick.

SIL continued texting Jake more threats and lies about me. She told Jake I had cheated on him and that she could dig through messages and give him a name. We told her please do. Then she said I have lupus and can’t bear children. We offered to produce medical records, but when we called out her lies, she decided it was better to block us.

Then one of Jake’s brothers started texting him that he needed to apologize to his mom and sister because “his family is all he has.”

I’m sure there is plenty more drama to come, but for now: Viva La Resistance.