Woman Regrets Trying to Give Manipulative Mother-in-Law a Second Chance

A woman says she tried to create boundaries with her overbearing mother-in-law, and it did not go as planned.

In a post shared on Reddit, she writes that she and her mother-in-law used to be “super close” until she got pregnant with her son over two years ago. After she gave birth, her mother-in-law’s “true colors” came out and it has only “gotten worse” in the years since, with lots of “boundary stomping and manipulation.”

A few months ago, the two women sat down and “aired everything out.”

“It wasn’t a great conversation but it cleared the air enough to start to move forward with some boundaries instead of tension and animosity,” the poster writes.

However, soon after, her mother-in-law “completely started boundary stomping again,” leading the Redditor to, once again, take a step back from their relationship. Her husband, however, maintained his relationship with his mother.

“She often cried as the victim to [my husband] when he would visit solo that she doesn’t understand why I hate her or why I don’t talk to her,” she writes.

So, the poster told her husband she “would be willing” to have a conversation with his mom and reiterate her boundaries.

Despite going no-contact, the woman finally approached her mother-in-law about establishing some ground rules in order to move forward.

“She started gushing that’s all she wants, so we could go back to the way things were before and be super close again. All I said was ‘I’m actually not comfortable with that.’ And all hell broke loose,” she writes.

The post continues: “She spent the next 20 minutes screaming crying…in response to me telling her I felt disrespected she said ‘YOU feel disrespected?! No I feel disrespected! You didn’t even tell me happy birthday!’ Because apparently that is the pinnacle of disrespect.”

The mother-in-law also stated that the poster “hovers” around her son too much and has become “mean” over the years.

While the mother-in-law offered an “apology” about her behavior, the Redditor questioned her sincerity.

“She said she was sorry she just wanted to be a grandma and show love,” she recalls. “I told her she’s intentionally convoluting things to be the victim here and she knows it.”

The woman now wants to go no-contact again, though her husband isn’t willing to cut her out.

While he has “been very reassuring” and supportive, he hasn’t taken any action to call out his mother for how she treated his wife.

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“He has said he will talk to her and tell her he heard the whole thing and what she did was not okay. But we’ll see how it goes. Over the last two weeks it has really just festered and made me feel worse and worse,” she adds.

Others are weighing in, with one commenter writing, “Your husband needs to realize that telling her ‘This was not okay’ doesn’t mean anything without consequences. If this is all she gets from him then she’ll continue to misbehave, make up some excuse or non-apology and then keep on disrespecting you. Simply because she can. Even if he doesn’t want to go no contact he has to come up with a proper reaction towards her behavior.”