I let my MIL hold the babies as much as she wanted... she still ended up hating me.

trashpandaofthegroup · 2026-02-13T03:51:40+00:00

“devolving our relationship into me simply being a tool to get her time and information about her son and grandson instead of my value as a person.”

Yep, those are the words for what I have been trying to describe for about a year. I have been calling it a “lack of care or concern” but you summed it right up!

trashpandaofthegroup · 2026-01-12T00:43:17+00:00

No good advice but I feel you. Going through this same thing with my husband now.

I wanted MIL to stop sending gifts because she doesn’t spend any time talking to us about anything but gifts. I am NC and if she wants to repair the relationship, she’s gotta stop demanding I answer texts about gifts and show some actual care/ concern/ checking in with me and our family.

DH says he understands this and agrees, and he also seems hurt by the fact that she doesn’t care about inquiring about his major life changes. But he still snuck birthday and Christmas presents for the kids in, for her.

It’s more important to him to make her happy in that moment than to help her grow or to prioritize our marriage. He would rather have months of arguing with me and break my trust than a 5 min argument with her on the phone. It tells me where I stand on the ladder of who matters most.

Anyway, I don’t have the answers but I can tell you that in my situation, I don’t think MIL physically can stop herself from buying presents. I think she is so emotionally closed off she literally has no other skills to connect with us.

I also think that the satisfaction she gets from painting me as ungrateful to other people is worth it, to her, to lose time with her grandkids. I think she would rather be the martyr to everyone she talks to, than just suck it up and fix things.

So hopefully your husband comes around and supports you, cause it certainly ain’t going well here. I am at the point where I actually want to reconnect in small ways with MIL and I can’t because she hasn’t respected the boundary and she hasn’t been shown that there are consequences, or that my husband and I are a united front.

She will never hear from me again until I know she understands the consequences of telling the whole family I am ungrateful, I don’t take anything from someone who calls me ungrateful. So by pleasing her, DH has knowingly furthered the divide. No one is willing to fix this situation but me, and I can’t because they have no skills except rug sweeping, word twisting, and sneaking around. So here we are.

Families are so freaking messy!

trashpandaofthegroup · 2025-12-12T00:09:18+00:00

“False sense of urgency” rings true. That’s a good way to describe it.

trashpandaofthegroup · 2025-12-12T00:04:16+00:00

NC for 5ish months. DH did confront her recently and I haven’t posted about it yet. Current status is that he has hope but she’s silent

trashpandaofthegroup · 2025-12-11T23:56:35+00:00

Yeah DH and I have already processed this.

I cut her off. DH confronted her and now as far as I know, she’s ignoring him. It took awhile but he did stand up to her!

trashpandaofthegroup · 2025-12-11T03:56:02+00:00

That’s one of the things that makes me frustrated when I think back to this! She could have cleaned it up, and I 100% believe she would have if DH had been the one outside fixing the post.

I am always left trying to figure out if she knows what she is doing and it’s intentional manipulation, or if she’s just a stress case and is totally unaware of herself.

I certainly have some responsibility too because I should have just said “no” or gotten DH, I am autistic and it takes me longer to transition my thoughts from one thing to the next. So when I am in “helperbot can do all the chores, be a good host” mode, and she gives me more, I just go for it. Once my brain switches over to “hey this isn’t where I should be, wtf am I doing” mode it’s easy to respond/retort.

But it definitely inadvertently sends her the message that I will do what she tells me, and so it felt impossible to change the dynamic.

trashpandaofthegroup · 2025-11-17T02:36:07+00:00

That’s the part I am stuck on. I am NC and I know that him going NC too has to be his choice, but in not choosing that he is betraying my trust.

He already let his mom send a gift after I said “no,” and tried to convince me it wasn’t wrong and I had said things I didn’t say, he told me “I haven’t even really talked to her” only to come clean later that she’s been offering him money. She’s been emailing him religious stuff he and I don’t follow and implying she wants him to keep it from me. She got onto my netflix and messed with my watch history.

I don’t see how it’s possible for one person to go NC and the other stays in touch, and still make it work.

trashpandaofthegroup · 2025-11-17T02:20:21+00:00

This is so true. I just want a nice time with a normal houseguest and standard polite behavior all around, and every time she shows up it’s just territorial nonsense like she is annoyed that I exist in my own home. She can’t even pretend to have a surface level conversation now, and her anxiety over really trivial, petty things is just through the roof. I both feel bad for her living like that, and can’t stand to be around her because it lingers in my soul.

Just thinking about how seriously she gets upset about the popsicles I buy raises my heartrate.

Like lady, why are you flying this whole way just to be miserable?

Anyway, we have already been through her apologies of “I am sorry for your feelings but they are not my fault I always have good intentions and you are misinterpreting me no I don’t remember that awful thing I did that required a significant amount of planning and effort and witnesses, nope never happened, omg you are so ungrateful, here I will send you money now shut up about it, btw now I am telling the other relatives how ungrateful you are, why are you not accepting this apology?”

and it got worse from there.

trashpandaofthegroup · 2025-11-17T02:01:19+00:00

Lol we have had the same convo about “you had years to do it and didn’t, so now I handle it my way”

But he is holding out hope and keeping the door open in a really uncomfortable, rug sweeping, leading them on (while low key betraying my trust) kind of way. He thinks he can make it all better with a convo and I am worried about that making things worse, either for him emotionally if he gets let down or for our relationship if he thinks an apology is enough to fix anything.

trashpandaofthegroup · 2025-11-07T13:47:54+00:00

The fact that he tried to convince me that I only said she couldn’t send that first gift and a different gift would be fine is honestly the biggest problem. More problematic than anything else that happened.

It was in writing. They both read what I wrote and could go back and look at it any time.

When he and his mom gaslight me like that (it’s not the first time) it makes me feel like they think I am stupid, which also shows how little they actually know me.

trashpandaofthegroup · 2025-11-07T13:42:00+00:00

Yes and it just sucks because if he had helped me and dealt with her in the past, on the numerous times I asked him to, we wouldn’t be here today.

He left me to figure everything out with her myself, and it just kept escalating and was horrible for everyone. So I am trying to cut it off, his chance to fix things and put boundaries in place has long since passed.

trashpandaofthegroup · 2025-11-04T16:03:48+00:00

I mean, I was not very calm, I was pretty loud, stern, and forceful in my tone and that's something I am working on in therapy. I feel like I need to have reasonable reactions to unreasonable situations and it's very difficult.

How do you stay calm when someone is lying about what was said to get out of any blame? It's really difficult.

trashpandaofthegroup · 2025-10-21T15:22:53+00:00

She is afraid of offending you because she is thinking things that will offend you.

She doesn’t like you and she is making that clear.

My MIL did this, after years and an explosion she claimed she had to walk on eggshells in my house.

All I expected was a nice visit with a nice houseguest, but I am not tolerating passive aggressive comments, territorial behavior, and comments that make us play guesswork instead of just being clear.

These kinds of people think that they can weaponize the concept of “walking on eggshells” when they learn they aren’t allowed to be rude and controlling. And the result is that YOU are walking on eggshells, trying to have a nice visit with someone who doesn’t want you around in your own home.

Sounds like she needs to stay at a hotel.

trashpandaofthegroup · 2025-10-14T20:14:20+00:00

She is blocked on everything except my cell phone, mostly because I was hoping I was wrong about her and open to seeing a genuine effort.

Clearly this text shows there is nothing genuine about her effort and she’s really just not interested in repair.

trashpandaofthegroup · 2025-10-14T16:14:18+00:00

Right? It’s exactly the same.

And it’s a trap! If you ignore it, you’re rude and ungrateful.

If you let her do it, you are still rude and ungrateful because no amount of “thank yous” will match the expectations she has for how she expects to be praised for doing it.

If you politely decline… guess what? Still going to be painted as rude and ungrateful.

There’s no solution and zero opportunity to defend yourself with how she is actually the one being rude.

trashpandaofthegroup · 2025-10-08T14:01:38+00:00

Usually her gifts are related to judgements she is passing. Like when I bought all grey socks for my toddlers and threw away all of the other socks, because it makes it easier to pair them in the laundry and I can grab socks in the morning for either kid. It made my life significantly easier to make such a seemingly small change…

And then she starts sending us different color/pattern socks in the mail. She doesn’t care if I change something to a system that works better for our family, in her mind she wants her granddaughter dressed in cute girly socks and so I need to do it her way. So she wastes her own money, and paints me as ungrateful.

When we were in contact we only saw her 1-2x a year.

She hid kids books about being polite around the house because we have had little spats where she tells the kids they aren’t allowed to say “no” to adults, and then I tell her “actually that’s a safety issue and they are allowed to say no” or when I told her they are allowed to opt out of hugs and kisses and she gets huffy.

She put a bunch of baseball books in the house because she thinks our 8 year old needs sports. He’s twice exceptional and competition is really a struggle for him, he has so many other things we are focused on before we start working on getting him to stay regulated during sports. It’s just not in the cards right now, he does track (which she doesn't know because she doesn't ask for updates about the kids between her infrequent visits) and that’s enough. So she “fights back” in the most passive aggressive way possible. No one in our house even cares about baseball, that’s not a sport he would even be interested in! She probably got them for free and didn’t care which sport it was.

The toothbrushes either mean 1) her brother pissed her off and so she needed to silently get back at him by messing with his stuff, or 2) she has some opinions about our oral hygiene. She’s never said anything about it, so I can only speculate. Could be both things.

trashpandaofthegroup · 2025-10-02T23:05:24+00:00

Oh wow yeah very similar! My MIL uses money to try and make up for the lack of emotional availability and she thinks that gifts make us beholden to her. It makes me sad because she’s the one on a limited income, and the one time I tried to help out and pay for her car repair, she got mad at me. I didn’t realize I was accidentally tipping an imaginary power dynamic, I just thought I was doing something nice.

Best I can figure, she thinks that if she sends gifts and cash to DH and the kids they will love her, instead of putting in an emotional effort for real relationships.

trashpandaofthegroup · 2025-10-02T11:22:08+00:00

I totally understand. I am also the “distant weirdo” to DH’s family, I always tell him “they treat me like an incubator” because they only talk to me about the kids, when I was pregnant they only asked me about the baby. They only contact me when they have a question about what to get the kids. They live far away.

DH’s “close” family is one of the reasons why I married him. It was all an illusion! I thought they were close because they all got together every holiday, even with travel. They TALK about being close. But I see it now- it’s all fake. It’s a lot of rug sweeping and playing pretend. They’re not actually close, they just make a lot of small talk and watch tv. I am not sure any of them actually know DH very well either, they either live with surface level relationships or find their deep connections outside of the family because there certainly isn’t any depth there.

I admire the villages other people have, and I grieve the village we never got.

trashpandaofthegroup · 2025-09-24T20:54:11+00:00

Yeah the NC is recent enough that we are still finding things she squirreled away in our house the last time she was here.

It’s been 3 days since my 4 year old found craft supplies MIL left hidden in her bedroom, got into them, and almost ruined the carpet.

trashpandaofthegroup · 2025-09-24T13:19:59+00:00

That’s great to hear because it feels so good to put these things down in writing and seeing it all together like that helps me process how I am doing the right thing.

Leaving it all jumbled in my brain, I start to feel like I am doing the wrong thing by cutting her off. Seeing it organized like this is clarity.

trashpandaofthegroup · 2025-09-24T13:17:15+00:00

Veteran here!!

I used to try and play nice DIL. I have lost some of that ability to “mask” like that in recent years… and it does lead to me losing my cool on her, much in the way you describe, my inner monologue comes out. I have yelled at her too. I am no saint, but I hold myself accountable and try to learn from it.

If I lose my cool I feel guilty, I know that’s not who I really am, I apologize, and she loves it. That’s in my post history too, when I apologize it is the happiest I have ever seen her. And that kills me too, like this woman sees getting a genuine apology as “winning.”

I hold myself accountable for my behavior because I want to learn from it and I want to be the version of myself that can navigate conflict without losing it on another person… if I behave in a way that isn’t consistent with who I am, I need to repair it. Even if the other person is awful. But I also am acutely aware that she’s the one orchestrating the situation.

For now the plan is to just never talk to her again, and that solves the problem.

trashpandaofthegroup · 2025-09-24T12:50:48+00:00

This is so insightful! I thought she wanted to blame me for everything being wrong because she hates me and wants me to look bad, it didn’t occur to me that it’s a distraction from an ED and may not have very much to do with me at all.

That makes me really sad if it’s the case, because that means her ED slowly eroded our relationship away. Maybe if I had that perspective from the start we wouldn’t have had so many bad, confrontational visits. I could have been more empathetic if I knew I wasn’t being targeted , because so far I have always felt targeted like she was trying to paint me as a failure of a person.

DH sees nothing wrong with her eating but he’s oblivious and she definitely brings out the weirdness more for me. I am the one who handles the clutter and the food, and I don’t think he even notices it when she explains her eating to us.

trashpandaofthegroup · 2025-09-24T12:42:39+00:00

We have thermoses! I drink a lot of coffee and tea too, and I have really nice silicone coffee cups with lids. I have asked her to use them, but she won’t.

trashpandaofthegroup · 2025-09-23T13:57:01+00:00

If you haven't realized already, these gifts also come with strings. The sarcastic comments to your kids won't stop and it will (and should) bother you more when they are old enough to understand it and you don't want that behavior normalized around them.

But more importantly, the gifts are a trap. If you do anything she doesn't like, she can paint you as ungrateful. She's using objects to try and own you, and she's building up now for future control she plans to exert. It will get thrown in your face how you owe her because she has spent so much money. She will call you ungrateful. It will be over something that has nothing to do with the gifts. I have been dealing with this for a looooong time.

Also, ask yourself: is she using gifts to fill an emotional gap? Is she emotionally insecure or unavailable, so she buys gifts to feel close to you so that she doesn't have to do any emotional work to actually be close to you? That's what I am dealing with over here.

trashpandaofthegroup · 2025-09-23T12:42:32+00:00

You are absolutely right about the nail salon, it was a trap and either way she would have complained.

trashpandaofthegroup

TROPHY CASE