My MIL HATES me—seriously! It’s not just a personality clash; it’s a sport for her. EVERY TIME she goes out of her way to humiliate me, mock me, pick apart my cooking, cleaning, what kind of wife I am, and how I take care of my husband—basically EVERYTHING!
I’ve tried to be the bigger person. I always thought I was patient, but with her, it’s truly impossible. She constantly implies that I’m lazy and that her precious son, David, deserves better.
On our last visit, she started up again. We were sitting at the dinner table with David’s siblings and aunts. She looked at David, then looked at me with pure disgust. She started loudly complaining that her son isn’t looked after, her son has stains on his clothes, I’m useless, etc.
“Look at him,” she sneered, pointing at a tiny coffee spot on David’s shirt. “He looks exhausted. He looks like a ragamuffin. If he had a wife who actually cared about his appearance instead of her own nails, maybe he wouldn’t look so run down.”
David tried to intervene. “Mom, stop. I spilled coffee on myself in the car. It’s not her fault.”
But she wouldn’t let up. After her comments, I couldn’t eat anything, so I left for the kitchen to do the dishes just to get away from her voice.
She didn’t let me escape. She followed me in. Even there, her humiliations kept coming. She leaned against the counter while I scrubbed pans.
“You know,” she hissed, “it breaks my heart to see David working so hard and coming home to this. He deserves a partner, not a burden. He looks so tired because you drain him.”
That’s when I lost my patience! The rage that had been building for five years just exploded. I shut off the water and spun around to face her.
“Great, so we’re telling the truth now?” I said, furious and trembling. “FINE. I’LL TRY TOO!”
I walked back into the dining room, wiping my wet hands on my apron. “Everyone, listen up!” I announced. The room went silent.
“Martha thinks I’m a terrible wife because David looks tired,” I said, my voice shaking but loud. “She thinks he has stains on his clothes because I’m lazy. But do you want to know the truth? And I ended up spilling EVERYTHING.“
“David is tired because he’s working sixty hours a week,” I said, staring directly at my mother-in-law, whose face was turning pale. “And he’s not working those hours for us. He’s working them to pay off Martha’s $40,000 credit card debt from her online gambling addiction so she doesn’t lose her house.”
Gasps rang out around the table.
“That’s right,” I continued, feeling a weight lift off my chest. “We haven’t been on a vacation in three years. I shop at thrift stores. And David wears old shirts because every spare dime we have goes to her. So if he looks ‘run down,’ Martha, it’s not because of his wife. It’s because of his mother.”
Martha tried to sputter a denial, but the look on David’s face—resigned and tired—confirmed everything. His siblings turned on her immediately, demanding to know where their own loaned money had gone.
We left amidst the chaos. David held my hand the whole way to the car and said, “I should have done that years ago.” We haven’t seen her since, and coincidentally, our bank account—and our marriage—has never looked better.
