Woman Tries to Give Manipulative Mother-in-Law a Second Chance, Then Immediately Regrets It

A woman shared on Reddit that she tried setting boundaries with her mother-in-law — but the conversation didn’t go as planned.

She explained that she and her mother-in-law were once “super close,” but things changed when she became pregnant with her son more than two years ago. After the baby was born, she said her mother-in-law’s “true colors” came out, with ongoing “boundary stomping and manipulation.”

A few months ago, the two finally sat down to talk.

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

However, soon after, her mother-in-law began ignoring those boundaries again. The woman decided to distance herself, though her husband still kept contact with his mother.

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

Eventually, the woman told her husband she was willing to meet with his mom again to restate her boundaries.

When they met, her mother-in-law initially seemed eager to fix things. But when the woman said she wasn’t comfortable going back to how things used to be, the situation escalated.

“She spent the next 20 minutes screaming and crying,” the post continued. “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 woman also claimed her mother-in-law accused her of “hovering” over her son too much and becoming “mean” over the years.

Although the mother-in-law gave an apology, the woman doubted her sincerity.

“She said she was sorry, that she just wanted to be a grandma and show love,” the woman wrote. “I told her she was twisting things to play the victim, and she knows it.”

Now, the woman says she plans to go no-contact again, though her husband doesn’t want to cut his mother out of their lives.

While he has been supportive and told his wife he would address the situation, she isn’t sure if it will change anything.

“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 added.

Others on Reddit also weighed in. One commenter wrote:
“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 excuses or give fake apologies, and 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 toward her behavior.”