Not a Day Without My Mother-in-Law: How Another Woman Turned My Life Into Hell
When James and I got married, our first—and what I thought was wise—decision was to live separately from our parents. He worked as an engineer at a decent private firm, and I put my share from selling my gran’s flat into the mortgage. We started building our little nest, dreaming of peace, cosiness, and our own family. But who’d have thought his mum would move in with us—not physically, but in every other way?
She wasn’t actually living under our roof, but it felt like she was in every plug socket, every cupboard, every spoon. No decision, no purchase, no event happened without her jumping in—whether it was picking a kettle, curtains, or even a silly bath mat.
Mention needing new curtains, and she’d show up out of nowhere with folders, catalogues, and a full set of advice. For holidays, she’d plan them like we were putting on a school play. Once, we’d booked a New Year’s trip to a cottage in the countryside—everything paid for, groceries bought, transport sorted. But she threw such a tantrum Stanislavsky would’ve given her a standing ovation. Tears, guilt trips, wailing: “Abandoning your own mother on a night like this!” In the end, we stayed home, lost the money, and she spent the entire evening criticising TV presenters from her throne-like armchair.
When I finally got pregnant, James and I decided to turn the guest room into a nursery. We barely brought it up in conversation… and the next morning, she was at our door with two builders and rolls of wallpaper in hand. I didn’t even get a word in—renovations began immediately. Her plan. Her colours. Her vision. And there I stood, in my own home, feeling like a stranger.
I’ve told James a hundred times how suffocated I feel—how I’m not the one running my own home, how I want to choose things myself, from wallpaper to a bloody dish sponge. But his answer’s always the same: “Mum just wants to help. She’s got good taste. She does it out of love.” And what about my love? My wants? My taste? Or does none of that matter because I didn’t birth “such a wonderful son”?
And then—the grand finale. She waltzed in and announced, “James and I are going on holiday. To Spain. I need a break—I do everything around here.” I was seven months pregnant, standing there speechless. James mumbled something about not being able to let her go alone. So I laid it out: if he went with her, he could forget about having a wife.
The result? She stormed in screaming that I was jealous. That she’d given birth to and raised my husband, and I was ungrateful. That I couldn’t go because “I stuffed myself with baby,” and now I was ruining her chance to rest from her “unappreciative life.” She does everything for us, and this is the thanks she gets…
I don’t even know what’s right anymore. I’m exhausted living in a trio when marriage is supposed to be two. I don’t want war, but I can’t accept this either. I feel like I’m losing myself—as a woman, a wife, a soon-to-be mum. And it terrifies me that once the baby’s here, she won’t just pick nappies—she’ll choose the name, the school, even who they’re allowed to be friends with.
Girls, any advice on surviving a “golden” mother-in-law like this? Or is it hopeless? Do I just accept that she’ll haunt me till the end—a shadow, background noise, a voiceover that’s always louder than mine?
Tell me. I don’t know how to fight this madness anymore.
