No Day Without Mother-in-Law: How Another Woman Turned My Life into a Nightmare
When Oliver and I got married, our first—and what I thought was wise—decision was to live apart from his parents. He worked as an engineer at a respectable private firm, while I poured my share from selling my grandmother’s flat into the mortgage. We began building our nest, dreaming of peace, comfort, and starting our own family. But little did I know, his mother would move into these walls with us…
She didn’t physically live with us. Yet, it felt like she was in every socket, every cupboard, every teaspoon. Not a single decision, not a purchase, not even an event escaped her eager involvement—whether it was choosing a kettle, curtains, or even a mundane bath mat.
Mention replacing the curtains, and she’d appear at once, armed with folders, catalogues, and an arsenal of advice. For holidays, she’d draft scripts as if we were contestants in an amateur theatre competition. Once, we planned to ring in the New Year at a countryside cottage with friends. Everything was paid for—groceries bought, transport arranged—but she staged a performance so dramatic Stanislavski would’ve given a standing ovation. Tears, accusations, lamentations: “Abandoning your own mother on such a night!” In the end, we stayed home, lost the money, and she spent the evening criticising TV performers from her armchair like a disgruntled monarch.
When I finally got pregnant, Oliver and I decided to convert the spare room into a nursery. We barely mentioned it in passing… By the next morning, she was on our doorstep with two builders and rolls of wallpaper under her arms. Before I could protest, renovations began. To her plan. In her colours. By her vision. And there I stood, a stranger in my own home.
I told Oliver a hundred times how suffocated I felt—that I never felt like the mistress of my own house, that I wanted to choose everything from wallpaper to dish sponges. But the answer was always the same: “Mum’s just trying to help. She has good taste. She does it out of love.” And what of my love? My wishes? My taste? Do they mean nothing just because I didn’t birth “such a wonderful son”?
Then came the grand finale. She arrived and announced, triumphantly: “Oliver and I are going on holiday. To Spain. I need to recover—I’ve been carrying everything on my back.” There I stood, seven months pregnant, speechless. Not a single word. Oliver mumbled that he couldn’t let her go alone. So I told him plainly: if he went with her, he might as well forget he had a wife.
The outcome? She stormed in screaming that I was jealous. That she’d birthed and raised my husband, and here I was, ungrateful. That I couldn’t go because I’d “gorged myself on pies” and now begrudged her even a scrap of respite from this “thankless life.” After all, she did everything for us, and we—
I don’t even know what’s right anymore. I’m exhausted living as three in a marriage of two. I don’t want war, but surrender is impossible. I feel myself fading—as a woman, a wife, a soon-to-be mother. What terrifies me is that once the baby arrives, she won’t just pick the nappies—she’ll choose the name, the school, the friends.
Girls, any advice on surviving life with this “golden” mother-in-law? Or is it hopeless? Do I just accept that she’ll haunt me till my dying day—a shadow, a backdrop, a voice-over that’s always louder than my own?
Tell me. I don’t know how to fight this madness anymore.
