We Cut My Mother-In-Law Out Of Our Lives

Dear Mother In Law:

To say I’ve had it with you is an understatement. It’s been years, literal years, since a conversation has been had with you by either me or my husband. This excludes all the times you’ve sent nasty text messages, phone calls, screamed my name across parking lots or stores and followed me and my children around at holiday events. You still find a way to disrupt our lives on a regular basis.

The lies you spread, the hate you spew – I’ve had enough.

I wanted a relationship with my in-laws. I really did. I wanted to be able to cook Thanksgiving dinner with you and go to lunch – hear stories about my husband as a child and then a teenager and all the mischief he got into. I wanted to be able to call you when I had a question about a recipe or what diaper rash cream was best for our littles.

Unfortunately, that never happened and never will. There wasn’t even a chance for it. I tried to be nice to you. I tried really freaking hard. All the times I showed up when I didn’t want to with him. He used to have to bribe me to come to your house for dinner before we got married.

There was the time you said, “I don’t care if you two are happy, all that matters is if I am,” in regards to our wedding.

You approached me after our newborn son had been in the NICU for a week and asked why I was such a horrible person. And then proceeded to scream in the road for all my neighbors to hear because my husband had asked you to go home and said you shouldn’t have been at our house when we arrived home. AFTER you had your other son call me while I was in the hospital, separated from my newborn baby, to tell me I had no rights to my own child. (Because you somehow thought you could have him call you Mama?)

It’s all the times you texted him and called me a bitch, said I was nuts, told him to divorce me and take the kids. For no reason. For absolutely no reason, other than you couldn’t stand that he had found someone to love and care for him the way you never could. The way you have pegged every other person in your family against him and caused the breakdown of other relationships. Which in no way hurt me, but it did hurt my husband, your child.

You spread rumors about your own son. What kind of mother does that? What kind of mother uses Facebook as her weapon to have other people make threats and talk horribly about their own child’s spouse, children and family?

It’s when you manipulated him as a child and were not the fantastic mother you make yourself out to be. He told me the stories. I know the things you did.

And yet somehow it’s me who is horrible. It’s my husband you feel sorry for and make others feel sorry for because he’s married to me. Married to me – who has a loving family who loves him more than you ever have or ever will. He gained a mother when he met me – my mother loves and cares for him like her own. Like a mother should.

I attempted many times to have some sort of tolerable relationship with you. I did. Not my husband, your son. Me. I tried to make peace so many times so that he could have some peace.

And each and every time, you made the choice to make that impossible. I didn’t want him not to have a relationship with his family. This is not what I pictured or hoped for.

All you had to do was plaster a smile on your face and be respectful. That’s it. You didn’t have to like me – I was never going to like you either. All you had to do was be nice, keep your mouth shut, and then you could have had a place in our lives.

You send him messages saying you don’t agree with his choices – and we all know it’s me that is the choice you’re referring to.

You don’t deserve to be part of this family. We have built a beautiful life together and none of it is because of you. You made it very difficult sometimes. And although many times you could have been the reason we were torn apart, you actually became the reason we became a team.

I’ve given him two beautiful children who will never know you as anything other than the woman who gave birth to their father. Because that’s all you are. That’s all you’ll ever be.

And that is your fault, not my husband’s. Not mine. Yours. You made that choice years ago, and you continue to make that choice now. You’ll never offer an apology for the havoc you’ve created, but I wouldn’t expect you to anyway.

And as long as you being nothing more than the woman who gave birth to him continues to be what my husband wants – I hope it stays that way.

Sincerely, super duper freaking sincerely,

The Woman Your Son Loves And The One Who Loves Him Back