u/Both_Potato5635

For context, my husband is an only child from a very small town where everyone knows everyone. We lived with his mother for about six months before and around our wedding while my husband started a new job.

At first there were never any huge issues, just uncomfortable comments here and there. She would compare me to his exes, make weird remarks about how my husband was born with defects and how our future baby would “probably have issues too,” and constantly involve me in family drama that honestly wasn’t my business.

My husband’s family history is also extremely traumatic. His grandfather took his own life, and apparently some family members blamed my husband and his mother for it when he was only 12 years old. Because of that history, I tried really hard to be understanding and patient with her.

I also had my own family issues before all of this. I had previously cut contact with my sister and was low-contact with my father due to past problems. Recently, I had started repairing those relationships and trying to move forward with both of them. My MIL seemed to have a huge issue with that.

While we were living with her, she made horrible comments about my sister that honestly made me furious. She would say things like my sister “wasn’t welcome in town” and that if she ever saw her, she would hit her. I never understood why she was so invested in my family relationships in the first place.

Things started getting worse about a month before our wedding. My husband signed a contract for his current job and didn’t tell his mother straight away. I accidentally mentioned it in conversation and she became extremely cold afterwards. She blamed me for him signing the contract without telling her first, as if I had somehow convinced him to hide it from her. It felt less like she saw him as an adult making his own decisions and more like she saw me as someone taking control away from her.

Around the same time, I had left my in-person job to work remotely. I started noticing she would listen in on private phone calls with my mother and even business meetings while I was working. I only noticed when she would say things in snarky comment that i had told my mother in a phone. I also signed an NDA for the company i work for and i was scared that she would repeat what she heard to someone and cost my job.

The morning of our wedding she messaged me saying she wasn’t attending. Then she showed up anyway. At the time I brushed it off because I didn’t want drama on our wedding day.The day after the wedding, my husband and I moved onto a farm provided by his employers. That’s when everything escalated.

I started going into town and random people would come up to me telling me the things she had been saying behind my back. Apparently she had been telling people she wished she had broken us up and stopped the wedding from happening.Then a week after the wedding, we found out I was pregnant.

Since finding out about the pregnancy, her behaviour has become genuinely cruel. She has told people she hopes I miscarry. She constantly inserts herself into our relationship, gives opinions nobody asked for and says hurtful things about me to other people in town.

The important part is that I never retaliated. I never spoke badly about her publicly. I just quietly went no-contact because I couldn’t mentally handle it anymore.

I’ve always dreamed of having a close relationship with my in-laws, so this whole situation honestly hurts more than I can explain. I never wanted conflict with his family and I tried really hard to make things work.

My mental health had already taken a turn for the worse earlier this year because of other things happening in life, but since everything with her escalated it has become significantly worse. Living in a small town where people constantly repeat the things she says about me has been emotionally exhausting.

The more distance my husband started creating from her, the more manipulative she became toward him as well. She constantly reminds him of “everything he put her through” growing up and brings up his birth defects whenever they argue. She also uses money against him because she helped him financially when he needed it in the past.

During one of their arguments, my husband told her he was no longer going to do absolutely everything for her the way he used to. Somehow that also became my fault she accused me of getting involved in their relationship and changing him, even though all I ever did was encourage him to make his own choices and set healthy boundaries.

For a long time my husband and I argued constantly about her because he didn’t fully see how bad things had become. I never told him to cut contact with his mother — I only removed myself from the situation.

Recently I left for a week because I needed space from the stress, him and the town in general. Around that same time, my husband mentioned to his mother that we had been discussing moving away from the town. That was when she started accusing me of being controlling and manipulative, saying I was trying to take him away from her. When he was the one who brought up the idea of moving first i agreed to look at moving due to everything with her and so i could be close to my family as we are over a 4 1/2 hour drive to any of them.

Instead of agreeing with her, my husband finally defended me and realised how extreme her behaviour actually was. He has now chosen to go no-contact himself.

We’ve both agreed she will not be involved in our child’s life and will not be given information about my pregnancy going forward.

I genuinely never imagined things would get to this point, but I don’t know how you come back from someone openly wishing a miscarriage on you.