'My husband defended his toxic mother for a decade. This was the final straw.'

Laura* and her now-husband fell hard, fast. Within six months, they were already planning a future, moving in together, building a life. It felt easy, natural, like they'd known each other forever. They married, started a family, and for a while, everything was exactly as it should be.

There was just one problem: her mother-in-law, Jean*.

"It was odd from day one," Laura told Mamamia. "I didn't understand the dynamic between my now-husband and her. It was very polite, and it just felt really superficial."

According to Laura, as Jean was divorced and single, she would "rely on her son to fill the gap of a partner".

"She was always weary of me and kept me at a distance," Laura added. "I feel the biggest issue is that she knew I saw through her."

Despite this, Laura tried to be a good daughter-in-law. 

Watch: 10 signs your parent is a narcissist. Post continues after video.

"I think no matter how evolved you are as a woman, you think it's your role," she said. "I felt like it was my job to make her like me, and that I had to crack her."

She also didn't want to deprive her children of a healthy relationship with their grandmother.

"I never wanted to do that to them. So I think that was a huge driver for me, plus just that pressure we put on women to keep a family afloat. We don't put the same pressure on the husband, for sure. I felt such a weight of responsibility that shouldn't have been mine."

But no matter how hard she tried, things only got worse. Especially during her visits. Twice a year, her mother-in-law flew in from overseas and moved into their home, settling in with Laura, her husband, and their kids.

"It should have been a joy for her, and it should have given me some freedom and extra set of hands." said Laura, who was on maternity leave at the time.

"On paper, it could have been really good."

The reality was far from it.

"I would be home with her the entire time, and she would completely and utterly ignore me all day," Laura told Mamamia.

"She would not say goodbye if she was going out; I just heard the door shut. She'd walk into the kitchen, make herself lunch, walk back out, just completely ignore me."

But when her husband arrived home from work, Jean would be a completely different person.

"She'd sit down at dinner and start talking to me like we'd had a great day together," Laura recalled. "I would be palpably so aggravated."

Afterwards, her husband would confront her.

"Why are you being so rude to my mum?" he asked Laura. "She's talking to you, and you're just giving her one-syllable answers."

"And I'm like, you've got no f—ing idea."

Laura told her husband what was happening behind closed doors, but he dismissed it.

"There is no way she would do that," he would say.

"Because she's all about appearances and manners. So he was like, there is no way she's doing that."

This went on, day in and day out. Jean would ignore Laura all day, acting as though she was invisible. Then, when her son returned, she would play happy family.

Still, Laura tried to build a relationship, asking Jean if she wanted to pick her kids up from school. The grandmother would always jump at the chance. But continued to ice out her daughter-in-law.

One afternoon, Laura had reached her tether, and decided she would pick the kids up instead.

"It got to school pick-up time, and I was like, I'm not giving you that anymore if you're ignoring me, and we're not communicating," she said.

"It was so hard for me to behave like this, but I just walked out the door without talking to her and went to get the kids, two or three blocks away."

Just as soon as Laura had left, she heard the door open behind her.

"I swear to God, this woman would power walk past me or on the other side of the road, not acknowledge me, just hot-foot it to the school, speak to all of my friends and be all happy and friendly and just completely and utterly ignore me so that she could pick up my children from school."

Things were getting worse, and Laura tried to enlist her husband's help. But his response was always the same.

"He would say, 'It's not that bad. She wouldn't do that. There's no way that's happening', because he wouldn't know how to deal with it," Laura said.

But, deep down, he knew it was true.

"On some level, he knew, he absolutely knew," Laura said. "Because she gives everyone the silent treatment. That's her M.O. He grew up getting the silent treatment. He knew, he just didn't know what to do."

So, he stayed silent to avoid any tension with his mum.

"It's that really old, generational thing of don't upset your mother. Don't upset your mother, and certainly don't challenge her."

His passiveness caused friction in their relationship.

"We would fight in the lead up to her coming, we would fight about her coming. We'd fight about how long she was staying. It got to the point where I'd say to my husband, 'She can't come out unless you're working from home'. So he'd work from home, but he just shut his office door, and it was the same story, nothing changed."

While Laura is quick to hold her own family accountable for any disrespectful behaviour towards her husband, he didn't offer her the same.

"He should have done that for me. I put my marriage above all else, but he didn't. When you're married, your family and your partner's family are supposed to become the bottom line of the triangle, and then the top point should be you and the family that you've created," Laura said.

"So my family and my husband's family should have been the foundation of our relationship, but we should be the top of that triangle, and we should be each other's priority at all costs."

The longer her husband avoided confronting his mother, the more their arguments spiralled.

"The final straw was a bit messy," Laura told us. "She was visiting. My husband and I went out for dinner, and had a few too many drinks and had this huge argument. We both stormed off."

He stormed the streets. Laura went home to find her mother-in-law. She snapped.

"I just gave it to her. I said, 'You're the reason why he's not here. You're probably the reason why we're getting divorced. And, basically, you ruined your own marriage, now you're ruining mine, and I hope you're happy'."

It was something Laura says she never would have done sober. But after bottling up her feelings for so long, everything came spilling out.

For the next few days, nothing changed, and the family was dealing with the fallout. Then, right before Jean was due to leave, she pulled Laura aside for a chat.

"She just came to me and said, 'Something has to change'. And I called her out on all of her behaviour. And that real sort of narcissistic mask dropped. At one point, I thought she was going to launch at me.

"She was swearing, doing all these things I've never seen her or heard her ever do, and the way she spoke to me was quite colourful, and that's just not who she is."

Then she left, with nothing resolved.

That visit fell right before the COVID pandemic, meaning Laura and her husband didn't see Jean for a few years. It was a saving grace.

"We both saw a counsellor and saw one together, and that helped. But a lot of damage has been done because he just didn't have my back."

After working on things together, Laura realised that her husband was silent because he was frightened.

Laura told her husband that he "had to make some changes".

"I think it took even close to 10 years for him to truly accept the things that I was saying and the way she was treating me when he wasn't around," Laura said.

"During that time, over COVID, he spoke to her a lot and challenged her and just sort of said, 'You're not welcome because of this, so things have to change.' And it's better. He stands up to her a lot more. It has improved, but it's still hard."

These days, Laura has "nothing to do" with her mother-in-law.

"I will not go to her house. I will not stay with her. She has been here, but he has to be off work and with her. I can be polite with her when she's nice to me, but she just cannot maintain any level of civility with me, and that's her doing," she said.

"So I just can't carry the pressure of that anymore. The scars are still there. I can feel it in my body talking about her."

While she and her husband's relationship has improved, she still finds the dynamic between him and his mother "really, really hard".

"I think part of me still wants him to make a grand gesture and stand up for me when it comes to her. I think he'll only ever do it in his own way."

*Names have changed for privacy reasons.

Feature Image: Getty (Stock photo for illustrative purposes only).

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