Tale of a Mother-In-Law

The first time I met my future mother-in-law, I was not yet married to her son, Bob, and I knew if she had anything to do with it, I never would be married to Bob.

She was sixty four years old, but her face was covered with deep wrinkles, making her look even older, and she dyed her hair dark brown. Purple or blue eyeshadow usually covered her eyelids, and the lower portion of her eyes because it was applied too thick. I could have lived with her outward efforts to stay young, no matter how misguided they were, but it was the person she was inside that grated on my nerves.

When I first met Bob, he would become frantic when she was coming to visit, and cleaned his apartment from top to bottom, even going so far as to wash his walls, so his mother wouldn't be bothered by allergens. When she was around, she was his first priority, and I should have seen the problem then, but love is blind. I had been teaching Bob how to do ceramics, and he was very talented with his pieces, and one day while she was visiting, she was lying on the sofa while Bob and I were working with ceramics. My assumption was she didn't like that she wasn't the center of things, because she jumped up, threw her book against the wall and stomped outside.

She didn't have any problem voicing her opinions either. At the dinner table, Bob gave me a nice compliment about the food, and her reply was that he was prejudiced. She made ugly comments about my body, catching me changing clothes one day and naked from the waist up, I stated that I didn't have anything she hadn't seen before, to make the situation more comfortable. Her reply to me was that she had seen them, but never any that big. It was said in a sarcastic manner, and meant to make me feel uncomfortable.

Bob and I eventually moved in together, and after a year decided to get married. Of course she drove in for the wedding, and she took me to the drug store the next morning, and on the way told me that it still wasn't too late to back out of the marriage. I was dumb struck because I loved Bob, and would think she would be happy for us, but not her.

A year after our marriage, we moved to the town where she lived so Bob could take over her job, since she was retiring. She was getting her own apartment, but had to stay in the tiny one bedroom apartment we were going to be living in, until her place was ready. One day, she bought herself a roll-away bed, and proceeded to shove it into our bedroom for her to sleep on. I was appalled, but Bob didn't see anything wrong with it, and I began to realize that this woman had a lot of control over Bob, even though he was an adult.

As time went on in our marriage, I got used to her coming over and doing her laundry without asking, making rude comments about my own mother, who had a tumor growing in her brain and couldn't always help her behavior, and spending all her time in the office with Bob. He ran to her for advice when we would have an argument, and tell her everything we were fighting about. She always had to accompany us when we went out to eat, and after a while, that got very old.

Time proved to me that Bob's loyalties were with his mother, who he should have married, and not with me. I remember on my birthday, it was the only day I could get in for injections to my spine that was constantly hurting me. I opted to go to the doctor and get the injections, meaning I had to stay calm the rest of the day, so we didn't go out to dinner. Bob mentioned to me that his mother was very upset and wanted to go to dinner, and I had to remind him it was my birthday, and not hers.

Ultimately, she drove me away with her constant interference and rude comments. If Bob had backed me, I think I could have managed to stay, but since he was more committed to her than to me, I decided it was time to go. I believe her comment to him after I left was, "Thank God the witch is gone." That showed a lot of class on her part, but I went back to Bob, and we went to counseling, and finally, life is turning around.