Over on Reddit, people are sharing their most toxic experiences with their narcissistic mothers-in-law. Here's what they had to say:

1. "My husband and I are expecting our first child, and my husband's sister is getting married about six months after her birth. My mother-in-law expects my husband to provide financially for the wedding, and when my husband said he can't because he's having a child, my MIL said, 'You haven't even seen your baby yet. You've seen your sister your whole life. She comes first.' She also expected us to travel by car to my sister-in-law's family three months after I give birth to the baby, to a different state. When we said it's not safe and we'd probably pass, she got upset. And when my husband said, after the baby comes, the baby is his number one priority, she said, 'Your sister should be a priority for you over your baby, then your family of origin (parents and rest of siblings) before the baby.' She's said this multiple times now, and it bothers me a lot."

2. "My fiancé went no-contact with his mom a year ago. She would come to our place once a week to check if our towels were clean. She'd also go through our drawers and ask for receipts for everything he bought. I never knew it was that severe because every time she or his dad came over, I wasn't home. I witnessed it twice, and I got yelled at for some dust on the TV. I thought that she was wild, and we got into a fight after she yelled at me. She told me to take my stuff and get out of her son's flat, or she'd call the cops. I went to work and came back when my shift was over. It happened three months into our relationship and a month after he went no-contact with her. He went to her house, told her that he didn't want to be a dog on a leash, and she slapped him. This is when I discovered his parents had a spy app on his phone..."

"They disabled it during the night, so he could only use the call app. I never understood why he only wanted to talk on Snapchat; it was because they would read his conversations with me on regular texts. When she discovered that we never broke up, she grabbed a paper and a pen and asked him to tell her the date we met, what we did, where we were, and what we talked about.

When we were arguing earlier, she changed her mind from 'you're not allowed to stay at my son's place' to 'you're not allowed to see him.' She told me that since we only use condoms, we are forbidden to have intimacy. I'm guessing she forced him to tell her if I was on birth control pills or not. It was unhinged behavior.

Fast forward to now: my fiancé got a call from his grandmother, and she told him that if he ever wants to talk to his mom again, he has to break up with me, abandon our cat, quit his job, move back to her house, give her his credit card, and allow her to download the spy app on his phone.

I feel ridiculous because throughout the year I'd try to tell him that maybe he should call his mom, apologize, even if he's not wrong, because she's his mom, after all. He has a younger sister and a cousin who was like a brother to him. They all went silent and stopped talking to him. I was also the one to tell him that he should maybe try to talk to them. To his mom, I'm the villain who broke her family, but she could've hated me in silence rather than give him an ultimatum. Nothing would've happened.

I should maybe mention the reason she hates me is that I wear 'too much makeup,' I was hospitalized for six months and had to drop out of college, I used to have seven face piercings, and I have box braids, and also think but can't prove that it's because I'm mixed-race."

3. "My fiancé and I have been together for 11 years. We are both 28 and getting married in a few months. Unfortunately, his mother has never liked me. Over the years, she's constantly made passive-aggressive remarks, belittled me, and made it clear that she thinks she is better than me in every way. This caused a lot of emotional pain and conflict in our relationship. My fiancé has confronted her many times and asked her to stop, but her behavior never truly changed. Because of this, we limited contact with her over the past few years. We only saw her at family events and a few necessary occasions. Last year, we announced our wedding date and went on vacation. After we returned, we visited her because my fiancé helped her move into her new apartment. During that visit, she spoke horribly about me to my fiancé..."

"She told him that she does not want us to get married and that I am not fit to be a mother because I grew up in 'difficult family circumstances' (I was abused as a child, then abandoned by my parents, and raised by my grandmother).

My fiancé told me everything she said. At first, I tried to confront her calmly, but as she became more aggressive and cruel, I ended up shouting back. The situation escalated to the point where she physically pushed me out of her apartment, screamed at me, and called me a 'wh*re,' telling me to get out.

Since then, I have been completely no-contact with her. My fiancé has repeatedly demanded that she apologize, but she refuses. She shows no remorse.

I am determined to remain no-contact, but emotionally, this situation has been incredibly difficult to process. What hurts the most is that she completely stole the joy of our engagement and wedding planning. The last six months have been emotionally exhausting, and instead of enjoying this special time, we've been stuck dealing with trauma, stress, and pain."

4. "About nine months ago, my MIL announced to my husband and me that she was living with us. Because of her living situation, there was no way we could kick her out. We came up with a plan to connect her with services and place her in a better and permanent living situation. She has not followed through on any of the commitments she made and has rejected all our offers of help. I absolutely despise her and cannot stand to even see her anymore. Ever since she moved in, she has absolutely taken over our house. She is super narcissistic and manipulative. She seems to fully ignore the fact that she is an unwelcomed guest living in our house and acts like I am an inconvenience to her."

"She doesn't celebrate any of my husband's accomplishments. Recently, she had accumulated almost $2,000 in debt, which he had agreed to pay for. He figured out a way to have the debt waived. When he informed her, her answer was, 'Oh,' then she moved on to another topic. When my husband is sick or not feeling well, she does nothing for him. She doesn't ask how he is doing or if she can do anything for him.

My MIL also borrows his car all the time, but never puts gas in it or lets him know that it needs gas. That is a discovery he makes on his way to work in the morning."

5. "My husband (25M) and I (25F) have been together for about five years and have been married for one month. We got married the day before he left for Army basic training, so we've been mostly no contact since then. His mom was very upset about our marriage. She left the house the day we got married and didn't see him before he left. When he got his one phone call to let me know he was okay, I reached out to her just to pass along that he was safe. She told me she didn't want to hear anything unless it came directly from him. Since then, she's made multiple Facebook posts about how excited she is for her son to join the Army, without mentioning our marriage. She's made comments calling herself his 'favorite girl,' which honestly makes me feel uncomfortable as his wife..."

"I've tried to be respectful and avoid conflict. I've even attempted to apologize for a large argument my husband and I had in front of her over a year ago (when we were still dating), but she refuses to move past it. I also tried to reach out to his sister, but was told they had been instructed not to speak to me.

My husband has defended me and told his mom to respect me as his wife, but he's currently in basic training and can't really intervene right now. He graduates next month, and I'm anxious about graduation day. I don't want any tension or drama to affect him, and I don't want to be put in a situation where I react emotionally and make things worse."

6. "My mother-in-law made my husband a photo book for his 40th birthday using mainly photos taken from my social media accounts, but I'm not in the book anywhere. At the time, he and I had been dating for about six and a half years, and we were getting married in less than two weeks. Most of the pictures of him and my stepkids were taken by me on our family vacations. Since she took them from my Facebook page, she had access to pictures of me from all the same trips. I can't help but feel like she purposely chose not to use those. The main part that I can't get over is that I am nowhere in the book whatsoever, but she included two pictures of a childhood girlfriend. I don't know if my husband noticed, and I've never said anything about it, but it still irks me years later whenever I see the book. She's a nice woman to my face, but I've never felt like I was one of the family."

7. "My 64F mother-in-law just hit a new level of absurd. She said if my newborn daughter doesn't grow up to be conservative, she 'won’t get a dime.' Imagine putting political conditions on your love and support for your own grandchild? My baby is literally an infant, but she’s already being financially blackmailed for beliefs she doesn’t even have yet. I'm not confrontational with my in-laws any longer because they are so stuck in their weird mindsets, so I just filed this under why boundaries exist, but seriously, who thinks like this? I can't imagine being this contingent with my love, and I will be sure to raise my daughter to never conform to anything she doesn't believe in for profit."

8. "My mother-in-law has always faked medical disorders for attention. She also uses them to make excuses for her inexcusable behavior. Early in my relationship with her son, she attempted to extort my parents by accusing me of stealing $16,000 worth of property from her and telling them that if they paid her the $16,000, she wouldn't go to the police. Rather than admit she lied, she claimed an untreated seizure disorder was to blame for the accusations against me. When my parents maintained their refusal to have anything to do with her, she decided in her head that my dad was the one preventing a relationship. She started pushing this narrative that he was controlling my mother, and if not for him, she and my mom would be besties. When my dad got cancer in 2023, I didn't want my MIL to know because I knew she'd find a way to make the darkest time of my life even harder. My partner let it slip, and within two weeks, she was faking cancer."

"For over a year, as I watched my dad slip away, I also had to witness this woman writhing with jealousy, making increasingly ridiculous claims about being miraculously cured of simultaneous liver cancer and cholangiocarcinoma, only to every few weeks claim they found a new cancer elsewhere.

When pressed on why she never required chemo, radiation, or surgery for any of it, she initially said it was caught early enough, then changed her story to include sneaking away in the dark of night for secret treatments and wearing a wig so as 'not to worry her family.' And when asked about her prognosis, she said, 'Tentatively optimistic, but I'm not trying to take any attention, so don't worry about me.'

My dad didn't get so lucky. His cancer had a particularly cruel progression of responding well to initial treatment, only to come back quickly and often metastasize to the brain or liver.

He died a few months before Christmas, and my MIL attempted to invite herself to my mom's for the holiday. When my husband told her no, she sulked and said, 'I really thought once [my dad] was gone, things were gonna be better.'"

9. "My mother-in-law lives with us, and I am tired of her being here. We have a very small house — it has two bedrooms and one bathroom. She only pays rent when she wants to, and never offers to pay for anything else, including food. She demands that we pay for her hemp gummies without offering any money to pay for them, though. She didn't even offer to pay for her own meal on her son's birthday! I told my husband I want her out by the end of April, but he hasn't told her yet. She was only supposed to be here for a month or two, and has been here for almost a full year now. I am tired of sharing MY house with her. She is selfish and manipulative, and I want her out (and if she doesn't leave, I am moving into my own apartment)."

10. "My mother-in-law has an alarming plan to take my baby, whether through fighting for custody or even kidnapping once she’s born. I contacted Child Protective Services and made a report detailing her plan to 'frame' me as an unfit mother in an attempt to gain custody. My husband and I called my MIL to confront her about what we knew. She immediately went into denial, screaming, crying, and insisting she’d never do something like that, while heavily guilt-tripping my husband. By the end of her 'tantrum,' she managed to tug at his emotions, but I stayed firm. Afterward, she blocked me on social media, and I blocked her as well. I don’t want her to have any access to my baby or me, even through photos or posts."

"So far, my husband has agreed to honor my boundaries and keep her completely away from our child. However, something happened that really shook my confidence in that promise. He came home about an hour late from work with a gift bag, a smile, and handed me $100 in cash. It turns out that he met up with his mother on his way home. She gave him a baby shower gift since I wouldn't allow her to attend, with a card addressed 'To my baby, too.'

That specific phrase was something I already told him makes me extremely uncomfortable, as she’s repeatedly referred to my daughter as 'her baby. 'He brushed it off, saying I was overreacting and that it was a 'nice gesture.'

But it got worse. Inside the card was $200. He told me that he had an extra $100 in his wallet. I asked to see it, and he refused. It turns out she gave him $1,000 in cash and told him not to tell me how much it was — and if he had to, to make it seem like a much smaller amount.

So now, after everything we agreed on, it feels like she’s buying her way back into his good graces, and he’s letting her. I told him that she is manipulating him to allow herself back into our lives. His response was, 'That's not a very nice thing to say.'

I’m heartbroken and frustrated. I hate that it feels like it’s them versus me right now, especially at such a vulnerable time in my pregnancy. But I want to be clear: my stance hasn’t changed. My mother-in-law will not be allowed around my baby, period."

11. "Two years ago, my mother-in-law took our card box and gift box home from our wedding. In our culture, people often give gifts of either gold or money. We had 600 people at the wedding and should have technically had an average of $100 per person, including the thousands our grandparents and extended family gave. Apparently, she took it home and didn’t let us open it, saying, 'It’s not safe at a hotel.' I told my husband before the wedding even happened that she would do this. He cried the night of our wedding when he realized I was right."

"BUT we never knew if she took anything because she gave us the boxes back after our honeymoon. So, who knew what was missing or not, other than us assuming, because we didn’t even have one-eighth of what we expected.

I recently visited them with my husband (we don’t live in the same country), and my father-in-law, who is now divorcing my mother-in-law, told my youngest sibling-in-law, 'Your mom took all of your brother's gold and monetary gifts from his wedding.' What I didn’t know was that she also took money from my son’s birthday party.

I’m a little relieved I was right and wasn’t accusing her for no reason without evidence."

12. "For background, my husband proposed to me in January 2019, and our plan was to marry in April 2020. The pandemic hit, and we pushed back our wedding two years. We decided that for our wedding, we wanted our mothers to wear champagne-colored dresses to give them special importance. My mother found her dress a couple of months after we got engaged and was set, but my MIL was a completely different story. She waited out the two years to find a dress and said she 'didn’t have enough time.' To her credit, she went to over a dozen different stores but couldn’t find anything because everything was too tight, showed her arms, and didn’t make her 'look skinny' (her words)."

"Finally, a month and a half prior to the wedding, she went to a bridal shop with my brother-in-law (an enabler to her shenanigans). Luckily, my sister-in-law was also there and noticed the dress was white. She voiced her concern, but my MIL insisted it was the lighting in the shop, and the description of the dress read 'champagne.'"

I told my husband and explained that if she wanted to make a show of herself, I would let her. He was, however, irate about the situation and wouldn't let it go. He decided to casually mention the dress to his father. I overheard his dad say, 'Oh, yeah, your mom has a great dress. She’s going to outshine the bride.'

My husband then confronted my MIL, saying she couldn't wear it. She told him he had to see it in person to recognize it was champagne, and not white. They went to the bridal shop, told her it was white, and asked to order a different color. She cried and complained.

She ended up ordering a different color, but was so angry about it that she didn’t smile once on our wedding day. In all of our wedding photos, she has a sour face. I can’t wait to get these printed and hung up for her to see."

13. "I’m 28, recently had my second baby, and I absolutely want at least one more. I’ve never said otherwise. But for some reason, my MIL has decided she gets to narrate my future. She keeps making comments about how I won’t have more children, and the most recent one really annoyed me. She said maybe I’m soaking up this stage so much because 'it’s probably going to be your last and you won’t get to experience this again.' Who told her that? Because it sure wasn’t me. And as if that wasn’t enough, she’s now started making comments about my mental health, too. I haven’t been diagnosed with anything, I don’t have postpartum depression, and I’ve never given anyone a reason to think otherwise. But she’s talking like it’s inevitable. She even said that if I were 'suicidal' she would take my kids so I could 'go to the hospital and get help.'"

"I’ve never said anything even remotely like that. It felt completely out of line and, honestly, a little disturbing that she would jump to those kinds of scenarios out of nowhere. I’m so tired of her projecting her own assumptions onto my life, my family planning, my mental health, and my kids. None of this is her call."

14. "My mother-in-law came over knowing she’s sick during RSV season when I have a young infant, two months old. I have discussed this with my partner multiple times: I don’t want his family to come down for flu season because they’re disrespectful and ignore anything we say if it’s not what they want. She comes in, holds the baby, coughs into her hands, wipes them on his hair, and then proceeds to touch his little hand. I take him to my bedroom and stay there. While my partner continues chatting with her in the living room, she sounds like a bad chest cough the whole time. She says to me, 'I’m just getting over something,' which pissed me off. I text my partner that I’m not coming out of the room because she’s sick. He mentioned it to her, and she told him 'She took a drink down the wrong way.' She lied."

"I’m upset she would risk my vulnerable baby getting sick and not caring. I expressed how mentally this affected me and how he didn’t kick her out, knowing she’s sick. He expresses that she brought us gifts and will help us out if needed, in case anything were to happen. I told him that’s no excuse for her to do whatever she wants and hold it over us, controlling situations.

He then tells me I’m overreacting. I’m going to burn bridges in life and isolate myself because people do stuff I don’t like. However, apparently, she’s allowed to do as she pleases because she will be the only one to help us out if needed. He was upset that I kept telling him I didn’t agree. He told me to leave his space as his face turned super red. He said I deserve to be shouted at."

15. "I survived seven days with my mother-in-law for Thanksgiving. She always comments on my weight and body, and it gets bothersome. She’s convinced I have anorexia and is always complaining that I don’t eat enough, even though I eat the same amount of food as everyone else around me. She’s one of those people who takes it extremely personally if you aren’t obsessed with what she cooks. She’s a great cook, and I love her food, but hate the pressure of eating it. I spent most of Thanksgiving in the living room, but whenever I took a couple of hours to myself in my room to nap or read a book, she would come up and make me come downstairs to eat, even if we’d all already eaten. It was so emotionally exhausting because the house was full of people, and I hardly got any breaks from socializing."

On Thanksgiving Day, we went to a relative's house who is in the medical marijuana business. While his mom was having some champagne, my husband had a puff of a blunt; he doesn’t drink but does smoke weed now and again. When she got home, she said it was her favorite Thanksgiving.

A couple of days later, she got mad at me for being in the guest room and not eating enough. I came downstairs, and my husband could tell that I was not happy. He was dishing up soup and gave one to my sister-in-law. She got mad at him for not serving me up first (she’s like that, getting super angry at random things). So then my husband asked me what was wrong, and I told him I just didn’t feel like I was allowed to take any mental breaks because she gets offended at everything.

A minute later, she was getting on my brother-in-law's case because she kept micromanaging his parenting of his toddler, so my husband interjected and told his mom to stop. This enraged my MIL, and she gave my husband the silent treatment for a day.

This morning, she told my husband that he looks super old and ugly. She said she can tell he lives a very unhealthy lifestyle, and she’s disappointed in him (he’s a marathon runner and looks great, in my opinion). But she is now super upset that he smoked a puff of a blunt on Thanksgiving."

16. "We haven't been in contact with my fiancé’s mother for two years. She’s manipulative, boundary-crushing, and incapable of seeing beyond herself. Every interaction with her is dramatic. She’s sent endless emotional tirades to the family WhatsApp, turned the smallest things into chaos, and has always made it clear that she sees me as a threat in order to control my fiancé. The breaking point was after a family trip. She bombarded us with messages blaming me for 'isolating' her, saying things like I was 'cold, heartless, and destroying the family.' My fiancé confronted her, and she gave him the silent treatment for months. Then she reappeared like nothing had happened. But we cut contact, and those two years without her were so peaceful. Then, earlier this year, we got pregnant. Given everything, we chose not to tell her. That moment wasn’t hers to have. It was ours. Then we lost the baby, and it was devastating. Grief like that changes you."

"Somehow she found out (not from us, of course). Her very first reaction wasn’t compassionate — it wasn't an 'I’m so sorry.' Instead, it was, 'You’re blaming me. Maybe God didn’t want you to have the baby.' I’m not paraphrasing. She said those exact words. No empathy — just playing the victim, and even daring to frame our miscarriage as 'divine punishment for our choices.'

I heard her say this, and something inside me snapped. Not just anger, but pure rage. Who weaponizes someone’s miscarriage to make themselves the victim? So I told my fiancé, 'No more.' This time for real — we needed strict boundaries. And he said I was overreacting.

Then came the cavalry — his sister and his stepdad. They jumped in with manipulation, telling him he was going too far, that she 'didn’t mean it like that, and was just emotional.' And the worst part is my fiancé believes it. He's pulling away.

I feel alone. I’m grieving a baby I lost, and now I feel like I’m losing him, too. I can accept that his personality is more conflict-avoidant than mine, but I cannot accept him failing to protect our family when we are under attack.

Because that’s what this is. An attack. And let’s be honest, that’s exactly what she wants: to drive a wedge between us, to make me the scapegoat, and to keep him in orbit around her."

17. "I had a fight with my mother-in-law because my husband got a DUI and was arrested. I called her for help and advice, as people in her family have been arrested before. Since I'm not from the US, I'm not familiar with the process. She said it was my problem because I'm his wife, so I had to fix it, and said his drinking is my fault because I’m a 'psycho.' I got heated and said stuff back to defend myself, and she didn’t like that at all, and continued to insult me by calling me lazy for being a stay-at-home mom and having postpartum depression and anxiety. I made some bad comments to her, and, of course, she was offended. She didn’t help at all, and my family ended up helping me get my husband out of jail and paying for anything I needed for our toddler. When he got out of jail, she twisted everything and told him I was mean to her and insulted her. Now she wants us to bring our two-year-old to her house, but she said I'm not welcome over..."

18. "My mother-in-law feels 'left out' after my traumatic birth. I went into labor on a Monday and, after 56 hours, had an emergency C-section. My hormone crash is horrific due to already struggling with depression and anxiety. Breastfeeding isn't working either, which is a horrible experience to navigate. I just needed my mom, who has come to help me out. Now, my MIL has refused to vaccinate, lives five hours away from me, and has a long list of things I need to do to the house to make it fragrance-free, so she is happy when she occasionally visits. Meanwhile, she has put in little to no effort to see me as her daughter-in-law for the last 11 years."

"It turns out she is now vaccinated against whooping cough and all other vaccines, but was refusing to get any moving forward.

She turned up just after we had gotten my little one down (it had taken a while because she had been awake for a long time), and instantly said to me, 'Where is my granddaughter?' I explained she was asleep and would have to wait for a bit.

My MIL tried to argue with me, but I stood firm. When my daughter woke up, I gave her a feed and put her down for a cuddle. Everything was going well until my MIL spotted my Reed diffuser and said to me I was a 'bad mother' for having this around my little one, and I was putting her in harm's way.

My hubby told her to drop it, and she sat there sulking until she left. She then sent a massive text to my hubby, saying he needed to protect her from chemicals and that the reason she isn't settled is that we have exposed her to too much. She tried to tell us that Google would back her up, and again said I was a bad mom because of this.

Hubby blew up at her, and I have now gone no contact for the foreseeable future."

19. "For background, my husband proposed to me in January 2019, and our plan was to marry in April 2020. The pandemic hit, and we pushed back our wedding two years. We decided that for our wedding, we wanted our mothers to wear champagne-colored dresses to give them special importance. My mother found her dress a couple of months after we got engaged and was set, but my MIL was a completely different story. She waited out the two years to find a dress and said she 'didn’t have enough time.' To her credit, she went to over a dozen different stores but couldn’t find anything because everything was too tight, showed her arms, and didn’t make her 'look skinny' (her words)."

20. "From the day I met my mother-in-law more than 10 years ago, she’s made it pretty clear that I wasn’t who she wanted for her son. The very first thing she brought up when she met me (after I’d flown across the country to spend the holidays with them) was my religious affiliation, political preferences, and stance on children. All things my husband and I have in common, by the way. She’s a textbook narcissist and has also treated my husband poorly many times throughout our marriage. She has shown no interest in me as a person, wouldn’t check in on me when my husband was deployed unless it was to simply ask how he was or if I’d heard from him, or to share horrific articles about military incidents that had happened, making sure it wasn’t him. And when we eventually had our child, she’d reach out to check on them and request photos, but again, not ask how I was doing."

"A few weeks ago, my own mom ended up in the hospital after battling cancer for many years, then came home, where I was providing her care while she was in hospice. My in-laws never reached out to me. Then, when she passed away earlier this week, still crickets.

I had to ask my husband just to make sure he hadn’t thought that maybe I wouldn’t want to hear from them, so he hadn't asked them not to. Nope. I could tell by his response that his own family not sending me their condolences had upset him too.

My MIL wasn’t pleased when we moved my mother in, knowing that she wouldn’t be on this Earth much longer. She expressed this to my husband. She also warned him when we added my mom to our cellphone plan (a measly $10 more a month) that, 'I just don’t want you to be taken advantage of.' My mom let us live with her for a few months, and she always had a great relationship with my husband.

So as the days passed and I still hadn’t heard from her, I knew for certain what I’ve always suspected. My MIL couldn’t care less about me. Now I can cut ties without feeling an ounce of guilt."

21. "My fiancé and I got engaged, and as soon as his mother heard the news, she immediately started with the drama. It wasn’t enough that I love her son and that we’ve built a great life together, but now I needed to convert to being a Baptist before she’d 'approve' of the wedding. She also declared (as if she had any say) that our future children must be raised Baptist. I’m Catholic, and my S.O. and I already sorted all of this out. We’re getting a dispensation from canonical form from my church, and he’s completely on board with raising our future kids Catholic. But of course, 'Saint Karen' saw our engagement as the perfect opportunity to swoop in and demand control over our marriage."

"It took her son exactly zero seconds to shut down her nonsense. She started one of her signature, teary-eyed 'I just don’t know if I can support this marriage' monologues when my fiancé said, 'If you keep pushing this, you will neither be a part of our wedding nor our marriage. You won’t even know your grandchildren, let alone dictate their religion. This is not up for discussion.' And then the cherry on top, he added, 'You always talk about family values and god, but by the way you act, I wouldn’t trust you around my family.'

Since then, she’s been sulking, sending passive-aggressive bible verses via text (which he ignores, so she forwards them to me), and making vague Facebook posts about how 'some people turn their backs on their faith for earthly desires.'"

22. "I found recordings on my child's camera of my mother-in-law and sister-in-law berating me. They were basically annihilating me and my character, saying I am such an empty person and my husband is only married to me because of them, and pointed to my two children who were in the room at the time. My eldest girl is nearly 10 and came home and told me months ago that they were saying 'not nice' things about me. But I told her not to worry, maybe she was mistaken, maybe they were talking about someone else. It turns out, nope...it was me. This happened 10 days after we had them over for Christmas Day dinner. I have a lot of family trauma, so I have always tried to be the best mother I can be and always tried very hard with my in-laws, as we live in quite close proximity (unfortunately)."

23. "My MIL made a doctor's appointment for my toddler without my consent. She called my husband and provided him with the appointment information, including the date and time. My husband then told me about it, and I was a bit upset. Then, a few hours later, she texted me and said that she was just trying to help and hoped she hadn’t overstepped. He was due for his first dentist appointment because he's 18 months old, and he was supposed to have one a few months ago when he started having teeth. However, life gets in the way, so she just did it for us. Is this her being helpful, and I shouldn’t be mad? Or should she have at least called or texted my husband or me and told us that she was thinking about making the appointment?"

24. "Get this: my MIL has been ignoring a serious health issue for the entire time I’ve known her (about eight years). She's relatively stable medically, not mentally. Then she decides she has to go to the doctor right before we leave on an anniversary trip. Of course, she shares all about it with my husband, and, of course, it is a 'complete coincidence' that the one thing that gets him to lower his boundaries a bit is medical emergencies. The day we leave, she shares she has lung cancer based on a blood test that could mean any of 10+ things ('nothing' being one of the possible things it means). Two days later, on our actual anniversary, she shares that she’s actually fine. Shockingly, no lung cancer at all after a couple more tests (she sends us this news in an email, even though we asked for a quiet weekend away, and on our wedding anniversary, a day when she always acts up)."

"Never mind the fact that we don’t talk to her very often BECAUSE she acted like a jilted lover following our wedding two years ago, verbally abused us both, and verbally abused my husband even more when he suggested she seek counseling.

So our anniversary was all about having panic attacks and sobbing on my end, and thus we missed all of our celebratory plans. As much as I love my husband, I can’t take much more of this."

25. "His mom said that if she wasn't going to live with us, then my husband would be paying for her to have a place to stay and have his own bank account just for her expenses, and that this was also 'end of story.' My mother-in-law's justification for this is that she paid for his medical school, and 'you guys wouldn't be here without my financial support.' This is untrue. I have never, EVER accepted any financial assistance from her, and my husband never asked for her help. She gave it to him willingly because 'that's what parents do.'"

"It wasn't money that she earned, but it was money my father-in-law had set aside for my husband many years ago for his education. If they hadn't done that, my husband was fully prepared to pull out student loans."

26. And, "My mother-in-law showed up at our house, bashing on the doors and windows and screaming and cursing at the top of her lungs. I called the police immediately and ensured that the security camera I had set up outside, which streams to my phone, was recording, because I wasn’t sure if my husband would give them access to it. I also called a couple of my neighbors and asked whether they had her on their security cameras. They were more than happy to give over their footage. Two neighbors got her screaming that she was going to kill me for taking her son away. And our neighbor, directly across the road, caught her trying to pick up a big rock he has in his yard, but she couldn’t pick it up."

"I made it very clear to the police I wouldn't go outside while she was there, so they put her in the back of their car, and I let them come in and speak to me. While I was speaking to them, my husband came home from work. He was shocked when he arrived home and saw his mother in the back of a police car, and they were talking to me in our house.

He saw footage from the security camera and couldn't believe what I endured. I wanted her arrested, but unfortunately, the police said they could only charge her with trespassing because she had been told not to come to the house anymore.

My husband wasn't happy about this news. He wanted her charged with something. He told them what had been going on and retrieved all the threatening letters she had sent me. They read about four of them and said it was smart to keep them because I would be guaranteed a restraining order after how many she had sent.

While we were talking to them, my husband suggested to breathalyze her because she was probably drunk, and what do you know, she was (and didn't have a driver's license). They arrested her and said she'd only face fines.

So she'll have a record for it now, and I’m going to pursue a restraining order. One of the police officers left his card with me and said that if she shows up again, to call him. And once I get the restraining order, he'll be more than happy to pick her up if she breaks it."

Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.

If you are concerned that a child is experiencing or may be in danger of abuse, you can call or text the National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-422-4453(4.A.CHILD); service can be provided in over 140 languages.