Well, it took me almost 2 days of on and off reading to get through this thread. Many posts made me laugh and many made me cry and I could really identify with most of the posts. To help paint the picture of my MIL, think of the actress Shirley Maclain in the movie Terms of Endearment (she could literally be her twin and many people think she looks like her, especially in that movie) with the same selfish, no boundaries, crazy personality as Aurora and then sprinkle in a bit of T.V.'s Marie Barone, off Everybody Loves Raymond, (but not as endearing) and you get a glimpse of my MIL's appearance and behavior. She is affectionately (or should I say sarcastically) known to all of my friends as, "My Beloved Carol."
Where to start, where to start, I could write a book - literally, I could write a book. I've actually thought of making up a stand up comedy routine called My Beloved Carol - ya know, sometimes you need to laugh to keep from crying

But before I share the story of My Beloved Carol, I want to tell you that I have a precious, loving, hard working, kind and wonderful husband, as many of you do. People often ask, as they probably have of many of you also, why does your husband put up with that or not stand up to her or cut her out of his life? Some people do not understand what it is like to be raised by a selfish, controlling, brow-beating, crazy person. A person who does nothing but beat into your head and heart that you owe her everything and deserve nothing. A person who oozes guilt and manipulation. It has taken me many years to realize what exactly my DH and his younger brother and sister had to take for many years. I'll try to condense this as much as I can, so you don't actually have to read my book
She divorced my FIL when my DH was 12 because FIL did not spend enough time with her at the hospital when she had kidney surgery. He was at home taking care of their 3 young children and she was in the hospital for a few days. I know it sounds trivial, but it's been 35 years and she STILL talks about it, how he never loved her enough. FIL moved to another state and she did not allow him to see the kids much. She remarried, less than a year after their divorce, a man who didn't give a flip about her kids. They lasted about 10 years and she divorced him too. She says her 2 husbands turned her into a "man hater" and she will never trust or love another man again - she would frequently say this in front of her sons. She's 70 now, and to my knowledge, has never dated or had another relationship of any kind since the second divorce. All focus was then turned to her adult children and their lives. My husband has been emotionally and financially responsible for himself since he was 16 years old. She kind of turned him into the head male figure of their family and made him feel like he was responsible for all of them. My SIL joined the military as soon as she got out of the high school to get away from her.
Fast forward to when DH and I started dating. She lived 3 hours from him then and I met her a couple of times and she seemed fine, normal, I daresay. Then the first weird thing happened, she called my DH a few days before our wedding and I could hear her screaming, "Have you told her? You have to tell her!" I was looking at him like, what the heck? He gets off the phone and tells me he has to tell me something. He explains to me that his mother started seeing a therapist and the therapist has helped her "rediscover" some repressed memories and that his mother has (a week before our wedding) confronted her brother, my husband's uncle, about molesting her during her entire childhood. The uncle denied it and said she had gone off the deep end. And, well, as you can imagine, no one from that side of the family was coming to our wedding. I actually felt sorry for her, because who would make something like that up? . . . Mistake number one.
We wanted kids right away and had our sweet first DD. We would see MIL every couple of months or so, you know dote on her over the weekend and take her to dinner. She still lived 3 hours away - a nice buffer. My SIL had 2 daughters and had divorced a number of years before and lived near MIL. She would tell me annoying things about MIL, but I just thought it was their mother/daughter issues. When my DD was 18 months old, my SIL decided to move closer to us so the kids would be close and she would have more of a support system and a male role model for her kids. Well, about 2 or 3 months after my SIL had moved near us, there was a knock on our door, and it was my MIL. She yells, "SURPRISE!" and informs us she quit her job (her very well paying job that she had been at for 7 years) and is moving to our town and will be staying with us until she finds a place of her own and a job. She also informs my DH he needs to call his brother and that the two of them need to go to her home and move all of her things into a storage unit near us. She tells them that everything is already boxed up and ready to go and she had informed her apartment complex she would not be returning. Yep, you guessed it, they traveled the next day, got her stuff and put it in a storage unit near our home. This is the point when the crazy really started coming out, or I was really seeing it.
Well, it's getting late and this post has turned long, so I will try to finish my crazy IL saga tomorrow. . .