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[quote=Anonymous]My MIL has always been really passive aggressive with things since we got married.  It's starting to get worse and she's starting to make little digs about me to DH.    When we first got married and then when we had children I tried to make sure everything was equal between DHs family and mine.  We lived out of town but I made sure they knew they were always welcome, invited them to visit as much as my family did etc.  They always made excuses about why they couldn't come and came only a handful of times while my parents came and helped us at every chance they got.  Even when ILs came or we visited them they hardly paid any attention to the children.  Subsequently, the children are much closer to my parents than ILs and when we moved to be near family we moved closer to my family than DHs (neither is more than an hour though). When MIL complained to DH that I was excluding them by wanting to live closer to my parents (a decision DH and I made together) DH did point out that my parents have helped us much more than they have.  Since then MIL has become increasingly jealous and will make negative comments to DH about me.  He doesn't say anything and if I tell him it's bothering me he just says he's sorry but she didn't mean it the way I took it.  She's getting worse in the things she's saying to the point of outright lies and he just brushes it off and says she doesn't mean it like that.

Each individual thing by itself isn't a big deal but I feel like she has his ear and is going to cause problems for us in the future.  In the past when DH and I have disagreed about something she will tell him to "put his foot down." We make decisions together and while we might not always agree we need to make decisions without outside influences. FWIW while I am close to my parents I don't talk to them about major decisions until DH and I are on the same page because ultimately the decisions are ours to make, not theirs.

Anyway, I guess my question is how to handle things from here. Here's the most recent example: DC#4s birthday was a week ago and we had a small party.  MIL/FIL were the only ones not to bring a gift for DC#4 (they did bring something for older DCs that had not come in time for Xmas but that they had intended for Xmas.  DC#4 is too young to know about gifts anyway so it didn't really matter but DH was annoyed because they also did not give DC#4 anything for Xmas either, just the older children (and they DID give gifts to our niece who is the same age as DC#4). When DH said something to MIL she said when she asked me what to get DC#4 I told her to only bring a gift for the older children.  That is not at ALL what happened.  She never asked what to get for DC#4. She said if I don't tell her what to get she'll give money which I said was fine. Then LATER she said the gift for older DCs came too late for Xmas and asked me when she could give it to them and I told her she could bring it to the birthday party.  I never said not to get a gift for DC#4 but she's blaming me for the fact that DH is upset that she didn't. When I told DH that's not what happened he believed me but says she just misunderstood.  She did NOT misunderstand.

I know this one incident doesn't seem like a big deal but when things like this keep happening it's frustrating and I'm tired of her always "misunderstanding" in ways that make me look like the bad one.  DH doesn't always tell me everything she says either because he knows I'll be annoyed so I don't even know half of the things she says.  She meets him once a month for lunch and I used to encourage it but now I feel like she will just use the opportunity to put in little digs about me.

I'm sorry this is so long, we have had a lot of stress recently about some major decisions and I just feel like she's going to make sure to get her opinion in there when it should be just between DH and I.[/quote]

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