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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP here, I should add that my MIL showers our DS with attention and funds an expensive private education for him, which makes my wife say "see, my mother is not so bad" despite the verbal and emotional abuse (which seems to be targeted exclusively at my wife and no one else in MIL's life . . . for reasons I don't understand).[/quote]

[b][b]I'd rather send my child to public school than put up with my ILs abusing my spouse.[/b]  Soon MIL will be trying to buy your child's loyalty with her expensive gifts. [/quote]
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+1. I don't put up with my ILs giving crap to my DH and they're not paying for anything for us! [b]Your child's education is not worth your partner's dignity and self-resepct.[/b] Would she speak to a therapist?[/quote]

OP, can you see that probably your MIL thinks she can treat your wife this way because MIL is paying for your child's education? Grandma is buying herself the "right" to "speak her mind." I would bet that if MIL were asked by some outside observer, "Why do you criticized Daughter so much? She seems together and successful and nice," your MIL would reply that she is "just being frank and honest" and "just helping Daughter by 'telling it like it is.'" There are so many people like this--who believe in their personal versions of reality that they are never harsh or wrong, they are only honest and forthright and frank, and that is of course good and right and healthy for the person hearing their constant "honesty."

This cannot be changed, not this late in the game, on MIL's side. But your wife CAN learn to stop wanting to please her mother. Therapy, extensive and serious, for your wife. And I would truly cut the financial ties first (because grandma will hold that over all three of you, forever, and it yokes your family to her) and then second, cut most ties with grandma. I agree with the person above that MIL is going to start buying off your child with more than an education, eventually.

Worst of all: Do you really want your child to grow up watching grandma being so profoundly disrespectful of his mother? That teaches your son that YOU tolerate MIL treating your wife this way, and over time, the message your son will take away for his adulthood is that it is normal for one parent to let the other one be disrespected like this. (And right now, in your household, it is indeed normal because it's how you all live day to day without attempting to alter it.) And your son will lose respect, maybe even some affection, for his mother if he is hearing her berated by grandma. Your son is little now. Maybe he doesn't hear grandma's treatment of mom, but believe me - he will pick up on it more and more as he gets older, through little comments grandma will make to him.

Sounds like MIL lives geographically close to you. Too bad. But she is truly toxic and your wife needs therapy staring now. Would she do it, OP? Will you encourage her to do it, even push her, so that son doesn't grow up bought off by grandma and you don't all spend years enduring MIL's "I'm just telling the truth and being honest" crap? Stop it now, for your son. No education is worth letting him grow up seeing his mother disrespected and seeing his mother with no backbone to stand up to MIL.[/quote]

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