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[quote=Anonymous]OP - I feel you. I have a MIL with boundary issues. She doesn't ask whether she can help. She does things and does them in a way that makes you feel like the assumption is you can't do it yourself. And the help is never what is actually overly helpful, it's what she wants to do, not what you need. A very small example that I'm sure will set some people off but that you will get ... we were staying with MIL once and explicitly asked her not to do our laundry (I didn't want MIL washing my undies) - we try to let her be helpful in ways that allow her to feed her need to care for others but feel like there are some boundaries for us. She waited until we went out and did all of our laundry. Was it a nice gesture in some regards? Yes. Was it the ONE thing we had explicitly asked her not to do? Yes.

The people who are saying you need therapy or are overreacting have not been in your shoes. Unfortunately you need DH to talk to her. I finally got my DH to talk to his mom. It was hard, but he finally got it and talked to her. I then followed up saying that I knew her intention was not to undermine me, but that it felt like the implication was the she felt I could not care for my own family without her assistance.

Is there something you are comfortable with her doing so that she can feed that need but then you don't feel disempowered or judged? Then you'd have something to concede in the conversation. Hey MIL, instead of coming over in secret without permission and cleaning our house, which was very generous but made us feel a little judged, we love and appreciate when you do XYZ. Is there a way that we can communicate better about our appreciation for your generosity as well as our desire to have some privacy/personal space?[/quote]

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