My mother-in-law is disturbing my marriage- Man cries out

A man took to Reddit to seek advice regarding his mother-in-law’s clingy behavior towards his family. In his post, he shared his frustration over how her actions are impacting his relationship with his wife and daughter.

He mentioned that his wife had always dreamed of traveling to Venice, a dream he was happy to fulfill. They planned for his mother-in-law to stay at their home to take care of their child while they were away. However, things didn’t go as planned when she insisted on joining them on the trip.

To his surprise, when he trusted his wife to handle the trip’s arrangements, he later discovered that she had booked one room with two queen beds and two rooms with king beds, accommodating her mother as well.

The man expressed his frustration with how his mother-in-law often invades their space, sharing personal items like his wife’s shampoo, face wash, and lotion.

He also recounted an instance where he was spending time with his daughter, only to have his mother-in-law intrude on their moment.

He wrote: “I, 38M, am the solo breadwinner of this house. I have a wife 35F and a daughter 5F. Me and my wife has been planning this family vacation to Venice for months. For context, my daughter is very little and she needs constant attention or she will get into trouble.

Venice has always been my wife’s idea of a romantic city, so it’s been her dream to go there. However, we can’t just leave our daughter at home. We initially wanted to leave her at my MIL’s house, but she wanted to come with us and my MIL said that it was her dream to visit too. My wife was very supportive of this idea, but I was more reluctant. My wife planned everything, booking the hotels and the restaurants.

However, to my dismay, she booked 1 rooms of 2 queens instead of two rooms with two kings. I planned for this to be a romantic getaway, and did not want my daughter in the room with us. We could easily afford two rooms, but my wife wanted to keep an eye on her as well.

To make matters worse, my MIL was constantly in my space. She also had to share all of my wife’s expensive products (facewash, shampoo, lotion, etc).

My daughter likes to sit on our bed when me and my wife are gone to the city, and I come back to see that MIL was sitting on our bed too. It is very unhygienic to me and I don’t like that she was sitting on the bed that me and my wife share, as I am a very private person. She also rummaged through our suitcase looking for a hair tie, and it really irked me that she did so without asking me. I don’t like the thought of her looking through our stuff when we’re gone, so I locked it.

The final straw was when I woke up in the morning, I saw that MIL has yet again, forgotten something. For the last few days, she’s been sharing the same toothpaste as me and my wife! I don’t like the thought of her putting her tooth brush close to (or even on) the toothpaste nozzle and I was ill the more I thought about it. I asked MIL if the only reason she came was to freeload off of me and my wife, as she didn’t pay for any of the expenses (hotel, amenities, food), only her own plane tickets. I said that I’ve asked her politely several times to stop using my wife’s stuff, especially because I share it with her and it’s very inappropriate.

My MIL was very upset and told my wife, and my wife screamed at me. I was very angry that the trip that I paid with MY OWN MONEY was now ruined, and I changed the date of my plane ticket and went straight home. My wife has called me several times afterwards, screaming at me and saying that our daughter is upset. I feel bad that our daughter was caught in the situation, but it was really not acceptable what my MIL did and I had to set some boundaries before it gets worse.

My wife has her own card and enough money to stay there. I’m not sure about her plans about staying or not. I’ve been ignoring her calls to take sometime for my own mental health.