What’s your “nightmare mother-in-law” story?
The Divorce Proceedings
I’ve been to a couple different divorce lawyers already and I picked the second one since the first seemed like they were only there for a paycheck. I’ll have the divorce papers served soon.
I loved my wife, but it’s clear she didn’t love me, so I can’t stay with her anymore. She can have her thieving hoarder mom all to herself now. We both have very comparable incomes, so I’ll be pushing for a clean split divorce.
This woman didn’t deserve me, and I fell for her act. She didn’t want a husband, she wanted an insurance plan. I will pursue any charges still possible against her mother.
I’ll update again when more happens, but I’ll be clear on this: I won’t be changing my mind. My soon-to-be ex-wife can beg and love bomb all she wants, if she even bothers to. I’ve never been her number one, and I’m not going to settle for being number two in my own marriage. It is over.
Update: It really didn’t take me long to find and hire a divorce lawyer, and she’s mean. Yes, my lawyer is a woman, and she seems pretty good at her job.
She asked me a couple of times if I was really sure I wanted to do this, but once I explained my full story to her and showed some evidence, she agreed with me when I said I wanted to start ASAP. So she got the ball rolling.
Oh, this divorce is going to cost me, but I don’t care. I’ll rebuild my savings later as a free man. I didn’t even want to rent the house I’m currently living in anyway; wifey pushed for that.
I’d have been happy staying in our old apartment we used to share until we could have actually afforded to buy a house together instead, but that’s obviously never happening. I’ll be paying a lot less for an apartment once we separate.
Before coming home, wifey spent some time at a cheap motel when she bailed her mother out of jail, and she even threatened to call police on me when I went to see her there. I changed the locks with my landlord’s permission while wifey was still away and sent her a text saying I had done so.
But I guess she’d not bothered to look since she never responded. So upon returning home, she ended up pounding on the door and screaming at me to let her in.
I just watched her through the doorbell cam and let her keep it up for a while before she finally got on her phone to call me. I was already walking home from having had dinner with my best friend when she called, and I pointed out the text she’d not bothered to read.
When I got home to let her in, she was puffy-cheeked, teary-eyed, and red, with a bit of cat butt face. I had a new key ready for her and told her if she gave a copy to her mother again, I’d be notifying our landlord, as they were already very angry she’d given her mother a key to begin with.
Not sure what the landlord could have done, but it was enough to make wifey comply for the moment. Plus, I’m not going to be living here much longer anyway.
My mother-in-law still believes she did absolutely nothing wrong and is playing victim to wifey every chance she gets. She’s not allowed over anymore for obvious reasons, and I’ve been repeatedly called a monster by her and wifey.
I’ve never been more glad that MIL has no friends because then she’d be telling them all her convoluted version of the story to paint me as a villain; I just know it.
She was told how much my key collection is roughly worth and what kind of felony charges she could be facing. Though my collection was returned fully intact, so she may get the charges lessened.
I’d like to hope she gets a decent punishment at least, but I’m not really counting on the system to throw the book at a manipulator like her.
As I said in my previous post, wifey also paid her mother’s bail and what she owed to the pawn shop with money out of our joint bank account and then smugly told me that she wouldn’t be putting the money back.
Basically, that was a terrible power move and her only way to try and put all the cost on me. I’ve since removed everything I had in that account and stopped all future payments to it so she can’t spend my money too, and I’ve changed my passwords to pretty much everything.
Wifey flipped the hell out on me for it once she finally checked the account a couple days ago because that meant that what she paid for MIL’s bail and reimbursing the pawn shop was all in her money only, and now there was no more access to my funds to supplement her own with.
I just ignored her tantrum and went into the home office to watch anime on my computer. She banged on the door for a while demanding I talk to her. I just stayed quiet and put on headphones.
Wifey has repeatedly demanded I drop all charges against her mother and even said that if I really loved her I would not only stop all this, I’d cover the cost too. When I kept refusing, she moved into the spare bedroom.
She tried to kick me out of the master bedroom first, but I made it clear I’m not giving up the master bedroom when she’s the one at fault. She tried to start taking my stuff out, but I just blocked her while pointing my finger at her face and said:
“no”
Like I was talking to a dog. She ended up crying and saying I was demeaning her, but I didn’t care.
Then, for some more deception on her part, she admitted to me out of pure spite that until this mess had started, she’d been planning on letting her mother come live with us full-time soon because of the state of her hoarder house.
She boasted that she was just going to move her in while I was at work. I told her we were supposed to be equal partners before this all happened and I was sick of her unilateral decision-making.
And as long as I’m paying 50% of the lease, her mother will not be living here, and if she tried, I’d throw all her mother’s stuff out immediately. Wifey looked like she wanted to explode and stormed off to have a drink and a loud phone call with her mother in the kitchen.
I just started removing her stuff from the master bedroom and left it in the other room for her. I’ve put a new lock on the door to the master bedroom too.
I had wifey served at her job, which she said really embarrassed her in front of her colleagues, and she flipped out on me again once she got home. Apparently she didn’t take my threats of divorce seriously until those papers were actually in her hands.
She said I couldn’t do this, but I told her I was done. She made it more than clear where she stands. I told her I learned a rather interesting phrase online: “When people show you who they really are, believe them”.
And she’s clearly shown me who she really is, and it’s not the woman I fell in love with. That woman disappeared and got replaced with an entitled mommy’s girl who refuses to act her age right after we got married, which makes it pretty obvious she did that intentionally.
At this point, I don’t think she ever loved me, just my wallet. I can’t stay married to a woman who conned me into marrying her. Then she started screaming at me that she wasn’t a gold digger.
So I asked her if she’d have been inclined to stay married to me if I’d done all the same things to her. She tried to deny it at first, then looked around like she was trying to find a better answer. Then she just gaslit to deflect as usual, but I had none of it.
I told her right then and there that I’m not renewing the lease on the house with her because I don’t want to live with a petulant woman-child I can’t trust. And if she wants to keep the house, she can go ahead and start a new lease to move her mother in once I’m gone.
Finally, that’s when the real waterworks started. She said I was destroying our family, and I said:
“what family”
And pointed out how we don’t have kids and her mother is more important to her than me. We have no family. Then I just walked away. She loudly cried in the living room for hours, but I ignored her.
Now she’s giving me the hardcore silent treatment and won’t look me in the eyes. I’m actually enjoying it, which just seems to make her angrier.
As an added bonus, I warned my current landlord about wifey wanting to move her mother in. I gave him all the details I had about MIL, the state of her hoarder house, and how much of a deceptive mommy’s girl wifey is.
And warned him that if he let my mother-in-law live in any property he owns, she would turn it into an utter disaster. He thanked me for telling him and is now not going to let wifey renew the lease on her own if she tries. He’ll be advertising the property soon.
Wifey has no idea yet and likely would have only just barely been able to afford the house with her mother’s help anyway.
One more thing: yesterday someone warned me to take my name off the joint bank account entirely so I would not be on the hook for any overdraft. I took that to heart and went to the bank to get it done.
Only took a few minutes to do it, and the bank is 10 minutes away by car. All good now. I’ve been working from home lately so I had the time. All statements from the account were already printed and given to my lawyer too so I can wash my hands of it.
Update two: After roughly a week of the silent treatment from her, wifey couldn’t keep it up anymore and started love bombing. She even tried to make me dinner and get me drunk.
I told her while she was cooking that I wouldn’t touch anything she made for one: she’s a terrible cook. And secondly, I don’t trust her not to put something in the food.
She made overcooked hamburgers, and I didn’t touch them or the alcohol provided. I mean, the beer was already opened. She cried and said I was being mean by not eating her food.
And I coldly said it was because I can’t trust her anymore. She retorted that it wasn’t like she cheated on me or anything. I said back that she may as well have cheated since her mother was always more important to her than me, the man she married.
You can’t keep a marriage by treating your spouse as secondary. Wifey changed the subject by breaking down crying again and begged that if I stopped the divorce we could get the marriage counseling I’d wanted, and she’d never try to have her mother live with us.
I told her it was far too late. She had her chance and blew it badly. She already made it very clear where she’ll always stand. In the past two years, she made no effort to get better and only acted nicer in public.
Why would I want to stay in that sort of toxic relationship? She had to answer truthfully for once and admitted that she likely would have left me if I’d done the same stuff to her.
But she still kept trying to convince me not to divorce and that we could work it out. I had to just walk away and go into the office again. Wifey didn’t stop and even tried to initiate intimacy multiple times.
She walked around the house in lingerie a lot and even my favorite, wearing nothing but a lacy apron. She hasn’t done that for me since our honeymoon, even when I asked.
She tried touching me in places, running her fingers in my hair, and getting on her knees to try to entice me. I didn’t take her bait and stonewalled. She ended up gaslighting me with the:
“Am I not good enough?”
I told her she used to be, but I just can’t see her that way anymore. Wifey left me alone to hit the bottle hard after I said that, and she wound up puking in the kitchen.
I wouldn’t put it past her to try and baby trap or frame me at this point. I even locked the door when I sleep and I’ve installed a hidden camera in the room. I want out of this house, but I can’t leave yet until I can get into my new place.
Wifey later doubled down while sobbing when nothing was working on me and begged again that I don’t go through with the separation and divorce. But I’ve already found an apartment that will be vacant sometime in early to mid-March.
I’ve also notified all of the utilities of the change as well. Wifey is now freaking out even more because now she has to find an apartment for herself right away. I don’t really care where she’ll end up; I’m just happy I’ll be free of this house soon.
I’ve also made sure not to tell her where my upcoming apartment is located, and she’s tried to get that info out of me three times already. As soon as my new apartment is ready, I’ll start moving stuff in.
I’ll be taking the bed from the guest room when I go. I paid for it after all, and it’ll be easier to move since it’s a queen size and what’s in the master bedroom is a king. I’m a light sleeper, so having a comfortable bed is a must.
My wife can have the bulk of the furniture; she can either leave it for the next tenant or she can sell it, I don’t care anymore.
The apartment I’ll be moving into is the one-bedroom. The previous tenant left it in a sorry state so it needs some remodeling, but I picked that specific one because not only will the rent be far cheaper than the house, I’ll be much closer to my job.
Like I could walk or bike to work from there, and I just might. I haven’t ridden a bike in years because I never could get wifey to; yet another thing she’s held me back from. So when I move out, one of the first things I’m going to do is buy a bike.
