This has absolutely been my experience and I love that you shared your journey. I stumbled through my own experience because I had no idea what was going on, and I’ve now been haunting this sub for years and figured out I’d been grey-rocking my inlaws since the beginning. My MIL was passive aggressive to the extreme, old-fashioned (read: racist, religious, and misogynistic), and has extreme trust issues that she tried to force onto our relationship (like never sharing a bank account or reading each other’s mail). I just avoided her constantly, didn’t think about her, and didn’t text or call.

It’s almost ten years later and I have not seen or spoken with her since our first was born several years ago, when she fluttered into the hospital room for 5 minutes 3 days after the baby was born to take a photo, not hold the baby, and leave. My dear spouse sucks at the phone and she’s too big of a victim to call you on her own (she just has to complain when you do finally call about how you should call her more), so she only gets contacted once in a blue moon. Oh well! Not my circus. :)