Gentlemen: Have you ever had a beef with your mother in law?

Yes, but not a long term one, although it came close. Me ex MIL is a very need person but she expects everything to be brought to her. She just about refused to do physical therapy for hip replacements, and now she doesn’t like to go anywhere unless absolutely forced to. She is always complaining she can’t see the grand kids ( my kids) but she does nothing to make it easy, never has food in the house to feed them.

I just worked hard on setting boundaries with her. I encourage the kids to call her.

What pisses me off more is that if I send her a picture of the kids, she’ll print it on crappy paper and then send it to MY mom! I take a nicely printed photo to my mom, and I get , “oh thank you, Ann already sent it to me.”

Yep, every year my inlaws butchered a couple beef, we went to help and usually got a quarter. Same with hogs only we got a half.

We had some disagreements, but having 500 miles between us kept them minor for the most part.

My wife was abused by her mom. Her mom was so awful to her, it is amazing my wife isn’t in an insane asylum. When I met my wife, she was out of contact with her mom, which was what she preferred. After we had been married for 2 years, circumstances required us to see her. Belinda was very scared, but wanted to go through with it. Half way through that first meeting, Belinda had told her she forgave her, and hugged her. I had never seen anyone so forgiving.
I was quite defensive of her, but I needn’t have been. Things went very well for that, and the 3 or 4 other chats we had. Her Mom lived about 75 miles away, and going to see her was an event. Her Mom died about a year after that meeting, and no issues ever arose to cue me to tell her what I thought of her.

The only reason I don’t argue with my mother-in-law is that she died several years ago. She didn’t like me when I dated her daughter and only slightly warmed to me because we have two beautiful daughters.

I’ve had three mothers in law. In the other marriage, she was already dead. I never has any conflict with the others.