The relationship between my mother-in-law and me has been cold for so long. The two of us just can’t get along. She would visit our house and wouldn’t say much to me except complain to my husband about something she thought I did wrong. One day I told my husband, “If your mom can’t tell it to my face, then she should stop talking about me to you. And you too, stop delivering her messages.”

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Since then, I hardly get a message from her. I want to believe whatever she sees wrong about me, she tells her son and it ends there.

She came to visit recently and the first thing she did was scrub our bathroom, something I did a day before she visited. She would usually do something once and later complain to my husband that I don’t do what she did at all.

When I saw her doing it, I told her, “You don’t have to scrub. I did it only yesterday.” She retorted, “If you did it well, I wouldn’t have had a reason to do it again.”

Honestly, her answer got me angry, so I responded, “I did it very well, but your hatred for me won’t let you see it clearly,” and then I walked away. She stopped scrubbing and asked me to repeat what I said. I didn’t mind her.

Apparently, she didn’t hear what I said, but she judged from my body language and concluded that I had said something insulting. She told my husband I’d insulted her. I asked my husband, “What did she say that I said?” My husband couldn’t answer.

All day, this woman was breathing down my neck, telling me, “If you’re a woman like me, repeat what you said.” She would follow me around, asking me to repeat what I said. My husband saw her doing that to me and said nothing. I didn’t mind her. I went about my business as if she didn’t exist.

At night, my husband told me to pray for forgiveness for insulting his mother. Not only that, he wanted me to also apologize to her the next morning. I asked him, “What do you want me to apologize for? What did I say that you want me to apologize for?”

He couldn’t name anything, so I told him, “I won’t apologize today or tomorrow. She’s the one who owes me an apology, but I don’t even want her apology, so we should keep it that way.”

Marriage Through the Eyes of Millennials and Gen-Z

My mother-in-law has left this house long ago, but my husband is acting moody toward me. He doesn’t even eat my food the way he used to, which I don’t really mind. He told me, “Until you apologize to my mom, it’s going to be like this around here.”

What am I going to apologize for? For saying something she didn’t hear?

—Joy

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