"It Took Years Of Therapy To Undo The Things They Said": 15 Toxic In-Laws That Treated Their Son's Or Daughter's Spouse Like Complete Garbage, And This Is Beyond Abusive

Warning: the story below mentions suicide ideation.

When you marry your partner, you're also marrying their family. So having toxic in-laws can really make the relationship ten times more stressful. Unfortunately, many people experience this, so when we asked the BuzzFeed Community, "People with in-laws, when did you notice they were beyond toxic?" a lot of people shared their stories. Here are the top answers below:

1. "My mother-in-law told me my wedding day was the worst day of her life. Why? Because it wasn't about her — it was a completely normal wedding with zero drama. My father-in-law said I'm rude and disrespectful because I don't stand up when he walks in the room. No, he isn't royalty. The one time I tried to set boundaries, five years of garbage came out, and they listed 10 million reasons why they hated me. It was the stupidest list of the most petty things imaginable. My husband was eventually hospitalized after a nervous breakdown, and then I learned he's struggled on and off with depression since high school. When he asked his parents for help, they told him no and said he was making it all up."

2. "My now former in-laws were super conservative and very religious. None of their kids were. Other than their super (hypocritical) Christianity, I guess they were okay except for one other thing: they LOVED my husband’s first wife, and she was invited and included in every holiday, birthday, or family gathering. The first wife was okay, but I was very uncomfortable whenever she was around because my in-laws cooed over her and completely ignored me."

"I found out my husband was a cheater and exhibited predatory behavior, and told his folks. He hated me ever since, I guess, because I ruined his image as the 'perfect son.' He got engaged three months after our divorce was finalized to one of my best friends. They got married on my birthday. He’s dead now (liver cancer, I think — big-time drinker), and she’s alone. Karma, it’s a bitch. Not sure if the former in-laws are still alive, nor do I care!"

—Demon Copperhead

3. "Adding wheat germ to mashed potatoes, because she saw a 'recipe' saying it gives them more flavor. I have celiac disease. Potatoes are one thing I can eat. I got upset because I was talking to my brother-in-law, and he turned away to talk to someone else. My mother-in-law said it was my fault that I was 'probably looking at the wrong eye when I was speaking to him.' My BIL had a lazy eye. My favorite? I overheard her tell her daughter and her other son’s wife that my husband (her youngest son) was 'still young enough to divorce me and find a woman who can have his ‘real kids,’ instead of adopting.' Childhood cancer took my fertility. The joke was on her. After I divorced him for never standing up for me, he married a woman with a 13-year-old son. They decided not to have more kids! I’m so happy with my current husband! Married 23 years, and we have three AMAZING adopted children!"

4. "My father-in-law was great before we got married! At our wedding, he made a great toast welcoming me to the family. And then, it went all downhill from there, but usually, just the silent treatment. It all came to a head this past Christmas while I was eight months pregnant. We arrived on Christmas Day, and as soon as I hopped out of the car, he approached me and asked if he could talk to me privately without the rest of the family. Basically, what he said was, 'I wish you weren't here. You are selfish, and having you here makes our lives miserable. I wish you guys weren't married anymore.' I wish I knew what I did to be spoken to like that. I was stunned into silence for a full two minutes. Needless to say, I won't be spending much time with that family anymore. And I feel really bad, too, because my mother-in-law is great!"

—leahm491b1c910

5. "We moved to his hometown, and I went to get my hair cut. The stylist asked for my name and who I was related to. She expressed shock that I was the same person another client (my then mother-in-law) said was 'Stupid, fat, and lazy.' No surprise our marriage died. Now, I live a million miles away, and am very happy!"

6. "When we sat down with my future in-laws in December to tell them we were getting married in 17 months, the first words out of her mouth were, 'When are you due?' To this day, she doesn’t understand how I carried out my first child for four years before delivering!"

—witchyshark35

7. "This applies more to my daughter, but when she was getting married, all of us — daughter, her sister, dad, and I — had a 'meet the families' dinner with her fiancé and his parents. So her sister and I sat across from his parents; everyone else was near the end of the table. The entire time, her future mom-in-law kept saying, 'Oh, I don’t drink!' And proceeded to imbibe at least two bottles of wine. Perhaps that led to the MIL spending the entire rest of the evening telling us what an ugly baby her son (my daughter’s future intended) was — seriously. Apparently, that was just the preview."

8. "My MIL, who knows nothing about special needs, keeps hinting that my son is autistic. He has been tested, as well as the fact that I work in special education and know the signs to look for. When talking one day with her sister, who also works in special education, about how studies are showing that special needs might also come from the dad, when we were talking about work. My MIL looks at me and says, 'There is nothing wrong with my son.' I had then looked at her straight in the eyes and firmly told her MY son is not autistic."

"Not only is she thinking this, but she went around and told others in the family that he is autistic. She blames my son's needs, which he has been diagnosed with a speech delay, all on me. Not only does she do this, but she calls both my boys 'her babies.' This tears me apart. She had the time with her boys; this is my time with my babies."

—emooctopus18

9. "She has mentioned multiple times over the last 12 years that I’m not her family. Also, that my partner's home will always be her house. Then she has the audacity to ask why I never visit."

10. "Before I started dating my ex-husband, my ex-MIL ran a background check on me and found out I was trans and kept it to herself until I was at my wedding dress fitting, and I told her that it might take some time to have children, and she told me, 'Oh, I know you don’t have the parts.' Also, at my wedding, she was yelling at all the staff. At Christmas, she only brought gifts for my ex-husband; she never acknowledged my birthday, and for our wedding anniversaries, she sent a card addressed to my ex-husband only. Needless to say, she added to the reason we got divorced. My ex-FIL was a saint, that poor man."

—edgyhedgehog33

11. "My MIL was always awful to me. It would take pages to write how many times she was out of line and downright cruel, but the worst thing that ever happened was when I told her my mom had stage 4 breast cancer and was given six months to live, and she replied three times by saying she 'felt bad but never liked my mom anyway.' She repeated it twice, and when I couldn’t believe what she said, I asked her to repeat it. She said, 'If you don’t understand my English, I’ll repeat it in Italian,' and did. Shocked, I left the room to get my husband to go home, and she followed me, saying, 'I haven’t seen my son in two weeks because of you and your mother.' That was it for me. I’ve stayed with my husband, who always defended her, but it has been very difficult."

12. "I was pregnant and gave birth during the pandemic, and obviously, the doctors and nurses at the hospital had concerns about family coming to see our newborn, but that wasn’t okay for my MIL to hear. After telling her when our baby was FIVE DAYS OLD that she couldn’t see him until we took him to his first doctor's appointment and made sure with his pediatrician that it was okay to wear masks and wash hands before touching the baby, she ignored all of my husband's and my calls. We kept calling her and her mom to make sure she wasn’t mad at us, but she wouldn’t answer anyone’s phone. We later found out she was debating killing herself just because she couldn’t be the first one to see the baby. The next day was our baby’s first appointment, and after getting the okay, she drove up to our house. My mom was there (we lived near her at the time), and thank god because I couldn’t have been alone with her and just my husband at that time."

—maskedarcher871

13. "His parents were divorced, so I had two sets of in-laws. His mom and stepdad: For our first Christmas after getting married, they came to our house and had my husband open his gifts first. It was hundreds of dollars in new clothing, plus a few hundred dollars in gift cards. For me? A $10 Starbucks gift card that only had $4.23 left on it, an open bag of decaf coffee that expired three years earlier, and a car antenna topper from a Jack in the Box kids' meal from six years prior, that was all dingy and scratched up from being in their junk drawer. Also, neither of us owned a car with an antenna. His dad and stepmom: In the 20-plus years my ex-husband and I were together, they called me by his high school ex-girlfriend’s name. When we had our first child, they refused to visit the hospital, and when my ex sent them pictures of me holding the baby, they got angry and said they only wanted to see the baby, not 'other people.'"

14. "My mother-in-law and her daughters said that they were not coming to our wedding because this was my husband‘s third, and we all know how those turned out, and that ours would end the same way. Needless to say, 20 years later, we’re still together. Oh, and she still considers my husband‘s first wife to be her true daughter-in-law, which is why she can’t have a relationship with me. I don’t need toxic people like that in my life."

—radiantorca13

15. "My ex-in-laws were devout Christians who consistently liked to tell me everything that I did wrong. I didn’t dress well enough (they liked brand-name clothes), my hair wasn’t done by the right hairdresser, I didn’t raise our children properly, I didn’t have a good enough job with status, etc. I have TONS of stories about the evils that I experienced at their hands, but the worst (and final straw) was on one Christmas. After the devastating passing of both of my parents, I was told that I would never see my parents in heaven because they chose to be cremated. I was being questioned as if I were a child who had just stolen something from a store and was being asked to explain myself. They took turns telling me how horrible it was that I allowed that to happen, and I was so absolutely crushed that I got up and walked out of the house and back to our home a few blocks away. It took years of therapy to undo the things they said and did to me from the ages of 17 to 45."

Do you have toxic in-laws? Tell us a story about them, either in the comments or in the anonymous form below: