Woman Says Mother-in-Law Cannot Live with Her For ‘Months-Long Stretches’

• A woman is at a crossroads with her long-distance mother-in-law, who can’t come visit and wants the couple to move to her
• The woman doesn’t want to leave her home in Canada, and while her husband agrees, he hasn’t outwardly denied his mom
• Now the woman wants to know how to manage future visits with her in-laws

A woman says she’s putting her foot down with her husband, whose mother has been overstaying her welcome at the couple’s home. But now, her demands are getting even bigger.

In a post shared to Reddit, the woman writes that her mother-in-law, who lives in Pakistan, had been planning a trip to the couple’s home in Canada near the end of April, and that she had “fully committed to graciously hosting my MIL for 31 days (and not a day more).”

“I was born here, my husband immigrated a decade ago, we got married 2 years ago, and our son is 10 months old,” the woman writes. “My parents moved to Canada from Pakistan a year before I was born.”

Her mother-in-law “had initially planned on staying longer [than 31 days], but I had put my foot down and told my husband I couldn’t deal with someone living with us for longer than a month, so she’s had to cut short her plan and didn’t take that well.”

“I had made my peace with the one month stay and was fully planning on being cordial during it,” she adds.

But when the woman sent her mother-in-law some photos of the child via text message, she received an unexpected response.

“She started lamenting how far we were from them, and said that this is the problem with marrying someone not from Pakistan, that the parents suffer as a result, how unfair it is that my parents get her son and grandson to themselves,” she writes. “My heart literally shrank reading it. I knew she missed us, but to hear her say she essentially regrets our marriage was so hurtful.”

She continues: “I just left her on read. I showed it to my husband, he sincerely apologized and thanked me for not responding to her.”

Days later, the mother-in-law got the news that her visa application had been rejected — meaning her planned trip to see the couple would not come.

While the woman writes it felt like “a huge weight has been lifted off me,” she says her mother-in-law is now “inconsolable” and has asked her son if the couple can move to Pakistan.

“When he shut that down, she gave him his uncle’s number who lives in the UAE for job leads so we could move to the UAE,” she writes. “He told her it’s going to be difficult but agreed to talk to him. I was a bit angry about this, I told him there’s no way we’re moving to the UAE, he said of course we’re not, we’ve built a life here, he has a great career here, but he didn’t want to completely shut down his mom. I personally disagree with that, I think she deserves the truth but whatever.”

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Fellow Reddit users say the couple should plan on meeting in a neutral location, rather than traveling to Pakistan and risk the mother-in-law trying to convince them to stay forever.

Responded the original poster: “I plan on keeping our passports with me at all times and having the Canadian Consulate’s number saved on my phone. Our December visit is going to be for my Brother-in-Law’s wedding so hopefully she’ll be too busy/happy to be bitter.”