Suspect DDM (EV 12)

So, after the first horrific year of marriage, we flew back to his home in the summer and spent six weeks there. The mother in law gave me the cold shoulder because I was the woman who had shipped away her son, and she spent the entire time kissing my husband’s face and making him eat obscene amounts of unhealthy food at obscene hours of the day and night. I didn’t say a word.

On the second night, my mother in law announced that because her son had been stolen away from her and taken so far away, she wanted him in the nights too, not just in the day, so that she could make every moment last. I asked my husband what this meant and he sheepishly said that my mother in law was going to move into our bedroom that night so that she could spend every second with him.

I told him that there was absolutely no way in hell that I was going to sleep with her and it was a complete invasion of privacy. He gritted his teeth and said, ‘Don’t you dare make a scene.’

So, that night, when she turned up in her pyjamas, deliberately waiting for me to challenge her decision or react, I calmly and politely said that I am not feeling well and therefore would feel far more comfortable in her room than disturb her sleep. Would she mind if we swapped rooms?

It turned out that she was delighted. Not just that year, but annually, whenever we went back each summer, I slept in my mother in law’s room and she slept with my husband.

And I enjoyed every tiny bit of that freedom and never told anyone at the risk of sounding weird.