I (46F) and my husband (50M) have been very happily married for 25 years. We have 6 children in total and spent the majority of our marriage stationed far away from any family while serving in the military. I got out after 4 years when my husband did a full 20. During a span of 11 years deployments, my husband was gone for a total of eight years all together; we only saw him for a few week and then he’d be gone again for months. Our two oldest sons endured the most of him being gone and we were stationed very far away of family so it was only me with them. We endured all holidays birthdays, etc. just us 3 in those 11 years. It was the toughest time in life, but I did it competently alone while suffering with chronic migraines. This meant my ongoing trips to the ER included my two young sons. I stayed strong and my mother would keep touch over the phone but would work two jobs all year long to visit once per year. Yeah life was not easy, but we made it happen.

Our third and fourth children were born toward the end of my husband’s military service so they don’t remember anything. Our fifth and six children were born after he retired. So our first two took the brunt of all of his absences, so they are the reason why I’m focusing on their treatment from MIL.

During all those deployments for all those years, I only had one person keeping in touch with me, and that was my mother. I tried very hard to keep in contact with my MIL, brother-in-law‘s, and my own brothers, however, everyone is very busy with their lives and I understood that we were very far away so out of sight out of mind, I guess. I tried in particularly hard to keep in touch with my MIL because my own mom did with me so why not? Side note: MIL has hated every single girlfriend or wife that has come into the family, so she’s hated ALL of my sister in law’s. In other words, I am not special in this case. This is just my own personal experience as to WHY she doesn’t like me and that’s because she’s prejudice against white people, and I am mixed Mexican, Spanish and a wide variety of different European ethnicities. I am the only she fully rejects to be clear. Also, no matter what her sons do, like lie, cheat, or whatever, according to her it is NEVER their fault. They could cheat and she will accuse the girlfriend of being the cheater in a heartbeat to cover for her son…and she has done that literally.

She has never been fond of speaking to me nor my children, and after a couple of years of deployments where she was particularly been absent with calls, even though she would often call my husband on the phone and not speak to our children, I understood where I stand with her. Little bit of a backstory; I am Mexican and Spanish mixed with a variety of European. People often mistake me for any group that is Hispanic or middle eastern. I grew up only speaking English, but I do understand some Spanish but don’t speak Spanish fluently. My family is also very progressive, like education was pushed on us females big time. I was mechanic in the military. So yes, very progressive for some. My in-laws however, are very old-school and because I don’t speak Spanish, somehow this automatically disqualifies me from “being Mexican.” Even though I was raised Mexican American, that’s “too white” for MIL & FIL. My in-laws have long called me every sort of racial slur in the book, but as a term of endearment according to them; it’s like two friends who call each other “Bitch”. Yeah, I don’t call them any racial slurs with love, but whatever.

Well according to MIL (not FIL, but he’s not in charge) I’m not accepted. And because of this, she also doesn’t accept our children. Years back this actually was very hard to deal with because I wanted my children to actually know all of their family however, eventually I reconciled that this is just the way it was with her and I got over it. However, my husband never has gotten over it and it has slowly bothered him more over the years. She will call and talk to only him and never asked to speak to our children. And let me correct myself she has periodically called me only to remind me that is her other grandchildren’s birthdays and to make sure that I call them. Meanwhile, she has never in over two decades, remembered our children have birthdays as well. For several years, I desperately tried hard to impress MIL by sending her gifts every year for her birthday to show the effort I was trying to make her happy with me. During those early marriage years we did not have a lot of money, but I would still start saving for a couple of months so that way I could go to Victoria’s Secret and buy whatever brand new perfume set was in and would often spend $100 so that way I could get the free bag and put them all in there as well. That way i could gift it all to MIL and she would get a cute bag with a bunch of very expensive perfumes and lotions. She was only happy the first year of me doing this, but by about the fifth year, she wouldn’t even let my husband know (via text) that she’d received it. So I gave up. This was around 2010, so 10 years into our marriage by the way. A very long time ago.

Recently, my husband got a very good job offer in a different state that is much closer to where we grew up and where MIL and the rest of our families live. Recently, I’ve had to put up boundaries with one of my own (abusive) family member as I’m just too old to be dealing with so much stress, and I do have 6 kids! Just low contact. So I talked to my husband that while I appreciate him wanting to see his family, I was not going to be pushing out kids to see strangers that reject them. Not spitefully, but why should I take our children to meet people who don’t want to know them? They only want to see my husband and so if he wants to go, then he should, but not with all of us rejects. I won’t allow them to use the same racial slurs that they’ve long used on me, onto our kids. If it’s me, I’ll walk away, whatever, but if someone hurts my kids, oh hell no. My husband fully agreed with me and we talked more about trying to mend things with MIL and see if she’ll change. I said the first thing she needs to do is to apologize to our two oldest who needed her the most back when their dad was deployed. And because she is a stranger to all of them. And both our oldest two have expressed their disinterest in knowing her and her prejudices about us.

So here is what has now happened. MIL birthday, the most important day of the year for her, came and went. My husband didn’t call her and she apparently got upset. Mind you, she didn’t even remember his birthday (yeah her own son) this year and I had to call her in the late afternoon to remind her. Well the other day, she blew up his phone the day after her birthday while he was at work and couldn’t answer. Maybe she took this as a slight and kept calling and texting, saying it upset her. Well the weekend came and my husband’s phone rang with his dad’s number. So I said, “you should talk”, and I left our room to give him some privacy. Mind you, I don’t speak Spanish so it’s not like I needed to leave, but still. A few mins went by and I came back into our room and could hear my husband quite amplified in his tone. While I don’t speak fluently, I did pick up on a bit of it and wow, he was giving having it oi with his parents. Not cursing but simply unloading on why they reject our children. I quickly left our room again and went outside with our children. A bit later he came out flustered. While he had had this same exact conversation with MIL many, many times before for some reason this time really got to him. I’m not sure and highly doubt anything will change, but at that moment, I thought there might be a chance and so I told him that while our oldest didn’t wanna speak or get to know his parents, I would still do my best to talk to our to them anyways; some older folks are racist and prejudice, so it’s simply something they need to unlearn. Like I said I’ve accepted my position as being rejected by MIL (not all in-laws). If MIL were to accept our children, then I would still want that for them if they wanted it themselves, which at this time they do not.

So I spoke to our two oldest again and said there was no pressure and that it is their choice on what they wanted to do. That it’s completely up to them and they shouldn’t feel any pressure from anyone to do it or not do it. They decided that it was ‘no’ for now, but that they would reassess the question again after we moved. Very good idea I think.

The next day, my husband texts me, “Guess who says you have her blocked?” I don’t have anyone blocked so, why would MIL think that? Apparently she tried calling me from Facebook and I have a setting on it to not receive calls; I got spammed called on there before so I disabled that feature on my account. So MIL ran with the story that I’ve had her blocked for years now! Yeah. Even though she follows me on there, likes my stories, but according to her, I’m blocking her. Immediately I tell my husband, “oh good, she wants to come after me because you obviously can’t be blamed for this.” Sure enough right at that second, she starts calling me and I wanted to barf. I just didn’t want to deal with her but like an idiot I thought, “Maybe I can help her understand?” Yeah right. I answered and she quickly accused ME (and not my husband) of having a problem. I kept telling her that it didn’t bother me, but it bothered my husband and she needed to speak with him about it. She then proceeded to insult me, my life growing up, etc; I went through physical abuse, got into drugs and ended up temporarily homeless, but got clean and joined the military and haven’t touched an illegal drug since. I kept trying to get her to focus on what the REAL problem was, her not accepting me or our children based on cultural differences but she ignored me and scolded at me”you talk too much!” Mind you, I was listening while she was ranting and I was calmly giving her feedback. She then began ranting again and again I tried to get her to focus on not insulting me but her lack of respect for our children and she again, cut me off and told me I talked too much. I finally stood up for myself and said if she was going to continue to be disrespectful, I was hanging up. The next few mins were her attempting to accuse me of things she’d made up in her mind and me correcting her. She kept trying to insult me and I’d had enough and hung up. I did manage to tell her the truth that a lot of family members don’t have the balls to tell her; like she hates all the women in our family, she’s prejudiced, only blames us women for each of her sons problems, gossips too much, etc.

I’m not proud of that conversation at all, EVEN THOUGH I got to tell her all that, I still felt sick afterward. But it did let me finally accept that if after 25 years of a great marriage with her son, being completely supportive and loyal, that she still talks to me like I’m an unworthy piece of human trash. Well I am done with doing anything to help her. She doesn’t realize that I’ve been the one all these years that has been insisting to my husband that he call her. I remind him about her birthday, or other events so he can call, send money, whatever. Yeah, she doesn’t understand my part in all of that, or that now it isn’t happening anymore. She has no idea it’s been me all these years making it ALL happen and it’s over now.

Up until 5 seconds before the phone call, I was STILL willing to do the work with MIL to bring us all together IF SHE WAS REMORSEFUL at all. She absolutely is not and stands by her choices. That means she will never accept me, let alone our children and I am done trying to appease her highness. I am now focusing on our tribe here and their futures only. I doubt she will ever come around but I do feel sorry for my husband and because my FIL loves me! Yeah, crazy right? Even with my his racial “terms of endearment for me”, he still says I’m a great wife to his son. But he will side with his wife and I have to support that. That’s his wife and like a good husband, if your wife goes to crazy town, so do you, I guess.

I have about 1% doubt in my head about keeping boundaries up until MIL can reconcile her behavior with my husband and our children. AITA for keeping these boundaries?