***You are so clever...***
My wife on the other hand, found her mother in law to be helpful, thoughtful, attentive, full of advice, wisdom in how to offer that advice, and when I brought her to see my parents for the first time, my mother asked her if she was 18 years old.
She was 28. My mother and Colleen got along famously after that and I think that my mother and my father actually preferred her company most of the time, especially after we started created blessed little bundles of joy.
I lived with my in-laws for 12 years. That we stayed friends is a miracle. It wasn’t so nice during those 12 years but she was my mom at my second marriage and loved my husband, as he did her. She was my ‘other mother’ as she wanted to be called. My children were very close to her as we lived there much of their growing up years. MIL’s don’t have to be contentious. I try not to be but of course some times you see things that you wish you didn’t! Hard to stay quiet sometimes but I do. I pray a lot...