This is Why I say I’m Allergic to Family Drama

Our daughter has a mother-in-law no one understands

Our daughter actually has two mother-in-laws because her husbands parents got divorced when he was young and then they both remarried. Consequently he has several half-siblings from both parents. The siblings are all in their 30’s and 40’s now with families of their own and they all get along amazingly well.

There is only one cog in our son’s family wheel, and that’s his real mom.

I’ll call her Cassie to protect her identity and she doesn’t get on here to read my work anyway.

When our daughter married Cassie’s son 10 years ago, she became a step- mom to his eight year old son from another woman he dated briefly, but didn’t marry — I’ll call her Laurie. Unfortunately, by that time, Cassie had become a close friend to Laurie and she had always held out hope that her son would marry her, ‘for the sake of their son,’ she said.

I think she finally faced the fact that this wasn’t going to happen on our daughters wedding day, although everyone else had it figured out a year earlier.

Sure enough as time went by Cassie stayed a true friend to Laurie more so than our daughter, which has become a real bone of contention for our daughter and her husband because Laurie’s behavior towards them became unhinged soon after they said their vows.

After they returned from their honeymoon they discovered Laurie had immediately begun to post nasty lies about them on Facebook. She referred to our daughter as “the other woman,” and she kept up a nasty narrative against them for over a year, even inferring that our new SIL had asked her to marry him which was a lie. He refused to marry her because he began to see her as crazy when she was pregnant with their child. It was obvious she was now a woman scorned, even though our son in law had had little to do with her for years other than taking his son as they had joint custody.

Consequently Laurie was soon blocked on FB by everyone in the entire family, except Cassie. At that time I believed it was because she felt for Laurie since she began to see her as the poor, slighted, underdog even though she knew about the hateful posts.

Over the years as their son grew, splitting his time between both parents households by staying with each of them for a week, Laurie took every opportunity to make their lives miserable.

In short, she turned every molehill of their parenting into a mountain and she even managed to drag them into family court a couple of times. Laurie has never married so she has stayed in the role of a financially struggling single mother so she even threatened to sue them if they didn’t pay for her attorney. Our son in law finally had to get an attorney to file a motion to stop this.

Laurie turned her son into a pawn until the court finally decided he needed to see a therapist in order to preserve his sanity and that was six years ago. Following this the judge turned them over to a family case manager. That didn’t go well either as the manager was also a divorced single mom who was biased in Laurie’s favor.

For most of her son’s life Laurie has manipulated her son by lying to him about both his dad and our daughter in unbelievable ways in an effort to keep her son’s feelings alienated towards his dad and our daughter.

However, by the time he was 14 they learned about Laurie’s schemes from the therapists report when he presented it to the court along with his recommendation that Laurie needed therapy, too. After the cat was out of the bag, so to speak, her son told everyone he no longer wanted to spend anymore time with his mom, but due to his age the court insisted he had to.

Fine legal system, huh?

Now their son has turned 18 and has just graduated from high school — Alleluia! His graduation party is tonight. It’s a swim party/open house with catered food for 50 some people who are all friends and family.

However, a few nights ago Laurie had her own graduation party for him with just her small family — and Cassie went. This was in spite of her son telling her he hoped she wouldn’t attend. She actually laughed at his suggestion to avoid her party.

Now their feelings are hurt, but she’s coming to their party tonight at their house. Our grandson has said he will just hang out with his friends tonight and he wishes grandma Cassie weren’t coming at all. He’s not happy with her either for causing all this s*it. He didn’t want her at his mom’s party either.

Cassie and I have usually gotten along very well. She is a likeable person, but I’m not feeling friendly towards her now. Why did she go to Laurie’s party, and most of all why can’t she just leave Laurie behind like a bad chapter in a book?

Everyone else in the family knows and understands why their son has said that he will no longer spend much with his mom, Laurie. He calls her “the crazy woman” and is glad he can now call the shots in their relationship because he’s 18.

My daughter has already asked me to go somewhere with her next weekend and, of course, I will. Between her stressful job, this graduation party and all the family drama, along with co-coaching her youngest son’s baseball games, she needs to get away.

I don’t envy step-families at all. In fact when a hear someone say, “we’re a step family,” I can’t help but cringe a little inside.

Divorces, remarriages, and step children are too much drama for me as I’ve been embroiled in our daughter’s drama for the past ten years. I try to keep in mind that not all step families are problematic as I’ve known a few lucky ones. Thankfully not everyone has a Laurie, or a Cassie to deal with.

For the past 10 years my husband and I have counseled our daughter over their problems and we’ve prayed for everyone, including Laurie, countless times. We’ve vacillated between blaming our SIL for producing an illegitimate son, and Laurie who lied about being on birth control so she could get pregnant in an attempt to trap him into marrying her.

We’ve prayed hard for the sanity of our oldest grandson who we adore, that Laurie tried to turn inside out with her vicious lies, petty jealousies, and overall attempts to alienate him from his dad and our daughter.

Needless to say, we’re all glad we can now forget all about Laurie. That is until this grandson decides to get married. Then we may all have to endure drama from Laurie’s all over again.

Mr. Pam and I are praying he elopes.

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