:jawdrop: Okay people, I have a very strange/irritating situation. My husbands ex wife lives with my mother in law, which is only a couple houses down. I have no problem with my two step daughters at all, I met them when they were both fairly young and we kind of grew on each other.I also have a daughter from a previous marriage and a son with my husband now. My husband works on an oil rig away from home so he is gone 7 days and off seven days. We have had a very good relationship, he is the kind of person who does not dance around things so if we have a problem it is usually solved before we go to bed.

When we do fight it is usually because of his mom or the ex wife. And no I am not just being vindictive towards the ex, we used to get along and I tried to help her as much as I could with her kids and taking them back and forth to school, checking them out if they were sick, they would even call me to come get them when their dad was away. They have no problem with me at all but when their mother started treating me as if I was her ex husband, I felt she was overstepping her boundaries and many things came to a head. I had held my tongue too long and let too many emotions build up, so one day I called the ex-wife a Bitch while getting these feelings out of my system and oops,my youngest step-daughter heard me and told her mom, as she should have. I would not want people to disrespect my mom either. I apologized to her and told her if I ever did anything that hurt her feelings or made her feel uncomfortable to let me know.

As for apologizing to the ex I felt I did not have to. She knew what she was doing and she should be ashamed of herself for acting that way. My mother in law automatically took the daughter in laws side and did not talk to me or her grandson for about three months, during which time, I have to say, my husband and I got along great. Fights were non existent to say the least. Then being me, I felt that I needed to talk to the mother in law and patch up things, so I apologized to her and told her that I wanted to get along with her. We patched things up and went about our business. But, the ex living with her has caused so many problems not too mention drove a brick wall between my husband and his parents. Before the ex moved in we would go every Saturday when he was home and grill and play with the kids outside at his moms then later in the evenings the adults would play dominoes or cards and drink coffee and munch on dessert. Times like these are what made me so angry with my in laws when they put up that brick wall. As a matter of fact I shall name the ex Brick Wall.

So when Brick Wall moved in with in laws, the Family time Saturdays came to an end. My husband felt rejected by his mom and hurt, and I completely understood. My husband is not an asshole and he had many reasons for why him and Brick Wall did not get along. For instance, she took away his firstborn for six months and he did not see her all that time but she did meet with his parents to let them visit the baby. Then she put him in jail for correcting his kids, a whole other story. He did not hurt the child,but after many months of some type of "phase" the child was going through he whooped her for the first time with a belt and it left a tiny bruise across one of her butt cheeks. Before the belt though he had tried spending more time with her thinking that maybe the separation of him and her mom caused the problem. He sat her in time out, he took away certain toys and entertainment. He tried making her write lines in a notebook, and when the "phase" almost hurt out nine month old son he had enough and tanned her hide. He obviously meant no harm because after all this the little girl still wanted to stay with us all the time. It was a year before he could see his youngest daughter again and that is only because Brick Wall needed a babysitter. The mother in law had enough of babysitting and she put her foot down. So naturally Brick Wall had no one else to turn to as her attitude had ran all her friends off.

My mother in law still continues to give her everything she wants, she lives in their house for free and goes to school during the day. She has been in school forever it seems, almost like she is living off welfare. The only job that she has held for more than a year is a casino job as a cocktail waitress. She recently told my father in law that someone needed to get rid of him, I could not even fathom talking to my own parents like that, she has no common sense when things fly out of her mouth. She does not like my mother in law to talk to me so my mother in law rarely speaks to me anymore and rarely speaks to her son, she lives only a couple houses down the street but it has been at least a month and half since she has seen her grandchild. My mother in law also takes vacations yearly with all the grand kids but my son, I obviously don't expect them to have much to do with my daughter from my previous marriage and she is aloof to them anyway.She has told me that my husband is still in love with Brick Wall and that is the reason they don't get along. I fear I am going to wake up one day and say that I have had enough, but I love my Husband with all my heart, and I know people would say just leave the in laws to themselves but I come from a very close knit family and I believe family should always be there for each other, any advice or comments would be appreciated, I would just like to know some other opinions.