Leave us alone will ya!

My husband and I went away for a night for our 5th anniversary. Just a couple hours away, set off early on our anniversary and came home the following evening. Well, mother in law knew this but she proceeded to hound us with texts the whole time. Not just texts, she sent us both reels (the same ones, knowing we were together), sent me a three minute voice message of her crying because she thinks her dog probably misses her while she’s out (she’s retired and doesn’t really go anywhere but dollar tree or her daughters house), she checked in on our cats which I was grateful for but made sure to do it during our dinner reservation time so she could continue the hounding with stupid questions like, should I lock the door when I leave, does the automatic feeder feed them automatically and should I feed them although you told me they don’t need feeding? Also texts about her day to day activities and what she’s having for lunch. Messages copied and pasted to both of us. I replied briefly to be polite but it got to the point I was getting pretty overwhelmed.

She hounds my husband while he’s at work most days, he has a pretty stressful job and she’ll text him updates about her day, who’s upset her, what’s she’s eating, remind him to eat and drink water (he’s 43). He reads them and doesn’t reply and then forgets when he gets home after a 12 hour shift in the heat. He has read receipts so she can see when he’s read her messages and she’ll text him question marks and things like “are my texts not going through?” Even though she knows they’ve been read. She rarely texts us asking questions so in my eyes, the messages don’t need responding to half the time. Plus my husbands more of a caller than a texter.

My husband is a bit of a people pleaser, it genuinely makes him happy to help others and some people including her take advantage of this. She pulls on his heartstrings and will say things about dying alone, I’m just old and lonely, who knows how much time I have left (68yo), you know the stuff. So he then feels guilty. Ive seen him be stern and have boundaries a few times and she was awful about it and made his life hell with the guilt tripping and hounding with texts and implied I was controlling him so I can understand why he feels it’s easier to just go along with her crap. I remind him that she knows what she’s doing, she’s being manipulative and that her happiness is not his responsibility and he agreed. He’s starting to notice things he hadn’t before but if he calls her out on it, it’ll be a shit show and she’ll play the victim and he just doesn’t have the energy to deal with it.

They both know that I’m not afraid to say no and stand up for myself so her crap doesn’t work with me. I’m annoyed that she hounded us on our anniversary trip and I’ve noticed she’ll hound us both once he’s home from work which is our only quality time together. I know I shouldn’t have replied on our anniversary but felt compelled to because she was checking in on our cats. I don’t want husband to quit talking to her or texting her but it’s every day/evening and he feels under pressure to call her because of her sending those are my texts going through texts.

I don’t know if it’s her generation or her, but it’s like she feels entitled to an immediate response when she texts and if she doesn’t get one she keeps going, whereas me and my friends/family will text and read it and not reply or reply hours/days later.

Just needed to vent, she’s already muted on my phone. Husband doesn’t want to mute her because she’s old and lives alone and said something could happen which I understand. I just wish she would leave us alone sometimes!