How do my [31f] husband [33m] and I navigate the waters with his parents [60s] after a major Come To Jesus talk that didn't end well?

Throwaway for obvious reasons, and LONG. Tldr at the end.

Husband and I together 6 years, married 3. I am drafting this but we are posting together. The relationship between my husband and his parents has been strained and getting progressively worse, particularly with his Mom, for a while. They had problems long before I was in the picture, dating way back to childhood, but things have definitely gotten worse since we got engaged/married. His Mom obviously had a lot of feelings about us getting married and did/said some not great stuff.

She is mildly JustNo, classic passive aggressive and we're positive she is depressed and has been for a long time. My husband has spent some time on Raised by Narcissists and feels there is a correlation there in that his Mom sees him as an extension of herself and not an independent individual. He describes his childhood experience as intensely smothering and that she basically projected her beliefs, insecurities and fear of the world onto him resulting in severe depression and anxiety that affected him into his twenties.

After the wedding and various incidents surrounding our engagement, we slowly reduced contact and it has gotten to the point where my husband barely speaks to his Mom at all and we don't see them very often. Both MIL and FIL will happily admit that they don't have much in their lives - no friends, social life, and their children are their 'whole world', which is why it's particularly painful that my husband has withdrawn from them. They also have a family culture of rug sweeping and not talking about their problems or feelings. His Dad is well aware of what's going on but is 'staying out of it'.

It all came to a head on Boxing Day when my MIL herself addressed the elephant in the room and started a conversation about why my husband has withdrawn so much. That conversation ended with my husband laying it all out on the table for her as to why he feels their relationship has broken down. We're talking 10 to 15 year's worth of unexpressed issues. I was incredibly proud of him, it wasn't easy and he didn't pull any punches. He also didn't shy away from his own faults and in his own words, was 'man enough to admit when I'm being a complete dick.' I'm sure it was also thoroughly difficult for her to hear, but you know what they say, don't ask a question if you don't want to know the answer.

We're not entirely sure what MIL was expecting, but it definitely wasn't what she got, and she didn't react especially well. My husband raised clear and specific examples of incidents that have contributed to the breakdown of the relationship and she refused to acknowledge them. They either didn't happen (they did); her words or actions were in someway misconstrued (possible, her actions were passive aggressive of the type where you could superficially argue they were innocent, but were loaded with subtext and 'not saying what you really mean'; or, if she did acknowledge something, it wasn't her fault and Hubs would 'understand when we have children of our own'.

A second conversation ended up taking place a couple of days later after a happy new year call devolved unexpectedly into a rehashing session, and it didn't fare much better. MIL doubled down, and had, in her own words, been up all night researching things on the internet to back up her point of view and she wholeheartedly doesn't believe she has anything to apologize for, except for how things have been 'misinterpreted'.

We really don't know how to move forwards and we were wondering if anyone who's been though something like this could offer us any advice as to what we do now? We're inclined to not really do anything. Continue acting how we have been - medium to low contact, polite but mostly distant. By saying she has nothing to apologize for we're basically being told to just get over it, as though that will magically fix things. Mediation was mentioned in passing, but we both suspect that all she's really looking for is for someone to tell her she's in the right. We have said we'd happily do mediation, so we'll see if she actually sees that suggestion through. It's not something Hubs is going to push for though, because, quite frankly, he sees this as her problem. My husband never wanted to hash all this out and was ok with the low contact status quo. She was the one to drag it all out, she just didn't like what she heard.

It's also worth noting that I am currently pregnant with the first grandchild and this whole thing has strained even further what was an already pretty strained relationship. We are going to be navigating completely different waters once the baby is here and we're concerned about what her expectations are around that. We know what ours are - low contact and no unsupervised visits, but given what has happened we can see this escalating once the first grandchild is in the picture.

Note: we have deliberately not gone into details about the incidents themselves, things to do with Hubs' childhood are obviously deeply personal and the stuff around the wedding could make identifying us easier if this were to be found by someone. If you feel that specifics are necessary we will do our best to summarize them - but it may be even longer than this post!

Tldr - Husband and MIL opened the can of worms that is their strained relationship and she wouldn't accept anything that he told her. She won't apologize for anything, but she thinks that things are somehow going to be magically fixed now. They aren't, and we don't know what to do.

Submitted January 03, 2019 at 11:47AM by Throwaway3633dgbji96 http://bit.ly/2F4bDC6