Hi I'm new to this site, the more I read the more I realise that my MIL is a psychopath.

I don't know why it has taken this long for me to realise, I just thought she was domineering & had a need to control everyone close to her,but she has tried to destroy our marriage, & family. I've decided that she will not, & she will not win.

She has used & abused us for way too long. It finally came to ahead nearly a year ago, our daughter was celebrating her 21st birthday. She didn't even acknowledge her birthday let alone give her a gift or birthday card.

She uses her money to manipulate,she plays one person against the other. She lies, steals,gossips,verbally,mentally, & physically abuses our family. To the outside world she is caring, lovely woman, who devoted her life to looking after elderly neighbours until they died (she ended up with everything being left to her) & looking after her husband until his death last year. At least he has peace now.

I don't even know where to begin, but I like so many kept quiet for so long, afraid to confront her, I still tremble & get heart palpitations when I see her. I know she hates me, I can see the hate in her eyes! She plays the victim so well, such an actress, but I see right through her, and she knows it.

We have lost nearly everything because of her, and she doesn't care, i think she delights in the fact that she has control, or rather thinks she has control of our lives. At the moment we live on the same property two adjoining houses, her living with her son (43
year old) never married & also a bully but really a mummy's boy, & my husband & I with our 4 children living in our home.

I see her everyday, she knows my every move,watches everything we do, collects our mail & opens it! (We now have our mail re-directed to Post Office) She has keys to our home, also to our cars - I still to this day don't know how she did this!

I will go into depth later, this is exhausting reliving the hell she is putting us through on a daily basis. We are in the process of moving and have to start again, financially this is going to be very difficult but will be worth it just to get away from her.
How can a human being be so cruel & spiteful? Have no empathy towards her own children or grandchildren? To say how sorry she is for what she has done and then the next day/week do more harm and simply disregard any apology.

I am hoping one day the real story can be told & everyone will see her for what she is, but until we can move from the property we have nowhere else to go, & I have to keep quiet. Only my family & one close friend knows what she is truly like. Thankfully we have their support.

I feel so tired, mentally exhausted. She has drained me.

Well my husband took ill last Tuesday, extremely high blood pressure- 209/124, he woke feeling terrible and had tingling and numbness down his right side. I took him straight to emergency where they told us about the blood pressure, he has had all the tests, brain scans,blood tests, heart,kidney etc all have come back normal, we are so relieved.

He didn't want his mother to know and she saw him home and us going back and forth with X-Rays etc but no concern whatsoever.

So he is on sick leave from work to have rest and get blood pressure down with medication and it was slowly working. My mum travelled over 2 hours to be with us and give me support,check on him while I was at work. Still no response from MIL!!.

This morning I left early for work and my two daughters were here, luckily. My husband walked outside to check if our garbage bins had been emptied, he saw his mother said hello as he always does and she was pleasant. He thought Oh this is good, I don't need any trouble today.

She must of saw his relief and flew into a rage!! She let loose AGAIN on what we have done to her, how he didn't care for his dying father, insulted my family again, by now my two daughters run outside, put their arms around their dad to protect him, she goes into a further rage!! Our eldest daughter says "can you just leave dad alone??" "He's been in emergency with dangerously high blood pressure!!"

Her response was "I've had high blood pressure for years!!" Can you believe it?? Her son, how could she be so cold to him?

My husband and girls went inside, but no she had to call him out again "Oh darling I'm so so sorry,please forgive me, lets just be civil to each other!!" He just wanted to get away from her so just agreed. She then happily said " I'm off to bingo now" Oh what a beautiful day!!

Of course my youngest daughter rings me at work, upset, Dads blood pressure has gone sky high again.

Hi, so very sorry for those that have posted, have been knee deep in work and will write replies and thoughts in the next couple of days.

My apologies, didn't want anyone to think they were being ignored.

Di

Hi QueenofherCastle, sorry to hear about your MIL being a psychopath, sounds pretty bad. The best thing to do is exactly what you are doing get away as far as possible, moves can be expensive bit it will be worth the sacrifice. I think a female psychopath for some reason sounds more dangerous than a male? as far as the schemes and manipulation, does anyone agree? well keep us posted please.

I have known three male Psychopaths, and two female, one of whom is my sister, although it is only in relatively recent years that I have been aware of what they are.

In my experience there is very little difference, although maybe one can be more vulnerable to those of the gender to which one is attracted, irrespective of whether someone is straight or gay,as that is added leverage for them?

I think as a society we are less likely to think of women as being evil. The only studies were done a million years ago on the male prison population. If I were to take an educated guess, I would bet on the side that it is an even mix. Females are more likely to be able to "hide" their true Psychopathy from the general public. I have seen many shows where the socialized killer is a cunning Psychopathic woman.

I think we think of women as the caring, kind people who take care of children etc. which distorts the image and can make the symptoms less obvious to the untrained eye.

Di

Thank you everyone for your response. We went down the coast for the weekend, it was so good to get away.

Just not thinking about her and what she'll be up to next gave us time to "breathe easier" for awhile at least.

It seems nearly unbelievable how we ended up in this position. My dad died 10 years ago. The abuse started immediately. The day of my father's funeral. We weren't living here
then, but had bought the land & decided to build the two homes here together. My dad didn't like the idea (he was a real estate developer) and cautioned us numerous times about this arrangement. He could see what she was up to but was too ill to try & persuade us out of it.

We were at our old home, the children were very young & my mum was staying with us. The morning of Dad's funeral, about 1 hour before the church service, she turned up at our home,my husband was in our bathroom & my mum was getting dressed, I was in our bedroom. She heard me saying to my husband "make sure you have good shave" I want you to look clean shaven", she burst into our bedroom, starting ranting and screaming, I couldn't understand why she was even at our house, by then my mum came in visibly upset saying "please can we just stop the yelling" my MIL than screamed at my mum "why isn't my son doing a reading at the church"? My husband then said "What?? I could never read
at the church, that is ridiculous!!"

By him saying this, she was furious, she stormed out our front door yelling at my mother
that "Oh I've never been good enough for you, have I ?" We were left standing there, trembling from her abuse. She was at the funeral, all done up with bright red lipstick, laughing, grabbing me, asking me "who's that? " Introduce me to your relatives etc. I couldn't believe she would show up at the funeral. Mum & I both decided not to tell my two brothers & two sisters about what had happened. They have only recently learnt of what happened that day.

In her mind that incident was just erased. Simply erased, never to be be bought up again, and it wasn't,until my Father-in-law died, and then it was repeated again, but this time it was a planned attack. ( I will explain this one later, as there is a whole
10 years worth of abuse in between).

At the moment my husband's blood pressure is still high. We have to have a sleep apnea test done, and go back to doctor's on Friday to review medication.

I have been offered counselling from my workplace as she has caused trouble with me leaving the property. I am a community care worker and go to patient's home for their care,on one occasion I went to leave the property and she had padlocked the gate so I couldn't leave the property. Luckily my husband arrived home and had to remove the gate post so we could get in & out of the property. I had to notify my co-ordinator at work as I was very late getting to the patient's house. My son went & saw her once I had left for work to explain what grief she had caused me, her reply was "Good" I don't care" my son said "Nan that poor man needed special medication, he was relying on mum," She just shrugged and said "I told you I don't care!!" This is one very sick woman indeed.

*waiting for the day we can leave here & start our life!!*

Well the property has been on the market,since MIL opened up our mail & found out we had bought block of land to build again.

She didn't inform us, I got a call on my mobile phone from real estate while I was at work, informing me they were standing at our front door,but couldn't get in! I was furious but kept calm, telling them I was at work & unfortunately had no idea they were coming
to the property to do valuation and that they would have to make another date available that suited us. My MIL must of been somewhat embarassed as she thought she could just let them in to our home!! The real estate wouldn't do this so the plan backfired!!

Later I got another call on my mobile,this time to arrange photographs of the home. I asked them how they got my work mobile number, and found out my MIL had given it to them. I politely explained this was my work phone & couldn't answer whilst with patients. They apologised and said they would just leave message, I agreed.

Well no one has been interested in even looking at the property, but in the mean time I have been boxing & packing things up. We are not informed of anything until the last minute & late tuesday night I got another call on my mobile. My husband answered as I was in shower, & thinking
it was a patient (I do home nursing) answered it. I heard him getting angry, asking how they got this number etc. Apparently my MIL had changed real estates & gave another person my work mobile number!! I said to my husband, "she has taken away our family life & now she
is trying to involve my work as well!!

I decided to leave note on her back door the next day, telling her not to give out my private work phone number & if real estate needed to contact us, they could ring home phone & leave message if I'm not home.

I watched her as she arrived home & saw the note!! She stood there in disbelief, grabbed the note & ripped it to pieces!! She stormed outside and I thought Oh No she's going to attack me!! But she just screamed, ranted and raved & went back inside.

In the meantime I got ready and quietly left for work for afternoon shift, hoping not to see her. I had forgotten that my sister was bringing my two girls home. So she drives up our driveway, opens the gate & my MIL launches her attack on my two girls!! Abusing, shouting, screaming saying "get off my property" I'm calling police!! My 22 year old said " Good call them!! Because they will take you away not us!!

My sister made sure the girls got in safely, the girls locked the doors & put on alarm, & then rang me. No sooner had I hung up from them, I got another call
from the real estate, saying they were just given this number to inform me that the inspection was called off for thursday. OMG !! she can't help herself!! I notified my work & now will have to change my work mobile number. When my daughter said she shouldn't have given out my private work number, my MIL said " Your mother gave me that number years ago, I can give it to whoever I want!!

The 22 year old daughter said to MIL "How could you scream & abuse us like this? You don't even love us!! My MIL replied "Whats there to Love??"

I am now trying to work out what her next move will be, because she is angry, very angry.

Well it didn't take long, my MIL must of been thinking what she could do next for her "Payback".

I worked the weekend & my husband went down the coast with one of our sons. Its better that he gets away from here
as she always upsets him & he still has the blood pressure problem.

I got up early 5am with my eldest daughter, we both had early starts for work. My youngest daughter was here with the
oldest son. She decided to take a shower, and got in & was there for couple of minutes when all of a sudden there was no
water!! We are on tank water and need electric pump for our water supply. She thought maybe we had blackout or something.

When I got home just before lunch, we still had no water but electricity was on. I rang my husband & he said maybe we had run
out of water. I don't think so!! Then I see BIL walking down to the tank, followed by MIL. BIL didn't look happy!! He had also arrived
home from work and I'm guessing she's gloated about how she turned the power off at water tank. Suddenly we have water again!!

She must of got some strange delight in annoying my youngest daughter. (She did annoy her) I decided not to say anything about
it. I'm not going to let her see me upset anymore, because this is what she wants.

All the same I'm getting so tired of these games that she plays. None of it is amusing at all.

My husband is due home today so I'm expecting an "attack" on him when he arrives home. We'll have to wait & see!!

The latest is turning off the water whenever she "Feels" like it!! It has happened three times now. I have not given
any response when she turns it off.
She cornered my husband and told him we use "too much" water, we should only have showers every 2nd day, & not
to flush toilet!! What???? what is wrong with this person??

Also no visitors, the children can't have friends over.

Last night we were all here watching the football, the children DID have friends over, we enjoy their company, we usually
have a good night. My niece arrived with her boyfriend got to the gate & rang us crying. My MIL was screaming abuse at
her in the dark on the driveway. I went outside with my husband, saying "What is your problem?" I had to ignore the "no
contact" as I felt my niece was in danger. When she saw me she just said "Oh I'm going to bed" and hurried inside her home.

She will not even look at me now!! Have I gotten to her?? I don't know. She seems to think she can say what she likes & we
just have to go along with whatever she demands. Well its not going to happen. She will not intimidate me any longer.