The mother-in-law test

MATTHEW McConaughey’s wife Camila detailed in a recent Southern Living magazine podcast how her mother-in-law put her through a series of tests when she first began seriously dating the actor in 2006. The Brazilian model said she had a tense relationship with the woman, who called her by his ex-girlfriends’ names, spoke broken Spanish to her in a condescending way, and was just generally unpleasant. She said only when she fought back, did the woman finally say, “You’re in.”

What has been your mother-in-law test? These women share how some were near monsters as they sought to protect their dear sons.

Monique, 27:

She seemed OK at first, just a little bit overprotective, but then he is her only child. We met and she liked me and really helped me to get to know his likes and dislikes and helped me prepare to be a wife. She could be a little abrupt when I was slow to get certain cooking or baking things right, but I survived. That was until our wedding, when the true monster showed. First she tried to micromanage it, but my mom set her straight. She grabbed the mic and made a speech that was not on the agenda, but I looked past that. Then afterwards, when we went to the hotel for our honeymoon — that’s when it got weird. The third day we were at the hotel pool chilling, when guess who showed up on a day pass? She said she wanted to check that we were OK, then proceeded to ask me about the wedding night, joked with him about whether he was satisfied with the sex, and gave me sex advice right there by the poolside, while other couples stood by listening.

Tash, 33:

My ex mother-in-law was OK enough; I didn’t have any problem with her accepting me. In fact, she saw me as an improvement for her son over the other women he had dated. I didn’t know how much the social status thing meant to her though, until he told me one day that she had told him to “hurry up and slap a breed” on me so he could tie me down. He took her advice so literally that he was furious when I had a miscarriage, then an anembryonic pregnancy, and insisted that I go on fertility drugs. This all happened within a few months by the way. Finally, after our first child was born, I realised that he was eager for number two, but that wasn’t in my plans. I ended up separating from him for other reasons still, so I guess she was incorrect in thinking that a baby was going to tie me to her son forever.

Natalia, 40:

My mother-in-law is one of those women who think that they’re married to their sons, so it has really been a hard marriage. She told me to wear her old wedding dress, and when I said no, she said she wouldn’t attend. When she realised that we didn’t care, she came to the wedding in red and sat alone at the back of the church, like some bad omen. The worst was probably when our son was born, and she became Nancy Drew and said he needed a DNA test as he didn’t look like her blood. When we stopped paying her mind, she faked a test and sent it to her son and told him that she had tested the baby when she was babysitting. My husband did a reverse Google search and found that the test was fake. To this day she’s a thorn in my side, but I don’t really allow her to dictate my life.