9 December 2016 • 6:00am at the Telegraph

I was 21 when I met my future mother-in-law, Violet*. Before things got serious between my husband Simon* and me, I got on fine with her. But our engagement meant a shift in the dynamics. She was the matriarch in a family of men. Now she’d share the marital name with another woman.

She started asserting her position over me: snapping orders in her kitchen where once I was treated as a guest; speaking over me at the dinner table and turning conversations into opportunities to reminisce about a past I wasn’t a part of.

I pushed back: shooing her away when I was cooking in my home, distracting Simon while she held court and steering talk back to the wedding that had riled her in the first place.

While we bristled, everyone else cringed. We weren’t entirely querulous; sometimes we got on. When I became pregnant with her first grandchild, three years after the wedding, she set me on a pedestal, fussing over me. But this didn’t mark a new era in our relationship.

Once my daughter Jess* was born, I was shoved aside – often quite literally, in her eagerness to get to the baby – as she obsessed over my child.

Now we clashed constantly, disagreeing over everything from how often I should feed my baby to how much time Jess should spend with my mother as opposed to her.
“I said I only saw her out of duty. She said she wished her son had married his ex”

We each found excuses not to spend time together, upsetting both our husbands. One day I phoned her, out of pity for Simon, suggesting lunch. When she snootily rejected my olive branch, another row ignited. I said I only saw her out of duty. She snapped that she wished her son had married his ex.

Yet as Jess grew up, we mellowed. I began to see that my daughter needed as many people loving her as possible, and no one seemed to do so more passionately than the grandmother who helped with childcare while I worked. A mutual respect began to grow…. read more here