‘[She's] crashing out in the family group chat’: Control freak mother-in-law gets her comeuppance after alienating the whole family when no one shows up to her birthday party

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Jesse Kessenheimer • Writer and Editor
Sep 2, 2025 5:00 PM EDT

Mean and tyrannical family members rarely get to witness the consequences of their actions, but when this mother-in-law realized that nobody wanted to come to her birthday party, it made her think twice about how she'd treated them the last few years. Usually, relatives are the only obligatory invites to a birthday celebration, guaranteeing that you'll at least have a few guests to eat cake, but this woman had alienated everyone so effectively that nobody was willing to endure an afternoon of balloons and lawn games. 

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  • MIL is crashing out in the family group chat SUCCESS! & Let me start by saying we are NC with MIL and VLC with FIL for 3.5 years ever since MIL disowned us as a response to our youngest child's birth
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  • announcement, which, funnily enough, happened in the previous family group chat. The chat has been remade by MIL a few times since then, and she keeps adding me back to it. I keep it on mute, but occasionally skim it if it seems like something interesting may be happening.
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  • Today I noticed the chat had been active, and opened it to see MIL repeatedly sending GMIL's (FIL'S mom) address (which is weird for several reasons, not the least of which being it's one of the 3 primary party locations, so everyone is well
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  • aware of where she lives). I scrolled up to find today is my FIL's birthday party, and of their 6 adult kids only one said they "should be there", and another's spouse said they "would try". MIL's parents RSVP'd, and the party was at GMIL's house.
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  • Only FIL/MIL and MIL's parents showed up, I guess, because MIL is sending out personalized messages about who "was missed", and how they had a great party without "the kids". The called out include the one
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  • kid and spouse who gave tentative answers. No one is responding, so MIL is just shadow boxing the phantoms of the (adult) children she thought she had under her thumb. Doesn't seem like she's convincing herself so far.
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  • So, for anyone wondering if these women ever get their comeuppance, MIL/FIL are in their 60s and the only people willing to show up to their birthday parties are their own parents. That's gotta sting.
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  • Frankly, it serves this woman right to have her family despise her. Everyone was too exhausted to try and placate her pushy requests, and after a lifetime of driving a wedge between herself—who was always right, of course—and everyone else, she finally succeeded in setting herself apart… Just not in the way she expected. Perhaps it is lonely when you've reached the top, because when you're a tyrannical mother-in-law that drives everyone mad, you're actually just driving everyone away.

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  • Edgelord McMemex • That's the natural endgame of control freak parents, eventually everyone stops showing up, and they're left ranting into a group chat no one cares about. Honestly, that's better than any apology they could ever give you.
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  • CurlyNaturally ⚫ When you sow the seeds of foolishness and crazy, people tend to avoid the crop show. Now they are in their feelings, because they aren't the center of the universe. And they still won't get why...the delusion is absolute!
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  • Cool_Organization_55 It does sting. They never learn though. They try all the same tactics over and over in a loop, and never stop. Can you just leave the group chat?
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  • Star_Gazinggg I'm curious! What happened with the birth announcement??? JadedorTraded OP She is the sole creator of the family group chats. This is an important detail to keep in mind.
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  • My child's middle name is an honorary for my husband's mom who passed away when he was a child. MIL and FIL married ~6 months after Mom passed away. MIL had shown signs throughout the years of being jealous of a de d woman (literally destroying her things beyond recognition every time she found something), but no one fully expected things to go how they did.
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  • I won't even get into the background of the birth (a whole ordeal as it's wont to be), but we'd just gotten situated into the post-natal room when one of us sent the birth announcements, including to the group chat.
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  • Because of hooplah from the previous pregnancy, most people had only been given the baby's initials prior to the birth. Amongst the congrats is MIL saying something like, "I can't believe you didn't tell your father."
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  • We then realize she apparently left FIL out of the group chat. I responded with something like, "Sorry, we assumed he was in the family group chat since you made it, but [husband] is calling him." Now this part is verbatim: she said, "I didn't realize we were family."
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  • So I said, "Noted." The only thing I've said to her since was to quote her own words back to her when she tried to trick my BIL into letting her hold my then-infant at a family gathering.
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  • My husband has talked to his father; he set the weakest little hurdle to open talks knowing I well she will never even do that much, and that's fine by me. We've only been on the same property with them a handful of times since, and every time she's suddenly developed a headache and had to leave.
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  • ETA: I just realized I didn't address the name bit. Whoopsie. My SIL took it upon herself to try to smooth things out with MIL either the same day or the next day, but MIL flipped it by telling off my SIL for defending us naming a child after "that woman". I would also like to be clear that "that
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  • woman" was just a normal wife and mother in a small town who had actually babysat for MIL for free out of the kindness of her heart. MIL's animosity, best guess, comes from feeling second place. Anyway, when my husband
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  • talked to FIL, FIL reaffirmed that MIL was upset we had honored my husband's mom. MIL expected an apology from us, which, to his credit, FIL knew was never gonna happen. As it sits my husband talks to his dad a few times a year, and that's about it.
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