My husband and I have been together for going on 12 years and married for over 5 of those years. We didn't notice anything substantial from my MIL while we were dating. Most of the trouble started once we were engaged.

My MIL would start getting oddly emotional at get togethers after drinking rum. She would guilt trip my husband saying things like "We never see you" or "why don't you come over more." Once my husband got so irritated by her guilt and accusations that he tried leaving early and she chased him out of the house. She stood in the way of his open car door so that he couldn't close it. It was all very annoying, but we didn't realize this was all rum related yet at this point. So, I made a system in order to always see both sets of parents at least once a month. That was never good enough for her, or sometimes the time between visits would be 6 instead of 4 weeks apart. We would get guilted about that. This continued for years.

My husband and I had a destination wedding. We both worked in healthcare at this time in our lives, and having the same day off wasn't easy to come by. My MIL called my husband crying shortly before the we left for Jamaica saying that she did not believe that she would get enough time with her son while we were together for a WHOLE WEEK because we had 30 guests coming. So, within a week before we left the only day we had to get things done we HAD to meet up with her for brunch. It was an hour there, 2 hours at the restaurant, and an hour home! She took half of our day, and we didn't get nearly everything accomplished that we needed to. My husband and I were extremely irritated but still didn't draw the line between her emotions and rum.

At the rehearsal dinner, she got incredibly drunk and asked me if I "planned on taking her son away from her once we were married." I was more than a little offended. I started suspecting that her emotional fits were alcohol related at this point.

On the day of our wedding, she was crabby, irritating, and crazy crying, but I had enough distractions that it didn't faze me.

Fast forward about a year and a half of the same or similar ongoing shenanigans. It came to a head when my parents invited my in-laws to their family cabin for a weekend. My MIL was so anxious that she drank on the drive to my parents' place and all day once she got there. She was spilling drinks in the three season porch. She was barely able to form a coherent sentence. Every thought she DID get out was an insult or another guilt trip. We went to bed early just to get away. The second day was SO much worse. It was the 4th of July, so we went to the parade in town. She was drinking rum at the parade. After the parade, we planned on taking the boat out on one of the local lakes, but it started raining, so we stayed in for a bit. My husband laid down on a couch and fell asleep. I decided to do the same since we planned on being up late. This made my in-laws IRATE! They were appalled because they were there to spend time with us, and we chose to take a short nap, so while we were sleeping, they got TOASTED! We made them dinner, and my MIL got mad because the dinner we were making took too long to make, and we weren't investing enough time into her. We wanted to go for a quick walk to the nearby bridge to show them how pretty it was, but my FIL had a bad hip at the time, and she didn't want to walk without him. She essentially forced him to go and screamed at him the entire time. We all walked ahead to get away from it all and to give their fight some privacy. They stayed outside for a very long time when we got back. They were yelling and screaming at each other all the while. My poor parents were so freaked out and frankly extremely offended that they were acting like that. My husband was so mortified that at one point, he went outside and yelled at both of them for acting like that. My MIL actually tried getting in her vehicle to drive home! She is extremely drunk, irrational, and angry at this point. She is in no shape to be driving. My husband essentially dragged her out of her vehicle and took the keys away. When she came in, she gave a really pathetic apology to my parents and went into hiding (little did we know she was packing her bags and trying to leave again). She was yelling and cussing at my FIL and husband once they tried stopping her. They eventually both left in the middle of the night without a goodbye. It was infuriating. Thankfully, they somehow made it home alright. We went two weeks without talking and then met up for a very difficult 4-hour discussion about what happened. We told her that she will no longer be drinking rum in our presence or we will leave without a word. She said that she understood.

She slipped up here and there, and we would catch her with rum at Christmas, her birthday celebrations, and at special family events. We continued to tell her how we felt. She continued to try and call our bluff.

When we had our first daughter, she brought her sisters over and started drinking around my 5 day old, but she thought that was fine since it was beer and not rum. I had a traumatic birth, and I was in no shape to host an IMPROMPTU party! My husband promptly kicked them out.

Now my SIL just got married. At the bridal shower, one of my MILs sisters was feeding her rum and cokes using the little mini bottles stashed in her purse (even though this was deemed a no rum zone from the start). At the weird family "bachelorette party," she was (surprise) drinking rum and got into a screaming fight with my husband about some family issues. My SIL and FIL joined in, and it got loud. My daughter was sleeping in the other room. I ran to be with her in case she woke up, and thankfully, she never did. At the rehearsal dinner, she was ordering rum and coke all night long. She got rude, beligerent, and aggressive throughout the night, and it got worse as the night progressed. She said that the weekend was as much about her as it was about the bridal couple. That set me off because I remembered how inappropriate she was at my own rehearsal dinner. And she was told from the start NO RUM!! She broke that rule almost immediately. The next day at the wedding she brought a 2 liter of diet coke which looked full so nobody thought anything of it. It was lousy with rum! One of the bridesmaids had a little bit, and that's how she was found out. She was told months ago (and it was repeated several times after that) that if alcohol was brought into the venue and it was caught by one of the workers that the $3,500 deposit would not be returned. She freaking did it anyway!! They had a 2 hour cocktail hour after the wedding, wine at dinner, and an open bar during the dance. The bridal couple requested that no rum be served all day. My MIL knew that, which is why she smuggled it in. It's just insane.

The wedding was just this past weekend, and my husband and I have made the decision to cut my MIL out of our lives for a full month if she can stay clean of rum the whole time. We are counting on my FIL to keep her accountable. My SIL is thankfully on board, but my husband is in mental turmoil about it. We're taking away her only grandchild by doing this, but it needs to be done. We just don't know where to go from here if this doesn't wake her up (and I half expect it won't, honestly).