MY MOTHER-IN-LAW WANTED ME TO BE HER SON’S WIFE—AND HER CLONE

From the moment I met her, I knew my mother-in-law wasn’t thrilled about me. She had this way of scanning me like I was an unqualified job applicant. And in a way, that’s exactly how she saw me.

“You have to prove yourself worthy of my son,” she told me one evening, completely serious. “A wife should be like a second mother to him.”I thought she was joking. She wasn’t.When we got engaged, things only got worse. She started treating me like her personal errand girl—sending me out to grab groceries, organizing her kitchen, even folding her laundry. “You should learn how to do it exactly like me,” she’d say, inspecting my work.

I put up with it, thinking it would ease up once we got married. It didn’t.Then one day, she hit me with: “You should wear your hair in soft curls, like I do. My son prefers it that way.”

I just stared at her. “He’s never said that.”

She smiled—smug, confident. “Of course he hasn’t. He grew up seeing my hair like that. It’s what he’s used to. It’s what he loves.”