What is it about mothers/mother-in-laws that makes a person nervous?? Both my mother and my mother in law can make me nervous. Maybe it's the way they talk to me sometimes. Like if I'm in the same room with one of them, it's like they are looking at me as if I have turtles crawling out of my ears. It feels like they're just waiting for me to do or say something stupid.

With my mother in law, she barely says anything to me in person and online she's either talking about what SHE thinks we should be doing or how we don't visit her enough. Sometimes though if I talk to her online the conversation consists of my asking how she is, what she's doing and getting 1-2 word answers in response.

With my mother it seems like most of what I say she either ignores or disputes. Sometimes I'll ask what she thinks about something I've said, sometimes just to see if she was paying attention and she says "What am I supposed to think about that??" I hate when she does that.

I think I feel most nervous around my mother in law. I guess it doesn't help that she's 6 inches taller than I am. I'm not short now, she's just very tall. I rarely know what to say to her. I feel like every word I say to her or where she can hear, she's memorizing and making mental notes about how stupid it probably sounds to her. I'm almost constantly watching what I say around her and trying to phrase things that don't sound like I just came out of Hooterville.

I know I probably shouldn't care what she thinks of me but in some ways I do. I want her to like me. Part for me and part for my husband. I know he'd like it if me and his mother could be friends. Except for my husband and that we love kids, I don't think me and her have anything in common though. That's not to say I haven't tried talking to her about other things. It's just that she has this presense about her that's kind of intimidating. I think it's intentional. It's like she has this "Go ahead and mess with me" look. My mother has a look like this too. Except hers says "I'm too tired to bother, try again tomorrow."

A lot of the time when my mother in law visits or we visit her I'm usually very quiet. I feel like I'm on pins and needles and when I speak, I'm thinking to myself "Don't sound stupid, don't sound stupid." My husband thinks I just need to spend more time with my mother in law so I don't feel so nervous. I don't know about that. I spend time with her and I'm still nervous, sometimes even more. The first time we visited her I think I spoke a total of 20 words and most of those were directed at my husband. When I'm in the same room with my mother in law I feel like a little girl whose just stolen a piece of candy from the local store and I'm worried about being caught.

I hope one day my mother in law and me can be friends and I won't be so nervous around her. Just thinking about being in the same room with her gets me nervous sometimes. Talking to her online gets me nervous and I'm not even near her then. She's several hundred miles away and still has the power to make me nervous by talking to her. Although I think online I'm nervous about what to say and how to say it. She's moving to another state, a couple thousand miles away soon. Maybe that will improve relations between me and her.