Apologised because I was upset, not because she’s sorry

Hi! I’ve posted a few times here about my (future) MIL, and I’m here with the full tea. This post is over a year’s worth of content, so I’m sorry in advance for length.

TLDR: My MILs negiligence and inconsideration nearly killed my dog. My anger over this caused her to ask my fiance "if he was sure" about marrying me. She apologised because I'm still mad at her, not because she realised it was a fucked up thing to do.

My fiance (27M) and I (27F) have been together for going on 8 years. We’ve been dating since we were 19, and I’m for all intents and purposes an orphan, so I spent a lot of time with his family. His parents basically adopted me, I’m chronically ill and his mom would come with me to doctor’s appointments and tests and stuff, and was calling me her DIL for years before we got engaged. Fiance and I adopted a dog a year into our relationship. Her name is Charlie and she’s now almost 7! Important to note, fiance and I live with his parents, he’s never lived anywhere else, Charlie has also only lived with them.

We started looking at houses two years ago, and are unfortunately still looking. We put in an offer on a house about a year ago, but we didn’t get it. Regardless, this made my MIL realise that when we move out we’ll be taking our dog with us. She then was hell-bent on getting herself a dog. Charlie is chronically anxious, so myself, fiance, and FIL came up with guidelines for MIL when looking for a dog.

The guidelines were: 1) not a male dog (this is just preference after we saw a male dog that did nothing but hump charlie) 2) not a puppy. She wanted this dog but we’ve seen her with her other pets and we knew she wasn’t going to give a puppy the attention it needed 3) not an allergen. Both fiance and FIL are allergic to a lot of dogs so this one was non-negotiable.

We ended up seeing three or four different dogs over the span of a month, and either they didn’t get along with Charlie, or someone was allergic. She did, for the most part, follow the guidelines. Then, she sends us one for a male, 4mo old doodle. All three of us say “nah not this one” and she says “either you all go with me to see him, or I go by myself and if I like him I’m bringing him home.” So we’re all forced to go look at this dog that doesn’t meet ANY of the criteria. On top of that, we all told her no before going and again in the rescue to the point that the rescue went “you know you don’t have to take this dog right?” My FIL starts having an anxiety attack bc he doesn’t want the dog this badly, and she takes advantage of him just wanting to get the hell out of there and adopts the dog.

There were two criteria under which the dog would be returned: 1) if anyone was allergic 2) if Charlie had a problem

My MIL didn’t (and still hasn’t) done anything in terms of training the dog. He doesn’t listen for shit, she did take him to a petsmart class (after all of us got mad at her) but that was a participation trophy at best and he’s no more obedient. It was only 8 classes and they skipped one bc she “didn’t want to go out” and I never saw her practice with him. In over a year she hasn’t taken him on a single walk, she just lets him outside. I’ve never seen her play with him, to the point that if I walk into the room he’ll bring me his toy.

Less than one month into having the puppy, Charlie starts pooping blood. We take her to the vet, she’s got stress ulcers. On top of that/because of that she’s got stinky burps. So she’s simultaneously shitting out and burping up her intestinal lining. The vet puts her on Prozac.

This, of course, is not enough for MIL to lock in like “my decisions have negatively impacted another creature, I should fix it.” Shit stays exactly how it was. Her dog continues to eat everything, and she even lets him play with garbage so she can have “five minutes of peace”. Somewhere in here we also find out that FIL is allergic, but she still won’t get rid of the dog. We never asked her to, but we had the agreement, so? For all of these reasons, no one but her likes the dog.

Charlie has a really bad reaction to the Prozac, gets serotonin syndrome, loses 10lbs in a month, is basically catatonic, and nearly dies. Not inherently MILs fault bc we couldn’t have known she’d have that reaction to the meds, but still. We didn’t tell them Charlie almost died bc we didn’t want them to feel bad, but they were aware she was very ill. Again, not enough for her to do anything about it. Fiance and I have gone out of our way to keep the dogs separated bc again, MIL doesn’t care to. Her dog basically uses Charlie as a chew toy, jumps on her, etc.

In trying to keep the two separated, she decides that we’re being too mean to her dog. We aren’t hitting her dog or anything, just pushing him away or yelling at him. To note though, we do call him stupid/ugly/etc which I get is bad but it’s a shitty situation. Comments like this have led her to call me an animal abuser multiple times.

MIL has a habit of blaming Charlie’s anxiety on anything but her dog. Yes, Charlie has always been anxious, but not to the point of shitting blood, that only started after she became a living chew toy. MIL was very into saying things like “she’s just anxious bc there was an earthquake” or “a snake in the yard” or “fireworks the other day” literally blaming our dog's decline on anything but herself. We understand it feels shitty to be responsible, but she is.

In the beginning of January she made a comment like that and I snapped (again after a whole year of this) and said “you’ll do anything not to take responsibility for the situation”. It turned into a whole argument that ended with her once again calling me an animal abuser and going so far as to say she’s afraid to leave me alone with her dog because she thinks I’ll stab him (again, for the record I have never harmed this dog and go out of my way not to interact with him). She also looked my fiance dead in the face and asked him if he was sure about marrying me. Reminder: she and I had been bffs prior to this dog and she’d never expressed concerns about our relationship before.

A day goes by, we all reconvene. We tel them charlie almost died, and kinda get the response of "now you being so mad about it all makes sense." Again, nothing changes on her end. Fiance writes her up a plan to help charlie, and it's all stuff regarding her dog, including playing with him and walking him. As mentioned, she's never taken him on a walk, but after this conversation she did buy him a toy that's "as good as a walk". She won't even throw a toy for him outside. Surprise, that means that once again nothing has changed. Fiance leads MIL right to an apology for the things she said to/about me, and she doubles down on all of it. She goes so far as to say her comment about marrying me was fine because she “actually said I know you think you love her but are you sure.” On top of this, she says her therapist says I’m purposely causing tensions so that she’s mean to me and I can cry to fiance about how mean she is and manipulate him to take him away from her (not even remotely a thing).

I continue to be mad bc wtf?? We’re getting married in 6mo and she says that?? I’m not snarky or anything I’m just very self-contained atp. Understandably, my mental health dips and I’m now on additional meds as well.

She realises I’m upset and says to fiance “how do I fix it?” He tells her to apologise. She tries to apologise, says she wants to fix it, and I say “hard to fix trying to break us up after 8 years, 6mo before our wedding, because I don’t like your dog.” She says she wasn’t trying to break us up and that I took it the wrong way. Asked what she was trying to do then and she never answered. IMO, not an apology. What else could "are you sure about marrying her" have meant to do if not plant a seed of doubt??

Me, silently stewing from then until now, mental health shitting, trying to vibe knowing how she feels. Iv'e lost 20lbs cause my brain is broken and she asked if I was okay and fiance went "yeah she's just stressed about the wedding" bc telling her she broke my brain would cause even more issues. Atp it’s been over a month and she hasn’t apologised, so I’m not expecting her to. Fiance and had talked about it at length and agreed that if she apologised now it would be ingenuine bc she’d be apologising for me being upset still, not for what she said. She had two opportunities to apologise immediately after, and didn’t either time. We figure that’s just how it is now, which sucks but whatever.

In-laws are going on vacation, SIL is taking their dog (hallelujah). They still have a senior cat that I assumed we were going to watch. I wouldn’t normally mind, but did tell my fiance “I can’t believe she’d let an animal abuser watch her cat”. She asks me today to watch the cat. I say just that. She says she never called me an animal abuser (she has, three times, and my fiance backs me up on that. Add gaslighting to the list I guess). She then apologises for what she said and that she’ll “always love me” and just wants to fix things. I’m not inherently against fixing things, but I’m so exhausted idc anymore. Told her just what my fiance and I had talked about, that she was only apologising now bc I’m clearly still upset about it, not bc it was a fucked up thing to say and she realised it.

I am an animal abuser while giving my dog 12 pills a day to prevent her from having internal bleeding (Apparently).

AITA for not accepting her apology? I don’t think I am bc it’s ingenuine and she’s apologising solely bc I’m upset, not bc off what she did.

Unrelated to the dog but in the same vein: she asked what colours for our wedding and I told her gold/silver/grey/blue. She ordered THREE black dresses. I highly doubt it’s a coincidence she tried to break us up, didn’t, and is now dressing like our wedding is a funeral. I don't want her at our wedding at all, I don't want to spend the day having pics w her and her being all "I'm so happy for you guys" when she has explicitly stated the opposite multiple times.

Please don't tell me the situation is to move out, we know and we're trying. We wanted a house over an apartment, but atp we've caved and are looking at apartments now too.

Not sure what I'm hoping to get out of this post, but my brain is mush bc of this situation.

UPDATE: on the dress front: just came in in an off-white gown, gold tulle, and a TRAIN and asked if it was okay or if she looked too much “like a bride” (if you’re even asking that question then the answer is yes). I asked her if she would be comfortable w everyone thinking she was the bride and she said yes, so do w that what you will

EDIT: Everyone saying “one offer on a house isn’t looking”, we’ve put in multiple offers, this was just the one that started this whole fiasco. My fiance is a union guy and when he finishes a job he gets put on a list and doesn’t get sent back out until he gets to the top. During that time he can collect unemployment, but we can’t buy/rent anything (if we already had a place it would be nbd, but we can’t just buy something on unemployment. Not an us thing but a lender’s thing). So in two years of looking we’ve taken three 3mo breaks cause he’s been out of work. He did just go back, so we have to wait a month so he has pay stubs and then we can look again.

“You told her what she can do in her house? YTA” counterargument that her husband was also involved in this, and the stipulations were either for Charlie’s sake or her husband/son’s. We weren’t just being like “you can’t do this cause we say so” they were literally to make sure that no one was allergic, Charlie was safe, and the dog got the attention it needs. Is it not messed up that my FIL has to spend the next 15 years taking Benadryl bc his wife got a dog that he didn’t want and is allergic to?

I’m TA for calling him stupid and ugly: fair and I’ve stopped prior to this and even admitted that I knew it was a shitty thing to do. Everyone saying “be mad at MIL not the dog” that’s even worse. There’s no win there as far as I can figure.

Did you even offer to help with her dog: yes. We didn’t just bitch that he was untrained, we gave her all of our training stuff, clickers, treats, and sent multiple books/youtube series that we had used. We told her if she needed help to let us know, but that we weren’t going to train the dog for her, which I think is fair. Helping is one thing, but why should doing all the work for her dog fall on us? Not doing it for her we think was a fair line to set. Regardless, she never used any of the stuff we gave her or asked for help. She does have a correction collar for him that either vibrates or beeps (doesn’t shock), but the battery is always dead or the collar isn’t on him. If it is on, the beeps and vibes do nothing to deter him. She tells us to carry the remote around and that that will be enough for him to leave Charlie alone because he’s “scared of the remote” (he isn’t). He won’t listen when asked to come inside, so when Charlie goes out to pee fiance and I have to stand on either side of her and basically goalie this dog away from her.

Do you pay rent/bills/“you’re a mooch”: we pay rent and the electric bill and do all of the household chores. I’ve only been living w them for three years so everyone mad that I’ve been mooching off them for almost a decade that’s not what’s happening. I know we should’ve moved out by now (and had been asking for years prior) but fiance is dead set on a house versus an apartment. As mentioned bc of his employment, we’ve been sorta stuck. Also mentioned, he’s caved and has started looking at apartments too. Not ideal, but better than this.

Everyone mad about how I feel about her dresses: I can feel however I want. Are any of them bad? Probably not, but I have no patience for anything from her anymore bc of all this shit, which I thought would be understandable. Her navy dresses (which have a separate post) look black in real life, but they are very very very dark navy. The gold one isn’t inherently bad but I told her my dress had gold on it and then she went and bought a gold dress (that also came in two shades of blue that would’ve worked). Her saying she thought she looked like a bride and was fine with it I thought meant that she knew it looked kinda bridal, but y’all flamed me. Am I wrong for thinking if she thinks it looks like a wedding dress others will too? I deleted the gold dress post cause people were mad and I’m a baby and was getting stressed out. I did admit in this post that it’s probably her, not any of the dresses, that are actually bothering me. Anyone that was angry made about the dress made their way over here to tell me I’m TA without reading this post, based solely on the dress one. I guess if you feel that strongly about my disliking a dress go off, but I was kinda hoping for more helpful feedback than “YTA you lied about the dress”

If you were “basically an orphan” why did you go no contact with your family three years ago: I was very low contact with them prior to that, not like I woke up one day and went “I don’t want to talk to them anymore”. There’s a history of abuse to the point DCFS was involved in middle/high school. When fiance and I started dating I was still living with my parents but spent all my free time (minus sleeping) at his house. It was nice to just have some peace and be able to do things like take a nap without getting yelled at. For anyone that said “maybe MIL realised something here didn’t add up”: she’s been in the receiving end of harassment from my mom (bc my mom was jealous that (prior to this obvs) we had a good relationship). Just nasty, rude, “you’re stealing my daughter away from me, why does she love you but not me” type shit. Idk mom, maybe cause MIL never put her cigarettes out on my back, just a thought.

German shepherds are an allergen: she’s a mix but mostly shepherd. We’re aware of the irony that neither my fiance nor his dad are allergic to Charlie. MILs dog is a poodle/rottweiler mix, so I guess he’s not 100% hypoallergenic? Both my FIL and fiance are allergic to something in their saliva, not dander. Neither are allergic to Charlie, but both are allergic to my SILs corgi/collie mix

I guess I’ll update this part with any other commonly asked questions. I hope that clears some of it up.