Many memories come back when I think about this competition I was put in without even knowing I was in a competition. It became quite clear after a while. I just had never expected anything like it and wasn't prepared for the venomous mother who would find anything to put me down and make herself seem superior.
I couldn't do or say anything that she couldn't top with a brilliant story of her own where she outdid me tenfold. I talked about working in church with the youth, she would tell me how she was in charge of more youth and worked harder than I could have ever done all on her own without help. I talked about hiking and she'd have a story of hiking 20 miles in a day, something that is almost not humanly possible but she did it. I say something about a meal I cooked and she'd tell me about a feast she'd made for someone else because she thinks she is a Saint and that has to be proved by always thinking of others even though her serving is always connected with wanting praise but that is not mentioned in her desire to outdo me. Even when I had a baby and said he weight 9lb she wrote a long claim to fame letter to everybody in the family of how she delivered a baby weighing 9.5lb.
Nothing I did ever beat her brilliance and my mem ate it up. He would tell me I couldn't hike as far as his mother, couldn't cook as well as his mother, couldn't clean house as well as his mother, couldn't dress as well as his mother, couldn't ride horses as well has his mother, and on and on came the assaults on my talents and abilities. Really I was supposed to be a nobody who was worthless. It didn't take long before I quite talking. I wouldn't share anything I did or were doing. I didn't tell her nor my mem although he would bring things up just to help his miserable mother feel better by putting me down.
A mem mother won't tolerate competition and any woman coming close to her mem is competition and needs to be destroyed and put in her place. If you are with a mem, don't take the challenge of competing, just quit talking and cut contact. Life is much better without that evil in your life.