Oh jeez yeah, I’m not saying your mil has borderline personality disorder, but that’s a thing with people who do. They put you on a pedestal and hurt themselves to give you what they think you might want, right up until you fail to properly play the role they’ve assigned you. And as you say, the eyes go cold, they get angry, and they lash out hard.

As someone who struggles maintaining her own boundaries (working on it in therapy), I have far too much experience with this.

People with narcissistic personality disorder can do something similar.

People with untreated narcissistic and borderline are really good at using emotion to override certain types of people’s knowing better.