My MIL is hard to deal with

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I am 46 and I too was not diagnosed as being on the spectrum until I was an adult - just a couple of years ago actually. It is a huge weight lifted to know that I was not just bad, I was not just rude, that I am not just a misfit with no social skills. I know there is a reason for it all and I know that somehow I managed to find ways to survive in life. I raised a kid, I escaped from an abusive parent and a dead relationship, I have a job I love with coworkers who love and respect me. Sounds great, huh? I actually even have a few real friends, some of them women even. But it is not so great. Right now it is incredibly tough, so tough in fact that I am wondering why I keep trying to have relationships with people because they always end up leaving me exhausted and nervous and sad and sick.
This is where I am now. My relationship is in peril and the culprit is the mother in law. My Mr, I call him E, is odd and smart and tall and capable and insane and perfect for me most of the time. I can for the most part just be me, no script, no rehearsed role, just me and it is fine with him most of the time. It all goes wrong because of one wild card - his mother. We live with her. She was widowed when he was an infant and she raised 3 kids alone. His sisters grew up, married well and have grown up lives with kids and houses. Eric was the difficult one, or her "special boy" (I suspect he is spectrum but his doc says it is other various things). Eric never married, brought home a few girlfriends like stray puppies but most of them went away. We met in jury duty and he smarted me off my feet. He was the first person that I ever could say was smarter than me. Problem is his mom. He refuses to leave her home. We all three live in a house that E and I remodeled (rebuilt from floor up mostly) It belongs to her but he and I built it. She has told me that I am just one of many that have traveled thru and Eric will never marry me. Um ok. She has told me that he is not normal enough to be in a relationship. Um ok, I have been here for 4 years. She likes to gossip and watch the Voice and American Idol, she reads people magazine and chats of the phone for HOURS. She goes to church on Sunday and gets upset at cussing. She has to control everything, I can't bring home a new whatever for the house with our being questioned about it. She reads his mail and pays his bills, but that is okay because it is just "habit from when he traveled for work constantly." She treats him as both child to correct and husband that died. She complains that she is broke and freaks out about a light left on but manages to take trips and go to movies and buy new expensive toys. She always has the money to send E off on a trip (especially around my birthday) because he needs to get away from things. (He had been unemployed for some very real reasons for some time. I work my ass off but and am as broke as s**t and do not have a benefactor to send me on a trip or buy me a camera etc and yes I get jealous. She hates me. I am too abrupt and snarky and not friendly and I walk away when she is talking to me. I have too many hobbies and they take up space. (I sew, paint, crochet, make jewelry, etc) I am not like her girls. My humor if off putting. I dress weird. I I AM JUST WRONG!!
I am in trouble yet again. She will not speak to me. I have made an appointment to see a counselor and try to get us into family mediation, but she said she will not go. I am at the end of my rope so here I am spilling my guts to a stranger hoping that someone, anyone who understands will talk to me before I snap and crawl away to live in a shack in the woods. You are a stranger and I am sorry to ask, but how do you deal with people like this in your life?

This situation is not going to change as long as you are living there. There is NOTHING that will "fix" your mother in law, your troubled relationship with her, or what she chooses to do in her own home; you face a stark choice: you leave (with your husband or not) or stay and do the best you can to do your own thing, minimising interaction with her as much as possible.

The first thing to do is to be frank with your husband about your feelings, and the negative impact on you of disliking the current situation so much.

You have to take initiative here, because if you do nothing, the stress will make you ill. I am curious as to why your husband wants you and he to live with his mother. Is it for financial reasons - costs less than independence - or is it that his mother wants him to remain in her house and under her control? Has your husband matured into an independent person or not? You are going to have your work cut out here; the bottom line is you may have to cut your losses and move on alone. It may not come to that though, if he is receptive to your discomfort and distress over the current situation. If he is not, and wants to remain tied to his mother's apron strings, then can you really respect a man like that? As mutual respect is an essential part of a nourishing adult relationship, this is probably a really important aspect for you to consider; and can you respect yourself for staying in such an unworkable situation? There is nothing you can say or do that will improve it.

PS: please if you can, break up a long message into paragraphs, it's somewhat off-putting to get visually hit with an unbroken wall of text. Thanks.

PPS: mediation is unlikely to work unless all parties bring good will to the table, a mutual willingness to resolve the issues of difference and compromise in a workable way. It is clear that E's mother will not do that.

Ya moving out sounds like a good idea. My MIL is a very sweet lady and I just adore her, but I'll never live with her in the same house, and she'd probably pay me to not live with her. Adult women can be territorial, more than one in a house tend to clash, even if one is willing to submit to another they still argue and grumble. I hope you find a good solution soon.

One part I don't get. You say she is the mother in law but she made a comment to you that "he will never marry you". Did you guys get married and not tell her?

No matter how much work and money you and your husband/boyfriend put into your MIL house, it is her house. Her house her rules. I am sorry to be cold and short to the point but I agree with one of the above posters but I see it as 3 choices. You either realize you have no control over the situation and accept things as they are in the household or you move out or you and your man move out. Your man will have to make major and deep changes in his life to make choice 3 a reality. Choice 3 would most likely take you and him going to counseling.

I think you are expressing what every woman wants, a strong independent man who puts his wife as number one. You are currently number 2 behind mom. Mom makes sure you stay number 2 by doing all of these things (paying his bills, buying him gifts, sending him on vacations) for him and putting you down verbally. IMO, a healthy mother/child relationship is one where the mother encourages her child to become independent and self-sufficient so that the child can "leave the nest" and start their own family. As a poster above wrote, you do not have the power to change this in her.

Would your husband/boyfriend be willing to go to counseling with you? If he does agree to go with you, I would suspect his mom will not be supportive. She wants to keep her #1 position in his life.