BF's possessive mother causing trouble

When I first met my bf's mother, she liked me. She described me as his ex's opposite, something that made her very happy, but I think she assumed too much too soon. Don't get me wrong, I am better than his ex - not being arrogant here, his ex is just really horrible :lol: - but I'm not perfect. I'm Agnostic; his mother is blindly Christian. I'm laidback; his mother is a prude. The differences continue for miles (and yet we are eerily similar in other ways). Once these differences began to surface, she started liking me less and less. She insists that she still likes me but her attitude towards me noticeably changed after he and I moved in together. Since then, she's done little more than be a pain in my ass. She misses hearing from us - mainly him - but doesn't want to hear anything we actually have to say. We live as though we are married; we go to work, we come home to each other, I cook, he helps clean, etc. So, really, all we have to talk about is that. We're introverts who are nearing the end of a financial drought (thank God). We really don't have much going on. But if we mention...well, anything really, she gets upset. When he told her that I'd found a new mattress and boxspring for really cheap, because he was proud of me, she became uncomfortable. This was apparently too personal of a detail for her to handle (unwed couple + bed = SIN!). She even seemed to react jealously when he told her about me cooking dinner for him so we just don't talk to her anymore. She has us walking on eggshells way too often and I'm already working 45+ hours a week; I just don't have the energy and my bf is enjoying his newfound free dom. Note: She later retracted her complaints, saying none of this ever really bothered her, but I assure you - hearing about our buying a mattress did bother her and she said so right in front of me. She invited me over a few weeks ago, in an attempt to return to normalcy, but during my visit, she made a few "jokes" that weren't all that funny. She was clearly still bothered so I made a note not to visit again. But then she reached out to me for my birthday, asking if I could come over for dinner; she bought me a gift and everything. And yet here we are, back at it. Initially, I thought it was due to the stress of her father passing away in April. She's also used her period as an excuse for poor behavior on several occasions. Now that she's entering menopause, that's her new excuse, along with our being to blame for not being around enough and her father's death and I forget what else. She's apparently on medication for one thing or another but I'm not sure what. Whatever it is, it isn't working... Nothing is nice and quiet for more than a few days at a time. Our last fit took place at the beginning of the week. We saw her on the 18th for a picnic thrown by the funeral parlor that did her Dad's service. She was emotional, not just over the death of her father, but also because she made it up in her head that my bf no longer loves her... We patched things up and left with everyone seemingly getting along again. On Monday morning though, she texted him with all of this emotional blackmail, asking that we give her our current bed for free. Mind you, if she had just said, "Hey, if we help you pick up your new bed, will you give us your old one for free?" I would have said yes. The fact that she threw in a bunch of bullshit along with it pissed us off and had my bf asking, "What do I even say to this?" He was so mad that he just dropped the conversation. I encouraged him to continue it because I felt that he needed to show more aggression than he normally does. The end result was an argument/fight and her hanging up on him. She texted him right after to say, "I'm done." When he didn't answer, she wrote him another message saying, "I won't expect to see you on your birthday, I'll just put a card in the mail. And I'll give that recliner to someone else since you're just looking for a fight." Still, he didn't answer. Yesterday, however, she wrote him back saying we could still have the recliner and that she'll give us $100 for the bed. She came along with his cousin to deliver it but still wouldn't set foot in the apartment. And today, when I uploaded a photo of the flowers my bf bought for me last night, she liked the photo. So we're seeing yet another mood shift... I told my bf that I don't know what to make of it. He said he doesn't either. At one point, she even said that he talks about me too much which infuriated him. As I said above, we're pretty much all either of us has, partly because of our introversion and partly because we haven't had any money. Combined, that tends to make for a fairly isolated life. When we do see friends, it's usually his best friend, and we drink - which is also a no-no so we can't tell her about our sporadic nights out either. Anything else we do, we do together, not out of obsession but because that's just the state of our lives; he commuted to school so he never made friends, mine are moving away, and I'm a homebody. I don't see how that's a problem if we're content... To me, that was her outwardly showing contempt for me for the first time ever. Any advice on how to continue from here onward? She loves heart to heart conversations but we've talked so many times already that I don't know if talking would help. She only seems to want to be heard rather than actually hear what we have to say. Although I've considered that maybe I should be firmer than I have been in the past. I just don't know.

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