Mother in law experiences? Share them! 🤣

[OatMatchaLatte]

Th

My MIL would love nothing more than for her son to leave me and our four children and move back in with her. It’s been 30 years, it’s not going to happen Lady.
I don’t understand why they can’t just take the positives that come with their sons getting married and having a family, instead of trying to reclaim them & keep them at 8 forever. Don’t they want their kids to have lives and be independent? I know I do. What MILs don’t understand it that they can still be a part of their sons lives, while at the same time giving them space to breath.

This is what I don't understand. Why be so nasty and create such drama. They make it difficult for everyone, put their sons in impossible situations. And why should we put up with being treated poorly? Of course if there's a genuine issue, they've every right to look out for their offspring, but when it's just being nasty for the sake of it, urgh...what's the point?

 

[DCICassieStuart]

Postman was early here this morning. Met him just as I was heading out the door to work. He handed me a Christmas card from MIL. It was addressed to 'Mr and Mrs Hisfirstname Hissurname

I didn't change my name when I got married (and MIL is well aware of that fact) so she obviously did it deliberately. It's not the first time she's done it. I'll be having a word with my husband about it when we're both home tonight.

Oh now I'm really pissed off! I didn't open the card, left it for my husband (recognised her writing)
The evil old witch has only gone and spelled my first name incorrectly on the card.
She's added an extra letter in my name and changed an e to an a.
I don't have an unusual name, and even if I did, she's bloody well known me long enough to know how it's spelt.

Apologies for the languages Tattlers, but I'm just sick to the teeth of her being such a bleeping cow to me

 

[OatMatchaLatte]

Oh now I'm really pissed off! I didn't open the card, left it for my husband (recognised her writing)
The evil old witch has only gone and spelled my first name incorrectly on the card.
She's added an extra letter in my name and changed an e to an a.
I don't have an unusual name, and even if I did, she's bloody well known me long enough to know how it's spelt.

Apologies for the languages Tattlers, but I'm just sick to the teeth of her being such a bleeping cow to me

That's SO out of order, you poor thing. Did your husband say anything?

 

[Shouldntbutineedto]

I like my mother in law-as in, I don’t actually mind spending time with her and often will be the one to suggest visiting. However, she has 5 grandkids and makes it quite obvious the oldest is her favourite. She will say she worries about him more as he lives with his mum-no reason to be worried though!? and the others all live with both parents. Planning our wedding, her and my FIL both argued about their friends being on the guest list despite not contributing in any way. Just because their friends’ daughter had invited them to hers!! She’s also racist but refuses to admit it and while she doesn’t push her religion onto anybody, she is homophobic. I’m quite confrontational with her which she has admitted she likes about me, she’d rather know where she stands with me, unlike my sister in law who lets MIL walk all over her and just slags her off behind her back. I do think mothers of boys that I know tend to be that overbearing stereotype!!

 

[DCICassieStuart]

That's SO out of order, you poor thing. Did your husband say anything?

He wolfed down his dinner and then had to go and do some shopping for her. She'd like nothing better than for him to move back in with her, and if he keeps on carrying on like this, she'll be getting her wish

I said to him that it was really disrespectful. That she knows I'm called 'Sarah Smith' and not 'Mrs John Jones', not to mention spelling my name completely incorrectly on the card. He told me I'm 'making a big deal out of nothing'.
Just as well I didn't change my name eh? I'll never have to worry about changing it back if I ever divorce him! I swear anytime we have a row it's over his bloody family and the way they treat me. Ma in law in particular.

 

[malolo]

He wolfed down his dinner and then had to go and do some shopping for her. She'd like nothing better than for him to move back in with her, and if he keeps on carrying on like this, she'll be getting her wish

I said to him that it was really disrespectful. That she knows I'm called 'Sarah Smith' and not 'Mrs John Jones', not to mention spelling my name completely incorrectly on the card. He told me I'm 'making a big deal out of nothing'.
Just as well I didn't change my name eh? I'll never have to worry about changing it back if I ever divorce him! I swear anytime we have a row it's over his bloody family and the way they treat me. Ma in law in particular.

Would his mum be making a big deal out of nothing if you purposefully did the same thing to her and she told him she found it disrespectful?

 

[DCICassieStuart]

Would his mum be making a big deal out of nothing if you purposefully did the same thing to her and she told him she found it disrespectful?

That's exactly what I said to him. If I'd sent her a card addressed to Ms Her Maidenname, I'm sure she'd have something to say about it.

 

[Comehereiwantya]

The first time I met my fellas mother she called me a gold digging bleep. She told him to get rid of me out of her presence and not to bring me back. His SIL arrived a year later, stopped taking the pill and trapped his brother into a baby and marriage but she’s the favourite!!! She hasn’t worked a day in her life! They live with MIL and she doesn’t clean or cook! His brother is miserable, he’s only allowed out of the house to work and no socialising at all!! My partner and I have been together for 12 years now and I supported him financially through getting a degree! We don’t have kids yet but She still hates me!!

 

[Hodgies]

I get on fine with MIL but as a few people have said, boundaries are everything!

I've been with her son for 20 years and married for 16 so we've had plenty time to thrash stuff out. Major flashpoint was our wedding, in-laws wanted lots of control and we had to push back strongly otherwise it would have been totally done the way they wanted it with all their friends. There was also a lot of stropping because SIL kicked off about the bridesmaid dress and I wouldn't back down. It was all a bit of a nightmare at the time and both MIL and FIL were bullies and really horrible, demanding we cancelled the wedding etc.

After that we then had issues when my eldest was born. He's nearly 13 now and was their first grandchild. She was incredibly overbearing, wanted to hold him all the time, tried to tell us how to do stuff. Kept calling him her boy which gave me the rage. Again, lots of pushing back on our part and telling her to back off, lots of offence taken on her part etc. She was slightly less overbearing with number 2, except for her famously coming to visit when he was really wee and her claiming she'd get him to stop screaming of an evening (as clearly I was just being tit!) and if anything he howled even more He was just a crabbit git in the evenings for months! By the third she didn't even try as she knew what would happen. Main issue we have with her these days with the children is oversharing. She's got about a million friends on Facebook, the type of person who meets people on holiday in 1982 and still keeps in touch so she's not allowed to share pictures of them, I especially hate when she takes my pictures and puts them up as her own. She also tried to put pics of them in Christmas cards but was shut down on that too. We regularly fall out over it, she complies for a while then will start to do it again so has to be told, then she gets in a huff etc etc. My 3 are her only grandchildren so there's noone else to dilute it!

Essentially she's a nice woman but very different to me. She defers to FIL all the time, he's quite controlling and it's just a totally different relationship than H and I have so she finds it hard to understand our dynamic I suppose.

 

[Blonde123]

I suspect a lot of them will always resent us for "stealing" their precious sons away

My MIL came to my hen do, got wasted and told everyone she “had to get used to the fact she wasn’t number one in her sons life anymore”. She repeated the same thing at our wedding to my bridesmaid as well.

We went out for dinner and told her we were pregnant, her response... “you could have told me before I ordered the wine”.

My husband rang her to tell her we had miscarried and she has never mentioned anything to me about it since (this was 2years ago now). Not even asked if I am ok.

I have endless anecdotes of her being a nightmare. Particularly since we have had our children. Tries to undermine me all the time, I’ve learnt to try and let her comments go. It all comes from a very insecure place.

 

[Octopies]

I get on fine with MIL but as a few people have said, boundaries are everything!

I've been with her son for 20 years and married for 16 so we've had plenty time to thrash stuff out. Major flashpoint was our wedding, in-laws wanted lots of control and we had to push back strongly otherwise it would have been totally done the way they wanted it with all their friends. There was also a lot of stropping because SIL kicked off about the bridesmaid dress and I wouldn't back down. It was all a bit of a nightmare at the time and both MIL and FIL were bullies and really horrible, demanding we cancelled the wedding etc.

After that we then had issues when my eldest was born. He's nearly 13 now and was their first grandchild. She was incredibly overbearing, wanted to hold him all the time, tried to tell us how to do stuff. Kept calling him her boy which gave me the rage. Again, lots of pushing back on our part and telling her to back off, lots of offence taken on her part etc. She was slightly less overbearing with number 2, except for her famously coming to visit when he was really wee and her claiming she'd get him to stop screaming of an evening (as clearly I was just being tit!) and if anything he howled even more He was just a crabbit git in the evenings for months! By the third she didn't even try as she knew what would happen. Main issue we have with her these days with the children is oversharing. She's got about a million friends on Facebook, the type of person who meets people on holiday in 1982 and still keeps in touch so she's not allowed to share pictures of them, I especially hate when she takes my pictures and puts them up as her own. She also tried to put pics of them in Christmas cards but was shut down on that too. We regularly fall out over it, she complies for a while then will start to do it again so has to be told, then she gets in a huff etc etc. My 3 are her only grandchildren so there's noone else to dilute it!

Essentially she's a nice woman but very different to me. She defers to FIL all the time, he's quite controlling and it's just a totally different relationship than H and I have so she finds it hard to understand our dynamic I suppose.

I’m defo gonna struggle with the FB element when this baby comes along. In laws are very Facebook orientated and I can tell they’re secretly pissed off we never did a gender reveal or Facebook announcement about having the baby (not my style, I would hate the attention)
I just know they’ll be desperate to put pics of the baby on Facebook. I don’t wanna be mean but tattle has really opened my eyes to privacy issues etc. I’m just not sure I’ll be up for it.

 

[Makaraka]

Mine is so hit and miss,
She was lovely at first, then when I got pregnant she was all gushy and lovely.
One night we were dog sitting for her and I was on her iPad looking at some things for our daughter who was about 18 months.
A message popped up on Facebook from my now husbands ex girlfriend... curiously I read the preview and was really interested to know more.
I looked - I know I shouldn’t have but she had caused endless problems anyway.
Well I read the most horrific messages exchanged between them about myself and our daughter.
I was absolutely devastated.
I told him and we decided that we wouldn’t address it, but on my hen do she was absolutely awful. We saw the ex out where we were as she’d told her and she tried to join in at my MIL invite.
it ruined it completely and I ended up having a massive drunken breakdown over it.
I ended up just going home crying and my husband then went the next day and told her why.
She wasn’t even apologetic for doing so, but she was hell embarrassed!

she was fine for a while but she’s back to her ways.

I’m an only child, my parents help us out a lot with childcare even though they both work full time.
She doesn’t work and doesn’t do anything, our nephews are grown up yet she can’t babysit just for when I’m at work or do the school pick up.
She told us when we had our second that she had been a nanny for long enough now and she needed time for herself


Take it with a pinch of salt now really

 

[bolimepipi]

my mother in law and i don't speak the same language.. jealous?

 

[Hodgies]

I’m defo gonna struggle with the FB element when this baby comes along. In laws are very Facebook orientated and I can tell they’re secretly pissed off we never did a gender reveal or Facebook announcement about having the baby (not my style, I would hate the attention)
I just know they’ll be desperate to put pics of the baby on Facebook. I don’t wanna be mean but tattle has really opened my eyes to privacy issues etc. I’m just not sure I’ll be up for it.

It is hard and it would be much easier just to let her crack on but it's their privacy I'm protecting so I accept I'm the bad guy. Especially now the eldest is nearly a teenager and we're pressing on him the importance of not giving away your info online etc it's even more important to make sure gran doesn't do it either. She claims to be security savvy but is the complete opposite

I only have people I know on Facebook and everything is locked down so you can't see any pictures unless you're a friend. I don't have them on my profile picture either. My Instagram is public and I don't have any pictures of them or ever mention their names etc. Their names aren't hugely common and our surname is quite uncommon as well so they would be quite recognisable from a few details.

 

[Onthehop]

Glad to read that others have horrors for MiL's too. She openly dislikes me but gives me a list of jobs to do when we visit. These can be sorting out her computer to asking me to stick my hand down the outside drain as she thinks its not emptying fast enough. I refuse to do stuff like that but she doesn't get a professional in so I doubt it needed doing in the first place. She's been single since her husband walked the daughter down the aisle, he then left to be with the woman he'd been seeing for years. The son, my husband, wasn't supposed to leave her, she had his life mapped out for him taking care of her and the house. When I first met her she told me he would never leave so not to think of a future with him. When he told her he was moving in with me, she was livid, cried, used emotional blackmail, said I was damaged goods because I have been married previously, I would drag him down, was a slut who probably had STD's, anything to try and change his mind. She would phone him saying she couldn't cope anymore and she would hang herself/take tablets so he'd race around to check she hadn't. She has never been to my house even though I have invited her, doesn't bother me at all but it disappoints her son. We've been together 30+ years too.

Wow! If my MIL was like this I would never visit her.

 

[SamBamford]

I go because she doesn't want me there. If I'm there it stops her from trying to lay guilt on him. She is becoming quite infirm now and her doctors says she needs a carer. The daughter who can do no wrong has said she isn't doing anymore than she already does. That just seems to be visiting once in a while, sitting on her ample arse eating biscuits. As much as I despise her for how she has been with me/us, she must be scared of her uncertain future. A while ago there was an horrendous stink there, she had soiled the bed and couldn't change it. I did it for her, I vomited in it too when I saw the former contents of her bowels. Then she said I was wasteful when I chucked the lot in the bin.

 

[sushimama]

I guess I'm in minority here but I absolutely love my MIL. She is such an amazing woman, an artist, professor, she travelled the world and she is such a social butterfly. Life of every party (but not in a tacky way), she has friends everywhere and she has so many incredible stories. My bf and I are the same age, but my mum is 51 and his is 65, yet she's more active than me. She has a black belt in karate and she quit it only a couple of years ago, now she started doing ballet haha.

We live in the same apartment building and we have a saying that for happy life you need to move away at least so far that your parents in law can't visit you in slippers haha. Yet they are so extremely respectful and sometimes weeks go by when I don't see them at all. But then occasionally they would bring us fresh bread in the morning from the local bakery, or when I wasn't feeling well they carefully offered me lunch every day. I am so grateful to have them and I'm always telling my bf how lucky he is to have such a functional and loving family. And my bf is an only child (same as me) yet he's not spoiled at all, he's completely independent and they are never in his (or our) business. It's so sad to read all those horror stories, I can't imagine that at all.

 

[Blonde123]

I guess I'm in minority here but I absolutely love my MIL. She is such an amazing woman, an artist, professor, she travelled the world and she is such a social butterfly. Life of every party (but not in a tacky way), she has friends everywhere and she has so many incredible stories. My bf and I are the same age, but my mum is 51 and his is 65, yet she's more active than me. She has a black belt in karate and she quit it only a couple of years ago, now she started doing ballet haha.

We live in the same apartment building and we have a saying that for happy life you need to move away at least so far that your parents in law can't visit you in slippers haha. Yet they are so extremely respectful and sometimes weeks go by when I don't see them at all. But then occasionally they would bring us fresh bread in the morning from the local bakery, or when I wasn't feeling well they carefully offered me lunch every day. I am so grateful to have them and I'm always telling my bf how lucky he is to have such a functional and loving family. And my bf is an only child (same as me) yet he's not spoiled at all, he's completely independent and they are never in his (or our) business. It's so sad to read all those horror stories, I can't imagine that at all.

This is the sort of MIL I aspire to be! You’re so lucky xx

 

[bunnyboo]

I'd have a lot of time for my MIL. We come from different economic backgrounds, but she's always been very kind to me and welcomed me into her home. She's extremely extraverted and can be a bit eh.. loud at times. She (and the entire family) are very fond of a few drinks (ok more like binge drinking), but still.. she's never treated me badly or been unwelcoming. We might have different opinions on things, but that's never got in the way

She's not too fond of her other son's girlfriend by the looks of things but I don't get involved. Secretly thought.. I kind of side with her on this one? The brother's girlfriend (24 or 25, can't remember her exact age) stays in their family home from time to time and doesn't really say hello or goodbye to the parents which I think would leave a bad taste in anyone's mouth tbh. I still live at home with my parents too, so whenever I stop in my boyfriends place I always stop in for a chat with his mum and be sure to say goodbye properly when I'm leaving. That's good manners in my opinion... plus my own mum would be disgusted with me if she knew I didn't show some manners

 

[openbook1]

My MIL has never done anything to me but she has been such a witch to my husband that I can't stand her. Both my husband and his sister have dealt with crazy Catholic guilt-tripping controlling behaviour since they were children. My SIL has spoken to me about it and says she doesn't even like her own mum but she feels "obligated" to stay in contact with her.
She is a manipulative, narcissistic woman. My husband went no contact with her at one point for over a year after she sent him a list of everything he had done "wrong" since he was a CHILD...this is a man in his damn 40s. He talks to her now but has set firm boundaries and let her know if she steps over them, he will cut her out again.
My husband moved away from his hometown in his 20s and would never move back. But he's been talking with his mum about job security recently and she is like "you could move back here..." and he is like "why? there's nothing there for me. it isn't home." If she had her way, he would never have moved away, and he would move back.
My SIL told me that his mum said that since we've been together, his mum feels he doesn't speak to her as much. LOL. I am not the factor in that - he is very busy with work often, doing stuff around the house, and just life in general. And phone calls with her used to be so draining he couldn't be bothered. She seems fine now but I am sure the mask will slip again.
We don't have children yet but honestly, I am glad she is far away so I won't have to deal with her interfering if we do have them. She already asked if we would have a future child baptized... no, we are both atheists (me very strongly) and can't stand religion (the controlling nature of it, mostly Catholicism). If our child wants to, they can when they are older. She disagreed completely but luckily for us, it isn't her decision to make.