Things in-laws do to annoy you.

My MIL was a terrible gossip, you couldn't tell her anything personal unless you wanted her friend or her next door neighbour to bring it up when you saw them next.
She used to get the names of things wrong and even when she was corrected, would keep doing it. She always talked about Markor Spencer and about Flamberrrs theme park in Cornwall.
She thought all illness was the same, e.g. Jane's in hospital with a heart attack.
Me- I thought she had pneumonia.
MIL- Well it's the same thing.

That is so obviously not the point the op was making!

If they’re such awful people, why would you want them around your children?

When you're in company with other people it's RUDE!

My PIL always thought their hardworking DSs "keep" us DILs and that we're taking the piss. We must only work our full time jobs for pin money. I was the higher earner for years and somehow managed to ignore the comments. It ramps up when one of us DILs goes away for work reasons and the poor men are left to parent on their own.

Yeah that needs looking into. My FIL is just a lazy, misogynist arsehole who thinks women are on the earth to serve him (he was 55 when I met dh and was told that he couldn’t even make tea, FFs).

I hope they look into your FIL needs for everyone’s sake.

A wave of nausea came over me, reading this 🤢

Breathe

Missing the point. At the table at someone else’s house for christmas is a slightly different situation don’t you think? Most would consider rude if it wasn’t a language shared by all present.

Mine can still make tea. But a lot of things he literally can't do, physically and mentally. DH and I are of the opinion that he needs to see a GP because he is extremely injury prone and in poor condition. And confused if you take him out of his home environment.

I think in-laws (FIL, MIL and BIL) would rather stick their heads in the sand than admit there is anything wrong. They should really be thinking about adaptations at home like a stair lift. But they will never listen to DH because they still see him as a child, even though he is 45!

She doesnt like me but when greets me (and my SIL who she also doesn't like) she does this weird mmmmmm sex noise in my ear as she hugs me.

Oh god, there’s more like them!

Yup, green bits are just cut off 🤢

I never quite recovered after finding MIL defrosting a joint of pork on the radiator
in the hall!😮

Any leftover food re-appeared day after day til it was gone… any dry or mouldy bits were cut away and the rest of it was eaten. Turkey at Christmas frequently saw January, just re-heated and shovelled down!
Stomach issues were common, but blamed on anything except their scary food habits.

Oh god, how bloody horrible. Glad they're ex ILs now.

Mine is the same. MIL has always said she would love to spend a long period of time abroad at a holiday home they own but FIL refused to be there more than 10 days.

I asked dh once when we were first together why she just didn’t go alone for a few weeks, he said she couldn’t as FIL can’t even make himself a cup of tea. Well, he can, can’t he. Eveyone can pour boiling water over a tea bag. The list of things she does for him is astonishing. It’s like she’s got an 18 month old child, not a 75 year old husband. He’s never as much as made himself a sandwich. She has to plan her days around making food for him.

Although, the one place he can make it to unaided without supervision is the pub. Funny that.

Mine used to want to know the EXACT time we'd be arriving. To the minute. You could never say "we'll be there about two" and it drove ex DH mad because we were an hours drive away so you can't be that accurate what with traffic etc. So the more she insisted on knowing what time we'd be there, the more vague he'd become, on purpose. Then when you did get there, she'd be out waiting at the garden gate for us. It was a bit sad for her really, but it was stressful because it got DH's back up and he'd snap at her about it, so the visits usually started on a sour note then I'd feel like the one stuck in the middle trying to diffuse things.
She was also cloyingly over-attentive during the visits. Always prepared food even when told we wouldn't be needing lunch, as we'd eaten/would be going on somewhere else to eat/etc and then acting as if it was the end of the world when it was politely declined. Fussing if she offered you a drink and you said no because you just didn't feel like a drink. She was my MIL for 19 years and it never changed 😂
Mind you, she did have significant mental health problems and spent a lot of time in psychiatric units. Ex-DH was brought up by his gran because of this and I think his lack of patience with her came from some resentment at how his mum treated him sometimes when she was ill. Not abuse exactly, but weird behaviour. I just don't think as an adult he was ever able to just grit his teeth and make allowances for her oddities around us visiting.

My family are a complete shit show that could be on the Jeremy Kyle show if it wasn't for a very thin veneer of respectability, I do feel sorry for DH that he married into this mess.

It is different when it's your own vs the in-laws, I know how to manage mine. Or at least I think I know...

Hello, fellow Vessel!

During my second pregnancy, my MIL only ever asked my husband (not even me directly) how the baby was doing. Never how I was doing. In fact, she didn't once congratulate me on the pregnancy. Neither did my lovely SIL, for that matter.

The only time she addressed me regarding the pregnancy was the day of my C-section, as she and FIL came over to watch my toddler, and she tried to give me a hug after I'd put my coat on. Please bear in mind she'd barely spoken to me for 9 months, nor even bothered to look directly at me (even in my own home), by that point. I froze as she wrapped her arms around me, wondering if this was what it was like to be embraced by a boa constrictor...

My FIL needs everything he does to be managed by MIL, or he injures himself or gets lost.

We live abroad and when they last visited we have started to seriously question whether he has dementia, it is that bad. Also the complaining about everything because guess what, abroad is not exactly the same as home. It drove DH up the wall.

I'm not sure how MIL copes.

My in-laws can't say 'I love you'. My kids have told their grandparents they love them since they were able to, but my in-laws are too embarrassed to say it back. It makes me quite sad when my kids are left hanging with no proper response from them, it seems quite deliberate and cruel to let children think their love isn't reciprocated.