Would you be friends with your MIL if you weren’t related?

I 🩷 my MIL. She is fun, non-judgemental, extremely helpful and is an inspiration woman. She is always there for us when we need her without question and never asks for anything in return. I couldn't ask for a better MIL.

I had a love/hate relationship with my late Mil.. I think I was quite jealous of my now ex SIL and BIL, MIL definitely thought the world of them and they were a dynamic couple which was nauseating. She talked about them all the time with enthusiastic gush. But she helped me a lot with the children and we had our laughs.

I was actually friends with my MIL first. She introduced me to her son!

Yes! She’s great fun to be around

Absolutely! My MIL was the most lovely, caring and thoughtful woman. I wish we had more time together as we get on so well.

We have nothing in common so, no.

No.

Yes, mine is genuinely absolutely lovely and I'm so lucky to have her.

NOPE I am LLLLLLLC verging on NC with my MIL

Absolutely MIL was amazing. I enjoyed her company.

I love my MIL, she is a genuinely lovely person who cares about everyone, takes the time to get to know people and remember the little things that are important to them. Honestly I don’t think I’d ever have met her if not for being related as we don’t run in any of the same circles or have any of the same interests, but yeah she’s brilliant. She’s the kind of woman who sparks up a conversation with the person in front of her at the supermarket, learns the name of their kids and remembers them forever , bumps into them randomly at a park 5 years later and asks how little Fred is doing and whether he’s started Secondary school yet.

No definitely not. She’s just not my type of person.

No way. We’re just very different people. After 28 years, we rub along ok, but I’d not choose her as a friend. The question is interesting when you widen it to other relatives too. I’d say about 50/50 on cousins, aunts etc.

Absolutely not. The feeling is mutual. That said, I wouldn’t be friends with my own mum so…

This - very much my experience and view too. Lucky to have close and trusted extended family relationships with diverse people in this sense. That I wouldn’t have without the marriage.

I quite like my ex MIL - she’s done and still does some quite interesting things with her life.

I don’t like the way she acted during my divorce from her son, and she does sometimes say some odd things, but basically she’s a nice person.

I was at an acquaintances house and the dad turned to his 9 year old son and said remember when you marry someone, you marry the family too. Make sure you choose wisely.

It hit home as no one had ever expressed it to me like that before. And I thought why did no one ever say that to me? In that family it was just a normal conversation.

We have all of these true love fairytails, and my DH is mine. but they never show that their family is actually likely to be a huge part of that persons life, and are likely to be a big part of your and your DC’s life (not always, but there is a good chance). So you marry them, you take on the family also.

Sadly I didn’t realise this. It wouldn’t have stopped me being with DH, but i would have approached the relationship/ conversations with him about expectations a lot earlier. He finds them difficult and was more than happy to delegate the relationship to me. And while I’d love a better relationship with the in-laws, their misogynistic, racist and homophobic views, their lack of interests other than the tv and tabloids, has made it super hard. We have found in later years common ground over the DC (plus DH being told in no uncertain terms it was his parents and he could speak to them/ arrange to see them/ remember birthday cards for them etc and if he didn’t do it then it wouldn’t happen). At the end of the day they don’t understand me, and I don’t understand them, but I know all they do want is to have their DC and GC around them.

I really hope (I) I’m lucky enough to be a MIL one day and (2) that I learn from those around me how to navigate what can be such a tricky relationship.

I never met mine🥲 Only stand by my husband at her grave. I always think she would be so proud of her son and everything he achieved. I also think she would have adored her grandchildren. Her sister likes me and we get on. Would have loved my kids to have two granny’s

No. We are just very different people.
She's not awful. She has always respected me and my space. We get on well enough for family get togethers. She has never interfered.
But it returns to us being very different people, and not having anything in common (other than dh and the dc) so I don't choose to spend time with her other than whole family get togethers.

Absolutely not. She’s opinionated even about things she knows nothing about, she’s never wrong, doesn’t realise that life is very different from when she was younger, she regularly falls out with family and has no friends. She’s the only woman who ever breastfed and her way of bringing up children is the only way. Heaven help you if you are a working Mum, the original sin. She is always talking absolute rubbish about people called ‘they’ well you know ‘they’ always do this and ‘they’ always do that.

To be fair to her she did get me through some tough times with my son, his lack of sleep, his ill health and a father who thought work was more important, he was in the US and didn’t come home when our son was in PICU. However, I will be glad not to see MIL and FIL anymore once the divorce comes through.

If they were neighbours on our road I can imagine getting on pretty well with my in-laws. As others have said, the problem has been that I married their son and then did not take direct instruction on how I was to raise the kids.

I've never even met my MIL in person cause she lives on the other side of the world. Me and DH have been together 7 years and we have 3 kids.

But I know that no, we would not be friends. She is from a completely different culture. I'm eastern European but have lived in the UK since I was 8 (so I'm culturally mostly British) and she's from a south African country. Her culture is very focused on religion and extremely separate gender roles (basically men sat on their asses while women are treated like slaves even if they work). I see the stuff that she posts on Facebook and I have met DH's sisters who share her views. It's all about women being 'submissive' and men being the 'head of the family'🤢🤮 DH's family hate that he's not with someone from their culture and especially that I'm white. He tries to say they don't but it's pretty clear.

Once I was at one SIL's house, I'd just had a baby about 4 months ago (born at 31 weeks) and also had just turned 2 and 3 year olds and had an EMCS so was still struggling a bit. The SIL was going on about how 'well I had a hot cooked from scratch meal waiting for my DH every single day without fail EVEN the same week I gave birth' and the other SIL agreed. Felt like telling them yeah, you do all this shit and your husbands have still cheated on you about 20 times each while it's never happened to me.

No, she never liked me from the start, one of those ones who trotted out the old “sons are your sons until they take a wife” shite and so it was doomed from the start as she saw me as the enemy.

But aside from that she’s not the friends type, she doesn’t have any. So, no I wouldn’t be friends with her.

Loved mine and she was an amazing grandma. She was an interesting person. I would have been friendly with her if she wasn’t family but not close as I was as her DIL as she could also be a diva. I miss her.

I have a view that you marry the family as well as your partner and I accept that that may have been different if she hadn’t of been a loving grandmother and generally great with me.. she overstepped, was absolutely selfish and generous in one sentence, commented outrageously on everything and drove me nuts frequently. As I said I miss her… love can be a strange fish