AIBU to be fed up with my in-laws' reverse one-upmanship?

Give us some of their favorite phrases @GreenPoppies I’ll design a bingo card for you 😂Sounds like one of them is, “Such luxury!” I think I could feel your teeth grind when you typed that.

I take it they are fans of Monty Python's the Four Yorkshiremen?

How utterly boring and draining. I'd avoid any more holidays with them, discussions, visits, talking to them entirely 😅 and leave hubby to deal! Grins.

Edited: Ha, saw above, not the only one to think of Monty Python. Am so unoriginal!

I had to watch this and honestly this could be your MIL @GreenPoppies 🤣

Sorry OP, but this is hilarious. I can see why you'd find it irritating but you're taking them too seriously. That's just the way they are, there's virtue in suffering for them - and it's generally people who have life good who can indulge in that sort of attitude. I'd be going massively the other way with comments about there being no joy in pain, no need to suffer needlessly, to save energy for pain which is inescapable, and outright lol-ing when they say the more preposterous thing.

I would have to bite my tongue not to say 'you're insane' everytime they spoke to me

For anyone old enough there’s a Blackadder episode featuring Miriam Margolyes and I can almost hear her voice.

Do it to them. Wait for them to say something and do it to them.
twats.

Try playing into it. Say “oh gosh you’re much tougher than me, very impressive! You must think I’m a right wimp!” They’re looking for validation so give it to them in excess and perhaps they’ll realise what they’re doing.

A bingo card is the only way to cope with this sort of thing. You are so busy giving yourself a mental high five when the phrase 'walked and walked' is used that you don't get annoyed and they don't feel like you are dissing them. DH and I used to do bingo cards when visiting the PIL and the loser had to buy the takeaway/treats on the way home
If it was actively offensive, then the broken record technique can work (like the 'you do you' suggestion above), but its a pita to do.

You beat me to it!

They sound fucking insufferable. Maybe say something like "that sounds crap" next time they start yammering?

Nothing to add really, just wanted to say that you made me laugh, so thanks!

Well they sound like a couple of charmers not! All this one upmanship (or down manship!) Some how meant to make us feel inferior .just mad .Why on earth would anyone choose to drive to Europe with small children?

Could it be that they are put out because you really are superior to them in the suffering stakes, having done all those marathons? Maybe they are just trying to redress the balance in their favour. My mother and brother liked to pretend they knew more than me about the subjects I studied at university, or else they found some obscure fact I was expected to know about the whole of human history. Maybe they've just got a chip on their shoulder because their daughter-in-law really is superwoman and they feel inferior and want to bring her back down to their level.

I’d test them! Make up some ott extreme tale of hardship (on some outing or something) but dressed up all fun & enjoyable then watch them scramble for ways to imply they suffered more or how you should’ve done it.

They sound fucking nuts.

Usually, people who behave like this are extremely insecure. I’d just laugh at them the next time they make such comment and then just walk off.

Love the Four Yorkshiremen 😁

When they start the plasters thing up again, I would have to say 'remind me, how many ultra marathons have you run? Oh right. Well I've run (this many) and I know that when you need a plaster, you put a plaster on'

Otherwise, I think the 'it'd be a dull world if we were all the same, wouldn't it?' option is best.

They both sound bonkers, guess they are looking for eventual saint hood.

I transcribed this for my Dad years ago, enjoy!

THE FOUR YORKSHIREMEN
Monty Python

• 1ST YORKSHIREMAN: Very passable, I say, very passable.
• ALL: Aye, Right.
• 2ND YORKSHIREMAN: Nothing like a good glass of Château de Chasselas (wine), eh, Josiah?
• 3RD YORKSHIREMAN: Aye, You're right there, Obadiah.
• 2ND: Aye.
• 4TH YORKSHIREMAN:Who would’ve thought, thirty years ago, we'd all be sittin’ here drinkin’ Château de Chasselas, eh?
• ALL: Nah.
• 1ST: In them days we were glad to have the price of a cup of tea.
• 2ND: A cup of cold tea.
• 4TH: Without milk or sugar.
• 3RD: Or tea!
• 1ST: In a cracked cup, an’ all.
• 4TH: Oh, we never used to have a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.
• 2ND: The best we could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth!
• 3RD: But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.
• 1ST: Because we were poor. My old dad used to say to me, "Money doesn't buy you happiness, son."
• 4TH: He was right.
• 1ST: Aye.
• 4TH: I was happier then and I had nothing! We used to live in this tiny, old, tumbled-down house with great big holes in the roof.
• 2ND: House! You were lucky to live in a house! We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, half the floor was missing, and we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of falling.
• 3RD: Eh, you were lucky to have a room! We used to have to live in the corridor!
• 1ST: Oh, we used to dream of livin’ in a corridor! Would've been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woken up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House? Huh.
• 4TH: Well, when I say 'house' it was just a hole in the ground covered by a sheet of tarpaulin (tarp), but it was a house to us!
• 2ND: We were evicted from our hole in the ground; we had to go live in a lake!
• 3RD: You were lucky to have a lake! There were a hundred-and-fifty of us livin’ in a shoebox in the middle of the road!
• 1ST: Cardboard box?
• 3RD: Aye.
• 1ST: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a newspaper in a septic tank. We used to have to get up every morning at six o'clock, clean the newspaper, go to work down the mill: fourteen hours a day, week-in week-out, for sixpence (6 pennies) a week, and when we got home our Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!
• 2ND: Luxury!

• 3RD: Well, of course, we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox in the middle of the night, and lick road clean with tongues! We had to eat half a handful of freezing-cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at that mill for fourpence (4 pennies) every six years, and when we got home... our dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.
• 4TH: Right...

• 1ST: And you try to tell the young people of today that ... they won't believe you.
• ALL: No, They won't.

Stop telling them. If they do make a comment then just nod and smile you don’t need to answer. Total neutrality is your friend , rather than trying to win, just change the subject.

I told my MIL that I saw no virtue in roughing it and thank goodness I earn enough money to not have to do it . Shut her up .

I think I’d just say, on repeat, ‘you’re right. You’re MUCH more superior to us.’ Either they’ll realise how judgey they’re being, or you’re validating their views - but either way it becomes your grey rock statement and you don’t need to engage any more than that.

@Jamesblonde2 that's more than possible my DH is gorgeous and lovely his dp are vile ..materialistic mean ,snobby...

I would just continually retort something like ‘you do you’, 10 mins later say ‘As I said, you do you’.

Or ‘well everyone’s different Janet’ and keep saying it over and over again.

Thank you for that sketch it's wonderful ! Start playing it op !
Say I've just seen this is so funny and play it

Next time they start you can joke with them ...plastic bag seating ?? I had to sit on hot coals

They sound mental. Im
surprised they created a decent DH for you. Just chuckle and say “it’s ok MIL, I wasn’t put on this earth to suffer. I’ll get 90 years if I’m lucky and I’ll do it in comfort thanks. You do you”

Buy her a new carrier bag for Christmas to sit on whilst she’s camping in the pissing rain.