DM and small town gossip

[HeyMonkey]

Disclaimer: yes I'm sure when my mum is no longer here I would give anything to have her back waffling utter shite at me etc etc, before those posters jump on.

My DM has a heart of gold and is a thoroughly nice person. But Jesus Christ she talks complete shite at us for hours. Every anecdote:

A) She has told us before
B) Is about people we have never met.
C) Is completely inconsequential I.e is a story about a stranger who has a neighbor that has a niece who went to my school and is now working in the co-op where Woolworths used to be.

I just can't. She's a nice person, but WHY do I need to hear these Shakespearean monologues that have no point or ending.

Fedup My MIL is similar. I could have written your post. We hear many details of other people’s grandchildren while her own sit in silence. I’ve also wondered if she speaks about them but as she never troubled herself getting to know them, I can’t see how she can. I thinks it’s possible she transfers her own thoughts about what they might do in their lives and speaks of them that way. I’ve noticed we might say something like one is interested in art and straight away that will ‘remind her’ of the time she was living in another house and the cousin of the man two houses away was interested in yoga!

I’ve given up trying to say anything. One day I actually didn’t say ANYTHING for two hours other than ‘yes’ and ‘really’ and she didn’t notice!

DH visits and reads the papers. I used tell him it was rude and to engage but there isn’t any need it point. She seems happier to have an audience instead of a conversation.

Yes Doyou I bet that’s exactly what she does. It’s all just fodder, no real engagement. It’s to demonstrate their status in the world. Very sad.

I used to visit the elderly in their homes as part of my work and I’d wonder about their families. Just read threads like this and there’s no mystery at all.

doyoureally are you me? My DH does exactly the same and I also used to think it a bit off - now I sympathise! I can have an entire conversation with DM sometimes that consists of me going ‘hm, yes, oh!, no, hm’.

DDIJ. I know I shouldn’t but that made me burst out laughing 🤣🤣🤣

My MIL and FIL do this, ideally if we’re sat at the dinner table say, and one is talking, the other will wait for a pause and start the same story to Either me or husband that has happened to glance at them, then you get to hear the same story but with an echo.

My own parents just don’t speak. It’s one extreme to the other! Neither set could tell you what I do for a job etc .

@caperplips, your post so exactly describes my mother’s conversations!

I have to say though when it comes to meandering, repetitive, never-ending monologues about the most incredibly trivial shit you can imagine, it isn’t an age thing. I have a colleague of around 40 who can talk non-stop for 20 minutes about how busy Clarks was when she walked past at lunchtime. She doesn’t impart any new information after the first sentence, just rephrases and repeats. Endless mild speculation about the possible reasons a shop she had no intention of visiting was busy. When in fact she had come up with a perfectly plausible reason in her second sentence.
Unfortunately I have no patience and have started hiding from her.

Her favourite ending is "and they were all killed."

My dad will watch old TV series and I’m sure it’s so he can say “he’s dead” loads of times!

Jeez. We all have the same mother

My mother's like this, but it's as much as she likes to be in charge of passing on information as anything else. Woe betide if I might hear from somoene else, and if I'd heard something from FB that's a disaster!

I had to recently stop her from telling good friends of mine my pregnancy news. I'll tell them when I'm good and ready. She's not impressed.

I also moaned here not long ago about the fact she rang me specifically to tell me that someone who'd been a few years below me at school, who I've not seen for 20 years or so, had a miscarriage. There was no need for me to know but she needed to feel important by passing the information on.

Any stories which start with a question along the lines of "You remember X, who used to go to school with your much older sibling and who you last saw when you were 8, thirty years ago" get paused by the answer "No." Sometimes it encourages her to just get to the punchline, but not always.

DM recently nonplussed at my not remembering someone who I worked out would have been a year above me in junior school, and whom I have not seen since....45 years ago. Said person now works for a local charity. I mean, do you think I should worry about my amnesia?

In vain do I protest my bandwidth is currently fully occupied with my own life, work, home etc.

My DM does this. And yes, her world has become smaller in recent years, but she was never someone I could talk to about the important things in life. She was never approachable about feelings and boyfriends and relationships.

Her reaction when a dear friend of mine suddenly died at the age of 30: “oh dear, never mind.” And yet I’m expected to care about the hairdresser’s cousin’s neighbour’s knee operation.

No, I think there are various stratum of conversationalists;

1. Grumpy mon-syllabic non-conformists (none in my family - but i’ve Met a few).
2. The above category who make an effort when prompted or in out of necessity in a work scenario (like my DH and DS2)
3. People who can be pleasantly chatty and extrovert for a few hours and then get bored of the company and want to go home (like me, DS1)
4. Sociable, chatty people who can be in other’s company for several days without getting annoyed/running out of conversation. (DM)
5. People who feel the need to talk in every situation, comment on everything, talk incessantly about everything and anything (MIL and DD).

I find it difficult as DD is so chatty, but I find it quite tiring.....

kalinkafoxtrot45 - similar. A good friend of mine committed suicide when I was about 20. I didn't find out until a few months later and when I got back to my mum's I burst into tears. It had been many years since I'd done that.

About a year later she referred to 'that man who died'. It probably doesn't sound that bad, but it was so uncaring. Yet I'm supposed to pour out the sympathy on hearing that her friend's next door neighbour's cousin has a slight cold!

After my first relationship ended (had been a ten-year relationship) - days later DM observed me looking pensive and enquired if ‘something had happened’. Genuinely, she is lovely in most respects!

H2OH20Everywhere It’s awful, isn’t it? So dismissive. I had more sympathy from my crappy ex, and from my boss, who gave me time off for the funeral. My parents never once mentioned it again. I really do think it is intimacy avoidance, we do it very well in our family.

Ive just started shouting I dont care about this as soon as DM starts on a witter about a fucking blackbird in the garden.

This was exactly like my mum. Now she's gone I'd give anything for that inane chat.

kalinkafoxtrot45 - it is awful. The funny thing is I don't think she can understand why I'm so dismissive of her feelings now, nor why I never tell her anything.

As PP have said, one day I’ll almost certainly long for another chance to say ‘yes, mum, I KNOW’ or ‘you’ve told me that’ (through gritted teeth). Another fave of hers is asking if I have seen or heard some programme or other and when I confirm that I have proceeds to tell me about it in great detail 😂

Doh ‘proceeding’ that should be.

Another fave of hers is asking if I have seen or heard some programme or other and when I confirm that I have proceeds to tell me about it in great detail

Mine asks if we've seen a programme. We say no, it's not our thing, not interested in that type of show etc. Then she gives a real time narrative of what happened.

Or we'll say 'not seen it yet. We've recorded it. Don't tell us anything'. So she starts telling us important plot parts.

I've posted at length under different user names about my Mum on similar threads.
She can be generous, funny and the number one person to go to in a crisis but my god, 90% of the time she is as described by PP's.

I have a niche, interesting job that most people can't wait to ask me about. She doesn't ask me. She hardly knows what is going on in my life because she doesn't ask so I don't volunteer much.

A close colleague is off work at the moment with an illness. She asks how my colleague is, she never asks how I am.

For example, last year I went on a work trip to an amazing city in Europe. I was away for 4 days.
She asked me if I had a good time and before I could talk to her about it she went into a 4 day download of what I had missed. Which was mainly shite. Then it was all repeated.

My PILs are like this and have been for 20 years. We live a long distance away and see them only two or three times a year. They monologue for literally hours ignoring their grandchildren and us. We hear endless detail about the hairdresser's daughter's neighbour's baby and how he's a child genius and could pick up a raisin at 3 days old blah blah. But engage with their OWN GRANDCHILDREN?? Who are sitting in front of them right now. Who they see for just a very few days a year. What they're doing, what they're interested in....not a chance. If anyone manages to break the monologue with a comment about their own lives it's barely acknowledged with a grunt or an eyebrow raise and off they go again.

I don't get it. I don't understand why they aren't interested in their own families, their own children and grandchildren. They obviously aren't monologueing at the hairdresser because she's been telling them all about her daughter's neighbour's baby.

And if they are talking to the hairdresser it's certainly not about their own GCs because they know nothing about them! Because they don't ask, they don't pause long enough for anyone else to get a word in and if by some miracle I manage to impart some tiny nugget of information it's batted off. DH doesn't even try. He goes and sits somewhere else and will often fall asleep 'after the long drive' leaving me at the dinner table to endure the torture.

It saddens me hugely because as a result the DCs, now grown up, have no relationship with the PILs. They are very good and will still come with us to visit them but they sit politely in silence while the monologueing goes on as it has done since they were toddlers. I feel very sad about it.