MIL never talks about proper things- just gossip and rubbish. Is this a thing?!

[Napqueen1234]

I’ve never met anyone like my MIL for chatting rubbish. I’ve met gossipers, people who talk about themselves constantly. But she almost talks about nothing. Case in point- today met for a walk in the park. My DH has just taken on a few new big jobs, DC1 about to start preschool and finishing nursery, DC2 6 months and changing every day. This week we had to isolate due to covid risk and go to A&E (she vaguely knew about these things). She asked nothing about any of them- instead talked for 40 minutes about a random friends caravan (no idea who they are) and her partners daughter. She loves seeing the DC but never texts to ask about them etc (I end up sending updates and pics as I feel we ought to keep her in the loop). It’s not like she’s selfish as she doesn’t talk about her, for reference she doesn’t do much has had the same job 30 years, doesn’t really socialise or have hobbies.

Would you do or say something? Sometimes I feel like interrupting her stories with ‘who the hell are these people I have absolutely no interest in can we talk about something else?!’. If I try to start conversations she just doesn’t engage and changes the subject back to something incredibly boring and unimportant. Does anyone else know anyone that does this?!

My MIL does this too. It annoys me.

My mil is the voice of doom. We get random texts and calls about random people ie. someone who lived on the same street's auntie's cousins friend and their illness. Or someone sil went to school with 30years ago who's parent has died.
She also 'knows' people who have had coronavirus twice and talks about neighbours' friends friends who have had heart attacks at 20yo or strokes.
It gets me down. I live with health anxiety and listening to her is like a personal torture.

Haha my grandma was like this, I always knew all the ins and outs of Dorothy-down-the-street’s kitchen conversion and Mavis’ grandson’s diabetes diagnosis

Same as my MIL. Talks about her friends wonderful children and their perfect wives and Andrew Marr plus lots of bollocks about Covid she has 'learned' on YouTube. I need to get better at zoning out.

My mum is a bit like this. She's not excessively talkative, but all her conversations revolve around Mrs Jennings' overgrown hedge (and how could she not know how bad it looks when she sees it every day?) or Mrs Smith's son who never phones etc. She tells the same 'stories' in endless rotation to the point where I could recite them word for word.

She has Alzheimer's now, so it has been ramped up somewhat and I don't have the luxury of being irritated anymore! But she was like this since I was a child. Any time there was a conversation about something a bit more intellectual, even a news story, she would sit there looking dejected as if we were ignoring her. In fact, there were times when she looked at me as if she couldn't believe I had opinions on stuff, like I was an alien species. Then, as soon as there was a gap in the conversation, she would point at someone on TV and loudly insist we all look at how short/fat/badly dressed they were.

Maybe I have read your opening post wrongly but it seems that you only wanted to talk about your family and kids and what had been happening in their lives, which is lovely but there needs to be room for subjects that your MIL might find as interesting to chat back about , perhaps your MIL wanted to talk about a caravan as to her it seemed like a lovely idea for a holiday but didn't manage to get to the point , perhaps she likes her partners daughter and wanted to reciprocate your own family chat with her family chat including the 'step' daughter , sorry but it really sounds like she can't get anything right in your eyes

"Yammer man"

I'm 48, dd2 is 13, today I caught her arranging her face into a polite expression while I told a tale about the cost of sesame oil on Amazon .....

At least your DD arranges her face politely. Mine just glazes over.

I mean... i was talking about how i wished i had bought that oyster shucker yesterday when it was only £4.99 but did not feel I could justify it as an impulse purchase. How could any 10 year old boy not be interested?

My mum is like this. My husband calls her the "wall of noise". If she's in a car she kind of says what she sees as she goes along (like Catchphrase), it's hard to imitate. There's X restaurant, there's a big tree, there's some cows, there's the hairdressers (cue long story about her hairdresser's sister's child). She also does this while watching telly (look at that wallpaper, that's nice, look at her blouse, her daughter died in a speedboat accident).

All phone calls have to include details of what she had for dinner, how much of it she ate, and who has died plus full details of their family circumstances.

It's exhausting listening to her.

She is interested in her grandchild and does ask about what we've been up to but usually gets distracted goes off on a tangent before I've finished telling her.

I had an uncle like this who would talk about changes that had been made to the no. 26 bus route. And did you know the No. 21 used to go past the Belvedere pub until 1984. And the shop on the corner of the high street used to be a record store before it was a clothes shop. So not even nonsense about people, just things.

Oh god yes my parents do this. There are certain things I cannot mention in their presence as I know that they will without doubt tell a specific story that I have heard 30million times already.
They don’t ask many questions about what we’ve been doing but instead regale us on the details of the lives of people we’ve barely met.
I worry that the same will happen to me when I get older.

My dad has a set of topics that he never deviates from- and my MIL was the same.FIL and my mum were more on the ball and could maintain a conversation about anything.It seemed to come from their limited social life - my mum and FIL were the outgoing ones out of both sets of parents.
I expect most of the posters and myself will eventually morph into doing the same thing in conversations 😂

This thread is making me laugh out loud! Thank you OP! 😂

@Zaphodsotherhead, your post reminded me of the time I was walking our dog in a very wooded part of the park (as I thought) quite alone, and talking my usual baby-talk to the dog - ‘Mummy love oo!’ etc. - only to hear a sudden snort from above - lo, there were 2 blokes sitting up a big tree, pissing themselves laughing! 😂

OMG! I think this could be me! I do ask questions and listen to the answers and I do show an interest but I then twitter on about stuff that I find interesting but probably isn't. What's the answer? Do I spend all the time listening to y'all wittering on about your kids and your jobs and world politics or am I allowed to mention the price of pork scratchings? Social conversation is a minefield that's for sure and reminds me of a conversation I had at a bus stop yesterday......

Not mil but I have a friend who does this drives me round the bend, she's in her forties.

My mum was like this. My current MIL is like this.

I miss my exMIL who was bloody amazing, and who I could chat to for hours.

I too am too exhausted to go into the daily monotony of mindless and irreverent crap that I am expected to listen to and oh yes agree with,for having ones own opinion is neither allowed or tolerated! I stand side by side with you all ladies! I can have an hours worth of phone call and utter only two sentences from start to finish"hi how are you? and ok love you catch you later...

Have a friend like this, can go an hour and half on the phone and I am lucky to get a couple of sentences in. Once she started with at least 25 min description of her DDs routine for bedtime (it needed 5 sentences, tops not fucking war and peace).

If she has a new fridge delivered or a workman in you can guarantee you'll get at least an hour 'Story from Balamory' as I call it. By the end I will know every minute detail of what took place, how many sisters the electrician has, where he lives and who is milkman is. FFS I will put the phone down and think 'well I didn't get chance to mention xy or z pretty important or interesting thing.

Oh and she always thinks I want to know the updates on people I worked with 20 years ago. I've not seen them for 20 years, I'm not interested!