What is it about the MIL?

[SuckingDownDarjeeling]

It's way past my bedtime and I'm pondering life's mysteries.

What is it about the MIL that means that she is almost always hated? Please note, I say almost - I'm very aware that some people have excellent relationships with their ILs.

When I'm reading threads, the reasons for people disliking their MIL are all over the shop. Too bossy, or too timid. Too interfering, or too relaxed. Too nosey, or too disengaged. There's never a common theme (at least that I've seen).

So that leaves psychology and human nature. Why do you think such a large proportion of humanity conflict with their MILs. Surely a lot of MNers on here are MILs themselves, and I'm pretty sure most of them don't feel hated by their child's partner, or there'd be a lot more threads about it. Is that blissful ignorance? Is it some kind of territorial battle that we're wired to fight?

What's the deal?

You've got two women with intense though differing interest in the same man. That might be the only thing they have in common. It's not always going to click well.

I’ve been a MiL for a long time. I have never offered advice, unless I’ve been asked for my opinion. My son and DiL are adults, make their own decisions for themselves and their children. I love them both and want them only to be happy and healthy. My DiL is in the same profession that I was and she is a truly lovely person.

There have occasionally been situations with their children when I have disagreed with their course of action, but it isn’t my business to say anything and certainly not to criticise.

I don't know. I think the data is skewed on here though as people rarely come on to talk about their perfectly ordinary and pleasant relationships with their in laws, but often to talk about the problematic ones.

My dm got on better with her mil than her own mother (because she was objectively a much nicer person who had never hurt her, unlike her dm, who was less pleasant and has hurt her deeply).

My mil didn't get on with me despite my best efforts, because no one is good enough for either of her children in her eyes. Dp very firmly put her in her place and we have a pretty good (though certainly not perfect) relationship now.

We are not best friends but there is no real bad feeling anymore and we are perfectly civil and pleasant to each other.

What strikes me though is not so much the universal hatred for mils, but the stark dichotomy. They seem to either be lovely or awful with very little in between.

I'm not convinced the data is that skewed. Most of my friends in real life aren't crazy about their PILs either!

I can’t stand my MIL.
She’s a manipulative control freak who has treated both me and DH appallingly

We have nothing in common and when we got married, she addressed my Xmas presents to 'my new daughter' which I didn't like at all.
I think because she has no DDs, she thought I'd want to do the stuff she likes, like shopping/entertaining etc which I definitely don't!

I can't speak to her overall manipulative behaviour etc, but to be honest, I think this is a bit harsh. She obviously wanted you to be friends and wanted to welcome you. Clearly you don't have the same interests and being called her daughter offended you. But others may have liked that.

I do think MILs are often attacked for things that another woman would not be.

@SpaceOP, my relationship with my own mother wasn't great at the time (all good now ) and I did indeed resent her presumptions.

Absolutely adored my MIL
And died way way too soon .. one of the greatest women I have ever had the privilege to meet... which makes it hard to identify with all the MIL haters .. (btw I divorced her son, but NOTHING about her EVER changed.. might be because divorce/childcare was super amicable...

one of the greatest women I have ever had the privilege to meet... which makes it hard to identify with all the MIL haters..
I’m the opposite.
Mine is one of the worst women I have ever had the misfortune to meet.
Not all the time, but then no one is evil 24/7..
I couldn’t go into detail about all the things she’s said over the years as it’d be too outing.
She threatened to stab my DH once.
Horrid woman.

I think a lot of women by nature see it as their role to correct and criticize other women. Men just seem to let each other get on with it.

So when a mother corrects her daughter, depending on their relationship, she will either have learned to put up with it, or she will know how to put the dm back in her place.

With a mil, we don't have the many years of experience and tolerance. But the mil thinks she has free range because we are married to her precious son and raising her precious grandchildren.

My mil is highly critical. She's been a school teacher by profession, and I imagine the extra strict kind. I'm younger than some of her previous students, so she probably sees me no different. She is not able to switch that off no matter how much my dh picks her up on it. She probably also took a lot of shit off her own mil, and sees this as some kind of pecking order.

I think as women continue to gain equality and move away from the traditional house wife role, there is bound to be even more friction. While my mil worked, she was also responsible for the housework and child rearing and a teacher was one of the few careers available to her. Nowadays women have more options and are used to determining their own life path. The criticism of our choices becomes more personal. Mils don't always understand the stresses of modern life and because their time to choose has been and gone, or never existed in the first place, they have found a good place to vent their frustrations, in a dil.

I think, if you’re close to your own mum, it can be really hard to suddenly have another ‘mum’ on the scene getting involved in the same way yours does and it takes a while to learn how to get on.
Also, you’re forced to have a relationship with someone you might not know very well, and wouldn’t ever have met if not for your partner, and now they are going to be involved in the best and worst moments of your life. Even if you get on it can be difficult.

I really don’t like mine. I tried. I tried really hard, but she’s just made it so bloody difficult. I’ve always got on brilliantly with the mums of my former partners so it came as a bit of a surprise to realise my mil actively dislikes me. We’ve never had a falling out, but she’ll stop talking when I walk into the room and it gets so awkward that I feel obliged to leave again. She’s said things that have been repeated or overheard. She knows nothing about me. She’s got no idea when my birthday is or what my surname is and only a vague idea of what I do for a living. She’s got no daughters and my DM couldn’t go to anything with me when we were getting married so I invited her and tried to tell her our plans but she was always ‘busy’ and didn’t even pretend to like anything we’d chosen. She had no interest in meeting any of my family at our wedding; she doesn’t even know my mum’s name. I lost a close family member days before one visit and she never even mentioned it. She’s never visited our home in all the years we’ve lived together. She’s just not interested. It’s too late now; I’ve lost interest and she gets nothing more than politeness, (and only because I don’t care enough about her opinion to make things awkward for my DH) but I’m not sure what else I could have done. I’m seven years older than DH and she had him very young, so there’s not really that parent/child age gap between us. FiL is lovely though, so I just talk to him instead.

My DH’s step mum, however, could not have been more wonderful. She was the perfect mil, I loved her dearly and miss her greatly.

I quite liked my MIL and we rubbed along well enough.

She could be prickly though and prone to going into moods for no clear reason. If she didn't like what she got for Christmas or birthday she would sulk, and she was notoriously tricky to buy for.

She also had a clear favourite out of her three children and it wasn't DH. It was his total arse of a younger brother, who is an alcoholic. However, according to MIL younger brother could do no wrong and the sun shone out of his arse.

It certainly caused tensions and there were times when we had to minimise contact.

I tried so hard with my MIL. When DH were engaged I'd write to her/ email her regularly - never getting replies (I later discovered that she deleted my emails without reading them.) DH and I have known each other since we were teenagers, and were 30 when we got married, and yet still she told my parents she thought it wouldn't last - and indeed all her family. There was a family wedding shortly before ours and she told them not to include me in any of the photos. She still excludes me from family photos to this day - DH and I have been married 12 years. Our son was diagnosed with cancer when he was 6, and she never got in touch with me about it to ask, mother-to-mother, if I was okay etc., and it took her 5 months to come and see us (we were in hospital, I couldn't possibly take him to her, which she complained about. Oh and she's perfectly fit, she went on holiday 4 times in between his diagnosis and coming to visit him. Meanwhile she's put photographs of "my brave grandson" on Facebook etc.) I also heard nothing from her when my grandparents died etc. Even though she has very firm ideas about letters of condolence (she checks that I've written them to others when, eg, her brother's wife died.) I've now got to a point where I have stopped making an effort. It just seems pointless. Fortunately (for me) we barely ever see her or FIL, but that is sad for my DCs. I always imagined having a close relationship with them. When we do see her though, she does stuff to deliberately irritate/ upset me - and she does it on purpose, she'll tell me about how her MIL used to do exactly what she's doing and how it made her hate her MIL. Honestly she's just exhausting. None of my fellow brothers in law/ sisters in law will go and see her anymore - they leave her children to go alone - and I'm seriously considering doing the same, and would if she weren't sometimes so mean to the DCs to the point where I need to be there for emotional support (she's not always mean - just occasionally. And they love her because she's their Grannie and they want to see her.)

I am a mostly open and tolerant person except then I got pregnant and the idea of this woman with different values to me trying to influence my baby repulsed me. I think it’s instinctual.

This. But also, my MIL is a twat.

It's the favouritism for SIL and her GC that annoys me. Not obvious, but I've been very aware of the comments and discrete discrepancies in treatment for many years.

My issue with my mil is that she comes across as sweet and lovely and timid, but she’s highly manipulative and often attempts to leave me out of invitations to family gatherings and holidays. Finally got my husband to see that his wife and children come first and blindly agreeing to whatever his mom wants is just not normal.
We have a superficial relationship and nothing more.

Actually all my issues with MIL stemmed from the idea we were in competition.
DH went home after uni and was very helpful. Went to shops, fixed things, drove her places, kept her company when FIL was out. She was gutted when he moved away.
She genuinely thought this scenario would happen again when FIL died and she was really annoyed DH wouldn’t leave me and DC and his job, to live with her. She really thought this was reasonable.
Also when DH went home to visit he would help her out and she decided that I did nothing and it was all DH. That I was massively lazy. In fact he does very little at home (I won’t eat his cooking anyway).
She would have been much happier if he’d stayed single.

Until Mumsnet I never realised how difficult some mother-in-law / daughter-in-law relationships could be.

My mother in law seems to have been a very unusual woman.

My husband and his first wife broke up in their twenties, over 40 years ago. My MIL considered the ex-wife her daughter. They stayed in contact for the rest of their lives - regularly writing long letters to each other - and MIL became an honorary grandmother and great grandmother to her many children and grandchildren who were no blood relations.

She welcomed me as a daughter in the same way (some years after my husband's divorce). Everything I did was perfect: in the nearly 30 years I knew her before she died she never criticised anything I did. Any small kindness was treated as if it were the most generous and unexpected gift. She was very different from my own mother who was often critical and demanding!

I don't have sons so will never have the opportunity to 'pay it back' but (so far at least) have always had positive relationships with my children's boyfriends.