Are you close to your MIL?

[arlequin]

I'm a mum of 2 boys who are absolutely amazing. I really hope I can continue to be really close to their families if and when they grow up and meet someone.
Are you close to your MIL? I am close with mine although she lives far away so we don't see her as often as we'd like.

Don’t know about ‘close’ (I mean we’re not close like close friends) but we have a very good relationship and I like her a lot!

I miss the woman who was my DMiL every day. She died last year but she's been gone 10 years.
I'm lucky, I also have a good relationship with my DM.

Mine is ice cold. Ten minutes twice a year is enough for her. She is however self sufficient in her life so she is no bother to me.

I understand what you are asking this question OP, I've thought about asking this myself. I am also the mum of two amazing little boys, but in the past I have had people say 'oh you lose boys to their wives' etc, which did get me down a bit but I've decided to try not to worry about something that might not happen for another 25 years! (Boys are 5 and 7) However, i do still notice that a lot of my friends don't seem to get on well with their MIL. My MIL lives around the corner, and she can be a bit fussy at times, but overall we get on well.

I don't want to be the MIL that loses her boys to a wife that I don't get along with, and whose own mother will always take priority. Fingers crossed that doesn't happen!

I’m expecting a boy soon & it has crossed my mind re will I have a close relationship with my future DIL one day (totally appreciate it’s not for the DIL to facilitate but if you can’t stand each other it does make a difference!!).

My MIL was really hard work for the first 10 years of our relationship - so passive aggressive and very keen to keep her little family unit in place and not open it up. It made it really tricky and meant for things like our wedding she wasn’t really included on the planning as she never had anything nice to say about it. However it all came to a head eventually & now we both make a big effort with each other especially now that a Grandchild is on the way.

So I wouldn’t say we are really close but equally we see her regularly and I know she’ll be an amazing Granny.

One thing she has taught me is how not to be a MiL so I hope I can use my experience and be much more welcome to any future DIL I might have!!

The responses do not feel me with much hope 🤣

The clashing of wives and their husband's mums is seen time and time again. What does it boil down to though? How can the reason simply be that all these MILs are just awful and toxic?

No

I really hate that idea that you lose boys to their wives. You don't. Either you have a son who will bother or you don't. That comes down to how you raise him (expectation he will maintain the relationship and not expect his wife to do it for him) and whether his family find you good company or difficult.

I have two sons and a son in law. I don't view a potential DIL as competition. She's his wife. I will never be that. I am his mother. She will never be that. There's room for both of us! Yes, their wife should be #1 woman in their life just as I expect my daughter's husband to be #1 in her life. That's what happens when children grow up. It's not a loss, it's a change and natural life progression. If you're lucky, your child in law will enrich your life.

Even if you have nothing in commmon, most people are willing to have at least a polite relationship if you are polite to them.

@ienjoyeatingcake ha I was thinking this !! I wonder if it’s because we’ve all grown up with the stupid saying around a son is only a son until he takes a wife. So before DIL is even on the scene, they are already framed as the one who will take DS away from the family - so there’s an underlying competitiveness (probably without even being concious of it) ? And then MIL over compensates ? I know my MIL still tries to baby my husband which I find so annoying (‘ohh you look skinny are you not being fed enough’ etc) whereas my parents respect that I’m an adult now ?

@ienjoyeatingcake in my case MIL and to a lesser extent FIL are just not very nice people. My MIL says the nastiest things behind her friends back, only likes the son she can control, so it’s hardly a surprise she’s a bitch to her DIL too.

Every other guy I dated before him had LOVELY mums that I would have been lucky to be the daughter in law of. I think there is a 50/50 thing going on. 50% are just unpleasant people to begin with so stands to reason they are nightmare MILs and then the other 50% were normal then become unhinged when grandchildren came into the mix.

Sadly no :( I really tried, to the point of moving closer to DH's parents. But the digs were unbelievable and unrelenting, and I had a general sense of having no support in my new country and being actively left out of things - for example, she had coffee up the road with my SIL and BIL's girlfriend. A nice catch up between the three of them, five minutes away from where I lived, and not a thought to invite me but it was dropped into conversation later in the day. That sort of thing would happen often alongside digs when we did spend time together, or just not bothering to make conversation with me at all.

After two years DH and I moved back to where we met and where we feel much happier. This is, of course, my fault and they've said horrible things but seem to expect me to swallow it all as usual and continue being chatty and happy with them.

I feel very sad about it all and wish things could be different but I'm not sure how they will be. I'll keep hoping for better though, while not allowing myself to be trodden on anymore.

There’s no mystery. You’re thrown into a ‘family” situation with people who aren’t your family, and whom you often wouldn’t give the time of day to unless for the accident of who you happened to marry. You may have equally maddening family members in your own family, but often you’ve learned to accommodate those over time and from long affection/duty, none of which pertains to ILs. Your spouse/partner will have a different set of relationships with his parents, and a different set of accommodations, which you may not like.

Add in gendered expectations about DIL’s ‘managing’ family relationships, and ‘controlling access’ to grandchildren, and you have a fruitfully complicated situation.

Eg. I ended up having to speak extremely plainly to my MIL who kept getting cross about me not calling her back about some family party planning stuff, and tell her I wasn’t DH’s social secretary, I had a demanding professional job, like him, and that, like him, I didn’t give a thought to whether I was going to Uncle Paul’s barbecue or whether DS needed new shoes between 9 and 6, Monday to Friday because I was on work mode.

I don’t think there was any malice, particularly. It’s just that MIL never worked, neither of her daughters worked after marriage, and she seems to have thought that marriage and a child in my case meant I must be magically available for shopping and bingo on a weekday, because in her head mothers don’t work. So she sort of ‘unsaw’ my career.

I get on so well with my MiL my DH jokes she loves me more than him and if we ever divorced she'd probably be on my side. I do tell DH he should ring her more often. She often rings me and I ring her.

Not at all. Second marriage for us both and we have been together 7 years - I have seen MIL less than 10 times during that period. They live around 40 miles from us and I work alt weekends and DH long weekday hours so he always goes to visit them when I am at work. She is ok, not a particular warm person and has never gone out of her way to visit DH over the years but she is certainly not offensive.

My MiL took on my DC from first marriage as her own DGC. She has always treated them equally to her own DGC. She's left them equal amounts of money in her will too. As adults now my DS's go to visit her more frequently than her biological GC.

Nope. She's a total narc. I tolerate visiting for a couple of days once or twice a year but that's it. My husband, of course, visits much more frequently.

Before I met my husband I had been in a LTR since my late teens. My ex-partner's mother (and father) was lovely and we'd chat a lot. Losing that friendship was very sad (far, far sadder than splitting with the ex 🤣).

I'm cordial and friendly with mine and she with me. My dp and my children adore her, and she's a fantastic grandmother. She is a nice person, but are different generations (obviously), different educational level, from different social classes, different politics, different interests-different practically everything. And crucially, unlike dp and the children, we have no shared history.

I wasn't close to my XMiL - we had nothing in common. She was very much of the opinion that women shouldn't work and should do everything for their husband and sons. Even when her husband ended up in prison she refused to get a job so they lived in extreme poverty. Later on we were almost on our knees financially because the 3 sons decided to buy her house for her at a time when mortgages were at their most expensive.

My current MiL is lovely - lots in common as we were both teachers and seem to like the same things in life. Sadly she now has dementia so there are only glimpses of her former self.

Yup. I love her. She's brilliantly loopy and funny and is such a positive light-hearted person.

Not really, she’s closer to her own daughter and I’m not really included in much even though I’d like to be.

No, I can’t stand her.
I went into it wanting a relationship with her, but she’s the type who doesn’t like women coming into the family so criticises, humiliates and presses buttons to put women off the family. Her adult daughters do the same when their sons get girlfriends. They are very strange people! We are extremely LC with them.

Ha, my aunt and cousins are like this! Any girlfriends get taken the piss out of and set up firmly as outsiders – ‘snooty and full of herself’ (just nice and well mannered), ‘uptight and unfunny’ (just normal and unremarkable and possibly a bit on edge round them), etc etc!

It sounds like they are the same people - this is exactly what they do!

I wasn't close to mine. She's dead now.

She was controlling and obsessed with the dcs because her own life was just empty and she refused to develop any interests of her own.

My MIL is quiet and meek but a little cold at the same time. We get on well and have a nice friendly formal relationship but I always felt a little kept at arms length. She is like this with everyone though. She likes me and I like her well enough but that's it. She always kept her relationship with GCs quite formal too, we visit, she admires them etc. She has had poor health in last 10 years but even before that she never took the kids somewhere or popped in or invited us to stuff although we live really near. It frustrated me a lot over the years. FiL is a lovely man and a great Grandad.