about DH 40th birthday photo album in which I don't appear...?

[Mothproof]

Regular, but have namechanged for my first AIBU, in case the Mn judgement is that I am being unbelievably petty. This is long, as I'm still a bit stunned, but to sum up, AIBU to be hurt and baffled by a 40th birthday photo album of my DH's life, in which I am almost entirely absent?

My DH turned 40 recently, and when his parents came to visit, his mother produced a big photo album she had had professionally made up (engraved leather cover, glossy paper etc) of montages of photos from my DH's life. (They've done similar for significant birthdays of all of the family.)

My MiL showed it to me first before giving it to DH, as he was at work - I thought it was a lovely idea, and said so. So there we were sitting on the sofa, leafing through the album, and I'm cooing over his baby photos and his cub scout award photos etc and as we got towards the student years - which is when DH and I got together, now over 20 years ago - I made a joky remark about being apprehensive about what I was going to look like when I started appearing in the photos, as I had this mad head of henna'ed hair as a student and some horrifying paisley shirts.

So I was mildly relieved not to see myself in the first few pages of student photos, but then thought it was odd I wasn't in any of the graduation photos, as we had been together two years by then, graduated in the same ceremony, and his family knew me well. It went out of my head fairly quickly, though, until I gradually realised I wasn't in any of the photos - not in our MA conferring (again, was in the same graduating ceremony), not at his 21st birthday, not at his PhD conferring, not at family weddings, PiLs wedding anniversary party, not in snaps from two holidays we took with PiL, not in ones from a ski holiday we took with friends, where the only photos are of him solo or with the other two.

It got totally surreal - I was honestly wondering whether I only imagined I had been there on all these occasions! I featured in five group shots - student class photos, a survivors' ball photo etc, and the third last page of the album consisted of three photos of us as a couple, all - oddly - from about eighteen or nineteen years ago.

But, as we had a baby last spring, our first, I thought I would surely feature there - no. There is a lovely photo of DH snuggling our newborn DS in hosiptal, four photos of DH and DS, and a couple of DS solo. End of album.

At this point, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, and said something light-hearted like 'Oh, it looks as if DH had a baby by himself', but MiL clearly didn't get what I meant.

AIBU to be so hurt at appearing in 8 photos out of 400 plus, especially not in any of the baby photos? I thought I had a reasonably good relationship with MiL, assuming it was she who collected the photos (it's not my gentle, passive, FiL's kind of thing), and I have been her DS's partner, latterly wife, for 20 years, and am the mother of her youngest grandchild. Now I can't stop wondering whether this is malicious (I've always worked to maintain a cordial relationship, but we're very different people, and she has vocally disapproved of our decision to not have a big wedding and baptise our baby) or whether it simply didn't occur to her that I was an important figure in her DS's life, because I hadn't done what her other DiLs do, which is marry young and have a large family in their twenties.

I keep imagining her going through the hundreds of photos of family occasions and choosing the ones I'm not in. Again, how do you overlook a newborn baby's mother, even if the baby is the child of your adored youngest DS?

I'll never bring it up, but AIBU or being stupidly over-sensitive? Or can you think of any other explanation?

[1charlie1]

Very unkind. My MIL would do something like this, with absolute malice aforethought. Hilariously, last Christmas 'our' card (and small gift cheque) came adressed only to DH - the greeting inside as well! Despite DH rolling his eyes and saying, 'Sorry, but you know how she is', I binned the card and insisted he call her and tell her it was not on. He duly did so, she blustered and said he was throwing her gift back in her face. He agreed that he was, as it was given in spite. She then tried to argue that she adresses his DB's card similarly (he is also married). Fine, my DH said, I will call him and ask him if that is so. She honestly couldn't believe he was finally calling her on her crap. Amazingly, since then, she has been much less nasty to both of us!

Your MIL is probably relying on the fact that the entire family enable her poor behaviour by not saying anything to her about her unpleasantness. She might not even realise just how awful her behaviour appears to those outside her family, as everyone around her has been trained to 'normalise' it.

I would select a few lovely photos of you and your DH, and your DS , and get DH to send them to her with a little note from him to the effect that he feels very sad that obviously his DM does not have any photos of you - his DW, his life partner, the mother of his DS - in her collection, and how important it is to him to rectify the situation.

[youfhearted]

have a professional photo made of you and dh and dc and framed and give them a copy, nay, put in on their wall yourself!

[shesariver]

why does that matter though? The present isnt about her its about him

Well no-one lives in isolation do they - I happen to think the person you choose to spend your life with and the other parent to your child is a pretty big part of someones life, and yes whats wrong with acknowledging this?! Especially since there seems to be pictures of plenty other people in the album.

[Spero]

I really wouldn't descend into tit for tat photo collections - if it was malicious, she won't care and you are just stoking the flames of family resentment. If she was careless she will be hurt and confused.

Really, why bother? Is the barometer of your relationship set by what this woman thinks of you? Surely you have more faith and love in your relationship than that.

[HairyHandedTrucker]

YANBU, but if you haven't got it in you to confront her I feel you need to be incredibly passive aggressive and make a book of "family" and not have any of her in them

[pigletmania]

Yanbu it might have something to do with her not being invited to your wedding and it not being a catholic one like she hoped. I would Mae up a couple of pages of you and dh on your wedding day and with the dcs, make sure tey match te album and stick them in. Next time MIL comes round say oh dh loved the album but had to make some modifications take a look . Next time it's her birthday, send er a moinpig or vista ring card of you and dh and the children. Hopefully she will get te hint in a subtle way

[50shadesofmeh]

Are you a photo dodger? I always avoid photos so its no big surprise to me there are hardly any that exist, otherwise that's pretty mean of her.

[HairyHandedTrucker]

why does that matter though? The present isnt about her its about him.

Well she is a part of him or his life rather. You couldn't make a book about Tiger Woods and not have him on a golf course somewhere.. not without doing it deliberately. You couldn't make a book of my life over the past decade and leave dh out. It would be weird.

[OnwardBound]

Or could you do another book for DHs 40th, focusing on his life with you and DS?

And airbrush the old woman out

[fluffyraggies]

See, if my mother made a book without DH in it, and DH let me know he had noticed and was hurt, there's no way i would let it lie with 'oh you know what she's like'. I would say something to my DM.

OP if your DH wants to mention it to his DM then let him. There doesn't have to be a scene. There's no need. There's no need to destroy or alter the book - a simple quiet word to say that he was sad at the lack of pictures of his wife in the book is all that is needed.

If it's done in this way - if she's done it on purpose this will mean it's backfired on her as her DS has been disappointed by the book, and if it's not on purpose she can seek to rectify the situation or just appologise without having been unfairly dragged over the coals.

There's no pictures of me or my marriage to DH up in his parents house as it happens. As a poster up thread said, all the pics up of DH end at age 14 ish. His DBs and DSs and their kids are all over the walls. Odd.

[dotnet]

Maybe you don't exist at all? There is the basis of a spooky film here.

[Mumsyblouse]

There's no point saying anything, because she did include three old photos of you as a couple. So, if you bring it up (even though it is a bit odd and you may never know if it was accidental or malicious) you will look like the petty one, because there's just enough of you in there for her to say that what you are saying isn't true.

I would leave it now, I don't find it that odd they are mostly of DH, it was his birthday book and she has mainly picked ones of him and clearly not thought through including the wider family in a more systematic way (except for the three couple shots which were deliberately included to some extent).

[Mothproof]

Spero, whatever other posters think, I have no violent feelings against the blameless book at all, and have no intention of destroying it or doing tit for tat photos! Apart from anything else, it has some very sweet photos of DH as a toddler in brown seventies dungarees.

As someone said up the thread, it's not about the book as an object, or the percentage of photos I'm in or not in, or about 'posterity' - I have a small baby, I can barely visualise tomorrow, far less my descendants! What stings is that I thought I'd been part of this family for 21 years (DH and I got together as teenagers - I've known them for over half my life, and lived close by before we moved abroad, they know my parents and extended family), but this suggests I'm actually a pretty peripheral issue for my MiL. Now I feel like a bit of an idiot, and like I've been misreading things with his wider family all along.

No, it doesn't touch my relationship with my lovely DH and baby, but it's a bit hurtful nonetheless, especially as I feel I've worked hard to have a decent relationship with someone fundamentally very different.

Dreaming, yes, we took her and FiL for a special dinner and explained exactly why we'd married on the quiet - purely because we were dealing with the end of a complicated pregnancy and I was worried that if anything happened to me, DH would not automatically get our baby. The friend who almost died giving birth was twelve years younger than me and had a completely easy pregnancy, and I was not well (SPD) and very panicky.

I appreciate that parents would generally expect to be at their children's weddings, but we had always made it plain we didn't plan to marry or have children (we'd lived together for seventeen years unmarried and childless!) so I suppose I naively thought that our belated marriage-and-baby would be a pleasant surprise, rather than an occasion for resentment. I mean, we wouldn't have got married if we weren't having a baby, so there was never going to be a big white wedding with 200 guests because neither of us wanted it.

My own parents, by the way, to whom I'm close, say they understand completely, despite the fact that none of my siblings are married, so they've never had the chance to have a big wedding.

[Mothproof]

dotnet

Yes, it sounds like a Black Mirror script Charlie Brooker didn't write... Or the bit in Back to the Future where Marty starts disappearing from the photo.

[Spero]

Of course it hurts, I am not denying that! just a bit taken aback by the intensity of some poster's feelings, wanting it to be an big Eastenders hoo haa, feeling really, really upset etc etc.

I just don't think what his parents think of you and your relationship should be very relevant to your happiness with your husband- of course it would be lovely if we all got along and we all had these wonderful healthy mature relationships with love and laughter give and take etc, etc, but I am beginning to think that these are vanishingly rare.

My new life motto is from the penguins in Madacasgar - just smile and wave boys, smile and wave.

[pigletmania]

Ok than I think it's a good idea on say your next wedding anniversary to have one made of your own, depicting your life with dh abpnd your family and show it to mil, so she gets the hint. Fr her birthday do that moinpig card of you all, bet he won't get the irony

[Springdiva]

If there REALLY are 400 photos in the album, as OP states - no one except his doting DM will ever be bothered to look at them.

We have a smashing album of DH done by DD and there must be 30 pics max and it was his 60th but now it sits forlornly on the cupboard top, hardly ever looked at so OP just forget about it. DM is v tactless but it really doesn't matter.

Why don't you make a funny one of the two of you (in a much more sensible size) over the years. People WILL want to see that.

[Springdiva]

Oops I have repeated the suggestion to do one of your own.

There are loads of options - you could do a really good one yourself from YOUR photos of DH and DCs.

[Springdiva]

And you could start collecting funny photos of the DCs for an album to present to them on their 18th!

[GhoulWithADragonTattoo]

Do you know I think it was definitely done to hurt you. I wouldn't therefore give her the satisfaction of giving it a second thought.

[EuphemiaLennox]

It is a homage to her boy.

400 photos is ridiculous, only a mother would do that.

It is all about him, the wonderous creation that she bore and a study of him over 40yrs.

Nice for him that she adores him sufficiently to put this together, but springdiva is right no one else will give a toss.

It's all about how much she loves him and probably very little abut how much she hates you.

In this scenario you are irrelevant, it's all about her boy.

You did get one page be grateful for that.

[Loa]

I was going to write exactly what GhoulWithADragonTattoo has written.

I wouldn't destroy the album but put it somewhere out of sight and out of mind.

I don't know that I would be able to see the relationship to MIL as the same - I'd be a bit more cynical and possibly less accommodating in future though not malicious and keep more emotional distance. In fact that is what I?ve had to do with some of my family ? once bitten twice shy kind of thing.

[MaidenDevon]

I feel your pain

My MIL was invited to our wedding and she has a lovely family picture in her lounge of:-

MIL
FIL
Groom (DH)
DH's brother and his children
DH's sister and her children.

Wonderful if that had been it, a lovely snap of 'their' side of the family all dressed up, but no, also in the pic are the partners of DH's brother and sister. I jokingly asked if they thought anyone had been left out i.e. Me, The Bride? Much blustering and awkwardness followed, when she piped up 'We couldn't find you'...

That's right, you managed to round up 11 other people and couldn't find me IN THE BIG WHITE DRESS

I sent her a lovely framed pic of me and DH only to put next to it - and she did!

[KurriKurri]

Your MIL is bonkers clearly, - it's just the sort of thing my MIL would have done when she was in her prime, I used to get upset, then I learnt to laugh about it because if you make a fuss they will make it seem as if you are being unreasonable, effectively it is her loss if she does not include you, she could have an extra person to love in her life, she has chosen not too.

So I'd go with Spero - just smile and wave

You will laugh over it with your kids in years to come, - mine refer to all the photos of huge groups of my in laws, with MIL holding DS/DD as a baby, and me nowhere to be seen, as 'granny's mad photos'

Of course it is very tempting to make another bigger, album for your DH full of pictures of you and DC, entitled 'Dh's life with his new, more important family' - but I would never suggest such a thing

[SamuelWestsMistress]

YADNBU! How horrible for you.

My ex-SIL's brother and his wife adopted two siblings a number of years ago. One of the things they did was make up a "family" book to show them before and during the time that the adoption completed and the kids went to live with them. It had all of the relatives in there plus some close family friends. My brother, however featured nowhere in it at all, and there was no acknowledgement of him at all. Sadly he took his own life a while later and I am sure one of the reasons was because he never felt he fitted into stupid cow's ex-SIL's family.

Sometimes people are very selfish! (Although I doubt there are as many as selfish as ex-SIL but that's a whoooooole other thread...)