Been married to DH for 7 years and initially thought his PIL were lovely but am increasingly getting upset by their attitude and comments towards me.
DH and I do not have children and are not planning to have any (getting a bit late now too) but you never know. I also work part-time as a supply teacher, probably around 0.4% of full time as it works out, and I model part-time which is something I did to support myself through uni. I like supply teaching, it suits me, and I don't want a permanent role at the moment; as it is I earn roughly the same as DH, sometimes a little more. I also do some private tutoring, pay half the mortgages and paid nearly 100% of the deposits for our main home and holiday home/holiday let from my savings.
My part-time working is a great bone of contention for PIL - they increasingly make snide remarks about me "living off DH", being "unemployed" during the summer hols (I live on my saved earnings and basically give the impression that they think I am a bit of a golddigger.
This is despite both SILS working part-time and not at all; but that is all right because they have children. However the whole lot of them are prone to making remarks about my figure ("women who have the same figure as when they were in their twenties are unnatural", "women should cut their hair after they are 30", "they can tell me of a good hairdresser to get rid of all that hair as it must be so hard to keep looking decent", "Lil isn't a good homemaker because she spends too much time on her appearance", etc.). They have accused me (wrongly) of having hair extensions and plastic surgery (also wrongly), but clearly don't believe me.
PIL seem to regard DH and I as kind of black sheep of the family. They have never visited us in our house, even when passing by, and we always have to go to them, but they are constantly in and out of SILs' houses, as "they have children". Which is fine, they provide 5 day per week and often weekend childcare, which we don't begrudge. However when my car broke down recently, leaving us unable to visit as planned, the comment was "Lil should spend some money on a decent car".
One BIL is nice, the other is rude and obnoxious and constantly asks me if I haven't got pregnant yet. He has tried to blag a free holiday stay in our holiday let off us in high season, and clearly didn't believe us when we said it was already booked. He also wanted to borrow my car when visiting the town we live in instead of hiring and was put out when I said no, I needed it myself.
PIL have paid for one SIL's house deposit and for their house to be redecorated, no expenses spared, 6 years ago and she is now getting it done by them paying again as shes not the cleanest its looking a bit dated. We get the impression that both SILs are hanging around competing with each other to get the most out of their will, again we are really glad to be out of this and have, without prompting, been told we will get nothing, but we visit to enjoy their company.
Or did. I really don't want to go there again. I've had enough and DH is pretty fed up too but always goes there for Christmas and various family things we are given a three line whip for. I have tried to take PIL aside and point out that I actually earn as much as DH and I probably spend less on make up and hair than they do, but they persist in this line that I am some kind of low earner who lives of DH. They also think we are poor and disorganised because we are building our own house and its not finished yet as we are doing some of the work ourselves to save money. Trying to point out it will be worth 3 times as much as theirs when finished falls on deaf ears - we are the black sheep of the family.
Any advice? I'm quite happy never to see them again and leave DH to go on his own, but it feels like admitting defeat.