Examples of weirdness from inlaws.

[lovelydoggies]

Not sure if I'm posting in the right section but I'm talking about weird, unreasonable or plain bonkers behaviour from Mils, Fils, Sils....the lot.
I could write a book about mine, I don't know where to start.
One example comes to mind of Mil....she totally refused to spell any of my children's names right. When I used to tell her all she would say was "does it really matter".....
I mean what do you say to that.

I should RTFT. I was just posting something I thought was weird but amusing, and I rather like my MIL. Not trying to compare tea towels with the bat shit insanity many of you apparently have put up with.

SIL and MIL invited my DCs to spend the summer hols with them and DCs cousins in their country.
While he was there, DS was attacked by mozzies and was admitted to hospital with blood poisoning. 'Has this child a heart problem' asked the docs, 'because we can hear something odd'.
Two days later I arrived and took her out for a drink - she did not mention it at all!!

In addition she told the kids 'she would beat them with a cable until the blood comes' for fighting with her son.
Needless to say we have not been there or seen them since.

Oh no sunny was your DS ok in the end?

yes he just had an 'innocent' heart murmur but you know, it took us a while to find that out. I was absolutely furious, if I had been looking after her children, I would have phoned her immediately, instead she suddenly 'remembered' six weeks later. And still didnt have the guts to phone me, she let her bro, my ex do it.

and now I think back, we had lengthy phone conversations after the event about EHIC cards and making sure that she would not receive a bill for the hospital treatment!! and she said nothing, all she was worried about was the money. grrrrrrrrr

My fil and his wife won't let dh and I be in his house when they are not there. As in, if we were visiting, and they needed to go out for any reason, we would have to leave too.
We spent a week on holiday with them at their house in France (at their insistence) and the same was true there as well. If they had something to do (like going to the supermarket), we'd be put out to amuse ourselves somewhere while they were gone.

I don't know what they think we're going to do!

MIL went to her sisters graduation, one where they lend you a cap and gown if you want to get your picture taken. She got her picture taken even though she didn't graduate from anything that day and hung it next to her son's actual graduation on the wall at home. Everytime someone took it down she would put it back up. Crazy.

My exMIL was given a lovely framed photo of her daughter, husband (her son-IL) and their son (her grandson). Really lovely shot.

The next time we went to see her (about a month later) she had taken it out of the frame and cut her son-IL out of the photo with scissors and put it back in the frame. No idea why. Just a huge shape where there had been a person!

And they were/are still married!

I was a guest at a very good friend's wedding years ago, where the groom's sister made no secret of being upset it wasn't her turn to get married. She'd had two children from two very short term relationships and her mum would tell anyone who listened that it was a disgrace that neither man had stepped up and married her, as well as being the oldest of 4, where this wedding was the last of the younger siblings to get married.

Anyway, shortly before the wedding, she got a new partner and despite all the table plans etc being done, and virtually no one having met this new bloke, she insisted he come, or she and her DD, who was a flowergirl, would not be coming.

On the day, she turned up wearing a white, full length lace dress. Not obviously a wedding dress, but inappropriate none-the-less.

The ceremony was in a church attached to a stately home, with the reception in the main house. While all the guests were leaving for the reception, the groom's mother, sister and the new man stayed behind in the church to pose for photos by the alter like an actual bride and groom.

Thankfully, the wedding party were already tucking into the canapes at this point so didn't witness it. It was only when the B&G went to his parents after the wedding that his mum got her photos out (these were pre-digital days) and saw the alter photos when they were flicking through the photos.

Needless to say the new boyfriend didn't last very long after that incident!

The annoying thing about the whole 'a son is a son until he takes a wife' dynamic is: (1) if you don't want that, head it off early by bringing your son up to take family responsibilities seriously and to be caring (as we do with daughters); and (2) if you fail to do that, don't blame the woman your son eventually marries for the lack of contact, blame your son and yourself.

My sister has a SIL who is very clearly not prepared to have much contact with the in-laws, apparently because her own traumatic family background has left her very avoidant of extended family relationships. Her husband enables this. As far as his family are concerned, the SIL's position is sad and yes, annoying, but her husband's lack of consideration to his own birth family makes them very angry. They don't simply blame her. As an outsider, I would say that bringing him up as the favourite who never had to worry too much about other people's feelings is probably a contributing factor as well. His parents don't see that, of course.

My mum tells me I'm fat and then tries to make me eat cake. She told me I was damaging my health my being so big... I'm 5'7 and was a 14 & pregnant.
We went to stay a few weeks ago and she phoned me up afterwards to say she thought I was incredibly rude to sit and read a book in her house.

My MIL is lovely, but somewhat old fashioned in her views regarding housework division within a marriage

I have a horried feeling I'll have a few stories to tell in the next few years. At the moment live far enough away, but are considering moving closer to PIL (they are divorced but live in the same part of the country). My MIL isn't awful yet, however my partner is a golden boy, apparently a 'genius' (he is academically smart, however Stephen Hawkings he is not), can do no wrong in her eyes. I have spent a long time trying to curb his smartass behaviour when we're with other people (he can be an unintentional knob at times, total foot in mouth syndrome) but she seems to encourage his 'outspokenness and challenging ways'. He must have been a delightful child to deal with in school! I've already had a couple of snide remarks and passive aggressive behaviour aimed in my direction about the way I speak, my 'bossy' personality etc. Thank goodness I'm bossy enough to hold my own .

However, as someone who was treated badly as a child, I can appreciate she's not a monster. Its actually quite nice to hear a parent be so positive about their child, so possibly I am a bit jealous even if shes 'over baring' (partners words).

My PIL invited me to a family meal and my car broke down and they wouldn't give me a lift, even though they only live 3 miles away. They said they didn't have room in their car. Then they stopped speaking to me as I "had no interest in coming along to things". Basically they are punishing me for not giving them grandchildren and having a life outside their family.

They are also very snooty and look down on me, despite FIL being long term unemployed before he reached retirement age, and me coming from the most standard private school background imaginable.

My MIL isn't nasty at all but rather odd. I was really hurt when DS was christened, and she sent through what she called the "family photos" of the event the following week. All DHs side of the family lined up in our living room standing bolt upright & a foot apart from the next person like they were in a police line up, a red faced screaming baby DS being held very awkwardly and no me. They just hadn't thought to include me as it was their side of the family (Mind you, they have form for this. BIL said he'd do our wedding photos as a present, and presented us with a book that only has DHs side of the family, none of my family or bridesmaids, and only 1 shot of me in it! I am still bitter about this.)

Seriously thinking I should move past things with my mil after reading these.

We get on ok now, especially as I am pg with another gc and they do adore ds who's 6.

I just wish she didn't obviously disagree with me so much about food etc. I can't bare getting frowned at.

I feel like saying - do you know what you could have ended up with for a dil!?! I work hard, I keep a clean home, my DS is healthy and well looked after and sociable, me and DH love each other very much and are extremely happy. We moved in together, then got engaged, then married, then had DS - all in the 'proper' order not that I give a fuck but they're from that generation.

I look after DH and we have a great life together.

I think she thinks the lack of contact from DH sometimes (despite living in the same town) is down to me but I'm the one that's always arranging for us to go out with them, him to call her etc.

MIL and I have had our moments over the years but we mostly get on now. At one point she phoned DH in tears and said she never wanted to see me again because apparently I made her feel unwelcome. She told him when we first moved in together that she felt I was 'taking him away' and there was definitely some hostility but I mainly ignored it and she eventually mellowed.

There's still the occasional bit of competitiveness though, usually if DH asks me to do something, like pass him a bread roll or whatever, and she will fall over herself to beat me to it.

She does have quite an annoying habit of coming round loaded up with bags of drink and cakes as soon as we told her we were dieting and after she'd told DH very bluntly that he looked too fat.

I always read MiL threads avidly with a wistful I wonder what might have been. Would we have been friends and comrades or would we have had humdinger arguments. (Both strong willed with very different interests). But she died a month before our wedding. Suddenly, due to medical negligence. I'd only met her once.

My DH misses her, never mentions her, except occasionally to say that our DD is just like her. And how he wishes she had lived to see her granddaughter.

I will always wonder what sort of DiL/MiL relationship might have been.

I do laugh about this one as the photo looks so funny.

At our wedding SIL kept on gate crashing all the photos. One, where DHand I had our heads leaning into each other, she looped her arm through DH sneaked on the photo.

We have the full version but MIL got a copy and cut me off...it looks really weird as DH's head is leaning away from SIL with him looking at me and my veil floating around his head.

The fucking bitch cut me out of my own photo

By all accounts my OH's Mum was lovely, but I never got to meet her

My Mil used to have photos of her other grandchildren in nice frames. I once mentioned I couldn't see any of mine, I always used to give her copies of school photos, but she always claimed not to have any. None of my children felt any love for her because of the way she was.

Wow, some of these stories are horrifying!

I'm quite lucky with my PIL as they're relatively sane, especially compared to my absolutely bonkers exBF's parents, who would try to secretly book holidays in the same apartment complex as us (luckily we found out and put a stop to it), would tell people to their faces that they'd be good looking if they lost weight and would have blazing rows across the table at Sunday lunch.

We weirdest thing about my current MIL is how huffy she can get about really stupid things. Last time we went on holiday, PIL looked after our dog as they always do. It's a massive help and saves us money as we don't have to put him in the kennels. Anyway, we arrived home mid-afternoon and DP phoned his mum to say that he was going to come over to get the dog before he got too settled on the couch. All hell broke loose because she thought we were getting home later that night, she was at the hospital in the middle of a dialysis appointment and she wouldn't allow him to take the dog away without letting her say goodbye. She was really emotional about it too, we only live a few streets away

The weirdest thing*

My inlaws are extremely nice and pretty normal.

My Dad is quite weird. He has met his grandchildren fewer than ten times but dotes on a couple of cats who keep coming into their house. These cats don't belong to them, their owners have asked them not to let them in but he thinks that because the owners both work full time they are not taking proper care of these cats. Barking.

Mil called dd3 the wrong name for months. She also calked me the sane name for years when dh and i met, happened to be dhs ex.

Oh yes, she declared she was moving in with u after dd1 was born. She decided she would live in a caravan on the drive way.