Dreading becoming a hated MIL

[FlatOnTheHill]

I have read so many MIL threads on MN and many of the attacks on MILs are for such petty, ridiculous and unnecessary reasons it makes for uncomfortable reading.
Does anyone else dread the thought of their DS's one day marrying a controlling MIL hater.

[Cocolepew]

Years ago my parents took us to Florida. Before we went mil phoned DH and hinted very strongly that she had cancer, she was going for a scan at a hospital with a Cancer unit at it. She told DH to phone her from Florida on the thursday she was going
He didnt believe her so didnt.
Got home, eveyone in bed and the phone calls start, mil screaming and crying for DH.
Went to see her, she was insisting she had mud seeping out if her head.
I checked, brushed it for her, tried to reassure her. She was very agitated and distressed.
Went to make a cup of tea and she followed me into the kitchen and said in her normal voice, what the fuck are you doing here? I didnt want you, only him (DH).

There was no holy water involved but she did throw a rather large Bible at my head.

Point I was, labouring, to make was, if MIL had bought an advent calendar it would gave pissed me off because of all the pent up hatred I had for her. Everything would look like it had an alternative motive to me.
It does look bizarre when I see what she has done written down.

So to conclude, to be a nice MIL, don't tell your DIL you hate her on the first meeting

[Atomik]

Mil can be perfectably nice and sociably appropriate with eveyone she meets except me?

Her behaviour, including the fact that you appear to be a trigger for it, points rather than detracts from the possibility she might be ill.

Mental Ill health can be a beastie. In the sense it isn't always a fixed, tidy, "you either have control, or you don't" thing.

My late 2nd MIL was triggered by just a handful of people in the first 10 years I know her. BIL (DH's brother), me and FIL's sisters. So she could go from church (considered rather over enthusiastic, but a very willing helper and massively devout) to me/an auntie/BIL and in the short time it took her to get from A to B a whole new flotilla of behavoirs would sprout.

Like the unexpected Holy Water showers BIL and I (but never the aunty army) got. The only person she hurled holy water at in church was herself. And then in far more moderate amounts. Leaving out the whore/man who whores about "blessing" that BIL and I got with our dousing.

She was very very ill. And the Sainted Catholic v Poisonous Dwarf stuff was as much a part of her symptoms as the full blown psychosis was.

Later on, as her faculties failed, inhibitions collapsed and the illness took its toll, pretty much everybody got the treatment. So people believed me in the end. Which wasn't a great deal of compensation after 15 odd years of people hearing that I was a monster and believing it. But better than a kick in the teeth.

Or a face full of Holy Water

[BertrandRussell]

Of course there are bitches in the world. And some MILs are. But seriously- does her behaviour should even remotely .....normal?

Obviously you don't want to have anything to do with her and absolutely you shouldn't. But it's not because she's a MIL- it's because she's unhinged!

[Cocolepew]

She bought me a verrucca swim sock for my 30th. That pissed me off .

[ApplePaltrow]

But the stuff you are saying is so extreme, why can't it be mental illness? I agree with Bertram because I think in real life many many situations are six of one, half a dozen of the other. People are people and no one is perfect.

Like I didn't realize until this thread that buying advent calendars is traditionally a Parent thing. Many of my parents friends bought me advent calendars and if I had 3, my mum and dad didn't bother to buy me another.

But obviously if someone is threatening to kidnap your children and you have all had to go no contact, maybe that's a mental illness thing. But many people are stating things like "she buys thoughtless gifts like a pincushion" and it just sounds completely ridiculous.

[Cocolepew]

Maybe it indicates she just a bitch.
Some people are you know. Whether they are MILs or not.

[BertrandRussell]

"No thats not true Bertram. Mil can be perfectably nice and sociably appropriate with eveyone she meets except me?"

And you think that indicates good mental health?

[Cocolepew]

Bertrand, sorry sausage fingers.

[Cocolepew]

No thats not true Bertram. Mil can be perfectably nice and sociably appropriate with eveyone she meets except me?

[Ifrit]

Fucking hellIfrit, what did your DH do?

He went NC a whole two years before I did which was an odd situation but I really wanted her to have a chance at a relationship with her grandchildren. I finally had a final straw moment when on DS birthday she gave him £5 in a card delivered by a third party after he'd gone to bed for the night then two weeks later showed up at the door on DD's birthday all smiles and with one of those vtech tablets for her. I told her that she couldn't give one child a fiver and the other a tablet, I accepted she had favourites with her children and with her grandchildren but I wasn't going to allow her to favour one of my children over the other. It's exactly the sort of thing she used to do with DH - one Christmas, the last Christmas he had contact with her come to think of it, the SILs got top of the line mobile phones, shopping vouchers, and jewellery while DH got a tin of biscuits and even then it had both our names on the card so really it was half a tin of biscuits.

He's currently in therapy dealing with issues from his childhood and the way she treated him. His childhood was basically shit.

MILs stance on it all is that she doesn't understand what she's done wrong, she treats all of her children and grandchildren the same and she's hurt we won't let her see the DC. She sent a message over Christmas, via another relative rather than direct contact, to say she missed the children and would like to see them. She says it's all down to me and my influence on DH (she refers to me as "the puppet master").

You can't argue with that sort of blinkered view of the situation. She is never, ever in the wrong.

[BertrandRussell]

"Is it possible that you are dealing less with a MIL issue and more with a "close family member has a mental health issue" issue ?"

This.

It's only when it's a MIL that hideous unhinged behaviour is attributed to malice rather than to mental health issues.

[Hihohoho1]

Dils mum is vile by the way. I can see me stepping in if she starts on her after the baby comes. Not having that shit.

[Hihohoho1]

yankee no that's bollicks.

I am a mil and I try to see things from my dils point of view. We talk about things and I am careful to gauge her thoughts, feelings and needs.

It doesn't have to be hard. Just listen and remember what it was like to be a new mum.

Don't judge, criticise or advise.

Be kind

[Hihohoho1]

cocolepew have read other posts of yours regarding your vile mil. Honestly she sounds psychopathic. Poor you.

Ditto KERALA mil too.

Unkind, spiteful and vindictive. Char get your head around it.

[Cocolepew]

I veer between thinking mil has MH issues and that shes just a nasty bitch who gets some sort of twisted satisfaction from being like this.
She isn't a problem anymore, the DDs are older and know some what has gone on so I don't have to pretend to be pleasant. I don't take her under my notice.

She is very active in her church and has now adopted a wee, gentle, old woman persona. Im sure she tells her church friends a pack of lies about her relationship with DH and the DDs. Theres no way she would admit to them disliking her. I'm not sure what way she would play our relationship to her friends.

Maybe she has me painted as the DIL from hell. But it goes to show you you can't take everything at face value.

[LordBrightside]

"Personally I get on far, far better with my MiL than I do with my mother"

Me too. It's my wife I feel for.

[eastwest]

Personally I get on far, far better with my MiL than I do with my mother - or did get on - sadly she passed away recently.

[ButImNotTheOnlyOne]

I hate the whole 'we cant do right for doing wrong thing' and 'you're too sensitive' that the pils come out with when called up on awful behaviour.

Which includes telling dc that they 'are the only ones that care about them. Clearly Mummy doesn't' and risk taking including hot black coffee on 9mo old dd's highchair tray, whilst shes sat in it, not strapping into car seats.

Yep my oversensitivity.

[Scaredycat3000]

Flat
^I have never read so much crap and nastiness for such small reasons.
Makes me wonder about what has happened to make Scaredy this way?^

20 years of Matriarch MIL happened to me. 15 years of bending over backwards, doing my very best for her, FIL (was diagnosed with a degenerative condition 19 years ago) BILs, SIL and OH. Putting her family above mine. Spending days trying to get the perfect gift she had asked for. Risking my job by taking week off to care for BIL as she refused to believe he had had a total breakdown, diagnosed by hospital, so left for holiday anyway. She never said thank you once. I was told and it was made clear I was not part of the family. I was expected to give more. I was expected to do as I was told. I was expected to tell OH what to do. Then we had children. She upped her game. Then she teased DS1 all weekend when he was just talking as he had a different accent to her, that would be my accent! Then she accidentally started telling me the lies she had been telling her friends about my parents despite only meeting them twice. Then I found out she lied to BIL about my role in his care blaming me entirely for the length of his recovery from a week to years.I've had enough, gloves off, I tried so hard, I'll be a fucking Bitch to her, I don't care, there are consequences to her actions. But she will always get equal access as my parents to their GC despite her lies about how much she sees them.

[Atomik]

Cocolepew

Is it possible that you are dealing less with a MIL issue and more with a "close family member has a mental health issue" issue ?

Becuase... that is a whole 'nother ball game.

MIL 2.0 (who I am hoping was the whole package of the pay back due for my bad behavoir with MIL 1.0 ) had severe bipolar I, that more often than not did not respond to treatment.

She's dead now. But if I had my time again and could resist the urge to run screaming from DH the first time I met him (again) cos I couldn't face a couple of decades of the realities of his mother's illness twice over I think I'd be better off right from the get go framing the problem more as one of mental ill health, and less one of our relationship.

Because the stratagies I needed to get through it were vastly different from the sort of advice you normally get when it's bog standard MIL/DIL tussles and bad feeling. Plus if you've been up 36 hours straight having to repeatedly deny you hired the Peruvian spies currently lurking on the roof (allegedly) it can push you over the edge when you go somewhere to have a generalised "MIL issues" vent and see "well it's often six of MIL and half a dozen of DIL".

As with all unsolicited advice, this is just put here in case it's useful, to be ignored if not... but you might find some helpful support in the forums for relatives who are dealing with the ramifications of MH issues and family dynamics. Even if at this time there is no diagnosis on the table.

and

Cos there are times when if can feel like you are spending your life ricocheting between exhaustion, despair and white hot fury.

[Cocolepew]

Sorry typos

[Cocolepew]

Even if MIL had become reasonable after DD was born (she didn't) the relationship was ruined. I coukld never foorgive and forget.
We didn't keep the DCs away from them, they were allowed to come around as long as DH was here. We took them to their house.
We stopped contact when DD1 was a todder and I walked in to find MIL zipping DD into a coat and whispering, I'll have you across, the border in no time (into Ireland from NI).
We were NC for about 3 years.

She had a good enough relationship with DD2 until she said something nasty to my face and DD was old enough to understand.
Neither GDs want anything to do with her.
She also was the sort who thought she was, and should stay, No 1 in DHs life.

She was deluded in concern to this because DH never had anytime for her.

[FreshHorizons]

Thanks Elliecherry.

Some of the examples on here are just toxic women. Plenty of women have toxic mothers too, you only have to read the 'but we took you to stately homes' threads.

If you get a toxic one there is no real advice except keep your distance.

[Elliecherry]

freshhorizons I like your advice.