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.

"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?

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

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.

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

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!

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

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