To start a DIL bashing thread?

[Iwasjustabouttosaythat]

No it's not really! But a threat inspired by a thread. This MIL one is quite enjoyable: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/2816733-Aibu-to-think-this-about-MILs?pg=1&order=

Any MILs who care to share their perspective on the relationship? Why do you think DILs are so difficult? Is this a thing?

I am not a good DIL.

I work, which PIL's find utterly bemusing and makes them "feel sorry for" DH and my DD despite me repeatedly explaining that I work out of necessity, not through choice.

I won't commit to spending Christmas Eve, christmas day and boxing day at their house every single year because I also have a family who like to see us. This has been "devestating" and "heartbreaking" for MIL.

I have the aduacity to make such outrageous demands as "please could you call or text before you visit?" and "please could you not call me at work/after 10pm on a weeknight/before 7am unless it's about something important?" This is also "heartbreaking" and evidence that I hate MIL and am trying to prevent her from having a relationship with her grandchild.

Mrs muddles has touched on something here.

"...but [DILs] won't allow a close relationship between son and family".

Has it occurred to you that how close your DS is to his mummy is HIS decision? Or maybe he's just shit at remembering family stuff?

This gets my goat. Why do MILs think that we have any 'control' to 'allow' anything? My husband's relationship with his mother is his business. He can ring her when he wants, hang out with her if that floats his boat, shower her with gifts for all I care. As it is he's pretty shit at remembering to phone, I organise most trips to see them and have to prompt (or just do it myself) to make sure birthday and Christmas presents happen.

You can bet your bottom dollar that, when left to his own devices he totally forgets to do these things I would get it in the neck for not 'allowing' him to spend time with his mum. (This has happened).

I suspect this is the case in a lot of DH/DIL/MIL relationships.

Haha. I'm definitely a bad DIL & a bad daughter.

I took DH away & am (slowly - it's a bloody long process) - helping him to be more confident. Less reliant on his possessions. Making him see that he's worth something in his own right, not just for what he can offer other people. (MIL used to refer to him as "the donkey" as he's strong & they made him do all the household stuff. Literally everything. Even after they threw him out when he lost his job, the PILs still tried to make him go round to do jobs round the house - I put a stop to that pretty quickly.) What goes around comes around.

My own dear mother disapproves of me as, although she likes DH & can we are happy together, I had the temerity to marry a man who a) doesn't believe in God or go to Church, b) doesn't earn enough to enable me to stop working after we had a baby, & c) is an interested dad & has opinions on DD's upbringing, clothes, activities etc. He likes spending time with DD. DH was a SAHD for about a year due to unemployment after my mat leave. In my mum's eyes, fathers are there to provide the money but not comment. Apparently babies, housework etc should be my job & I'm failing at it. If I went to her church (not a proper church at all), DH would somehow get better, get an amazing job, all our health issues would go away & we'd have 4 kids before we're 40.

Bollocks to them all. I don't imagine I'll be a perfect MIL but I know what I won't do. Judge or interfere.

Think I'm a but of an overbearing DIL. They live overseas so my partner doesn't see them much, whereas I'm super close to my parents who live around an hour away. I think I over compensate with Christmas cards/birthday cards/generally making a fuss if they visit but partner has told me they find this annoying (last year he told me that they were annoyed about the Xmas card because they hadn't written me one - partner and I were not living together at the time). I think it's a bit rude and Scroogey of them so ill continue. They're otherwise very nice people who I get on with fairly well.

Klaptout and unborn

That's way beyond ordinary nastiness in both cases.

I was an awfully hard work DIL in my first marriage.

I was young, immature and had all sorts of pretty-conceptions about what a DIL/MIL realtionship should look like. possibly coloured by mother's spikey realtionship with my paternal grandmother. Where both played amrole in the prickles, but both saw the other as the issue.

Anyway, with my first (perfectly nice in retrospect) MIL I tended to look to find sly slights and subtle critism where none was intended. I expect she found me incredibly hard work and think she must have gone through many boxes of patience not to just think "fuck it" and give me both barrels for creating tension where none needed to be.

I went into the marriage expecting DIL/MIL loggerheads. When it did not naturally occur, I manufactured a competition for "the primary woman in his life" cup that she had no idea she was a competitor in.

If I had a time machine I'd go back and have a word with myself.

pretty-conceptions

pre-conceptions

PIL thought I was a bit of a snob at first because I went to a private school and they were council estate, and were suspicious of me because the first time I met them we announced our engagement and my pregnancy, after 3 months of dating. They were bemused by DH's choice but pleasant enough.

After DS was born and they met him, they accepted him and me into the family immediately. Because DS had ginger hair and peculiarly shaped left ear that all the many children in the family have.

Sadly MIL died on our wedding day and FIL a few months later, so DS didn't get to know one set of grandparents. DH doesn't really see his brothers and sisters, who also decided that we are now too middle class for them because we own our own home and have always worked. It's a shame really because DS has never met most of his hundreds of cousins

MrsMuddlepies I'm with other respondents on this - the MiLs relationship with the son is between them, but over and over its the DiL who does all the 'wife work' of managing relationships and gets stick if she doesn't do it to MiL satisfaction. If MiL doesn't like it well she needs to look at how she raised her son in that respect because he is following the models his parents set.

I'm sure my late MiL would have described me as money focused when they were redrawing their wills (regularly!). Each time they were carefully drawn to ensure no penny ever entered my purse under the guise of 'tax saving trust'. When my children were small provision for the scenario where DH might predecease them potentially meant them receiving a lump of money when they were too young to manage it themselves and without me having any say in how it was used for their benefit (I wasn't even a trustee). This was against even their own solicitor's advice.

We are not talking about massive fortunes here and I neither needed nor wanted their money but they were obsessed with 'keeping it in the family'. The clear message this gave me was that I was not part of 'her' family nor was I a good enough mother to make decisions for my own young children. Why should I give a shit about a MiL who makes it so plain what they think about me?

I'm not unusual - I hear this kind of tale a lot and suspect its often rooted in the woman never being fully accepted into the DH family or the mother struggling to accept a closer relationship with the son (and I understand that isn't always easy, I see it from both ends).

CharlieSierra, if you're not willing to do the legwork with Advanced Search before your accusations, perhaps refrain from being quite so vitriolic in the first place?

As for your first post. Gag. I am quite tired of seeing "if his/her parents are so bad, how come you thought he/she was good enpugh to marry?" I happen to know some charming adults who grew up in care after Social Services intervention, on account of their abusive parents. Have a think about how your nasty little insinuations work there.

Sometimes children become good, kind people due to influences outside the family, or their nature (rather than nurture) or their own hard work. You do not get to excuse every single parent of adult children on the plane whose kids turned out all right!

Great thread OP

Klap

I'm not sure what MIL thinks of me.
If I'm honest I find her really difficult and I suspect it comes across despite my veneer of politeness.
We just have such different opinions on everything so I'm biting my lip the whole time.

Her general attitude is that the sun shines out of the arses of all her DC and they never do anything wrong or if forced to admit wrongdoing (e.g. criminal conviction for BIL) it was all someone else's fault. This causes a problem for anyone they are married to as you are automatically the bad guy. I don't think she hates me as much as BIL1 or her other sons partner but then again I don't know what she says behind my back.

I do think clash of family cultures is a lot of the problem:

She was mostly a SAHM whereas my mum worked. She can't get her head around me earning more than DH and us sharing household chores. She still thinks I should prostrate myself on the floor if he loads the dishwasher! She knows that I regard it as his responsibility to remember his family's birthdays, make arrangements to see them and buy gifts but finds this bemusing.

We hear a lot about how she gave up her ambitions for her DC and Family is the most important thing in the world. I hear that as criticism of me and of my mum but she's probably just justifying herself.

My family are big on fostering independence whereas she is just the opposite. We all stood on our own two feet post uni and I have never taken money from my parents apart from a contribution to our wedding that they gave freely as a gift.

BIL still lives at home aged 30 and they all (apart from DH) 'borrow' (i.e. take)money from her which I think is outrageous as she is a pensioner and they have jobs. She actually likes to be 'needed' even if it looks like using to me and is offended if we refuse money we don't need. It always comes with strings attached so I steer clear.

We have different opinions on pets, alternative medicine, 'woo' spirituality, food fads and politics (I won't tolerate her xenophobic and borderline racist views) so it is pretty hard to find conversation topics that are OK.

We try to tolerate one another politely on the whole but that's as far as it goes.

CharlieSierra, if you're not willing to do the legwork with Advanced Search before your accusations, perhaps refrain from being quite so vitriolic in the first place

Asking if the 12 week rule applied to her own mother too is vitriolic? On fucking AIBU? And we should AS before commenting?

We don't have to AS before commenting, CharlieSierra, but if we say something wrong and/or offensive - as you did, in my opinion - we should apologise.

I never invited her to visit, after two years of never taking us up on it I gave up asking.

She never got the see her GC, (please read my first post) us visiting every 2 weeks for a day wasn't enough and my family got to see DC more (they live abroad and would see them every 6 months).

Im a gold digger even though DH was at uni when we met, I supported him financially and PIL were normally working class so not rich.

That I risked my DC because FIl is a "paedophile". FIL wanted to go traveling and on his list was Thailand! This was a few weeks after DC1 was born, she was jealous that FIL was visiting every day for a few hours, we were very close even before DC we were close and in some twisted way she didn't want him involved.

She had no involvement in our wedding because she would go on and on that DH shouldn't get married to me .

I stop DH from talking and seeing her after she was shouting at me walking down the asil (sic) that I was gold digger and a witch, the day after our wedding telling him and his children are dead to him .

I don't let DH contact her when BIL tell us she has some life threatening illness after life threatening illness

DH wouldn't help her out financially after her DH (DH father) passed, they had split for a year because she was having affairs and FIL said in his will the money (5K) was for us and our DC.

I wouldn't give her the funeral invoices so she couldn't claim back the money for the funeral. We paid and I refused to hand over the information so she could claim the money we spent back from the government and profit from his death the only time I interfered he was like a father to me, visited constantly and would have done anything for the DC

This is so interesting.

This is a DIL-hate thread (in theory) but we're all complaining about our MILs.

So, the MILs are either not on mumsnet (I don't think that's true) or they don't have anything to complain about?

That was long

Asking if the 12 week rule applied to her own mother too is vitriolic? On fucking AIBU? And we should AS before commenting?

The nasty little insinuation that her MIL was objecting to being treated unfairly was a huge leap, for which you haven't apologised. As a whole, it was vitriolic, yep. I haven't said you should AS before commenting, I've suggested it might be wise to AS if you're going to be that aggressive. And you know that quite well. I doubt that anyone so skilled with the double team of snide comments and the follow-up of but-all-I-said-was struggles with comprehension.

The thought process that mils/fils must have did something right because we married their sons is shite.
Dh strives to be the opposite of his psrents because he had an unhappy childhood because of them. He wants to be different so our DDs love him and will want to continue a relationship with him when they are adults.
We haven't spoken to his dad for 3 or 4 years, he, was a very difficult man but we tried to keep a relationship going for the sake of the children. Him and Mil are divorced.
Then he just stopped phoning/coming up (we all live half an hour away from each other ).

We dont know why, he just cut off his only DGC.
He was very ill about a year ago, DH went to the hospital to find out from other relations that fil has told everyone that I refuse to pass on messages and wont tell DH that he had phoned.
All bullshit.
Turns out hes just every bit as bad as Mil.

So, the MILs are either not on mumsnet (I don't think that's true) or they don't have anything to complain about?

On Gransnet their are a few mil threads, they are actually quite sad to read. One lady travelled I think to Canada to see her grandchild and the dil was really cagey and wouldn't let her hold the baby very much.

ollie

That's so sad :( I didn't know gransnet existed.

Gransnet can be verrrry interesting. Very interesting indeed. I don't have an axe to grind on this because my own mum is dead and my MIL wouldn't know an internet forum if it bit her on the behind - but there have been in the not-too-distant past, episodes of overspill from gransnet to here and vice versa. In particular, a subsection of gransnetters who are Very Wronged and all they want to do is Help Out and See Their Children and Grandchildren - but if you read it from the other side, they are domineering narcs who said children have gone NC with because of their behaviour.

Who can say who is right, who is wrong, or whether the truth lies somewhere in between - but it was a very interesting episode indeed.

Bad grammar there - should be "... with whom said children have gone NC because of their behaviour."