Future DIL WWYD

[Notwavingimdrowning]

Huge backstory that I've posted about before under a different username, so I will keep it quite brief ! My future DIL hates my family for some reason that we don't know about, despite practically begging for her to explain what we did / do that makes her hate us so much and therefore be able to sort it out. I know that MIL get a really bad time on MN, but can honestly say that we have been nothing but kind and welcoming to her from the beginning, if anything I admit probably over compensating for the rude way she behaves. She is coldly polite in front of my DS, but will completely blank us if we bump into her when she is on her own. ( in a relationship with DS for 10 years and she has always been this way). I have spent so much time analysing every conversation that we have had to figure out if I have offended her in some way but she hates us all as a family and refers to us as losers, overheard by a very close friend that she didn't realise knew who she was. We are just a normal family, live in a lovely but modest house and have never been in trouble so I don't understand why she considers us to be losers.
Anyway, we work in the same field but not in the same place, but recently I had to visit the department where she works, several times in the same day. I was with a very senior member of staff who knows both of us and knows she is engaged to my DS but is not aware of how she behaves towards me. On 3 separate occasions she saw me and though I said hello, made a point of turning her back to me in order to not have to acknowledge me. At one point I was actually close enough to reach out and touch her ( I didn't !) before she marched off to a different area away from me. By this point it was completely obvious to the manager that there was an issue and when we left he discreetly asked me about it and to my utter shame I started to cry and told him everything. I felt totally humiliated and embarrassed, but he was lovely and advised me to speak to my DS. I did and he must have asked her about it as I've now received a text from her to say that she's sorry, she didn't see me, I was mistaken as she was so busy, she would never deliberately ignore me, blah blah blah, but it just isn't true and definitely not how it happened. I decided today that enough is enough and I will no longer spend any more time worrying about her and trying to make her like us. I know that you cannot force someone to be respectful and I finally decided to leave them to get on with their lives and stop trying to be part of it, as much as it breaks my heart to essentially cut off my DS, as I also realised that I actually blame my DS for allowing this to go on for 10 years.
WWYD ? So far I haven't replied to the text. Would you ignore ? Reply with the truth, so essentially call her a liar ? I'm not going to say I was mistaken because I wasn't ! I know she saw me, she knows she saw me. Please wise people of MN tell me what to do.

Nauticant - merely explaining why I don't believe this to be so straight forward.

Last word on the matter, collar your son and confront him about the issues. Ask why things are so frosty. Sorted. Simple.

No it's not 0live it's just a 'script' you've invented. Nothing to do with the OP's posts. You accuse her of being 'mean' to the DIL at work, 'expect' that she will go to the wedding and 'complain'. It's bananas, frankly.

Lots of delusional people on this thread, projecting their own experiences on the basis of no evidence whatsoever.
It seems to be cas of 'my MIL is awful so you must be too'.
Fairy, none of the tales you're recounting bear any relationship to the OPs situation.
Perhaps you should start your own thread, or find a good therapist.

I don't get why it's taken 10 years for this to be addressed...

So the DIL sitting in the car tooting the horn is her being shy not rude.Really.They don't have to be best buds but what I'm reading is the OP wants a polite relationship. You bump in to someone you say hello,the DIL to me sent that text for 1 reason.She realised she was rude in front of a manager.

She let her mask slip and she doesn't like to be out of control.

Imagine you saw someone whilst visiting another office, they didn't say hello, would you break down in tears in front of the director?

I have already addressed this very point. and because I did it so eloquently (and you apparently didn't see it ) I will make it again here:

Why burst into tears because someone you know, who doesn't want to communicate, doesn't go oh MIL darling, my best friend, hello, how are you, hope you're keeping well

That's not why she burst into tears though was it? It was because the manager showed understanding in a situation that has been stressing her out for years. As she said, not her most shining moment professionally, but a LOT of us have been there.

I wouldn't like it...neither did the OP; I certainly wouldn't plan it (I don't expect she did either), but it can and does happen.

There threads here on MN, books and websites all over the net. So if I invented it I'm very clever.

Why don't you disagree with what I wrote rather than calling me bonkers or a fantasist ? Always better to disagree with an opinion than attack the person who holds it.

As I predicted, some people find it hard to hear an opposing view and concede that other opinions are valid. I wonder why that is ?

100% agree with nauticant.

It really does not make sense that OP has had this issue for SO long, whilst having no idea. It's not DIL that needs speaking to, it's DS, surely.

If you can't do it verbally, write down all your transgressions in a letter, we didn't get an engagement party, one family meal our family was abandoned and ignored, we've had little input in the wedding. Plus anything else that is relevant. The icing on the cake, I was ignored by DIL when I visited her office, I felt so bad I burst into tears when the director queried if everything was OK.

It's a script for a bad daytime movie on Channel 5.

Whilst possible, I find it really hard to believe that there hasn't been an incident that provoked the situation.

The problem is that many people on here are reading in their own experiences with their own MILs.

I have detailed two situations that I wasn't directly involved in - i.e. not my partner, not my MIL - where the DIL took against the family for no other reason than their own insecurities and issues.

Isolation from family is fairly common in abusive relationships, but it also happens in relationships with non-abusive people - if that person is insecure, unconfident, finds socialising hard, have issues that they choose to control by avoiding people who tend to trigger them.

My problem is the assertion that DIL is an evil control freak who wants everything her way.

Why can't people stick up for DIL?

Wow! That was a good story Olive.
Really, though, OP hasn't said she doesn't see her son enough, I think? She just feels really sad and awkward about the way she sees him, for a few minutes, with DIL tooting the bleddy car har outside!
Also, she wasn't expecting DIL to act like her best mate at work. Just to acknowledge her. That's basic courtesy to a colleague, surely??
She cried after the manager questioned her about it (WTF, why the tense atmosphere etc).
Maybe OP is not perfect, she might be a bit over friendly for the DILs liking, she might have wanted a hand in planning the wedding. None of these things are crimes. People are not perfect. None of these things are excuses to have no manners, and act like a surly teenager.
Part of being an adult is learning to deal with people, who may be a bit difficult or very different from you.
Actually though, there is nothing at all the OP has said to make me even think that she is difficult.
My SIL is a bit like the DIL in this scenario, although she is not rude all the time, she makes it very clear that she would rather not spend time with either our famiy, or her own extended family. Consequently I havn't had a proper conversation with that brother in years. It's like invasion of the body snatchers, which is sad because we were close. His choice though, ultimately.

Thank you online for your inciteful post re difficult people are just difficult people. OP sometimes when you are in the midst of this type of intensely emotional situation it can be hard to see the wood for the trees especially with 10years of water under the bridge. I realised some time ago to stop taking everything so personally...I have strong bonds with my family and great friends and colleagues who respect me. I look at the one person I have in my life who has caused immense hurt and realise they have difficult relationships with people everywhere in their life...Online is right sometimes it really isn't you and people are just have a history of being difficult for whatever reasons. You must accept it, set your own boundaries and be civil for the person you love that's caught in the middle.

He's not isolated though, he does visit. There is the breaking point where he'd say I can't take her abusive behaviour anymore. They don't have children. All they stand to lose is wedding deposits.

It really does not make sense that OP has had this issue for SO long, whilst having no idea

Once you've done projecting, and making up facts, it's time to move onto insinuations.

I've read a lot of MN threads. Never seen someone invent a narrative and label it a 'script'. Then declare themselves 'very clever' for doing so.

If DIL was that bad, there's not much of a reason why DS couldn't say, if unhappy, sorry it's over.

People do escape from domestic abuse.

10 years is a long time...

Tell me Nauticant why it's ok for people to make insinuations that the DIL is abusive.

Very entertaining to see people bending over backwards to explain/excuse the dil's behaviour. Never seen that in a mil thread!

Tell me Nauticant why it's ok for people to make insinuations that the DIL is abusive.

Does that mean that because you think people are inventing stories on this thread it then becomes a free-for-all and you can make them up too?

A thread that starts by saying 'I'll keep it brief..' then goes on to challenge Tolstoy with the details and ends with '..please wise mumsnetters, tell me what to do..' is a good candidate for being an attention seeking yarn.

And posted in AIBU and not Relationships?

So, yes, you are being unreasonable.

The soon to be Dil is probably an insecure and controlling woman who feels threatened that her partner is loved by others. The mother bears the brunt of the behaviour caused by these insecurities, probably because she's most vulnerable or was deemed the biggest 'threat'.
I think it will get much worse when they marry, and Dil paradoxically feels more secure to really let rip.
Flag up the issue now, but don't expect her to change much. Maybe your son will see sense before he marries her.

If we're 10 years into this situation, I think you can safely say change is not looking likely.

Your mission, should you should to accept it, is to find a way to make peace with the situation. Develop a pleasant, hands-off, friendly-but-distant style with your future DIL.

That way, you don't put yourself in the wrong in any way, but you give up on expecting more than future DIL is willing to give.

The rights/wrongs don't really matter. Just take the emotion out of the situation and deal with just the facts as they stand at the moment.

That's the best way to stop caring so much about future DIL's behaviour and to ensure that bad feeling doesn't go so far as to poison your relationship with your DS.

Why burst into tears because someone you know, who doesn't want to communicate, doesn't go oh MIL darling, my best friend, hello, how are you, hope you're keeping well.

Projection and bias is rather visible when people post what they imagine the OP's expectation were and reveal how synthetic their imagining of those expectations is.

Especially in a context when typically what people prefer to being overtly and publically blanked in front of people they work with is more along the lines of...

Hi, how are you you ? - Good - Oh, fine thanks - See you

The DILs who are genuinely being mistreated by an awful MIL (as opposed to being a DIL-Who's-An-Awful-MIL-In-Waiting, cos they are probably less blessed in terms of empathy) are those best placed to understand why

• years of unearned dislike and background tension

-being regularly pushed aside and made to feel very unwelcome -then being topped off by a public blanking so overt that the people who observed it were moved to comment upon it

....might result in tears shed.

Cost they know that the reality of shitty things being done on purpose to make somebody feel despised for an extended period of time is a horrible, unsettling thing to be on the sharp end of.

They also know that people in that position are not robots, they are hurt-able beings. With limits to how much rising above and internal OMMMM-ing they can do.

And they know there are times when the constant background tension of always being on the back foot will leak out.

If any of the DIL's reading could understand a fellow DIL having burst into tears when a ten year long campaign of sidelining was now leaking over into their professional life, to the extent that questions were being asked by fellow professionals, then they have all the empathy-tools and knowledge at their disposal when the roles are reversed and a MIL is at the sharp end of not exactly lovely DIL.

If somebody pulls a 180° perspective change when the roles are reversed then they are operating under a degree of bias that undermines the value of their opinion. Cos it stops being about talking through a fellow MNer's pressing issue and starts to turn into the OP being used by some posters as a proxy for their own MIL. Where she gets a kicking as pay back for the sins of another woman.