Share passive aggressive comments you've received from your MIL

[oxymomon]

My MIL is a cow to me. But she is also cunning enough to be able to veil her comments so they go over the head of my husband and father in law. E.g. when I put on weight recently and she kept saying "you look healthy". I knew it was a dig but I couldn't say anything. I said it to my husband after and he thought she was just being nice.

I thought it would be helpful to hear what other passive aggressive comments others have received from your in-laws. But feel free to just share any out and out insults too. I'd also love to hear your responses, or do you all just grin and bear the comments?

I'll finish with one of her worst: when we first got engaged, she said "I was glad you didn't put it in the paper in case it doesn't work out"...

ExMiL hated me from the minute she met me. When we announced we were pregnant to her she went mad and said she didn't 'want anything to do with it' had NC with her for remainder of pregnancy, although ex still saw her but they never mentioned pregnancy. (She tells anybody that will listen that she found out about it from her neighbour!) Until the day I had DD, very traumatic birth/EMCS, she turned up at hospital a few hours later, ignored me, and cooed over baby and ex. Spent another year slagging me off to anybody that would listen, would always say baby looked like everybody on her side etc. Told everybody how ex did everything, when in reality he did fuck all! Would cry whenever she was called out on anything. Very narcissistic vindictive person. 12 years later she still slags me off, and haven't been with her son for a very long time. Just recently have stopped my dd staying over as dd was getting upset with her slagging me off to her!

I don't get any from my MIL but my sister can't help herself.

MIL is lovely.

Step MIL, on the other hand, told me the day after my wedding that I had been so clever to find a dress that suited my 'unusual shape'.

I have 3 that really stick in my mind:
when we got engaged and went round to inlaws to tell them my future mil said oh that's such a lovely time when a mum gets to take her daughter wedding dress shopping. (I have no mum)
when each of my 3 youngest were born she told me they were all perfect as all (family name) children had perfect heads. she stood next to my eldest (not family name whilst saying it)
when we got married inlaws said they wouldn't buy a present as we already lived together and had children but would put money in a card and we could treat ourselves. now we didn't expect this but thought it was lovely. on wedding day she hands hubby a card and says to put it somewhere safe. when we open it as home there is no money in it. see them the following day and she says oh we gave u the wrong card ive got the right one upstairs. proceeds to give us another card and we try to put it aside to open later but she pushes to open there and then. yep no money. bizarre

When me and DH were first together MIL used to call me Tina (not my name). Well she loved Emmerdale and often got me confused with Tina Dingle. Nice.
When we said we were getting married, she turned away from me and said ‘So is she pregnant?’. On the day of the marriage (which DH had to ‘beg’ her to attend as she said she wouldn’t go just the day before) she scowled throughout. The only full sentence she muttered on the day (to my DM) was ‘don’t come near me - I have a rash’. That was 23 years ago. It has not been easy.

Mine just doesn't talk to me, it's bliss. She's even booked a month long holiday from the week before my due date the hatred between us is so great.

Before we had kids my mil and sil told us ‘we will have to take them out and about because, well you are both a bit boring aren’t you!’ I had done a gap year in Africa a few years previously and we went out and about most weekends! As it stands inlaws rarely bother to engage with the kids and taking them out regularly is a very recent thing and only because I publically stated how much I was struggling with no respite!

Whilst breastfeeding my eldest at 15/16 months ‘oh people who breast feed pastor 18 months are only doing it for themselves to make a point’ (sil is still feeding her 3 1/2 year old now and apparently that’s fine).

Accused my husband of breaking up the family when he expressed that they were treating him and his sister differently (I could write masses of extra posts on this one topic and the level of difference between how they are treated is huge).

When visiting for a weekend whilst uni students we were going out for a family meal (think possibly grandparents anniversary). We asked on the phone before travelling home for the weekend if it would be formal or were we fine in jeans? ‘Oh no completely informal, casual stuff is perfect’. When we got there everyone had chosen to dress up so we were very out of place and inlaws made a point of telling others how lovely they looked whilst eyeing up my causal wear in disgust! I’m still really pissed over this 14 years later 🙄

I’m vowing to be the nicest accommodating mil I can possibly be when I’m older!

When I was trying on my wedding dress again at my fitting, MIL said maybe I should do some exercises

I’ve had a very difficult relationship with my mil.
I’ve learnt to just keep her at arms length. Her comments aren’t PA some are just out right nasty or rude.

BUT this week I’ve had a beautiful new baby that we were told would never happen due to secondary infertility and ttc 5+ years.
My in laws came to see there beautiful new grandson. Asked his name so I said “ Name (our/my choice) mil df name, fil df name, surname”
My dh gave me final say on first name as ds has both his grandads name as middle names

Mil replied to me “oh mmmmmmmmm let’s see if it sticks” I was hoping you’d name him after his dad.” “..... “shame”
I snapped that’s his name.
To me it was passive aggressive. His name is beautiful and classic English without being too popular. It really felt like she knew I’d chosen it and loved it so didn’t even want to like it.

Daily Mail readers!

Fuck Off You Cunts!

I think this should be at the start of every thread to stop them linking!

Laughing at the hypocrisy of intolerance towards Daily Mail readers.
They don't conform to some posters' ideals so they shouldn't be allowed a voice. 😁

@tiredmummyshark similar, but my mil went one step further and actually had me photoshopped out of a few of my wedding photos as she wanted ones that were ‘just her family’

Other gems include:

You’re a size 7 shoe? Size 7?! SEVEN? You won’t find any shoes in here (in each shop we went into afterwards)

Your wedding make up artist did a really good job. You actually looked quite pretty.

It’s so nice you play so much with ds instead of concerntrating on cleaning the house.

I can teach you how to clean windows properly you know.

Oh and telling me I look tired every 5 fucking minutes

Vindictive and snidey BiL, following birth of his and my sister's 2nd baby: "It's perfect. We feel like a proper family now"

I was basically sat there having just split up with DH and mother to one child.

I hate coconut. Can’t stand the smell of it, and particularly hate artificial coconut scented things. MIL knows this. Every single Christmas and birthday she buys me a coconut gift set from the body shop. Every. Single. Time. DH has given up telling her.

She often rocks up at the crack of dawn on my day off and will say “oh, still in your pyjamas? I’ve been up since 5 cleaning. It’s all about having priorities”.

My exSIL would always comment negatively about my height (I'm 5'6" so not short) every time we saw her and she said as we were talking about a family party "you might want to wear high heels as most people there are quite tall".

I had had enough of the constant criticism and replied "you might want to wear make up, there's bound to be some really pretty people there". At which both my ex and her DH pissed themselves laughing.

Oddly enough she never made "shortarse" comments ever again.

I know that life is a rich tapestry of relationships and it doesn’t seem logical that MiL / DiL relationships alone are so fraught. I think the reasons are probably to do with the limited power afforded to women (of my MiLs generation at least) and all of it being concentrated in the domestic sphere, of societal expectations that they can be nasty and get away with it and shouldn’t be called out on it, the lack of tools available to resolve conflict (I can just tell my mum to stop bugging me about something but MiL reacts v v v badly to being asked not to do something) or just the sheer amount of time parties are asked to spend with each other. My DH doesn’t hang out with my mum or dad without me, whereas I spend such large chunks of time with MiL on my own or now with the baby.

She is v v passive aggressive and as is typical my DH never picks up on it.

Classics include
When one of her friends complimented my pronounciation of DHs native language, she piped up with “yes, some words audacity pronounces well.. others her pronounciation is still not very good”.

Or “oh I dust my home every day, I don’t like seeing dust collect everywhere”.. from a woman who hasn’t dusted a day in her life. She means her maids dust every day, and I should be doing the same despite having a FT job.

“Oh you’ve cut your hair.. it’s short” followed by silence.

There’s loads of other minor and major statements, I’m just trying to erase them from my memory so I can stop feeling so annoyed with her.

My Mil regularly used to say what a horrible mummy making you cry whenever I was changing my DD or when she was hungry and I was taking her out of the room to feed her. My FIL used to say the same thing. One day fil leant over the Moses basket and my LO started crying hysterically. I said what a horrible gramps making you cry with his scary face. My Mil went ballistic. Had a right go at me. I just laughed my socks off and pointed out they say shit like that all the time. She's now hugely passive aggressive with me all the time. It winds her up that I giver her the same back.
I never let anything slide and will pull her up on everything. I know I'm being a bitch but I really can't help myself.

My stepmother was very passive aggressive, sometimes just outright rude.

17 days after the birth of my 3rd baby she looked me up & down and said, "You used to be such a slim girl Infinite...."

Whenever she visited she would always be sniping about something - the one I remember best was when she cast a disapproving glance around and said "Do you still have help in the house?"

There were many others but as PPs have said, she was careful and if you had ever challenged her she would have been able to fall back on wide-eyed denial. And of course she was always careful to say these things when my father was not in the room

Another really weird one - when I told her I was pregnant with my first baby she just kept saying, "Well I'm really surprised.... I never thought you'd want this, Infinite.... it's not something I thought you'd do." WTF? I was 4 months married and 29 years old so her remark was really puzzling. When she'd said it for the umpteenth time it was actually my father who turned to her & snapped "Why do you keep saying that? What do you mean?" and she didn't have an answer other than muttering something about "being a career girl like me"

My MIL to be hates anyone over a size 12 but unfortunately for her her son shacked up with one (I'm a size 18 which to her is basically Jabba the Hutt). She never misses a chance to say "Look at the STATE of her! How DISGUSTING!" when she sees a chubby girl in public or on tv, especially in my presence. She once told a story to my Mum about me getting lost on a walk in her village, incorporating an impression of me huffing and puffing as I walk up a hill due to my excess lard even though she wasn't even there. She also once sneered at me as I bit some chocolate, pointed to the fruit bowl and said "Are you sure you wouldn't be better off eating an APPLE!". Honestly, she can be such a cow. My fiance has been telling me to tell her to fuck off for years but I just can't.

MIL has this annoying way of phrasing things, like if she's worried the kids will be a bit cold (when I don't think they will be): 'Do they not have coats with them?' or when they were staying over at MILs when they were little and MIL asks 'Did you not bring a hairbrush for them?' (Uhm, no, cos I kind of assumed you'd have one to use on them?!) as if whatever it is is so obvious that should pbviously know to do it/have it/bring it with etc.

Infinite, yours reminded me. When we told my inlaws that I was pregnant with my first, she said "Well. You do know you have to change your lifestyle don't you?"

I never figured out what she meant. Our "lifestyle" before kids was pretty much hanging out at home, going to the library every week, nature walks on the weekends. I've no idea what she thought I was up to!

My MIL is awful and I could share stories for days but two of her comments:

To [then] baby DS: oh mummy doesn’t love you enough to share her fancy moisturiser with you. (No baby needs bloody Clarins face cream on their legs!)

To me: well, Lola, if you had just read all the books you’d know what it means. (A particular word that I hadn’t come across yet in my quest to read ALL the books.)

MiL hates anyone with a university education so likes to find things I can’t do and point out that I didn’t learn them on my degree: “so they don’t teach you everything at university then.” Top of the list was invoicing. Shockingly, they didn’t teach me how to put together an invoice during my History degree.