To not understand MIL/DIL relationships

[ForumUsername]

This isn't an anti MIL thread (there are tons of them here)
I genuinely would like to try to understand why MILs & DILs have such notoriously troublesome relationships

I used to get on brilliantly with mine.
But since she retired and I had DD the dynamic of our relationship has changed.
We are both finding our feet in our new lives and seem to be not gelling.

Her ways now get under my skin when before I could of shrugged them off. I'm holding grudges for things I would of let go before
She thinks I've become too sensitive and lost my sense of humor. I also think she thought she'd be more hands on with DD and is disappointed I don't need help.

We do both make an effort to get along for DH and DD.
Don't get me wrong although she has her flaws (like any of us) she can be great too and I do miss how we used to be.

Do you think it comes from caveman times when there could only be 1 female in charge? 😂

Seriously though why does it need to be difficult?
Why is there so many threads and stories of MIL and DIL not getting along?

Actually my own MIL didn't get on with hers!! 😂

I don't think it's that maternal GP are seen as more important than PG
Usually (I know not always ) though the maternal GM is more of a support to the new Mum and as such ends up closer.

I know my DM came round lots to see that I was ok, she seemed more concerned about me and if I slept and ate.
She was and is so content to sit with me and DD watching me mother.
She tells me and DH how great a job we are doing all the time and how in tune we are with DD (although she does mention a lot that she wishes I'd rest more - DD is BF and doesn't sleep great)

My dMIL comes round to help lots too, she cleaned and cooked and was and is very much appreciated
But she then wants time with the baby, you can see it gets to her that she doesn't get alone time with DD. She made a massive deal when DD was 5 weeks old to DH saying she thought I was keeping DD from her - she was seeing her at least 3 times a day as she lives next door. She just wasn't getting to hold her everytime as I was usually BF or TBH figuring out the whole being a Mum.
She keeps buying DD noisy toys to get her attention.
She hasn't once complimented our parenting style and doesn't ask how we are just how did the baby sleep or how the baby is, or what is the plan for the baby that day.

My DM has raised 6 of us and has 11 gc all of whom she adores and helps with but she also has a little job and is generally busy with friends.
My dMIL has recently retired, DH is an only child and she is crazy about him. She only goes out to get her hair done or grocery shop and is at a loose end loads.

Now I know both woman are VERY different and both adore our DD but I find it very difficult to bond with dMIL right now while it seems to be bringing me closer to DM

I get on with MIL but JESUS she does my head in. She's very childish, and whines a lot. Says really offensive and stupid things without realising, meaning there is always 30-50% of the family not talking to her.
She's actually lovely, just occasionally needs a kick up the arse and a heavy dose of empathy.

eeanne

Oh I know I have read some shockers on here and I know friends with shocking mils but those same mils are pretty vile to everyone as I do see some dils posting on here who sound equally vile.

I don’t think it’s the relationship it’s the individual.

Most vile mils are vile anyway. It’s not they become vile as they become a mil.

Absolutely, April. MN has been a real eye opener for me. I had no dea people were capable of some of the behaviour I've read about and that goes for both MiLs and DiLs. A lot of mothers and daughters don't cover themselves in glory either - that poor woman whose mother is trying to blackmail her into allowing her into the delivery room couldn't possibly be treated any worse by her MiL.

Forum

That’s what I mean. Your mum is helpful and normal and your mil is helpful but a bit of an idiot. She probably was and always will be a bit of an idiot and that’s nothing to do with being a mil.

Don’t get me wrong I think you do have to respect boundaries more with your dils/sils and that’s natural. So I wouldn’t walk into my dils house and start tidying up where I wouldn’t think twice about doing that for dds.

BlueLady

I know sometimes you gasp st the awful ness of some people’s parenting.

The using of children as weapons by both parents and grandparents alike.

My one dil has a mum who constantly criticises her and refers to her always as my poor ......

I have to bite my tongue to not scream at her. Dh is fsr more blunt and said why do you call her poor... she’s grest

Her dads wedding speech twice referred to how lucky they’re daughter was to marry our son!!!!! I did pipe up and we are all very lucky to have her too and all our side clapped.

No wonder dil has zero self confidence but we working on that

"So I wouldn’t walk into my dils house and start tidying up where I wouldn’t think twice about doing that for dds."
This is interesting. Why would you tidy up in your dd's house but not your ds's?

Sometimes people have a blind spot where their children are concerned. Dp and mil are quite different, but I often get the blame for the things she doesn’t like.

Presumably because one wouldn't mind and the other would.

Different values. I was brought up to believe that families help each other. My parents and I help each other when we need each other. It’s how families work surely? My mil last year refused to come and help us in what was a family emergency.... I had a complicated miscarriage, retained products and internal bleeding and was told to rush to the hospital right away. My mil refused to come and sit with our ds (who was asleep) for a couple of hours in the evening so DH could take me to the hospital. She told us that we just had to get on with it. We managed to get hold of my mum instead who rushed straight over so it wasn’t a problem in the grand scheme of things but I don’t think i’ll ever forget it. This was only a few years after DH dropped everything, multiple times, to provide moral support to her when his GM was ill. He took lots of unpaid time off work and I picked up extra shifts to make up for it.

I learnt then that it was all about her and her wants, it doesn’t occur to her to help others. That just goes against all of what I believe in.

Bertrand

interesting why would you tidy up for your dds and not your dss

Er I would but the thread is about female relationships specifically mil/dil.

Did you miss that one?
.

cadBuryEgg

My point exactly. Your mil is a cold and selfish person to everyone. Nothing to do with her being a mil.

It's a really difficult subject and one I have issues with myself.

I love both of my PILs, they are my DH family and I will always respect them for that. However....I have a daily battle with myself over how I feel we are treated very differently from my SIL and her DH (and family) My DH completely agrees with this and regularly says something to them, things change for a short while but then things slowly slip back to the way they were.

I try to bite my tongue and keep the peace - as I said I respect my PILs, doesn't mean I have to like them very much. Unfortunately they come as part of a package deal!!

Always have had a lovely mutually respectful relationship with my mil. She never interferes or criticises - we have always lived far apart - which perhaps helps. Wish we could see more of her tbh.

"Bertrand

interesting why would you tidy up for your dds and not your dss

Er I would but the thread is about female relationships specifically mil/dil.

Did you miss that one? "
Sorry- I must have misunderstood. I thought you said that you would tidy up in your dd's house but not in your dils? Which surely means you would tidy up in your sil's house but not your dd's. I was just wondering why.

That last sentence when wrong. In your son in law's house but not your son's.

So you are insinuating that I see tidying up as wife work?

Sad to disabuse you of that,I obviously don’t, but out of respect I wouldn’t wade in precisely because she is my dil and I respect her boundaries and her house.

I don’t have the same boundaries with my Dds or my unmarried dss.

That’s probably why I think I am a pretty good mil. Or do they tell me anyway

"So you are insinuating that I see tidying up as wife work?"
No. No idea where you got that from-rather the opposite!

Are you insinuating that women should have more of a say in who does what in a house than men?

They shouldn't but in practice they do.

Ah I see dds arnt married and still live at home. So I have yet to have son in laws but I get on with their boy friends. I am imagining a future when they finally leave home

I think a big part of the relationship is if the in laws treat you like an adult. A few ex boyfriends mothers treated me and him as though we were children which I can see would cause conflict.

Luckily my MIL is perfectly nice and we have a good (if not close ) relationship

My relationship with MIL goes in stages, god I love her but she’s not always easy to get on with.

Every so often she feels a bit put out, and says things like “oh before you came along it wasn’t this way, he used to talk to me, we used to go out for coffee on Saturdays and shopping, we sometimes went out for lunch/dinner”

The thing is, I’ve always included her. She’s always invited when we go to do something, she no longer chooses to because she can’t sit in the front of our car so I sit in the back with DD.

We’ve got along quite well for quite some time until about 3/4 weeks ago, then this stuff started again.

Oh and the latest is I’m very rude about where they shop, how dare I when I’m subsidised by her son. All I said was DH bought some trainers, from sports direct no less! - he’s a picky bugger and has refused to step foot in there his entire adult life, the past 6 weeks has been spent in various footlockers, JD sports, Schubert, marks and Spencer’s, Debenhams. You name it, nope I’m slagging off her shop. :-/

I think it comes from their boys being their business for so long, and in my MILs case, having monopoly over their sons time, it’s very hard for them to grasp they are no longer in that first place where they can tell him what to do, wear, or have their time in the same way.

And she wonders why her son isn’t actually bothered about a relationship with her. If she took a moment to realise that the coldness she’s sensed in the past 8 years towards his mum is because the way she has treated me, maybe the shit would stop. But at the moment she views me being there as the problem.

Given a few weeks she will be back to her normally nice self.

I think there are equal numbers of threads about abusive/vile parents on here as MILs, I think generally there are just a lot of unpleasant people in the world.

The problem with MIL/DIL is that you are forced to spend a lot of time with someone you are not naturally friends with, if you met them at work or whatever you could just not socialise with them but as a MIL/DIL you still have to spend a lot of time with them.

I also think some mothers can treat their sons very differentally to their daughters, particularly in the older generation. I see it a lot in my grandparents generation, they baby their adult (mid 50s!) Sons but expect their DDs to be adults.

My MIL(or DPs mum-not yet married) is a horrible woman, our relationship isn't bad exactly, we have never fought but her relationship with DP is what gets me. She's manipulative, controlling verging on emotionally abusive to him. She refuses to believe he's grown up and interferes with everything, every single decision he makes she has to be involved with or she has like a genuine toddler style tantrum, it's hard to describe but it's just so manipulative. She's so interfering with dps life but it's all about control not genuine care for him.

Growing up she wasn't a particularly great mum, she was lazy-refused to cook for them or make them lunch, made them clean up after FIL when he was sick, would control their friends, there was lots of stuff she didnt do, if it wasn't for FIL I would have said she was pretty negligent. I have never seen a woman with such an amazing ability to put themselves above their DC as much as she did, she was really awful. She treats BIL like the prodigal son and DP like an 8 yr old boy.

It makes me so upset to see her manipulating DP, he is kind and he tries really hard to please her and she uses it to try and control him. I see him break away for long periods of time and then she slowly worms her way back into his life. He stands up to her but then he gets really upset because he thinks he has hurt her but he hasn't, she just wants to control him.

She does things like go into his and now our flat and tidy up all his drawers, throw away his stuff - (including condoms and sex toys!) Uninvited, when no one is there!. She then takes a load of his washing and does it but then uses this as a stick to beat him with, like goes on about how kind and caring she is and how shit he is basically, this is all unasked. She thought he was cheating on me so hid a load of my underwear, and kept winking at him and talking with lots of subtext. She was really excited he was cheating on me, except obviously he wasn't.

She's been horrible about some of my friends who she knew as children, doesn't know them now only knew them as young DC so she is essentially being horrible (racist, disablist etc) about young children. She has also said some telling stuff about DPs SIL, how she has taken BIL from her, how BIL only thinks of SILs feelings not MILs, how he never puts MIL first etc. She treated DPs DGM like shite when she was getting ill and that hurt a lot.

She has no friends, no hobbies nothing. BIL barely speaks to her so her whole life is just trying to control DP. Sadly FIL is a wonderful, kind, genuine man and DP can't cut off MIL without cutting off FIL. I love my FIL, because he reminds me so much of my DP but I hate my MIL. I would dislike her irrespective of her being my MIL, but I hate her because I have to watch her hurting someone I love.

@hungryhippo90 your MIL sounds like mine. My DH had been single for a long time before he met me and we got together. She was upset that he was no longer as available to speak to her on the phone as he had been previously, and this has been a bone of contention right through our marriage.

I think the problem is that she and her DH always put their parents first and she expected her my DH and BIL to be the same, but SIL and I weren't having it.

It's such a hard one isn't it :-( I've found my mil places the blame on me for her lack of relationship with dh. He is not very good at staying in contact and while I nag him to do so I have almost given up as I don't ever seem to be able to win. They have never fallen out as such, she is just quite full on where as dh is very relaxed. She has behaved fairly poorly in some situations and it has damaged the relationship I have with her. In fact I think it has actually damaged her relationship with dh too as he has told her numerous times he is disappointed in the way she has behaved towards me.

I do think it's unfair that it seems to be always the woman's job to remember birthdays etc and to keep in touch with the families. Obviously while I am closer to my own family I do try with in laws but we just don't have that natural relationship.

I think sometimes my mil blames me rather than dh as it is easier to do that than think that maybe dh doesn't need her etc as much as he did as a child. It's easier to see someone else's failings than your own childs.

Anyway I'm rambling maybe I'm completely talking nonsense! Just my take on our relationship!!!