MIL on repeat, repeat, repeat

[HarrysOwl]

I genuinely love MIL.

She's a lovely person, really kind and welcoming. She never interferes, is only full of compliments and she wrote a lovely letter to me welcoming me to the family when DH & I got engaged.

The only thing that makes visiting her hard is her habit of repeating stories and being talked at. The stories are the same ones. Over and over. I can't express how torturing it is to be talked AT. She's been like this for 10 years.

I've tried:

1. saying 'I remember you saying this'
2. saying 'oh yes, you've told me a few times'
3. telling her the ending i.e. 'did you open the door and there he was, in a dress?' But she carries on regardless
4. changing the subject

Nothing has worked. She has a friend who is the same and they literally talk AT EACH OTHER, over each other. They stayed with us once. It was insane.

On the phone she's better, weirdly, and you can have a slightly more two sided conversation (it's still 80/20 her talking) but in person, honestly, it's 99/1 and I feel like an unwilling audience. I mind when it's new information - it's the repeated stories that make me want to eat my teeth.

She'll ask a question but then talk over you immediately. She'll tell you every teeny detail of her weekend in Weymouth but when we came back from our wedding (we eloped, but had it videod to show her) she couldn't muster enough attention to watch it, instead she talked about work. Poor DH was really, really hurt.

AIBU? She's such a lovely lady, it's just this aspect that put me (and DH!) off visiting her. I have to convince DH to come along, as he hates his mum talking over him and at him. His energy evaporates.

We're visiting her today.

Any advice? Happy to be flamed and I'll put my good-DIL hat on!

Some of what my Mum has to say is interesting the first time. But mainly it's just on repeat or boring as fuck shite.

I came back from a 4 day work trip last year to an amazing European capital.
She didn't even ask me if I had a good time. No I got a 4 day brain download of what I missed.

In total I had three work trips away last year and every time was the same.
Told her about another I have soon. She just said, oh right - then changed the subject.

I have to accept that she is not interested.

What I find the most hurtful and annoying is that she will talk down the children (her only grand children) who are trying to tell her about their lives, so she can repeat stories even my youngest could recite word for word as we’ve heard them all so many times!

I think it’s so rude. Does she genuinely not care what they are doing?

My granny was like this and still mentally fit. Just listen as if its the first time you heard it.

These people enjoy talking more than listening. What puzzles me is how they gather enough information to continue to talk continuously about everyone they know.

It certainly won't be anything I said!😂

I was very sad when I realised that PIL who spent all their time telling everyone how talented and clever their grandchildren are, we're genuinely not interested in wasting their time watching the grandchild play the famous instrument or perform a play. The only enjoyment worthwhile was boasting about the achievements.

@AlphaSigma That's so sad

Have you never broached the subject with her? At a point when she stops to breathe I mean? X

@Holidayshopping Pls don't take this the wrong way but how did you manage to sit there and allow that to happen without saying something (loudly) like "Excuse me MIL?! 'Josh' is trying to tell you something!!!"

Occasionally I'll say you told me this already or I say you've done this or that story to death now. She immediately gets upset.

I'm afraid we all have very bad form for this in our family. I love hearing and telling stories and like them even better the second time when you get to appreciate the skill of the delivery. My Dad tells a great anecdote but my Mum a terrible one. She can't read the audience at all and talks like a machine gun. She also is set only to transmit and will walk away whilst you are telling her some important information.

With my family, we're littered with ADHD and ASD and i think that's a huge part of the repetition and inattention. I'm completely used to it but note a newcomer's shock when they encounter us.

I've had people say - how on earth can you communicate with your parents? My advice is always only to address the last question as they're already bored of the previous 100 they asked.

If i want Mum to note or look at something important I write it down, leave it at her place on the table and tell her, and point to it. I know she will need to process it alone later.

Can you try to adjust your expectations re her chatter? It will be about Doreen's petunias so just join in and sit back for the "story".

Just realised I'm also impossible to watch TV with, i need subtitles despite not being deaf and often pause and repeat things several times to watch the delivery after I've assimilated the information. Ye Gads.

It is very frustrating, isn't it? I feel your pain!

My DM would waffle on about total strangers for long periods even though I said I did not know them. Tell the same story over and over again. I tried everything, to no avail.

Now I'd give anything to hear one of them!

Just say ‘for fucks sake shut up’ and see how she responds!

My MIL is the same! My husband sits in silence and lets her get on with it so I have to nod and agree etc. Very annoying.

I have to agree with someone up thread, how do they accumulate these tails when they never listen! It’s so exasperating!

My MIL doesn’t know anything about my kids she doesn’t stop talking about her illnesses to ask questions. She’s just the center of the universe. Argghhh!!

DM did this (before she passed away). She also used to complain that nobody told her anything. Not surprising when we couldn't get a word in edgeways. DF does this and FIL does this. Twenty years ago, they were all quite "normal".

It even happens by text with my mum:
Me: we’ve just booked a holiday!
Mum: i’ve to go back for another blood test at the Doctor. Shona has a new car.

I don’t know Shona and how is that relevant?

She also used to complain that nobody told her anything

Yes! MIL says the same thing. We TRY to tell her stuff - she talks over us!

Telling us for the fifteenth time that Bob from work had a carer who stole his cake once is a FAR higher priority than listening to any of our news.

Obviously.

I could deal with it kindly and forebearingly if it was an ageing thing, but my father has been doing it since I was a child. He seems incapable of thinking about who he's speaking to or judging their interest, state of mind, receptivity, or the appropriateness of the occasion, or of understanding normal signs of boredom, disbelief, confusion etc. I once had to intervene when, in a car park at a remote coastal beauty spot, he discovered from two polite strangers that they and he shared a dentist, and he launched into a half hour monologue about all the work he'd had done.

I know how long it lasted because I was breastfeeding my small baby at the time, and he was well away on his dental story when I went off to find a picnic table at which to feed DS, and was still going for it when I got back after a leisurely feed, stopping only long enough to open his mouth and point to individual back molars. I have no idea of the two people tried to get away - they looked as if they'd been hit by some terrible spell that rooted them to the spot. I think I may have saved them from a few teeth at least.

Telling us for the fifteenth time that Bob from work had a carer who stole his cake once is a FAR higher priority than listening to any of our news.

God, yes. My father once cut across me telling my parents on the phone. still upset, that I'd had to call an ambulance for my baby DS earlier that day, to tell me about how he had contacted a radio ham in western Australia that morning.

My mum was the same. We'd drive the 126 miles there (me and now XH). Soon as we got in the door she'd want to go thru a whole load of newspaper/magazine clippings she had - think negative stuff about huge US corporations or about considered normal stuff like vaccinating children and go on and on and on and on and on and on and on about it. Never asked how we were; if we had our children with us she showed absolutely NO interest in them whatsoever. Just utterly self-obsessed with what she wanted to say. She'd phone me and I could not get a word in and I know this sounds bad (but it wasn't actual communication), I'd rest the receiver on the desk and go off and do things - come back 10 minutes later, she'd still be going! Hadn't even noticed I'd gone and come back!). It was pretty awful really because the idea of going there and any benefit from it was just non-existent. Sadly several days after our return home we'd be greeted with up to 7 pages of foolscap lined paper filled both sides with what we'd done but shouldn't have and we hadn't done that we should have, how crap the meal was that we'd taken her out to etc. She had always been an opinionated, quite bitter and angry woman so it wasn't as though there was a cracking relationship there to help things along. We almost went completely no contact after my son was hospitalised for something and she told me it was my fault because I'd given him the MMR jab. Sadly, after this her behaviour became more odd until we literally (in order to get her the help she needed) had to have her sectioned. It was vascular dementia. The sad thing was once she was on anti-psychotic medications, aside form her failing memory such that she didn't always know who I was when I went to visit her, she was the easiest to deal with that she ever had been!I think things like vascular dementia can come on really quite slowly over really quite a long time, (not that I'm at all saying it's the case here OP) and if the person concerned has always been, er, forthright or a bit odd, it can be really difficult to begin to see that the behaviour is actually more than just that. I think she may have had it for a good while but it took quite a bit of time for us all to realise that things weren't right. I think when we had to meet her at a neighbours house, I took the kids to the park and when we came back to walk back into said neighbours house, we nearly fell to the ground as she'd left the gas hob on full blast for the best part of 1.5 hours!! I get what you're saying about feeling sorry for your DH OP. I found it pretty shit that she didn't want to actually have a relationship with her GC (and of course I couldn't do right for doing wrong eg re breastfeeding, and obviously, vaccination!!). You just withdraw in the end when even really, really carefully thought out birthday presents and so on are met with 'oh well that's not something I can eat/drink/use' with a dismissive sniff and you just then well, fuck you then. At least she sounds a bit more 'alright' than my example but that doesn't make it any easier to deal with because you can't establish actual communication with people like this because it's just a one way street and you can't break through

I think there should be classes for people on how to have a conversation and if they don't attend they get their wages, benefits or pension stopped. Referral via the G.P from family members, employers, friends etc.
So many people have no idea that you talk for a bit then listen to the other person.Is it really that hard to grasp?

Most of these post are a fair description of my late MiL. I used to think I’d go mad if I heard another vivid description of my husbands birth. I could repeat it verbatim even now and she died over two years ago. The sad thing is I’d do anything to have her sitting here with me now saying “he was a double breech 🥴”

@Harry's Owl
She's worse with him, maybe because he's the youngest of her kids, I don't know. She never talks over her eldest son.

Right, okay. So, not so lovely after all then?

@OVienna

You know people are complex, right? That they can have some flaws but still be a good person? Personality isn't black and white.

my in laws do this. I've known them over 15 years - its SO annoying and ive given up now trying to remind them we've heard that story a billion jillion zillion times......

My grandma was like this, for as long as I remember, so probably from her being 60 ish.

She was reliving her memories. Telling the stories over and over again solidifies them in her life story. The best ones get told forever, while the superficial don't last so long. There's no telling which ones will last until they either fall out of the repertoire or get retold until the end.

If you can find it in yourself to listen then do. If it's really too irritating then find a way to tune her out, but don't try to stop her telling her stories and building her memories.