To ask for help with MIL

[takeasadsongandmakeitbetter]

Sorry it is another MIL one. I don't even know where to start. MIL is overbearing and has no boundaries, things have gotten worse since DS was born and I'm due to go back to work soon so need to find a way to deal with this as it's driving me mad!

We see her at least twice a week every week one of these is for an evening meal and we stay for approx 2.5 hours (which she complains is so short). Some weeks we see PIL 4 times ie one weeknight meal, one whole day at weekend, an afternoon with DS (no OH) and they might just pop in unannounced and stay for coffee too! I call MIL daily and keep her updated on DS and OH and send her pictures etc. If I didn't call her she would bombard me.

She keeps making comments about how hard it is when your kids grow up and how
I've got it all to come. She constantly tells me how heartbreaking it is to be a mum to boys ?!?! and is just very over the top. Every weekend my plans are railroaded to include her. She finds constant reasons to pop in or for us to need to go there and it feels like the more time we spend with them the more she wants.

She has been so overbearing lately I'm having nightmares she going to try and move in! She keeps making comments about each milestone and making it all about her.

On our sons birthday we were discussing my 4 day long induction and I said oh it was so scary and horrible at the time I'm glad it's over and she said 'if you think it was hard for you, think how hard it was for me'

I need to put some boundaries in place and help her understand she is putting too much pressure on us and being very intrusive! I also need her to understand my DS is not her child!!

Any advice welcome!

Wow I see pils 3x per year.
Stop with the updates
Don't answer phone
Don't answer door
Be busy and unavailable
Let your dh do all the communications

The problem seems to be that she has virtually nothing else in her life. I completely agree that you need to start now in making it clear that this cannot go on; also check with your DH whether her MIL behaved like this and, if not, point that fact out to her. But for the longer term, is it worth your DH sitting down with both of them and talking about things they could do to occupy themselves - e.g. look up classes in their areas of interest, volunteering opportunities, etc?

I think yo could use the fact that you are returning to work as a 'reason' for things to change. Presumably she is not doing any childcare ?
Are you going full or part time ? - whichever it is any spare time in the week - evenings or during the day will be spent doing housework stuff/working from home/household admin etc etc. So if the turn up unnannounced you are definitely busy - don;t let them in the door say 'oh you should have called - i've got loads on today sorry, now I'm working I have to be really organised with my spare time'
At weekend because you are working (and I presume your Dh is too) you want to spend time with baby as a family, so plan some outings that are just your three, tell her you can't come ove so much as you want to do things as a family.

Just constantly reinforce the fact that now you are back to work things will be changing and it is now all about you and Dh spending quality time as a family with your baby.
get FIL onside if he is a reasonable type - explain things are different now, say you'll do one update a week on friday evening, but you don;t have time for daily calls.

Good luck !

it's important to OH

Important enough for him to call her daily with updates? If so let him do them, if not then its his call. Its very easy to say something is important when you have someone doing it for you.

Agree with PPs that you need an agreed approach with OH and that approach needs to reflect your needs as well. I'm a fan of strong DC/GCP relationships but they need to fit in with family life not completly dictate them.

This thread has given me flashbacks to how my MIL used to be. My DH is an only child and when I came on the scene they just expected me to slot into their lives, like a visitor. I grew up with lots of siblings in a single parent family and am not close to my mother, so the suffocating involvement was alien to me. The expectation that we would see them every Sunday for lunch, that they could pop in whenever they fancied using their key to our house, that we would involve them in everything, was not how I expected my life to be.

Your sentence, it feels like the more time we spend with them the more she wants jumped out at me as that's exactly how it was with mine. Sadly DH was so deep in the FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) that he was little use in establishing boundaries. It all blew up eventually as whatever we did was never enough, and I went NC with them. MIL initiated contact some months later and we called a truce. We rub along ok now (I've been married 33 years!), but we are a big disappointment to them, and a cross she bears. Their disappointment now extends to our children (both adults) who selfishly moved away and have lives.

We came to the conclusion years ago that you can never please everyone, so you may as well please yourself. We could see them every day and twice on Sundays and we'd still be doing it wrong (as it is DH sees them at least 2x a week, and me 1x a month). Step right back OP, ride out the guilt tripping and emotional blackmail and live the life you want for YOUR family.

No wisdom to offer unfortunately OP, but I also have a PITA MIL - though not quite to your levels.

Ugh this sounds horrendous, how claustrophobic. YOu have had some excellent advice on this thread and you really need to use your transition back in to work as this is a perfect way to break the cycle.

Please don't arrange a weekly regular meal/time. My childhood weekends were spent with two overbearing sets of grandparents EVERY SATURDAY AFTERNOON for one side and EVERY SUNDAY MORNING for the other, It was very suffocating, I hardly got to see my parents at home and there was very little chilled down time, don't do this to you or your child.

You're not going to get another chance like the return to work so make a plan with your DH, and stick to it. GOOD LUCK

Oh and I meant to say, in the case of both of my sets of grandparents, they would NEVER be happy even if we lived with them full time so in the end it didn't really matter how much we saw them, they were always disappointed and making us feel bad. So as another poster has said you may as well please yourselves. I am speaking as someone whose kids have NO grandparents and would love someone who cared around, but this is too much.

You need your DH to speak to her. If you do it, you’ll be the nasty dil. If he does it, she’s more likely to accept limited contact, IMO. You definitely need to stop the daily updates. Tell her you’ll call her in the week, if she persistently calls you, tell her she’s disturbed you/the baby’s naps and repeat that you’ll call her during the week. If she calls round, don’t let her come in, it’s quite easy once you’ve mastered the art! Open door a crack, tell her now isn’t convenient, you were just going in the bath/out/talking to your mum etc. You have to re-train her. Firmly!

Does she have other DC or just your husband Op?

As other posters have suggested this is down to your husband to sort out, whatever you do don’t have a word with them yourself. I’ve been in your position and my husband wouldn’t speak to his parents about similar issues. After we scaled contact and messages back they went mental and came over to talk to us about it. My husband stayed mute the entire time and left it to me. They now think I’m the evil wife and all their anger is directed at me, not my husband!

What Mollyblack said . Dont arrange a regular weekend day to visit I was forced as a child to visit my grandparents every Sunday afternoon. I missed out on loads of stuff with my friends because of this obligation. I hated it and refused to go as a teenager once we could be left alone.

OH was asking if she upset me

😂 You are being played like connect 4 by this woman...

You need to put on your big girl knickers

She will sometime call 4 or 5 times in a row and leave a voice mail if I don't answer!

Phone back and dramatically ask “what’s wrong?!? Is everything okay!??? Did one of you have a stroke? Was there a CAR ACCIDENT!!!
Oh. My. god.
There was. I can feel it! I can tell!!!
OH. MY. GOD.
I’m simply sick with worry! I think I might actually be sick...

TELL MEEEE!!!!!
What has happeneeeeed?!?

And when she says nothing you say
“oh my gosh! you made me so worried, so so worried.
Welllllll If it’s not urgent I must dash as I’m in the middle of something - cheerio 👋 ”
then complain at length to your OH about how very very worried you were.
This on repeat x 10 including whinging to your husband.
Then announce your nerves simply can’t take it anymore and she must stop calling more than once.
She can’t keep doing it without looking like she’s being ignorant about something you “can’t help”

Fight fire with fire... your DH needs to be more concerned about your displeasure than hers...

What strikes me when I read these threads is that the OP's are living their lives dominated by someone who will never be satisfied, and could care less about what they want.

The years that children are young, go so quickly, and can be very full on at times.

How awful it must be to have an outside force imposing on you so much and making demands.

Accepting that you can't satisfy your MIL, and owning just how much you want to give, will prevent you from having major resentment as a part of your family life.
Best of luck.

I totally understand, we had a horrible time, I used to say no I couldn't see her as I was busy and she would then call my husband at work to ask if she could see me and the baby?!? She honestly thought she could override my decision not to see her! FIL had no idea that she wasnt invited everyday and was calling my husband constantly at work and once he knew he put a stop to it!

Mil can be like this but it stems possibly from how much she had her parents around as they did childcare for her and they lived in each other’s pockets. DH is an o my child and once his father died she really latched onto us. He would see her on s Thursday night after work and she started demanding he come on a Tuesday during the day. She had nothing to do in a Tuesday but DH WORKS FULL TIME! he would also take her to get her shopping on a Saturday/Sunday but she’d want to be driven here, there and everywhere with us picking up the cost, using our fuel etc. God forbid she had to put her hand in her pocket 🙄 despite not having a mortgage and having a very good pension. The worst day was just after I had surgery and begged DH to just got to supermarket with her and then home. 7.5 hours later he got back after she used guilt to manipulate him into taking her to a garden centre 25 miles away. I was lying on the bathroom floor helpless. Eventually he refused to take her out at weekends and pushed it back to one visit on a Thursday night with supermarket included. She accepted this surprisingly easily.

I'm glad I'm not the only one as some of you seem to have experienced similar.

I think I've got a new perspective from some posts, I've also been so eager to please everyone and as has been said- there is no pleasing some people! I think I'm going to start being a bit more assertive and stop caring so much about upsetting everyone else as I'm pretty upset by how life is going at the moment! I won't get this time back with my baby - not hers. She's had her time and needs to get a hobby!

Love the suggestions, keep them coming please it's giving me strength!!

Argh! OP your MIL is like mine! She would do this if I let her. A couple of things that worked. I found lots of little things worked:

• when she started visiting unannounced every day. I started going out as much as possible. If she text me to ask why I wasn’t there ‘oh we’re at a baby class. it’s so cute!’ Then I sent lots of photos of DC. Friendly but gave the message that we wouldn’t always be available
• when you start back at work do not ever answer the phone during work hours. Just say you are not allowed to and ignore any calls.
• DH would cave in to the guilt tripping. So I started being very honest and vocal about how I was feeling about the situation. Once he was getting both sides (or getting as much hassle from me as from her!) of the story his responses also became more balanced (it turns out he just wanted an easy life so whoever shouts loudest...)

-me to DH ‘when my mum visits I will be expecting you to do xyz with her just like I am doing with your Mum’. This wasn’t a threat. I even explained the situation to my mum in case I needed to send them off on a day trip together. I didn’t. As soon as he realised I was serious he told me I didn’t have to do xyz with MIL.

• I’m still not good at standing up for myself with MIL so I have less contact with her and let my DH handle most communications. I post a lot on the family group about the DC as that form of communication has never caused us any issues but I have less face to face contact.

Me and DH are now several years on from where you are and we have recently discussed this and accepted that massively lowering our expectations of the DIL/MIL relationship has been useful. Me and her wouldn’t be friends in any other situation as I wouldn’t cope with her behaviour but we r genuinely happy to have a nice friendly chat every now and then and I enjoy seeing her at family occasions. This is much better than forcing us to spend every day together and it getting to the point where I (or she!) can’t stand it.

There were a lot of rows between me and DH and one big row between me DH and PIL before this all settled down. There are still little bumps too But it is much better now so I hope I can give you hope that it can work out. Good luck

I Don't think there is anything wrong with MIL being apart of your life but she is taking it to the extreme 1 afternoon in the week and 1 at the weekend is MORE than enough! Anymore than that is just ridiculous! My MIL would often get upset at us as I would get DH to tell PIL that they are NOT to turn up without calling first!

The amount of times FIL would be at the window and id have a frigging boob out 🤦🏻‍♀️ it got to much!! I remember when DD was maybe 2 weeks old and I was crying in the toilet because it was 9pm and she wouldn't leave.

Put your foot down tell DH enough is enough and set a time when they can visit and also when you will visit them!!

So it turns out OH is not on side. I tried to have a chat with him about it and I am now the most evil person in the world. I'm ungrateful and unkind and obviously just looking for reasons to moan before I go back to work (his words!)

He is being totally irrational and saying if I don't want to see them then fine he will tell them I don't want to see them at all.

Looks like this problem is a bit more serious than I thought.

I'll give him one thing - he's certainly loyal. Just not to me!

This sounds bloody awful

she said 'if you think it was hard for you, think how hard it was for me'

How did you not bite at that? I'm not sure I could have held my tongue!

I'd stop with the daily updates and cut back on the visits/meals (or if you like the meals, just say can we come round for the meal but not stick around as we have stuff to do. Sounds cheeky but we do it with my DPs when we have stuff to get on with, they totally get it and appreciate the time with us whilst we eat together).

Have a chat with DH about boundaries especially now that you're going back to work. You're going to want family time.

Ultimately just stop indulging her in one way or another.

Oh no sorry OP just saw your update, I'll read any other updates first

Ok all caught up! Sorry to hear your DH is not on side. How did you approach it with him?

Tell bloody DH that if you split up due to his loyalty to his mum, then she'll hardly see your child as you definitely won't be initiating contact.

I asked him if we could have a chat after DS was in bed then just said I really love his parents but lately the contact has increased and we are now often seeing them 4 times a week! I said I was worried about returning to work and wanted to set some boundaries as I felt his mum was putting quite a lot of pressure on me for more contact and I didn't want her to be disappointed.

He was incredibly defensive and accused me of being ungrateful and starting a fight. Things escalated and at one point I said I felt I was being bullied into spending so much time with them... that did not go down well!

Overall was a terrible conversation and things are much worse now! He is insisting I Cancel in his parents this week and tell them we are too busy! I was happy to see them as planned just wanted to tone things down a bit!