What is the most annoying thing that your relatives do that give you unreasonable rage?

[FiveFarthings]

Following on from another thread of what your partner does that gives you unreasonable rage, what do your relatives do that make you grind your teeth/ want to punch yourself/them/ make you see red?

My in-laws are the loveliest people ever but my god they are incapable of saying good bye and actually leaving! It drives me up the wall! We will attempt to leave their house and they will then remember 100 million things they forget to tell us in three hours we have been there and that they must tell us before we leave. I have learnt now to start making noises about leaving 45 minutes before we actually have to leave, otherwise we can never get out the door!

In my family we just say, ‘Right we’re off, love you bye’ and walk out so my in-laws faffing drives me mad! We see the in-laws every couple of days so it’s not because we hardly see them and they are trying to make the most of it!

What do your relatives do that give you unreasonable rage?

My brother mumbles all the time . Can't hear a bloody word he says.

My mum still can't get the car seat off the pushchair even though I have shown her thousands of times and it's been a year!

In the last 3/4 years my Mum has started adding an upward inflection to almost every sentence. It's almost like an attempt to add drama to even the most dull sentence, drives me mad!

babysnowman Is she a Valley Girl?!

My mum used to come into my room when I was younger and take my cup of water if she needed a drink. I hide my drinks from her now.

Love a good moan!

My DSM is absolutely lovely and one of my favourite people in the world (we holiday alone together sometimes and genuinely enjoy beach other's company). BUT...she is late. For everything. Over the years I've fibbed about flight times, theatre and cinema start times etc just to try to minimise the disruption. However since she started using tinternet a few years ago she'll double check. We do laugh about it but it can be annoying (drives my DH demented)

My lovely DH licks his knife which I think is vile and I want to stab him in the face with it...

FIL is a controlling prick and feels the need to speak to MIL like she's a naughty 5 year old if she has 'too much' wine (ie more than one glass). I take great pleasure in ordering us another bottle / getting another bottle out and DARING him to say anything (FIL has a healthy respect for me )

DHs family in general can never just have an open conversation if something is bothering them. Chinese whispers go around the various aunts/uncles/cousins and it drives me fucking mental. My lot are generally quite good at just, you know, SAYING something...cue MIL asking for my opinion on what whoever the fuck has said about whatever the fuck and me saying "why don't you just ask auntie xxx what she meant?" to a shocked look...ffs

MikeyTheMouse

🤔

At night? Rather than go downstairs and get her own?

Weren’t you ever tempted to leave out something undrinkable?!

My DM gets a sad on if I phone one of my siblings to ask a quick question if they are at her house and I don't speak to her too.
I phoned one of my sister's a couple of weeks ago with a quick question, she was at my DM place at the time. The call lasted around 20 seconds max and my DM was moaning that I could have at least spoken to her too, despite the fact that I speak to her at least twice a week!!
Drives me mad.

DHs brother for 30 years has given long monologues about himself over the phone. He never asks about us at all.
DH was recently unwell and they had a phone conversation about it. BIL now won’t speak to him on the phone just now as ‘he just talks about himself’.

We live 5 hours from DHs family. When we go up we ring about and tell people when we are up. Without fail when we get there they just go ‘can’t you just stay till Wednesday and we’ll see you then’, or ‘why don’t you pop up next weekend as this really good thing is on’. Nope.

This.

@NewYellowPencilCase Ha, perhaps she's been watching too much American tv in her retirement

My mum if we eat out conversation goes like this .
Dm - what are you having ?
Me - I'm not sure
Dm - I'll have a burger & chips
Me - I'll have fish & chips
Dm - That sounds nice I'll have that too .
Drives me mad but it's every time it's like she waits for me to decide and has the same .

My PIL are lovely but they don't understand why people eat differently to them. They always have a cold breakfast and lunch and a hot meal in the evening. I would sometimes have eggs in the morning or occasionally eggs and bacon and they would repeatedly ask me why I was cooking in the morning. I am also not a big fan of sandwiches and would maybe have soup for lunch and this seemed very strange to them too.

They also have one meal on Christmas day at 12 noon and nothing else the entire time. It isn't even a huge Christmas dinner either. We were once making cheese and crackers at 8pm as we were really hungry and they kept incredulously asking how we could want any more food after lunch.

My brother leaves every cupboard door open in the kitchen, plus either the oven or microwave door. It always looks like they've been burgled.

My lovely late nan was obsessed with feeding people. She was like Mrs Doyle and would not take no for an answer. If you said no to one thing she would offer you everything else in the kitchen one by one and when you lay there exclaiming you never wanted to eat again, she would slip a plate of jaffa cakes in front of you. She was also legendary for buffets. You would say you'd pop in for a quick cup of tea and she would have laid on a tables worth of food for about 20 people, home cooked gammon, a roast chicken, an entire trifle, a giant apple pie. It was like she always expected a rugby team to turn up. But she said once she remembered always being hungry during the war and never wanted anyone else to be. I really miss her

My PIL are unable to make a decision and will, if pressed, only do so “to suit you”. It comes from politeness and not trying to get in the way but you end up having to guess what they want as they won’t tell you but if you get it wrong there’s a bit of an atmosphere. They visit for several days at a time several times a year.

“Do you want to go into town x?”
“Well if it suits you”
“What do you fancy for lunch?”
“Whatever you’re making”
“Shall we go out now or later?”
“Whatever you think is best”
“Do you want to go to this coffee shop or that one?”
“Oh I don’t know”

Last time they visited I said that we made decisions for three children and in quite crazy jobs All The Time and I do not have the energy to make decisions for them (suffice from saying that we won’t be hanging around the house all day).

Most recently had an email suggesting they visit at half term “in case you have childcare problems” even though we’d already said we were taking annual leave then. They can’t possibly say they want to see the children, because that would be putting their wants over anything else, so it has to be dressed up to help us.

Anyway I called their bluff, I said we had no childcare issues that week but still haven’t sorted out all the before and after school provision we needed so if they were coming to help for childcare term time would be better...

I wish they’d say “we’d love to come and visit you and see the kids and maybe take you out to lunch and x restaurant because that food suits us and we’d like to go for a walk and see what dc has been doing at football” or whatever but we have to elicit it from how they respond to every suggestion.

(Oh and they faff. Everything Must Be Packed Away After Every Use, so each time we go out they have to find coats/shoes/keys/bags/stuff for later in triplicate).

They’re very well meaning though, just so painfully nice about it.

My parents tell me exactly what they do and don’t want. And in their case it’s to visit us as little as possible and to stay out of the way at any time they might see the children because they might be noisy. I’d rather have my in laws than my parents any time...

My irritating DH puts the knife that he has just used for the butter in the fridge on top of the margarine tub, for next time as, despite having a draw full of them, according to him we are short of knives and he will need it for next time. Annoys me to death to find cold knives in the fridge, usually just after I've put the dishwasher on.

My mother also thinks hot breakfasts and lunches are weird and decadent. My husband and I generally have a hot breakfast at the weekend - not a full English but a bacon sandwich/sausages and hash browns/crumpets, that sort of thing. Every time she visits I'll tell her where the cereal is, the bread and other toasting things like crumpets or muffins, porridge oats, bacon, all the things you could eat for breakfast. She then insists on getting up at 7am and eating cereal, complains that we're lazy lay-abouts because we don't get up till 8:30-9 then moans when we cook something because "I didn't know that was on offer". Last time she was here and moaned I suggested she wait till we get up and offer to cook her something
"oh no, I couldn't do that. You eat far too late in the morning."
"well then why not make yourself something with all the things I've shown you?"
"I don't want to put you out by making a mess or using something you might have planned to use for dinner"
Ahh yes, toasted muffins those well known dinner ingredients. And obviously shops don't exist.
She also always says "haven't you had enough dear?" when I pour myself a 2nd glass of wine. There isn't such a thing as too much wine when she's visiting.

My dad has a mobile but refuses to text, take or make calls on it.
Him and his dp love to burst in uninvited to my house when a simpke text to let me know he's coming would be so much more polite.
He can be a bit of an arse.

my DH does a one-word thing and it drives me crazy - but it's this. He'll ask a question like "what time is the next bus into town?" and if I don't hear it for some reason and say "what?" he'll reply with "bus." no context nothing.

My brother does this!

Him: What would you like for your birthday?

Me: Sorry, what?

Him: Birthday.

Me: ...?

It drives SIL mad!

Mine are currently PIL related but that's only because we're living with them right now; I'm sure it would all have been about my family when we were living with them!

MIL never pegs out washing on the line. She just drapes the clothes over. It's windy here and at least a couple of items of clothing fall off every time...and she just leaves them!

I don't know if the earth eventually reclaims them or something because I haven't been able to leave them that long since we moved in and end up rewashing the stuff and hanging it back out WITH PEGS.

She has clothes pegs. I have a massive basket full, too, which she's always welcome to use. I don't know why she doesn't!

FIL can't do anything without leaving a trail of destruction wherever he goes. You can tell if he's had am on toast because there will be crumbs all over the breadboard, lumps of jam on the work surface etc.

Mil repeatedly rubs the end of the arm of our sofa with her fingertips. Aaaaaarrrrgggh! It makes me want to scream and over the years, it has gone slightly darker than the other one. Revolting (and I always gently sponge it clean when she goes.)

My cousins forget we share the same Grandmother. But yet when they talk about our Grandfather I'm always included in the stories - It's infuriating.

I always have to get my parents to correct them. But they never change

Families - You can't live with them, you can't live without them

My eldest brother is always trying to 'compete' with me - asking how much I earn only to scoff that he earns more. If he achieves anything, even the smallest thing, he'll try and rub it in my face. 'I got DM/DF the better xmas/birthday present'. Even bringing up the fact that he's moved out whilst I still live with my parents - even though he was kicked out and has tried to move back in since but they won't let him

My Nan asks questions about me whilst I'm in the room instead of just asking me direct.

Nan - DF, does YouBelongHere like fish fingers?
DF - I don't know mother, ask her.

My other Nan 'doesn't like committing to things too far in advance'. It drives my DM up the wall.

When I was first married, in the 70's, my Mum was absolutely horrified when she asked what we had for Sunday lunch; and I said soup/salad/sandwiches. There was only the 2 of us, but she seemed to think I should cook a full Sunday roast every week. (And I worked full-time, so I didn't want to spend half the day in the kitchen.

Whenever my parents come to stay, they bring with them random shit from their fridge and/or fruit bowl that would otherwise go off and that they ‘don’t want to go to waste’ while they’re at my house.

They then don’t eat them. All they’re doing is bringing stuff that would have gone mouldy at their house to my house so they can watch it go mouldy here instead. And I have to look at a heap of wrinkled satsumas and black bananas shoved on my worktops for the duration of their stay and then throw it away when they go home.

Also, they bring with them a laptop, two tablets, a Kindle and two phones, all of which take different chargers, every time. All of them are ancient, all have bits of sellotape all over them and all of them need connecting to our WiFi which takes forever. They have barely any idea how to use gadgets, don’t know how to mute any of them, and leave them teetering on the edge of chair arms or spread over all available coffee tables with cables trailing all over the place to be tripped over. They also leave newspapers everywhere and my dad likes to leave collapsible walking sticks propped up all over the house for reasons unclear.

They also insist on bringing their own instant cappuccino drinks with them so they can have one every morning because apparently they can’t break that habit for the three or four days they’re at my house.

My dad also randomly asks for very specific foods at odd times, eg “Have you got a Scotch egg I could have?” while we are just getting ready to go out. And my mum has a new eating/drinking fad every time so whatever thing she couldn’t live without on the last visit will be obsolete and untouched on the next.

Also my dad has to take regular medication to function at all, but leaves his pill alarm lying around where we can’t hear it and then suddenly announces that he is hallucinating/unable to walk/feeling ill because he was meant to take his pills two hours ago and didn’t. He could wear his pill alarm round his neck in the house but refuses. Also he does things that are insanely dangerous with his condition, like going into my shed and trying to hack at my hedge with shears even though he has no coordination and can’t see what he is cutting or stay upright for very long unaided without falling over. It’s basically like watching the opening ten minutes of Casualty for days at a time; you’re just waiting for the accident to occur.

My FIL won't drive in the dark which means that any time we see them has to fit around that, and he is completely inflexible about it. It is so annoying especially in the winter when everything has to finish in time for them to drive home while it's still daylight!

It's not a relative but a friend. Exclamation marks again. Every time she runs, it goes on Strava (fine) but she always names it with an exclamation mark eg "Run around Greenwich Park!" or "Glasgow ladies 10k race!" I don't know why the !!!!! are needed !!!!!!!

It doesn't really bother me, it was just the post above about the lawyer sister that made me think of it.

My MIL is a "naked person" and I have been regularly flashed because she's got a short nightie and no knickers on or she forgets to close the bathroom door