MIL on holiday

[alliejay81]

DH, DS and I are on holiday with MIL. She is not awful and this is definitely a first world problem.

However.

Her conversational skills are driving me mad. She'll expect me to listen to the minutiae of her life including: details of all her friends, the content of her Facebook feed and her preferred choice of frozen pizza. She'll expect me to remember her preferences and tastes, her weekly routine and the minutiae of her life. She'll launch into a story in the middle and expect me to be able to tell what she's going on about because of my total knowledge of her life.

So far, just about ok. Lot's of people are boring and a little bit self-obsessed. However, she cannot pretend to be interested in anything I say. To the point, she clearly disengages or cuts me off. The worst of this is when I mentioned a childhood memory of my gran, and she cut me off to tell DH about something she'd read on Facebook.

She's just so rude and clearly so disinterested in me - I don't expect much interest, she's not my Mum but politeness would be good. Spending time with her is just so draining but going LC / NC seems extreme. AIBU in thinking she's rude? And does anyone have any suggestions for how I deal with this please?

I like my dads old line... “I’m sorry, was I talking while you were busy interrupting ?”

Said in a joke-y way it can make the point quite well without being too offensive as I’m sure you don’t actually want to fall out (although it might depend on her sense of humour I guess - some people can get offended by anyone).

Op you need headphones...
Let dh amuse her.

Does she live alone? My DF tends to be like this, and I realise it's because he listens all day, to the radio, and what he really needs when he is with someone is to talk. And the subjects he has to talk about are, apart from what he's heard on the radio, his life. So I make sure I email him with lots of info about our life, and then he talks about that s well.

She may find you boring too!

Sounds like my exh.

He will tell me things about people I hardly know assuming I know who he's talking about.

We had a very surreal conversation on the phone once when he told me that xxx was getting married. It so happens that xxx is our son's name, and I was sitting there wondering why the hell our son, who would never phone his father and rarely speaks to him if he's in the same room, would phone his father and tell him he was getting married before telling any of the rest of us.

Turns out the xxx that was getting married, was the brother of his nephew's wife, who I'd met once some time before.

On the other hand. One of our DDs has developed a very debilitating condition that both she and I have explained to him quite a lot about.

She's waiting for confirming tests and when I told him recently about one of the tests she was going to have he had completely forgotten everything we'd told him, even seemed to forget that she has the condition in the first place.

Some people only listen to what's in their own heads. Having said that he is generally an extremely self obsessed person anyway. I imagine that self obsession is part of that sort of mind set.

Just realised, my post probably sounds a bit like the things your MIL does OP, but I was using it as an example of the mind set.

Tbh with people like this I think the best thing is to stop trying to have a conversation with them. Tune out when they're wittering on, and stop trying to share any of your experiences or interesting titbits with them.

It's pointless because they're not listening and it's just impossibly frustrating trying to get them to.

My exh will cuts across other people's conversation all the time as well.