Tell me your funny IL tales

[Frankola]

Sometimes I really can't help but think that my DHs family are genuinely insane 😂

My SIL is currently playing a game of "hide the wedding date".

So the story here is that she has booked her wedding. Announced this on Facebook (obviously). And asked my DH, her brother, to be a part of the groomsmen.

DH said lovely, yes and asked what date the wedding was. She is genuinely, honestly, no word of a lie refusing to tell him?!!!

How can he agree to a date he doesn't know? Why would she hide this?! 😂

It's almost as funny as them turning up to our wedding with a full tin foil packed picnic as they didn't know if a hotel venue booked for the entire day would provide food? 😒

Or the time that my DH hurt his back back was bed bound for a week. His mum and sister turned up and took over the house. Insisting on doing everything for DH and in turn insisting I do everything for them! This ended up with them telling everyone who'd listen that they had to "come to help care" for DH, making out I did nothing for him in that time. Well obviously I didn't when they made it so I was relegated to waiting on THEM hand and foot instead!

Do I have the strangest ILs? Please say it isn't so?!

Not technically in laws as we didn’t marry but my ex boyfs dad was mental. Biggest narc cheat ever. I hated him. He thought he was upper class and part of the rich set but he didn’t work and relied on his wife’s job for money and getting credit in her name and racked up debt.
He later went to jail for trying to kill his wife with a hammer and he’s since been released and now lives about 30 years away. Pretty sure the whole family are NC with him.

MIL gave me a packet of sexy stockings that she had bought and didn't want.

She'd been decluttering and found them, they are probably from the 80s, and thought I might like them. She gave them to me in front of everyone and asked if I wore them. I cringed a lot. No one said anything. It was weird.

My exMIL isn't a bad person, she just doesn't think before opening her mouth.

I was engaged to exDH when I fell unexpectedly pregnant. She said 'It's a good job he proposed before you got pregnant, otherwise you'd never have known whether or not he did it out of obligation'.

exDH's sister got married a couple of years before us. I was looking at dresses for our wedding and she said 'exSIL's dress was beautiful, wasn't it? You could have borrowed that, but it'd never fit you in a million years'.

MIL stayed at our house- in the guest room- for a week when her house was being decorated. We insisted she didn't have to clean, cook or anything and she was happy to do some gardening for us. But while we were both out one day she took it upon herself to tidy our room. Which meant sorting through our clothes making a big bag up to take to charity, hanging up every item of my underwear on their own hangers in the wardrobe, sorting through a box under our bed AND hid my tampons so DH wouldn't see them? When we got back we didn't notice straight away so she came into our bedroom and gave us a tour of everything she'd done to 'help'.

She's bought us 7 salad spinners and says bread is a sign of the devil so who knows what's going on there

Been with DH 15 years. Had our first DC last year.

Mil has in that time stopped speaking to me unless absolutely essential,
Treats me like the hired help, passing me dd when there’s a job she doesn’t want to do (nappies, calming her when she’s whingey) and insists she should be able to do all the firsts “I want to buy her first shoes” “it would be very special to me to be allowed to do x with her as the first person” when I once dared to say one of the things was something I wanted to do she cried to DH that I was forbidding her from treating her dgd

She obsessively takes photos of dd but EXCLUSIVELY ones of just dd or dd with DH or her. If you looked through her photo reel you would think I didn’t exist.
Only compliments DH on what a wonderful job he does with dd, openly criticised me in front of friends.

Ignored my messages when on mat leave offering her to come and visit to spend time with dd and bond. Cried to DH she had been cut out of dds life (like I’d personally released COVID into the world with the sole aim of keeping her away and not made every effort to include her when allowed)

Sil lives overseas and mil makes absolutely no secret of it that she hates it and wants her to move back to the Uk. Has expressly asked her not to date men from the country she lives in just in case it becomes serious and she never comes “home” Also definitely favours sil over DH and makes no secret of it. Now she can visit us will come and point her phone at dd and say “come on show Aunty how you do this or that”. We share loads of photos and videos on a family chat and sil is offered FaceTime calls all the time.

We moved house and wanted to buy a new bed. She offered to buy it. How kind we said. Thank you so much! Although we want to invest in a very good one so perhaps she let us know a limit and contribute rather than be expected to pay for the whole thing. No no she said. “The spare bed you have is so uncomfortable. It takes me a week to reset my back after one night on it. I want to buy a bed for your spare room so you can get rid of the one you have and then when I move out of my furnished rental I’ll take that bed to my new place”. For reference our spare bed is great. Lots of guests have stayed repeatedly and had no issue. I also use it to co sleep with dd when needed. She effectively wanted to choose herself a bed, have us get rid of a good one to store it and then take it back off us when it suited her.

I remind myself regularly that even though she clearly looks down her nose at me, she loves DH and dd so I need to make an effort!

@Longdistance

I would, but I give a key to fil who helps with childcare and the odd thing here and there. He’s a sap like my dh who won’t say anything. I thought it was the end when somehow mil had a spare set of keys. I asked for them back as the house was for sale. It didn’t sell, so we’re back to square one 🤦🏼‍♀️

I would remove FIL's key and put one in a keysafe for when you need or want him round.

When you go on holiday change the code. That way MIL can't get in, but if you need FIL for an emergency you can give him the code over the phone.

My MIL never refers to me by name when talking about me or introducing me. It was always "DHs second wife". She's now dropped the "second" since I started referring to DH as my first husband.

Offered our spare rooms to family in Ireland to come over and stay in, we didn't know anything about it. Arranged travel and accommodation for her sisters funeral, she was just poorly didn't pass for another 3 years. Booked a 4 bed holiday lodge for our honeymoon as a present but booked 4 bed as was planning to come along. Asked if I had any friends as I never talk about them! Talks constantly about husbands brother how well he's done in life (all her children have done well) insisted we have a buffett for our wedding, although I wanted a sit down meal and my parents paid 2k towards wedding, she went round to my parents to try and convince them I really wanted the buffett (as she did) my mum told her to learn to eat with a knife and fork!

I love my (now ex) SIL - she's intelligent, kind, lovely. When she married my BIL, the only photo MIL put up of the wedding was one of BIL by himself.
MIL was generally super PA about photos; she had a wall in the house that was covered in photos of her favourite GC. Ours didn't rate highly enough to get on the wall of fame. So DH and I started bringing photos of our DC with us and popping them up on the wall when she was out of the room.

My fil and mil are great. My sil clearly dislikes me and I've had both mil and her sil's own husband apologise to me for her behaviour in the past.

My MIL always bought me unwanted household presents that never matched my colour scheme. Lime green cushions when we had red wallpaper, curtains and rug, a purple breadbin when everything else (toaster/kettle etc) was pale green and then complained because we didn't change everything to match 'her' colours.
She did the same with clothes for me, odd colours that I would never wear and 2 sizes either too big or too small, and always reduced in sales. I took back one top with a £20 price ticket on to exchange and found out it cost her £2 ! I had to pay £18 for the replacement I picked out.
Came round to my house while I was in hospital with DD1 and re-washed lots of our clean clothes from our wardrobe. She shrunk 2 expensive pure wool skirts of mine in a 90c wash and our white bedspread ended up pink.
She also had a set of bunk beds delivered a week after DC3 was born as she didn't think 2 separate beds would fit in one bedroom - we had a 4 bed house !

My MIL once announced to a dinner party of her relatives that I'd only just met for the first time (lived in another country) how upset and annoyed she was when we told her that we were expecting her first DGC. I was breastfeeding in an adjoining room so heard it all. Apparently we should have run our conception plans by her first. The journey home was interesting!

@Longdistance

I would, but I give a key to fil who helps with childcare and the odd thing here and there. He’s a sap like my dh who won’t say anything.
I thought it was the end when somehow mil had a spare set of keys. I asked for them back as the house was for sale. It didn’t sell, so we’re back to square one 🤦🏼‍♀️

I would remove FIL's key and put one in a keysafe for when you need or want him round.

When you go on holiday change the code. That way MIL can't get in, but if you need FIL for an emergency you can give him the code over the phone.

I was thinking of the locksafe too! We’ve stayed in cottages that had this, so convenient and safe.

Op, I wouldn’t definitely recommend this.

Longdistance, not OP

@NamechangeApril21

My MIL never refers to me by name when talking about me or introducing me. It was always "DHs second wife". She's now dropped the "second" since I started referring to DH as my first husband.

first husband

In my home country, it is tradition for the bride to be ' stolen ' during the reception. ( Basically the bride and her maids disappear round various pubs, in their wedding dress and the groom has to find her )
Eventually he caught up with me and took me back to the reception, shouting ' I've found her '
His mother turned round and said ' more the bloody pity! '
Meanwhile, his youngest sister was literally chasing the poor waiter round the place, declaring undying love for him, while his brother was desperately trying to cop off with the barmaid.
Meanwhile, my f.i.l was telling the potted palm what lovely fronds she has.
My parents just stared open mouthed at these ' crazy English people '.
Strangely, we've got on great since. I actually loved my m.i.l.

My MIL hoovers every day at 10am. When DH and I were young and staying at his parents house, we came in late from a party and asked her to please not hoover as we wanted a lay in.

I got up for the toilet about 10 and caught her on the stairs, with sellotape wrapped around her hands, wiping the stairs because we told her not to Hoover that morning!

She also came round to our house and, without asking, took the washing basket away and washed, ironed everything. She probably thought it was a nice thing but there was a crotchless sexy outfit I had put in there! And she ironed it!

My SIL uninvited me to her wedding because I was pregnant and then when I miscarriage she said "problem solved" meaning I could go to her wedding now, everyone over looked her comments as she can't have biological children herself but I wasn't happy about it.

@PennyDreadful66

That is horrendous!

@toastjam

My MIL hoovers every day at 10am. When DH and I were young and staying at his parents house, we came in late from a party and asked her to please not hoover as we wanted a lay in.

I got up for the toilet about 10 and caught her on the stairs, with sellotape wrapped around her hands, wiping the stairs because we told her not to Hoover that morning!

She also came round to our house and, without asking, took the washing basket away and washed, ironed everything. She probably thought it was a nice thing but there was a crotchless sexy outfit I had put in there! And she ironed it!

To be fair I would be overjoyed if someone did my ironing, naughty underwear or not

Just starting to leave me H and could give you some awful stories.
This is one I find kind of funny and weird.

None of his family, him included, open their post except for hand addressed birthday cards. He had a vehicle almost repossessed as he hadn't bothered opening the letters warning that he hadn't changed his bank account details.
His mother had her power cut off she hadn't opened the letters telling her the supplier had gone gone bust and ended up with no power over new years.
She also called up going crazy at H as we hadn't sent her a birthday card... we had but as it was a moon pig card but the address wasn't hand written so she hadn't opened it.
SIL missed her sons first lot of vaccines and even his school induction.
There's way more happened because they won't open letters but they still refuse to open them and every time something goes wrong they say "that's just what happens when you don't open your post" and nod like it's an unavoidable part of life!

@CandyLeBonBon

Deliberately chose spicy pizza for my eldest (by this time dx with adhd/asd) even though he hated spicy food and I'd told her that, because she 'thought he might eat it for her

Oh my mother used to do this! She thought she was the child whisperer. (Nothing could be further from the truth. She has about as much empathy as a great white shark.) Every time 2yo DD2 (now older and diagnosed with ADHD) would throw a wobbler about shoes/breakfast/the unbearable lightness of being she'd be like "let's see if she'll do it for me." The answer to that question was invariably no. It's petty of me but I used to enjoy it immensely every time.

DD2 was amazing at trolling her, though. She was still not talking much aged 3, but then there was this time that she ate a daisy, and my mother was like "no! no! Bad girl! That's poison!" trying to get it out of her mouth and then shortly after, we walked past a garden full of daisies and she pointed to it and went "ahahahaha lunch."

Dh has a relative that won't acknowledge dd2 because she is born on the same day as the relatives son. The son died from a criminal act when young and the relative feels that his birthday is sacred and must not be taken over by others.
The relative believe we have ruined the memory of the son by having dd2 on the same day...

What does a criminal act mean? Did someone kill him?

And do they refuse to acknowledge dd at all or just don't acknowledge her birthday? The former is bad, the second understandable.

@honeygirlz

What does a criminal act mean? Did someone kill him?

And do they refuse to acknowledge dd at all or just don't acknowledge her birthday? The former is bad, the second understandable.

Yes he got murdered. This happened more than 20 years ago. She does not acknowledge dd2 at all.