How to handle this situation with my grandparents?

[GreenTeaMom]

I am talking about this situation with my grandmother and her husband (who has been married to her for over 20 years and does more for us than other blood relatives so he is known as my grandfather and my daughter’s grandpa).

My grandmother has a good heart in some ways - will be the first to help out, watches my daughter on a regular basis when I have appointments or I am not well and has helped us out financially over the years too - however the one thing I am really struggling with is the way she constantly belittles my grandfather and slags his family members off right in-front of him (will slag his children off to everyone whilst he is sat right next to her etc).

It is getting to the point where visits are extremely draining and I feel so uncomfortable listening to it all. I do defend him when she says things like that but she just continues to do it time and time again.

How do I handle this?

I used to be friends with couple like this.

The husband would be fairly pleasant for the first 20 minutes or so but then he’d start picking on his wife and be passive aggressive towards her. Anything she said or did was wrong. It was relentless.

Their own son and daughter in law limited their contact with them because of this.

I felt sorry for her but there was nothing we could do or say to improve the situation (as mentioned before, even their own kids couldn’t make him stop/convince her to leave).

Sadly we just said we don’t find it nice to be around such behaviours and we ended up visiting very rarely.

You could try being honest, saying you love her and you know it's just her way but you're finding it increasingly uncomfortable to listen to someone you love being run down constantly. I'd have examples rather than saying 'you're always saying horrible things', say 'when I was there last week and you said things such as his children are a waste of space, unfront of us, I felt really upset for him and very uncomfortable. You could also say that you're trying to teach your child to be kind about others and not say stuff if she doesnt have anything kind to say, and are concerned about the effect on her.
Ultimately it's not going to be a nice conversation but I think it's that or distance yourselves

I had something similar with my late mother about Brexit. I just ended up saying to her that I didn't want to talk about Brexit, and if she raised Brexit, I'd leave. And I did. It only took a couple of times before she realised I was serious and we agreed to disagree and not discuss. Maybe you need to do something similar.