What things do your partner's family do that you think are really rude? And what things do your family do that you now realise are rude?!

[SarahAndQuack]

This is absolutely a thread about a thread (the one where the OP's husband leaves the table). It just got me wondering. What does your partner do because they've been brought up that way, that you think is actually really rude? And what things did you discover, as an adult, were really rude that your family thought were normal?

DP's family have no table manners whatsoever - anything I could name that someone somewhere thinks is rude, they do it. But one thing that really irritates me is that they'll let you explain what you're going to cook, then when the meal is being served, they'll say 'is there anything else - I don't like x' or 'is there something else for ChildsName to eat?' Then they fully expect you to heat up something else for them while everyone else's meal goes cold. I trained DP out of this but something minor that bugs me is that I was taught if someone comes home with the shopping, you go offer to help unpack. It's just what my mum does. DP just doesn't get this and, though it's irrational, it never fails to irritate me.

As for my family - my parents are both eye-wateringly rude in shops or any kind of situation where they're paying for a service. They barely bother with 'please' or 'thank you' and they will complain at the drop of a hat. My dad recently had me read an email he was sending to his lawyer - who he thinks is doing a good job for him - and it was so rude I was squirming! No 'I hope you are well' or anything, just a list of demands and criticisms. I was well into my 20s before I really understood how to write a polite letter.

What about you?

@MsTSwift

Ha we have doctor worship too Dh brothers wife is worshipped as an oracle by pil. That said she has to put up with questions from fil about his urinary issues over Sunday lunch

Glad we’re not alone in the doctor worship.

The golden child also has never paid for childcare as her parents do it all, they also gave her £250k towards her house, paid for a good portion of the building works, while my H has had nothing and has to listen constantly to how hard she works and how wonderful she is and how important she is to society. Now, I’m not saying medicine is not a worthy and challenging career, it is, but two days a week as a GP may not be the thing end of that particular wedge.

Sorry. I feel a bit better now. It might have saved a few threads too.

In general my MIL thinks everyone lives their life like her and makes wild assumptions because that’s what she would do. She was dumbfounded when I explained that my mother never told me to ‘pray to St Antony’ because we aren’t catholic. She now takes every and any opportunity to tell me to pray to various saints. Can you imagine someone saying this to a Muslim or Hindu? She has no respect for my own beliefs, just ‘praying to saints is what you do’.

She always brings food when visiting. Not just a box of biscuits but full meals. Its meant generously, to be helpful so I don’t ‘have’ to cook, but there is zero communication, they just rock up with it, or the communication is the day before they arrive and delivered rudely - “I’ve made a pasta bake”. There is no consideration that we may have already shopped and not want that food to go to waste, plus the lack of space in our fridge. She always looks a bit baffled when I don’t serve said meal or give unopened packets of crisps to take back with her, despite us explaining that we have food and don’t need more because we DIDNT KNOW she was bringing it.

At first DH accepted this with heartfelt thanks while I seethed but as our family has grown (so more tastes to take into account when meal planning and less room in the fridge) he’s started to see how rude it actually is. She’ll even go so far as to start cooking said food when she can see I’m not going to. DH does challenge her on this and is usually greeted with mild mannered confusion “oh I just thought people would like x”
“But there’s Y, why didn’t you tell us you were bringing X?”
“Oh well, nice to have extra”
This is lessening as she has seen her food go untouched.

They, more so FIL, used to be awful at arriving early. They’d say they were arriving ‘mid morning’ and turn up at 8.30 or ‘lunchtime’ and arrive at 10am. When we were young and childless (therefore not up and certainly not in a fit state to be seen before 9.30) this drove me batty. What annoys me more is that again MIL behaves as if the way she does things is ‘correct’ and you just need to do it her way.

After a few times of this I would arrange to be out until ‘mid-morning’ and find them waiting on the driveway when I got back. They complained that they like to set off early to miss the traffic and what were they supposed to do with that extra time? They even complained when DH and I were at work and explained they couldn’t arrive until after 4 “well can’t you just leave out a key and we’ll let ourselves in?”

Now we have children we don’t mind the early arrivals as much but they know now to warn us and if we say we’ll be out then we will in fact be out!

That was cathartic!

@MonteStory I feel your pain re the turning up literally hours ahead (see my post upthread). When my PIL turned up 4h early and had to sit on the drive, it emerged that my FIL had suggested several times that they stop for lunch at a service station and MIL kept saying, “no, no, we must press on.” Why???? And they’d have still been several hours early even had they stopped.

I really, really hate this. It’s such a two fingers to the host’s wishes and I always felt PIL wanted to turn up early because they were subconsciously trying to catch me out. MIL used to sit there making snide comments about standards while I was rushing around hoovering and tidying - well, you wouldn’t have seen the house like this had you turned up when you were invited.

My parents turned up when told, but this was always preceded by endless boundary pushing to extend the invitation. Demanding to turn up for a Christmas visit on 21st and leave on 28th, and getting snitty when we said, much though we loved them, it was far too long and ate up the annual leave that DH and I wanted to spend alone, not hosting. One year I fell for the pretext that this was all for the benefit of golden child DB, who was apparently longing to stay for ages so he could catch up properly. He arrived on Christmas Eve and left on Boxing Day (quite right too as he didn’t want to outstay his welcome!). We were left hosting my DP for an interminable visit that was always really about them. Never fell for that again.

God my in-laws are early arrivers, too. Is it something they all have in common??

One day, when my H was working away, they turned up at my house at 7:30am (might have been nearer 7:40am), let themselves in using the key we have in the key safe (Christ alone knows how they knew the code) and the first I was aware was when I heard “cooooeeeeeee” and the sound of feet on stairs.

I’m convinced they were trying to catch me out at something while my H was away.

In a concentrated list like this it’s astonishing how much we’ve all put up with.

My in laws have a habit of pointing out every odd job or chore that hasn’t been done.

@purplesky18 My friends parents tried this one once. Friend and her DP both work full time intensive jobs, her mother (in her late 50s, early retired) walked around the house tutting, making catbum faces and made a few comments about the stairs needing a hoover. DFriend told her where the hoover was if she wanted something to do and walked away. The mother never pulled that one again

I really, really hate this. It’s such a two fingers to the host’s wishes Yes!! Like the idea we might be doing other things is just silly. Or that DH is still essentially a child and therefore his house is just an extension of hers.

DH genuinely didn’t get this at first “you can’t tell people when to turn up!” Errrr, yes you definitely can DH. We’re hosting, they aren’t honouring us with their presence.

Again it was something he didn’t recognise as rude at all until he saw how they responded when asked to turn up at a specific time (ie by completely ignoring us) and realise they prioritise their desire to leave early above anything else (us being at work, us being out, having jobs to do, sleeping…)

DP and his family have a habit of yelling "whaaatttt?" Which I was always taught is rude. I always say "pardon?". Although apparently this is a class thing - upper class say what and the lower classs pardon.

Apart from that both families fairly polite and good manners.

My friend often amazes me - we go for coffees together and she never says please and thank you to the waitors. She does at least smile. Her children never say please and thank you either and are grumpy.

I suppose that the “rude thing” we are all complaining about is a shitty disregard for other people’s boundaries, and that it manifests itself in quite a similar way for lots of people!

This has reminded me about something my DM’s PIL (my grandparents) used to do. They lived nearby and would drive over on a Saturday afternoon - which was fine in itself and we knew to expect them every week at about 2pm. But they would not knock at the front door. They’d come creeping round the back trying to “surprise” us. DP, who both hated this, usually prevented it by opening the front door as soon as they heard the car. But once, when dad was out, mum didn’t let on she knew they’d arrived and stationed herself in the garden round the back. She watched them tiptoeing and creeping and then suddenly called out, “oh hi there!” They almost jumped out of their skins. Mum said it was most weird watching them - they didn’t even speak to or look at one another, just simultaneously started to sneak down the side path into the back garden in a strange almost choreographed way. Hard to describe.

Mum absolutely hated it - her father, an abusive man that her mum divorced, used to do the same on the few occasions in her life he ever came by. She remembered her mother jumping and being frightened when he knocked on the kitchen window.

Bloody hell @DelurkingLawyer. The choreographed sneaking is insane. Almost like they knew it was wrong but their compulsion to do it was too strong.

You probably won’t fall over with shock to know that mine used to do the same. The last time (at which point I went nuclear) they came around the back, bringing with them several extended family members. They all lined up at the window and stared at us for a good few minutes until we noticed them. I nearly leapt out of my fucking skin. My husband shrunk away from the look I gave him and he told them off. It was so creepy. I sense my FIL actually wants to see something he shouldn’t (🤢). The extended family members were so embarrassed.

Anyway, I’m sorry to sit on your coat tails. I need to close these floodgates.

@Herejustforthisone If my husband weren’t an only child I’d swear you were the secret SIL I never knew I had!

It has been cathartic for me to learn that this rude behaviour that is actually also downright weird, seems to be more common than I’d realised (or at least not limited to my PIL and my own crazy family…)

PIL - Being unbelievably rude about presents we've thought long and hard to get them. Literally "well we'll never use that, how ridiculous" or "we've already got one of those why you get us another" because we had no idea you had one.

On the other hand when I was proudly presented with yet another pack of dishclothes (while DH got a bottle of his favourite short) and I very politely said thank you but I just don't have the space to store any more (I had drawer fulls, all from them, and don't even get me started on the misogyny) it was greeted with passive aggressive comments for the remainder of the visit (three days).

DM - will literally dump any rubbish from her pockets - tissues, receipts etc on to a table in a cafe as we leave because "they're paid to clean up".

she is 4 and still says things like 'teached' or whatever). But my mum has no issue correcting grammar and I want to hide my face when she does it.

Don't worry about this. Making mistakes like that is part of the process of learning language. So, she's figured out how to make a past tense (bung -ed on the end) but hasn't yet worked out that not all verbs work that way.

But she will. And she will because you do it that way. You don't need to tell her. She'll notice.

In my twenties my flat mates father used to ring the landline at 7.30am to ensure we didn’t lie in 🙄. I heard he was murdered in a political killing in his home country and was not as sad about that as I probably should have been.

@Chimchiminie

Meeting my partner’s family has confirmed that my own family are not good enough, and I’ve massively reduced contact since we met.

Ouch. Similar here though. My husband's parents are amazing and have made me realise, now that I have met them and have my own children, that my parents are hugely dysfunctional.

@MsTSwift

In my twenties my flat mates father used to ring the landline at 7.30am to ensure we didn’t lie in 🙄. I heard he was murdered in a political killing in his home country and was not as sad about that as I probably should have been.

I feel terrible but I laughed at that.

@MsTSwift

Ha we have doctor worship too Dh brothers wife is worshipped as an oracle by pil. That said she has to put up with questions from fil about his urinary issues over Sunday lunch

Are you my SiL?? I am a doctor, and while generally I get on very well with all my in-laws, I do know far more about my FiL's prostate than I ever wanted to. I am not a urologist.