MIL and her constant trips down memory lane

[popsoc]

Does anyone else's mother or MIL take constant trips down memory lane? At any opportunity remembering what their kids did / ate, how they mothered them etc ?

My mother rarely does this. She mainly does it in private and not in front of others. MIL just cannot help herself and has to refer everything back to how she did it and tells tales of the olden days a lot. It's so boring. She makes it all about her. Even my DH finds it so annoying.

Also, constantly pushing her traditions on us and our kids. It's just all about her and what she did and how great it all was.

Examples include :

I buy my DS a special coat and she goes on about how she still has her children's coat and must give it to us.

Her wanting to carry on traditions she had with her kids, like a special broach they all have. My kids have to have one too now. A special prayer she used to say to them, she now wants to teach to my kids.

Just small examples. But they add up. I know that it's not mean of her, but it excludes me, doesn't it. It's all about their thing and what they did. My mum might tell me things in private - like, ' oh it would be fun if you send DD to ballet, like you used to, maybe she'll enjoy it'. But she won't make a whole saga out of it. Whereas MIL will give me a huge trip down memory Lane about how she took her DD to ballet and if I take my DD, she'll say ' aw look, DD is doing ballet, just like her aunt did '.. I know it sound silly and miserable, but it adds up and makes me feel alienated from my kids and like I never had a childhood to share with my own kids. Like I'm just an irrelevant third party anyway and my kids are basically an extension of her own children.
Annoying. Rant over !

My builder BIL is doing major work on our house. Insurance is paying for repairs after major flood damage. BIL had a row with another tradesman doing work on the house and stormed off. BIL sent me a message last week saying he won't be doing any more work because of the row. This caused major stress as it would mean renegotiating with the insurance company to have another firm do the work, finding another tradesman to do the work and living for even longer on a building site until work can be completed. I was very angry with BIL for his decision and his way of communicating it. After a few stressful days, he turned up again , acting as if nothing had happened and started work again. The stress triggered my panic attacks which I had been having since the flood but had stopped a few weeks ago. Mild case of PTSD after the flood.
BIL has a history of huge fallouts with his family and is very touchy and likely to storm off again if I tell him how angry and stressed his actions left me. He is living with us while he is doing the building work but I really just need a break from him for my anger and stress to subside. I can barely look at him without feeling stressed and angry at the moment. He has had a difficult life and is prone to traumatic meltdowns.
I guess I just have to suck it up to make sure BIL finishes the work. Or should I risk telling him how I feel in an attempt to clear the air? If I tell him, I would start by saying I understand his frustration about the row he had and that I value his work.

@luxxlisbon erm, no. My own mum is a MIL to my brothers’ wives and is nothing like this. I have friends who get on fabulously with their MILs, better than their own mums. Just because some people have less than fabulous relationships with their MILs doesn’t mean they’re always in the wrong - and because you haven’t experienced this behaviour doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It’s like saying you have a colleague who drives you mad spraying air freshener constantly round the office, for example, and being rude when you ask them not to. And then someone saying ‘I’m sure you’re hard to be around at work too! It’s probably you that stinks anyway!’ Like… sometimes people actually are problematic, or we just don’t get on with them for whatever reason. MILs aren’t some homogenous being that can’t do wrong. They’re all individual people. Some are arseholes. Also all this ‘ah she’s just reminiscing about the good old days, old ladies love to do this’ …. You realise a lot of people on here are young parents so their in laws are probably in their 50s, my own mum was a nana at 42! Hardly a little old lady talking about the war in a fascinating way 🤣

I get it. My DM is possibly worse.

The need to tell someone something always wins. There's no consideration as to whether her story makes sense in the context of the current conversation, whether it's something she's regaled us with before, or whether it's an appropriate audience. There's no filter or discretion either. It's not an age thing, she's been doing it at least all my life.

So for example, DH's dad died unexpectedly and it was a shock for the family. Here in Ireland we have the funeral only a few days after the death so you are really still getting your head around it. Anyway mum rocks up to the house to attend the funeral with us starting in an hour and she's pure giddy with excitement. And the first thing she says to DH is that she's going to be a granny again - my Dsis is expecting her first kid. No condolences, no hugs, no reading the room that we have a traumatic funeral in less than an hour. Then she admired my funeral dress, made me pose by the door so she could send a picture of me looking lovely to her sister...like WTF? I didn't CARE how I looked. I was sad and shattered and steeling myself to get through the day being a support for DH.

All that's on her radar is her own family and her own offspring to the point where even my husband's grief (and mine, I was very fond of FIL) were irrelevant.

@ZeroFuchsGiven

…..or maybe you’re just a bitter person? You come across as such a nasty person 😬

oh no someone on the internet called me a nasty pasty for having a different view to them

@ZeroFuchsGiven are you also a memory lane indulger who feels personally victimised by the OP? 😫😆

@ZeroFuchsGiven

Erm……isn’t that literally what you done to the OP? 🙈😅

I have a great relationship with my MIL, I wouldnt be so rude to slag her off on the internet just for telling me some stories from her past.

Why would I feel vicimised you plank? get a grip will you.

🙄

@ZeroFuchsGiven ‘plank’ lolz ok. Some of your own threads make you look batshit so I’m going to reassure myself your opinion doesn’t matter

you’re consistently rude and vicious to EVERYONE on here. It’s bizarre. i feel sorry for you

OP, I get it!

In my situation, it annoys for me three main reasons.
(1) I had a really tough childhood myself - which MIL knows - and when she goes on and on and ON about how idyllic DH's childhood was, it makes me feel belittled and hurt. I know that's not her intention, but still.
(2) DH's childhood was idyllic in many ways, but it also had hard times, which must NEVER be mentioned. Actually, some of them she doesn't even know about because he never felt comfortable telling her. But it's fine for her to mention mine, while giving me a sad/pity face. The rose-tinted spectacles are irritating in conjunction with her 'I was the best mother in the world and my kids had the best childhood in the world' narrative.
(3) Almost anything special we do with our kids, she has to talk about how she did it with hers when they were little. It's also belittling, and it's also not true. (This is an analogy but let's say we were at a theme park and I was excited to take the kids on the rides, she would say something like 'oh I took all of mine on those rides when they were young' - even if she hadn't.)

Phew! Thanks for letting me get that off my chest OP. She's a doting grandmother and has been a great Mum to DH, and she does try really hard with me. DH reckons she is just jealous of the stage of life we are at and she wishes she still had young kids, and I think he might be right. Maybe that's what's going on with your MIL too.

I give zero fucks of what you or anyone else on an anonymous internet forum thinks about me. No need to feel sorry I have a great life thank you.

I get it OP, my MIL is just the same. EVERYTHING relates back to her or her family.
I feel we can never just have a conversation, it always immediately skips straight on to her and what she/her DC did.
Me: “DC got a certificate for English at school today”
MIL: “I was so good at English, he must get it from me…I won this that and the next thing etc etc”
It’s exhausting, rude and down right boring.

cringe. a great life aye? you’re so happy and content you spend this much time trolling random strangers online. Ok 🙂

I understand this as we have a family member, not an inlaw, who does this and it’s incredibly irritating.

I loved hearing my grandparents reminisce about "the old times" when I was a child. Those are some of my own favourite memories of them, now that two have passed away and the other two are quite elderly...

Your MIL wants to relive her own best memories a bit with her grandchildren, and probably pass some things down to the next generation. It's a normal thing to want. You don't have to make drastic changes in how you raise your children or what you do with them based on MIL's memories of the past, but I can't imagine begrudging MIL her pleasant trips down memory lane.

Yep you caught me out, I'm a troll

You are boring me now, go stalk someone else who has a differing opinion to You.

oh I’d LOVE to avoid seeing your embarrassing attempts at insults on here but sadly we can’t block users and you seem to be on every other thread trying to wind people up. have you thought of therapy? A job?

A job? Nah, I prefer being my own boss thanks, it means I can sit on Mumsnet for however many hours a day I decide and I still get paid!

Thanks for the advice though

No one is stalking you, you’re literally unavoidable on here, your childish bullshit is on every thread 🙄

Consider yourself fortunate that she can remember these things. Too many people suffer from memory loss due to Alzheimer’s disease or dementia.
You don’t sound like a nice person at all.

So with the ballet I would say ‘yes, I’m hoping she will carry on to grade whatever as I did.’ If she repeatedly references your SIL over you, I’d say’well of course she’s taking after me as I’m her mother!’

Great advice. OP, do this. Centre yourself in EVERYTHING. Make everything about you. Make it unrewarding for her to do this behaviour.

For Christmas, buy her a large beautiful notrbook and a nice pen, and beg her to "Please write down all your wonderful memories to make a family archive for future generations"

I understand this. It's nice to share memories but some people make everything about them and just cannot be engaged with an activity 'for someone else' when it's not about them. It's very annoying.