So I have been with my partner for 6 years, he is a complete and utter mummy’s boy and would do anything for her (as I think a son should for their mum), especially as she raised him and his brothers without his dad in the picture.
BUT I can’t help but struggle with her so so much, I know that people sometimes have issues with in laws but to what extent are you allowed to put your hands up and say you want out or something to change?
Without sounding too arrogant I’m relatively a bubbly and friendly person, always polite and never ask a thing from anyone as wouldn’t want to put anyone out. Have also always got on really well with past ex’s parents etc but just struggle with my MIL’s attitude.
To try and give a few examples is that she moans to my partner about us not seeing her enough or her not seeing the children alllll the time however whenever we try and arrange anything with her or invite her anywhere she refuses or makes up excuses as to why she can’t. The only time she will ever see us is if we go to her house but she will only have us to stay for 30 minutes to an hour. During this time I always feel so uncomfortable constantly trying to make small talk but at the same time being so conscious about how house proud she is and the children doing anything to mess it up (have a son that is 1 and a daughter that is 4, partner also has an older son who is 11). When my son was first born her and my partner insisted that we had to take my son to see her the very day after he was born even though I really didn’t feel up to leaving the house but because my mum had met him that morning (she made the effort to come to our house) then to my partner it apparently wasn’t fair on his mum. Then there’s been times when we went round there I felt the need to sit on the floor whilst I breastfed incase he sicked up on her sofas and was paranoid about what she would think, my partner told me to sit back up but I explained why I was sat on the floor and his mum didn’t say a word so I was obviously right with my thinking. Don’t get me started on the paranoia I felt whenever he would do a poo!
I’ve tried so hard with her in the past, always invited her out for coffees or if she wanted to come and take the children for a day out with me, all that I have been told ‘sorry I can’t that day’ but never tries to arrange anything with me yet still moans to my partner that he doesn’t take them round to see her enough. My partner works long hours in the week and so sometimes it’s hard to fit things in on a weekend when she doesn’t ever want to actually go and do something with us and instead just sit round her house! We do make sure we do this at least once a month however, I know this isn’t a lot but like I said it can be hard to fit things in but she would always always be welcome to join in with anything we were going to do and she’s been made aware of that. She also constantly asks my partner if she can have his older son to stay, which I do understand to some extent because she just lets him sit on his Nintendo switch knowing he won’t mess anything up which obviously with my two as they’re younger it wouldn’t be that easy, but my daughter is always asking why her big brother gets to go to nanny’s all the time and she doesn’t. There’s also been situations where she has on the rare occasions had my daughter to stay before my son was born and she makes sure we bath her and give her tea before we take her and then we have to pick her up first thing the next day, on one occasion we stayed away for two nights but she refused to have her that long and my mum couldn’t do the Friday night but could the Saturday so said she would pick her up from her house Saturday morning, we had to leave my daughters car seat there for her to use in the morning and she kicked off massively saying it was cluttering up her house. This is just an example about the type of thing she moans about. Sorry just on a rant tonight as yet again she’s asked if she can have my partners son to stay when my daughter hasn’t had a look in and it’s just grated me down recently. I’ve tried speaking to my partner and his attitude has always been ‘she is the way she is and there won’t ever be no changing it, at the end of the day she’s still my mum’ which I do get, it’s just one of those that you have to get on with. Guess this is more of a rant then anything but am I right to be annoyed by her attitude? Does anyone else have experience of dealing with stress from MIL’s?