Drama, Drama, Drama - SIL

[jumpingjackrabbit]

DH's mother has travelled down South to spend some time with her grandaughter who she sees a few times a year and also to be able to spend some quality time with DH. We don't see her very often as they live a good 7 hours away from us.

Within 5 minutes of arriving yesterday, SIL is on the phone having a breakdown about something. I overhead MIL say did she not remember that she had come down to spend some time with us (I'm not bothered about spending time with me, but I do think it is important that she gets to spend quality time with DH and our DD). She then took herself off to another room and was gone for 45 minutes.

5 minutes after getting off the phone, it rings again. SIL again. This time wanting to Facetime.

We just sit down for our evening meal and BIL's phone goes (he has driven MIL here) and he says he will speak to SIL at 8pm. 8pm he disappears off into another room and after 30 minutes comes back, hands the phone to MIL and says he has had enough of being Siegmund Freud and it was her turn. She then disappears off for another hour.

All the time, DH was wanting to talk MIL about some things important to him and about work etc given he hardly sees his mum or gets 5 minutes with her.

We are meant to be going up for Christmas, but I said to MIL that whilst I do not wish to know what is going on, if things were not great, it might be better for us not to come up. 2 years ago we had a bloody miserable Christmas due to SIL and her mood swings, taking offence at everything etc. and personally I would rather enjoy a happy christmas with my DD and DH away from all of this drama as it is just not pleasant and awkward.

AIBU to think SIL should allow DH and DD to spend at least a couple of hours with grandma / mum?

AIBU to want to reconsider our Christmas plans to avoid another repeat of having every word we say taken the wrong way?

Ask her to mute her phone OP. That's very intrusive in what sounds like a short MIL visit. Ridiculous.

Bloody hell. Your mil and bill should switch off their phones and not pander to Sil, who is an adult and does not need to call Mummy every 5 mins - unless she has a serious issue or there is something major v going on that you don't know about. Even so, she is U.

I honestly cannot get my head around the fact you can't follow OPs posts...
Are you deliberately misunderstanding to attention or something?

OP, SIL is a drama lama who can't handle not being the star of the show. I wouldn't go for Christmas, you'll just be side lined and it'll be rubbish for you.

I’d ask MIL to be present for her visit and only allocate one phone call a day that will last 30mins but the rest of the time is yours. Or she should just go home if she thinks her daughter is that vulnerable that she needs to pander to her like this.

How very caring of you.

First of all your posts are very clear , not sure why some people can’t understand what’s going on . You are not being unreasonable on both questions.SIL is thoughtless and has no respect for anyone’s time . Don’t go Christmas and when MIL comes to visit you get her to put her phone away. Or her son should tell her .

My sister is EXACTLY the same. Look up covert narcissism. This kind of person can not and will not think of others, it's pathological selfishness. Life and everything about it is about them. My sister made my wedding about her and that was my final straw. Your DH will have his final straw with his sister, I am sure of it.

I got divorced from a physically abusive man and he harassed me for years afterwards and obviously my MH suffered. I chose not to make it anybody else's problem because 1. I chose to marry the fucker and 2. My behaviour and emotional landscape is owned and chosen by me.

Your MIL needs to set some boundaries and stop being a passenger over her own life. Your grown up SIL should not be dominating your MIL in this way. I'd be asking MIL and BIL and your DH if they think SIL would be there on the same level when MIL needs her in old age or ill health? I suspect everyone knows SIL will not accept any caring responsibility for her mother in the future, because it doesn't serve her. My sister will be the same. You have a unique position that you don't have their family of origin dynamics and you can sense check the dysfunction. Sounds like you do, keep doing it!

Turn your phones off, funnily enough we all managed to.live just fine without mobile phones 🙄

Your post is entirely clear, on all points.

Anyway, perhaps your DH could suggest to his mum that she leaves her phone in the bedroom today, and then speaks to SIL this evening to check in. In a genuine emergency, she will call him, I'm sure.

Why should the OP care? Her SIL doesn't care that her brother and nieces short time with MIL is being impacted by her constant phone calls. Surely caring should work both ways...

What do you suggest? Everyone goes and dances attendance on the sil, and her needs are the only thing that matters?

This sounds like my sister. I rarely see my mum because she lives a long way away. Every time I visited her or she visited me, it was dominated by my sisters constant dramas over the phone. Once, my mum actually left me and my children to go to my sisters house because of some imaginary crisis. It was deeply hurtful and has permanently damaged relationships. I don’t have an answer because nothing I tried worked.

I interpreted this not as uncaring, but as not wanting to pry.

There could be things happening that people want to keep private, for whatever reason.

And even if it is what you suggest - that OP doesn't want to be involved in the drama - who can blame her? This is an adult woman who can't even let a little girl enjoy a couple of days of Grandma's company. She knows her SIL better than you do. She's probably had years of this bollox.

She can hardly commandeer her MiL's phone and turn it off can she.

@jumpingjackrabbit What is the point in saying about Xmas drama? You KNOW there will be. So set your boundary NOW and say you are not going.

Off to google "covert narcissism" as I have one of those too...

I think you have a slightly different version of the age old MN "You don't have an MIL problem, you have a DH problem." In your case, "you don't have an SIL problem, you have an MIL problem."

The issue is that it sounds like SIL has been beaten down by her relationship with her ex. Whether or not he is a genuinely horrible person is impossible to say but either SHE is the toxic one OR she is still in that cycle of abuse and control in which he dominates her thinking and emotions and he controls her that way. The knock on effect, either way, is that she is dominating and controlling your MIL.

I'd be getting your Dh to have a long and serious conversation with his mother about how SHE is coping being the sounding board/punching bag for SIL's issues. See if he can convince her that she has to put some boundaries in place and that while she's here, prioritise him and, importantly, your DD.

At some point, a touch conversation needs to happen with SIL too but that's maybe further ahead. I'm sympathetic. DH and I had to step away from SIL a little because of not dissimilar behaviour. Her ex is a narcissistic abuser and is still manipulating her. But she can't/won't hear it. She is still looking for a rational explanation for his behaviour and she still keeps hoping that if she can get him to understand, he will change. The result is that their lives are chaotic. We feel terrible. we also can't keep getting involved.

The OP quite clearly doesn’t give a damn about her SIL, and neither does her DH by the sounds of it. Of course its not just the SILs needs that count, but if she is having a mental health crisis, then her ‘needs’ probably currently top anyone else’s who are NOT having a similar crisis.
Maybe the OP would have had more sympathy from me if she had come on here asking how to manage a tricky situation rather than slating someone in crisis.
FWIW, I think the DH needs to speak to his sister, find out what the issue is, see if she needs immediate support or if she can access such support from her GP / counsellor etc. Then, once he’s ascertained her level of crisis / need, he can decide what action to take. But the OPs MIL is presumably a grown woman who can make her own decisions. Telling her she must not take the calls because shes supposed to be spending time with another one of her children is batshit and controlling.

The problem is that it sounds like this mental health crisis has been going on for at least 3 years, since she split from her ex. Meanwhile, while it's not clear what additional support she may have been attempting to access, she's leaning heavily on her mother in a manner that is making it difficult, if not impossible, for her mother to have a normal, healthy and independent life.

Mental health is not an excuse for abusive and controlling behaviour. Even less so over a long period when other options could have been sought.

I think that most of us would hope that by adulthood our kids would act like adults rather than attention seeking preteens.

The OP has explicitly said that there are other behaviours as well as the over dependence on the MIL.

Taking offence at every thing your hosts are saying on a week long visit? Ruining other people's Christmas (including the children of the family) by seeing everything as a perceived slight? Is that a MH issue? I have a diagnosis of Complex PTSD, had an eating disorder, post partum psychosis and clinical depression in the past and I am pretty sure it didn't manifest in being offended and telling everyone how offended I am by perceived slights and trying to cause drama? Obviously we can only go on what the OP is telling us but there seems more at play here than a mental health crisis IMO.

The sil seems to be quite happy being the controlling one though, or is that OK?
At some point if her needs are that exceptional she cannot cope with her mother spending time with other people then this needs professional support.

Makes me think of that American girl in Love Actually with her brother. They need to stop pandering to SIL!

Well, frankly I roll my eyes as soon as anyone mentions the term “mental health.” Because the term has become a meaningless buzzword which people use to demand that they be the centre of attention.

It’s sad because there are people out there with genuine diagnosed mental health conditions who have been lost among the attention seekers who have to have it all their way because “mental health.”

If this has been three years then presumably the SIL has been able to block her ex by now and put steps in place to prevent the harassment. But it seems that it’s far easier to just dominate everyone else’s time.

I suspect she’s always been like this and the divorce has just given her a higher platform. It may even be why the divorc happened.

I have a major energy/positivity vampire like this in the family. It's exhausting, it's constant, there's always a new facet to the drama and trauma, and no one ever has a good time because there is intense dumping of the latest Awful Thing.

Yes there are real problems, but burn out is a real problem too. The phrase 'not my circus, not my monkeys' has saved me. And some of the beliefs from families of addicts, because in my case it's not that dissimilar. I didn't cause it, I can't change it and I cannot control it, and I don't have to be depressed and walked over by it all the time either.

I cannot control that some family members will choose to enable and get very upset by the huge feelings being dumped all over them, that's their choice. As much as I possibly can however, I strongly limit my own availability to it. It really is be a nice sympathetic person and let my mental health be destroyed, or find some boundaries and cope with feeling mean for saying no. And turning the phone off.

It's also the case for me that if I invested in and supported all of today's dramas there'll be a whole new one to deal with tomorrow. There isn't an end to it, there isn't a resolution, this isn't someone in a temporary difficulty needing support: this is someone who will live their entire life like this day to day.

God I feel sorry for poor MIL in all of this.

Your mother in law and her daughter have a codependent relationship, mil enables her by answering the phone knowing full well she is missing out on catching up with her son and gd.
Your husband needs to sit down and ask her to leave mobile phone on silent so she can actually bond and catch up with them both, she can ring her daughter up later in the evening to catch up. If his sister is that bad then she may as well go home to tend to her. He can then explain that due to his sister needing to be the centre of attention at all times that you all will be spending Christmas at home and of course she has is invited as long as she she can ignore silenced phone for the majority of the time and can spend quality time with you all.