To not apologise when I meant what I said?

[MotherOfOlafs]

MIL round for Sunday lunch last week, all very pleasant to start with. MIL always has a lot of comments about others appearances which we tend to ignore as rising to it just seems pointless. Until during lunch she told us about a woman she’d seen at a restaurant who had some facial hair. She then told us she’d taken a photo of this lady obviously without her knowledge and sent it to some friends who’d then ‘made some very funny comments’. She was laughing her head off while she was telling us this. To be perfectly honest it made me furious and I replied ‘I didn’t realise you were such a nasty bully MIL’.
The rest of the day was spent in silence pretty much. She now won’t speak to any of us (fine with me but DH is upset). He’s asked if I’ll consider apologising. I honestly don’t think I should, especially as this all went on in front of DD14 and I would never want her to think this behaviour is excusable.

As the mum of an adult DD with severe facial hair from PCOS thank you for calling out your MIL on her shitty behaviour.

YANBU. She was extremely nasty and setting a bad example
for your daughter. Well done for speaking up and no, you shouldn’t apologise.

PCOS, post-menopause, hormone imbalances ... all causes of facial hair in women, and they already feel bad enough about it no doubt without people like your MIL making it worse with that kind of behaviour.

Your DH is deluded if he thinks you are the one that needs to apologise here.

Don't apologise. Maybe to keep the peace say you want to move on but I still stick by what I said.

Don't apologise.

This ☝🏼

My pil are like this, awful bully’s and similarly also cry victim when called out as racist, sexist, homophobic etc. Arseholes need to be called out as arseholes.

I agree with the the posters who said what the MIL did wasn't bullying: you can't bully someone who doesn't know it's happening. Also it has to be behaviour over time. OTOH I can see from the OP's point of view, the nasty comments about other people's appearance have gone on over time, so it has that feel.

Call the behaviour, not a name. I don't agree with posters who said tell her she was being unkind., way too weak. I prefer "That was deeply unpleasant" with possibly "I don't want you to do it this house again, ever."

These matters aside, should the OP apologise? Absolutely not. The spirit of what she said is the important thing.

In the spirit of diplomacy, if you want to for your DH’s sake, I would be prepared to put it behind me so long as that kind of behaviour wasn’t repeated in mine or my DD’s presence again.

Absolutely no apology to her would be offered but I’d throw her a bone of forgiveness and see if she was capable of contrition.

Don't you dare apologise, she needed to be told! She needs to feel ashamed of herself!
She's obviously had too many “nice" people accepting her shitty behaviour for too long and now she actually thinks it's funny to mock innocent people.
Well done to you!

She was a bully. People like her don't either understand or deserve a softly softly approach.

I don't necessarily agree.

Her behaviour was bullying. There is a difference (particularly if she is otherwise a good person).

It's not about softly, softly - I'd absolutely call out the behaviour quite clearly. I think the phrasing by OP was incorrect and unlikely to help.

What post did you read that said this? I haven't seen any.

Most are agreeing fully with OP. Some (like me) are agreeing the behaviour was abhorrent but calling her a bully wasn't the best (or fairest) way to address it.

So I think we can all agree if the OP "has" to say something it should be "I shouldn't have called you a bully because it doesn't meet the criteria. I should have just said your behaviour is vile, unacceptable and you are simply nasty."

What a pathetic woman. A grown adult thinks it’s fine to bully someone like that as if she’s back on the playground. People who are happy with themselves don’t comment on others appearances so really I suppose she should be pittied for having such a low opinion of herself that she has to pick apart other people. Pay no mind to her opinions, and don’t apologise. If anything I’d be giving her a piece of my mind.

Well, no... I criticised the behaviour. Do you honestly not understand the difference?

'You are a bully' is exactly the same as saying 'you are bullying someone'. Exactly the same. You are hairsplitting and arguing semantics in order to defend someone who is not worthy of defending. Why do you feel the need to do that exactly?

Precisely. All this hairsplitting is utterly nonsensical and I think very very British. We would rather criticise people who call out awful behaviour than the behaviour itself.

It may have been better if you already had one too many to drink and the case of, "I've started and I'll finish when ready" lol😂

But in all seriousness, taking the family dynamics into account, apologise
by saying something like " Sorry MiL I should have not said that as your comments took me back to the school days and bullies making fun of people... I should have said, something like 'Sorry MiL that is not nice nor funny."

Job done. If not, then don't hold back next time as she will learn to keep her trap shut with you present.

TBH, it is very disgusting what she did. How would she feel if pics were taken of her when she was older and with a small beard and it was taken without her consent then passed around to like-minded simple idiots to have a good old lol at her expense??

Your choice, your family.

It is different, not mere semantics, and it's drummed into teachers all the time; deal with behaviour, don't call names. After all, it's the behaviour you want to change. Sure it would be nice if such a person changed fundamentally, but unlikely in the short term, but the behaviour can be called out right away and told to stop.

Completely agree. Well done for saying something. Such disgusting behaviour from her.

I agree with this. Her behaviour was awful but ideally if you have "feedback" you say something like "I don't agree with that" in public, then something stronger 1-1 in private

Keep your mouth shut and not spoil everyone’s afternoon!

What a load of BS. This is why people like the MIL think they can say such disgusting things about people and get away with it.

This is correct, technically. When it comes to children, you shouldn’t label the child’s character, rather you should label the behaviour by saying something like ‘’stop acting like a bully, it’s not nice’’ as labeling the child’s character can be damaging to them.

However, OP’s MIL isn’t a child and has form for commenting on other’s appearances so I think the label is probably accurate in this case

But basically you have decided for the whole room what is appropriate, sure one on one say it, but I also get tired of 'I know best and I want everyone to hear it' regardless of what I would think of the original issue

Well done OP! Her and her friends sound hideous. Hopefully this’ll be the end of her visits for a while.

I agree it would be better to focus on it being a horrible thing to say rather than saying that she is a bully, which is a bit bridge-burning. Totally agree that she behaved horribly.