Culture clashes with DHs relatives

[ItsOhSoTiresome]

I am married to someone whose mum is from a southern European country. I don’t really want to be more specific than that as I’ll out myself.

From the get go I’ve had massive challenges with her, and the women in her family. My MILs culture dominates everything. The way Christmas and Easter are celebrated, birthdays, food…everything. Anything British is rubbish, and everything from her home country is brilliant.

The women in her family are very dominant and bossy. If you don’t do as you are told you get shouted at, or punished. The men are pathetically weak.

If you are not one of them i.e. a blood relative, you are dirt basically. Over the years I’ve heard them say absolutely terrible, catty things about them. It’s always the women, they don’t slag off the men. They are always not talking to someone, slagging one of them off, or playing games. The politics is off the scale.

Of course, they do all this to me. They play games. Recently we invited them to something. My MIL and one of my SIL’s sat there and came out with the biggest yarn you could imagine, as to why they couldn’t come. It involved flights and a hotel. I then heard from someone else that they went to see a concert. This was so inconsequential, why not just say “I’m not free”.

There are a million other incidents where I’ve done wrong, they’ve not spoken to me for 6 months, bad mouthed me to others, ignored me when I’m in my or their house. They do this to all the female non blood.

They do this, then they expect everyone to get along in between. There have been some big blow outs with other female family members and they just expect everyone to have short memories. In fact, one of my SILs has told my DH that she has no idea what on earth she has done as she gets the impression I don’t like her. I’m in the wrong apparently.

In the past I’ve been given feedback from female family members who live 000’s miles away, and don’t know me, yet have heard something, and think it’s their place to criticise my parenting.

I put up with this when younger, when inexperienced, but now I have no tolerance of it. I don’t want to know them. My DC are older now and the last time I saw them one of my SILs took a minor shot at one of my DC. If that happens again I’m likely to go nuclear because I’m brilliant at sticking up for others, not so much myself.

I find it really hard because I am quite a non confrontation person, and all this drama and games is exhausting. I didn’t want to turn this into a culture thing, but I’m English and I don’t think we act like this. If you bad mouth me, ignore me, and blank me for months, I’ll take it that our relationship is over, I’m not going to easily forgive and forget. Problem is there’s lots of them, and only me. I’ve stepped back so much, and I see a massive fallout on the horizon when I start putting my foot down and say, sorry I’m sick of not celebrating Christmas Brit style with some eggnog and sprouts, crack on but we are doing what we want.

AIBU it’s cultural, suck it up you knew what you married into
YANBU don’t take this shit anymore

Are you happy being married to a pathetically weak man?
It can't be much of a marriage if he doesn't have you back.

Personally I would send him back to mummy and have a great British Christmas.. This year and every year..

What's your husband doing while all this goes on?

You dont mention your husband at all?

A lot of it goes over his head. He says he didn’t hear that catty comment, or see that eye roll.

He does have a bit more backbone than the other men and tells his mum and DSis’s that’s he’s not interested in their dramas and games and not to be involving his family in them. Some, still too many, trickle through. We don’t have regular parts in the drama, like others, more cameo appearances which is still too much.

I think your actions of stepping back are good. Step away, and grey rock. You're perfectly entitled to celebrate Christmas (and anything else) the way you want. A good answer to when someone cals you up to tell you what you've done wrong is to say, "Thanks - but in my culture we try not to criticise." Two can play the culture game :)

Where do you all live? Answers kind of depend on whether MIL and co. are here, or back in home country. Much easier to ignore if they're farther away.

And as others have asked, what is your DH's part in all this?

I'm not convinced this is a culture issue so much as a toxic family issue disguised as a cultural issue. My DH is also from a Southern European culture and I recognise some of this in as much as the default assumption that THEIR way is the right way etc. BUT, because my DH's family are perfectly normal, kind, rational people, coming up with new ways and new systems and being considerate of each other is also perfectly possible.

So your problem is an extended family that are judgemental, loudly and obnoxiously opinionated and who are unwilling to make any effort. The less you have to do with them, the better I'd say.

I like that Zim. As a Brit I feel I’ve been conditioned to not stick up for my own culture.

In my family we don’t shout and scream at each other, if we did it would be because of a very serious incident. We certainly don’t ignore, eye roll, don’t speak for months. I wouldn’t do that to my own brother and sister in laws on my side because they’d be very upset about it, and my siblings would go ballistic, plus they are nice,

As a Brit I feel I’ve been conditioned to not stick up for my own culture.

I'm British, but was born and have lived most of my life elsewhere. This is something that really struck me on moving to the UK. Brits will complain (not unreasonably) about the government, the weather, the state of the NHS, but very seldom will you hear a British person say, "We're good at this!" But there are many parts of British culture that are amazing. For instance, most Brtish people are very well mannnered. I have never met a British person who isn't witty. Not stand up comedian style funny, but just generally able to make a witty comment that cracks you up in the middle of a perfectly normal situation. I see this day to day wit on Mumsnet all the time (and in real life) and I love it. Many Brits are self deprecating - I'll see someone come up with a brilliant idea at work, and then be shy about taking the credit that is due. A nice change from many other cultures, who will happily steal your idea and then shout it from the roof tops as their own. Anyway, I'm supposed to be working so had best crack on, but just wanted to say don't be shy about sticking up for British culture - many parts of it are utterly wonderful and should be celebrated!

encountered quite a bit of the same in my marriage to a Southern-European. The first years (pre-kids) I really made an effort to fit in. As soon as my first was there, it was as if they'd receive permission to criticise the hell out of me (breastfeeding was bad, I wasn't providing the same fancy meals for husband anymore, husband needed to do too much at home etc. etc.). So from then on I ignored them. In the beginning I made an effort to learn and speak the language, now I don't anymore. I can still understand it of course, but I will reply in English.
Husband is fine with it and as we don't see his relatives that often, I can't get worked up about it anymore. Now my kids are older and when we do visit, there's also been times that I just haven't joined at all. Their tradition of having very long, alcohol laden family meals tends to be very boring for me and the kids so we often now opt for going shopping instead. They may not like it, but I don't care.

@ItsOhSoTiresome , my husband’s family are from southern Europe; I feel your pain. I was not the nice (insert non British nationality) girl they had wanted for him. They did everything they could to sabotage our relationship, I could write a book!
To be honest my husband was bloody useless at putting his foot down although he maintains he had many fall outs with them. In the end for the sake of my sanity I refused to see them, my husband used to take our children though and I didn’t ever interfere with this. Eventually as our children got older my ILS started criticising them, at this point my husband broke off contact with them.
Find the strength to refuse to be subjected to this ill treatment.
In the end after many years I managed to persuade my husband to reconnect with them and we had a passable relationship. Good luck. X

I’m also sick of the Brit bashing.

About 10 years ago PIL and one SIL went to live in her home country, hated it, SIL couldn’t find work (because she isn’t fluent), no one spoke to them, the services were awful, so they moved back here, to “awful” Britain.

Is eggnog a British tradition? (Missing point of thread)

Yes. I have to say, I've never had it though so it depends on the family.

I don’t actually like eggnog.

Your H bears a lot of the blame for this situation
However, in your shoes I would just drop the rope and leave all interaction with them up to him, go to visit or don't but any direct communication should be met with "you will have to speak to H about that"
They won't like it buts whats the worst they can do? Complain about you? They do that already

Is it Portugal? If so, I've had this too! Thankfully my ILs all live in Portugal so I don't have to see much of them. I tend to put up with it for the sake of DH and DC (although mine aren't quite as bad as yours OP), but it is irritating and so rude. I can't imagine treating a visitor to Britain the way they treat me. The little comments are generally reserved for when DH isn't around, so he doesn't see it.

Haha, I do sympathise with this. It's stopped with DH's family now, but growing up there was an element of this... even though they didn't live in their actual country (Greece) either. But compared to other families, his was never as bad. MIL still does it a bit but I cut her some slack - she only moved to the UK fairly recently (from a third country) and it's hard to adjust when things are totally different.

I did fall about laughing when some random family friend tried to give ME a lecture (not advice, an actual lecture) on what I needed to do about getting the kids' Greek passports once. As the Greek embassy in London won't even speak to you if you don't speak Greek, how exactly she thought I was going to sort out their passports was beyond me but she definitely had a "well men are useless" approach which, while I don't disagree, doesn't change the fact that I'm not the one who is going to sort this!

The other thing that winds me up is they all tell me that British women are stupid, ugly, fat and have no style.

However, they themselves are very unhealthy and overweight. They dress like they are going to a wedding every day and don’t know when enough is enough.

I hate the criticisms when they’ve clearly never looked in a clean mirror.

This is nowt to do with culture and all about the husband. He is what links you and the in-laws you together, he is the communication channel, he is the lens through which all is viewed.

Don't fall fowl to nativism because he ain't doing his job as a husband.

It's an understandable trauma response to this nonsense but flag waving is not going to solve anything and never does.

Get your husband to step up and lay down the law to his family about how they interact with his nuclear family.

Philistine!

Yes. You only have it at Christmas because it is sticky and indigestible. On Christmas morning you have it topped up with lemonade straight after breakfast and spend the day in a happy yellow blur, unable to eat your dinner. That’s not just ny family , right?

I get that you are unloading here and quite justifiably so but do you wantg to be as bad as them?

Please say what country ?! I am intrigued! As a non Brit married to a Brit I wanted to celebrate holidays my way. But again we are reasonable people and came to compromise. BTW I love eggnog and pigs in blankets now !

Oooh, haven't seen a xenophobic thread in a while! Nice one, OP!