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

Typical - LTB, don't bother listening to his side.

@THisbackwithavengeance thats the exact approach we take with his French family (hope I haven’t outed myself). They’ve stopped banging on about how shit it is now.

We had some adjustments around cultures and Christmas but 15 years in everyone accepts there’s room for bits of everyone’s country- SIL married someone from another European country, step FIL is from Asia; and it’s been nice making joint traditions for our family.

The UK bashing pisses is off though. I don’t go to France and tell DHs relatives how shit it is repeatedly.

Helpful 🙄

this sounds like a Turkish matriarch if ever I heard one!

You can say the country. It'll hardly be outing, it's probably got a population of millions.

I think some of this UK bashing is just an attempt to big up their own country. Although if its so great, why don't they live there? I had a lot of this from my Ukrainian guest. Nothing worked in the UK (in fairness she had a point). The schools were terrible, the doctors were terrible, the food was terrible, the people fat and scruffy, even the pavement was terrible compared to Ukraine. And the children's parties in the UK were so bad (normal village hall whole Y1 class party) she came home offended that her child had been invited to such a low quality event.
Most of it's face saving bollocks.

I am getting tired of the constant Brit bashing that seems to be so rife nowadays. I think many are, and I hope it leads to some social and cultural change from where it seems to be going.
I certainly think that you shouldn't have to put up with it in your own family.

We incorporate a few customs and practices from our DILs' cultures into celebrations like Christmas, but when they come to us, they expect to experience a typical British Christmas, or whatever the celebration is.
If we go to them, it’s the other way round.
When in Rome, do as the Romans do?

(And even the typical British Christmas contains bits from other cultures, like the Christian bits of Christmas and the many pagan aspects that they nicked from us incorporated into the celebrations.)

I think there's several things going on here.

One is that many Southern Med cultures are much louder in general than the UK. I used to think my husband was shouting on the phone when I first met him, but it turned out that was how all his family and friends spoke, quite animated and voluble. There's no polite faffing around the topic, they tend to be opinionated and family definitely do see it as their right to speak out bluntly to other members, none of this 'if you are happy I am happy' kind of English way of hiding our feelings.

Your husband though needs to know you are the primary family unit, and that how you want Christmas and Easter is something to be built together in your two culture family- so if he's rubbish, that's on him (and you as you haven't put your foot down over the years).

I've noticed a lot of Med men allow all this loudness and bossiness, and then just do what they like, up to having affairs and just pleasing themselves. It's almost like they withdraw and do exactly what they want. They don't feel obliged to do housework, respond to their mum's texts or even be faithful.

Your issue is with your husband after all this time, he needs to know that keeping out of it is cowardly and that you are the family unit that matters, if he's not prepared to do that, I don't think you can change anyone else, I would just keep lowish contact.

@anothercookie I have had the same experience. I don't think it is cultural. When people don't like a person, they just don't like them. Some people, like my inlaws, would rather cut off their noses than be pleasant to me. Their loss.

Her in laws sound xenophobic thinking their culture is 'right' and slating Brits. I'm mixed race (white British and Asian) and my family celebrates both cultures. OP's in laws sound very xenophobic and close minded.

Ah. Same here, except both me and DH are from less enviable parts of Europe. I didn't like that bullshit either, never let it slide, and my DH stood by my side and never tolerated disrespect towards me. MIL then chose to cut her son off entirely, spreading very elaborate lies how we have mistreated and abused her (that never happened). Nothing can be done there, it's literally bad blood. They view it as pride, and have very little in life apart from that pride. They will never change. Forgive, forget and move on :)

I'm also guessing they are Italian. Love drama.

I have this exact issue with my DH's family. Different culture but exactly what you have explained. A horrendous first pregnancy and delivery due to them and I am now pregnant with my second and know the same is to come again.

MIL demanded I discharged myself after an emergency c section with a baby with an infection due to her culture 😂

I'm a little more prepared to put my foot down this time however, older and more experienced.

I distance myself now, only see his family when absolutely necessary or they arrive at our house unannounced (has been known to happen despite living 3 hours away)

I hope it gets better! Continue to be firm

My husband pretended he didn't notice/went over his head as well OP, also from a med country with an over bearing mother. We moved 200 miles away and she was still controlling. I eventually realised he was a cowardly mummies boy who didn't have my back and that it was never going to change.

Many many Brits have the same default thinking that British way is the best way

Honestly, you have a huge clash of culture. Living as a bi cultural family isn’t easy (I know I live in one) but I’d be very careful about any sentiment of xenophobia and ‘British/english bashing’
(fwiw when pointing that sort of things out on MN when posters feel free to be very critical towards another country, you get ‘well if they were doing the same, it would be ok because we brit are self deprecating and we could handle it. Unlike them’)

The bottom line, instead of making it about their culture etc… (in part because after living in the U.K. fur so long, they probably don’t fit in their culture of origin anymore - hence why they hated it when they tried)
look at it as a family with ‘rules’ you dint get on.

Id start by reducing contact, grey rocking etc…
Id let your dh organise any meeting and deal with ‘oops actually they wanted to go to a concert’
And strongly explain to your dh that his behaviour is unacceptable - ofc he doesn’t ‘see’ things. He isn’t the one being criticised. But the result is that he doesn’t have your back and that’s not ok.

I would encourage your DC to block them on their phones and social media. When my DC first got phones and social media, there were some relatives on both sides that I blocked. They are manipulative and toxic and my DH and I deemed it unsafe for them to have access to our children that didn’t go through us. Our rule is that as long as we pay for the phone and they live with us, these people remain blocked. We have kept an open line of communication about this with our children and they understand why we did this. At this point, our children don’t want a relationship with these people and don’t plan on including them in their future lives.

Don’t see your inlaws for holidays or invite them to your home. Celebrate the way you want with people you enjoy. It doesn’t seem like anyone in your nuclear family wants to continue a relationship with them, so don’t. Take an indefinite time out from them, until you actually want to see them. If you can’t do this all at once because of drama, gradually back off. Be too busy to answer calls and return them days later. Decline two of every three invites. Keep putting more time between when you actually interact with them until you are satisfied or you stop all together.

Yep and I’m afraid I got some hints of that in the OP’s posts too.
(and yes in her dh family)

Why is she a bore? The OP doesn't like her husband's family. They don't like her either.

Quite. But I didn’t like the virtuous, scolding tone.

I vote Greek.

I am presuming you are British as am I, sorry if wrong.

Southern europe means mediterranean countries. I've mostly found people from there to be extremely congenial and hospitable.

I've experienced plenty of what you describe from my fellow British people, including family. Go on facebook British groups and you will find endless oneupmanship based on our British ethnicity. It makes me feel despair.

Families can be bitchy wherever they are from. You are just unfortunate.

Tell them you don't like it, it's unkind.

However you will still come across it elsewhere, even at work or amongst neighbours.

This is the crux of it all

To me, none of this sounds like it’s specific to a culture. This is not the behaviour of a culture, this is the behaviour of some small minded individuals.

I do think that intercultural marriages can be challenging, unless you lovingly agree to celebrate all parts of each other, including customs and rituals that are of meaning to each person, in that marriage. This is where your husband needs to step up. This is also where your in laws should back off.

what would I do? I wouldn’t play.

I don't understand the Christmas dinner thing. By what mechanism are you and your husband prevented from having the Christmas dinner of your own choosing?