Things in-laws do to annoy you.

[Pinkjellyunicorn]

I could write a book I swear.

My in-laws have a different mother tounge. My husband understands all and speaks a little due to moving to UK age 10. My in-laws constantly talk in a different language in my house, whilst sat at my Christmas dinner table, sometimes screaming and shouting at each other in a forgein language. Husband doesn’t let us or DC go there as it’s filthy (and some other reasons but that’s a whole other post) so we are stuck with them here.

AIBU think this is damn right rude?

Please make me feel better with your woes 🤣

MIL always knows best based on BS she’s read on social media. It’s not worth trying to stand up or argue with her. My Mum once stood up to her and MIL tried to play the victim saying she was scared of my Mum! She will share clickbait horror stories on FB in relation to things that we do/use if we don’t listen to her. Annoyingly we’re relatively healthy and active and she’s overweight and lives a very sedate lifestyle but that’s never acknowledged. For these reasons family events can often be painful and I try to keep both families separate where possible, which I find sad.

All I can see in these posts are that these are things that do annoy you, not that they are doing it TO annoy you all! Good goodies. You all chose their offspring so they can’t be all bad!

Sounds familiar. MILs like ours can do a lot of damage, and they’re very good at making other people look like the problem when things get said or when boundaries get set.

@LeaveALittleNote quite. My ex MIL has never put a foot wrong in her life and is completely blameless! Never mind her:

1. saying women who have children and work are child abusers
2. getting blind drunk at her nephews wedding and having to be taken home halfway through the wedding breakfast by my husband and l (we drove so we were stuck with her 🙄). No apology or acknowledgment, to this day she claims she was ill
3. insisting l was converting to her religion when l got engaged to her son. For clarity l never converted and had no intention of doing so

Those are just off the top of my head, l can't be bothered thinking of more and it's too depressing!

@BernardButlersBra Doesn’t it just make your blood boil! I sympathise!

Oh god where to start… Believing Farage et al will ‘sort the country out’.

Various awful opinions about immigrants / Islam

Saying ‘pacific’ instead of specific.

Refusing all jabs as ‘she has an immune system’.

Complaining about her health despite doing jack shit about it.

Controlling every thing and every one (or trying to)

Thing is, they are not doing anything ‘to annoy you’.

They are living their usual lives, which just might be different to yours or unfamiliar to you.

If they annoy you, that's down to you.

Mine also say things like Mataland and Dumelms and everything is “was you” just generally incorrect grammar, saying things like “bot bot” for a bottle. Honestly grinds my gears.

Can also make a spaghetti bolognese in 5 mins flat by browning the mince, adding a tomato jar and bam it’s on the table. Thinks it’s strange that my young children eat things like olives and humous because they’re not “children’s food”

Oh dear God, that's released a suppressed memory of MIL's hideous 'Three Ingredients lasagne'. Pasta sheets layered with cheap, browned mince mixed with tinned tomatoes. That was it.

Do we have the same MIL because this is also a dinner as they don’t like the white sauce part 😂

No it isn't. If OP is that bothered, she can learn it! Only in little Britain are people offended by other languages.

Unlikely as mine passed away a few years ago. But, yes she was totally unaware that bechamel sauce was an ingredient.

The first time DH sampled my Mum's (Food Of The Gods) lasagne he refused to believe it was actually lasagne.

My MIL has major FOMO. Any event or get together she will want to carry on until the bitter end, when everyone else is yawning and saying it's a school night.

She actually locked us out of a holiday home once so we'd have to come and join her at a bar, claiming "that was always the plan" (it really wasn't - DH and I were having a date night during the holiday).

Last Christmas, my husband and I were sitting uncomfortably on the floor, BIL and SIL wanted to get back for their dog and FIL wanted to get home for Gavin and Stacey. MIL wanted to start another game though...

We'd want to be around more if she didn't push things to the bitter end.

Mine cooks all vegetables until they're tasteless mush, with the exception of roast potatoes. Any brown or crispy bits on a roast potato are "burnt" and served with an accompaniment of grovelling apology.

Her house is always so overheated that it's like being in one of the tropical houses at Kew, but she constantly asks everyone if they're warm enough, while we're all wishing it was acceptable to strip off and sit there in just our pants.

There are "too many foreigners" in the UK, and this includes the black paramedics who took her to hospital when she had pneumonia, the Filipino nurses who looked after her in intensive care and her GP of south Asian heritage who refuses to give her antibiotics for a simple cold. But she's not racist.

She doesn't understand why one of her grandchildren, who is neurodivergent and has a diagnosis of emotionally unstable personality disorder, can't "just get a job". There's no history of mental health issues in the family so it must come from her daughter in law's side, despite the fact that her father was diagnosed manic depressive, her late husband was a total control freak (OCD?) who killed himself and niece's father, MIL's son, is almost certainly ND too.

Her children were totally terrified of their volatile, controlling father, but they all had such lovely childhoods, with wonderful caravan holidays during which they were all scared to do anything for fear of upsetting their father.

Talk about rewriting history...

General cuntish behaviour in mil and sil but mainly their selfishness and penny pinching.

Mil makes crappy comments at me when dh leaves the room. Usually informing me how better behaved ds is for them .

I think she thinks I’m the reason we don’t see a lot of her. It’s a tually dh who finds them both a pita.

My MIL is lovely to me, when I had an op she called until I felt better to make sure I was OK. However she is dreadful to my very lovely husband, he had a triple bypass and was very ill, to the point I thought I might lose him. She never called, he had to call her to let her know how he was, he has to call her on his birthday for her to wish him a happy birthday. The list goes on but the most hurtful was when my sons visited her on their own and she said the most awful things about him, both have ASD and in their 20s but texted me asking what they should do, I told them to leave and go get something to eat.Horses for courses I guess

I have a-level French and Spanish and have lived in both countries so I tick the languages box. I asked PIL to not do what they did with their own kids and speak their native (only spoke in one small country across the whole
globe) tounge around DC. Won’t do it.

Bring a huge box of Budweiser every single visit.
It takes up so much space in the fridge it just really irritated me

My MIL is quite "silly" and will say stupid things to my kids who are 5 and 3 and easily influenced. Like if my son is counting on his fingers and he is counting his left hand he will go 1,2,3,4,5 but my MIL will go 1,1,1,1,1
And that really fucks me off! :D

Get a bucket and ice and chuck them in.

@Pinkjellyunicorn can’t lie, that feels like a bit much. One thing is not wanting your in laws to speak to each other over other people’s at the table or something, another thing is not wanting them to speak their mother tongue at all in front of your children.

So what if it’s only spoken in one country? That would be a pretty cool skill.

Mil and fil were quite judgemental when ds had a routine as a baby, we were told not to pander to him. Yet if we don’t do things exactly as mil wants she spits her dummy.

My in-laws are very intelligent people but sometimes they act completely stupid and have a very little common sense.

Recent They got mad at me for allowing my child to chalk in their garden because they absolutely couldn’t get it off. I was a bit worried so put some of the same chalk in my garden. Poured a bit of water over it and it came straight off. Turned out they were just trying to sweep it off until it “eventually rained”. I don’t know how two adults in their 60’s don’t know how chalk works.

They also add an S to the end of words. Aldis, Lidls, Asdas. And my MIL intentionally pronounces words incorrectly. She told me she’s visiting the town I grew up in then said the name incorrectly. I told her the correct pronunciation and she said no, it’s …. Isn’t it. NO! I spent 20 years there. I know. She does that a LOT!

MIL and FIL barely speak, ever. If FIL (who is lovely) addresses MIL, she pretends not to hear him, or snaps at him with one word answers. With everyone else, she’s queasily OTT (holibobbles, cosy wosy, tinkly sing song voice). It’s really bizarre to see the juxtaposition.

MIL doesn’t eat. Like a PP’s ILs, she’ll come to our house when we’re eating and just sit and watch. She sat in the living room while DH, my parents and I shared a takeaway at the dining table, for instance. Or DH or I will spend ages making a meal (and we’re good cooks, if I may say so!), and she’ll take the tiniest amount and pick it apart on her plate. She seems to survive on a slice of cheese and a cherry tomato for days on end. All of her children have disordered ideas around food and body image and I suspect this is not a coincidence.

Hygiene at my ILs house is non-existent. There are visible stains on the hallway rug from the dog weeing on it, and their oven broke because a mouse moved in and made a nest in it. They also do the ‘leaving food out for days on end’ thing.

The house is piled high with years and years of stuff (including all of MIL’s mum’s furniture - table and chairs, bedframes, mattresses - who sadly passed away in abour 2018).

They have absolutely no understanding of their dog’s body language. Their dog growls and lunges at our dog, ‘but her little tail is whizzing round and round!!’, so she must be pleased to see our dog really…

Probably somewhat related to MIL not speaking to FIL (apparently it has been like this as long as DH can remember), she will gatecrash her children’s holidays and days out with their families and partners instead. DH thinks it’s completely normal to plan a day trip and for MIL to decide to come along too, or to go away on holiday and for MIL to decide that her own holiday will coincide with ours, at the same campsite, so that even though they live a 10-min drive away at home, we also end up spending our holidays and days off with them too.

The ‘black sheep’ sibling of my DH’s family is actually the only sane and normal one who can see how strange her parents’ dynamic is and can actually express their emotions. Everyone else (DH included, although he’s getting better) sulks and represses their feelings. She’s invariably called names (‘slug’ etc) by MIL and the rest of the siblings, and the other day, DH recounted a ‘funny’ story about how MIL would go into the sibling’s room and throw wet flannels on her while she was sleeping.

DH’s speech at our wedding was about how wonderful his upbringing was and his parents are.

And breathe 🫣🙃

Latest in a long line of gems

My mil used the family what's app to congratulate my bils girlfriend (who is slso on there) on their engagement 5 hours BEFORE his surprise proposal.

👍👍👍👍
Welcome to the family - where NOTHING is about you anymore... just Susan*

I've truly never met a woman more self absorbed than my mil

* names changed to protect the narcissists.