Would you be friends with your MIL if you weren’t related?

[ThisPlumZebra]

Serious question. Mine means well (I think?), but if I met her randomly at a school event or in a coffee shop… I don’t think we’d even make it past small talk 😬
Too many “little comments,” too many surprise visits, and definitely too many parenting opinions.
Anyone actually likes their MIL here? Enlighten me.

Strange question as why would your paths have crossed?
DIL 1 I have known since she was my son’s friend at 14 and we get on famously. I’m a surrogate Mum.
DIL 2 I would have no recon to know. But we get on like a house on fire.
Ditto DIL to be.
So yeah- odd question!!

Probably not. We get on well and we’re very cordial to each other. But I don’t have many friends who are a different generation, social class and educational background to me. Who have completely different interests, hobbies, political and religious views and life experience to me. Cordial is great. If there’s more then you’re incredibly lucky.

Hmm maybe for a few weeks we would get on fine. But after that her miserable face would piss me off, as would her judgemental comments. I’ve been with my fiancée 9 years and I swear on everything I’ve only seen her smile 3 times. She’s too miserable and bitter for me. She actually has zero friends and I felt sorry for her at first but after a year or 2 I understood why.
I am more friends with my ex MIL now I’m not with her son we get on great. I have more of a relationship with her than my ex does.

It's just possible that our paths would have crossed and we might have become friends, though not close, as our interests were not that well aligned.
However she was a lovely person, though very poor at acting like one expects of a MIL. We live in the country - when she came over for the day she'd disappear down the garden and across the fields (sometimes with her grandkids) - we had to send out a search party for her at mealtimes. Crazy about nature, especially badgers. If you wanted to identify deer by their poop, she was the woman to turn to. If you can imagine Chris Packham as your MIL????
FIL, in contrast, would help out with the ironing, get stuck into the washing up... 😁

Absolutely not

i prefer to surround myself with kind and happy people.

I've had two and it would be no to both . First one thought I wasn't good enough for her ' darling ' and current 2nd one is quite elderly and falls out with everyone because of her opinions .

Sounds exactly like my MIL. Absolute nightmare to be around.

No, nothing in common in interests or behaviours or even in an "opposites attract" way.

DH sticks out a bit in his family too - he's very academic and has quite prosaic interests, whereas they're a bit Love Island in their tastes. (An example - MIL, for some reason, was fixated with the idea that BIL "wouldn't be reading our son books" - she said it so often he sounded borderline illiterate.)

Mines exactly the same. He's not perfect but I feel so sorry for FIL sometimes, it must be completely exhausting. They're selling their house (have lived in same house for 40 years) and she won't even click on Rightmove links I send her. She had a minor car crash the other week because a road was closed and she had to be diverted which sent her into a complete state and she crashed into a lamppost, she has spent 6k on a new car which is currently still sat on her drive because she doesn't 'drive cars she doesn't know'. I'm a police officer and frankly she's lucky she wasn't reported for driving without due care. She won't move anywhere closer to us because it would mean she has to drive on a motorway. (even though FIL always would).
I've tried gently steering her towards mindfulness, relaxation, even just keeping a diary, and she just ignores it. I think it's been so long she honestly just can't imagine ever being any different now.

I love my mother in law! So thankful after reading so many Mumsnet feeds on MIL’S tbh. I would hope my Daughter in law thought of me the same way one day so she’s a great example of how to be a lovely MIL

No. I thought she was lovely and was very welcoming to me and my daughter, always asking questions about what we had been up to, days out, eating out etc. Always commenting on my facebook posts. I knew she was close to DH’s ex but I discovered she had been relaying my conversations and what was on my Facebook to the ex who was then weaponising the information and my daughter to use against DH. Complaining and nasty ranty texts about how DH will go on a day out with my DD but not do the same for their kids.

Their kids are 28 and 26 years old and the ex is frothing at the mouth because DH accompanied a 13 year old child and her mum to MCDonalds.

And MIL took the ex’s side in all of it.

so she can get to fuck aswell using my daughter like that. She is blocked on everything and it will be a cold day in hell before I see her again.

She sounds like an amazing person! Who needs the ironing done if she can teach the kids how to identify poop!

I think the problem is that your MIL’s shared life experience is with your children and their father, not with you. Some people find this hard to accept.

I adore my MIL. She is thoughtful, kind, funny and helpful. Great with grandchildren, always on hand in an emergency.

Yes I would, I’m very lucky to have MIL in my life. She’s lovely, very caring & treats me as if I were her own daughter. My son adores his Nana & I enjoy spending time with her.

Fuck no. Not without redeeming features, but overwhelmingly controlling, selfish and mean-spirited. I don't choose friends like that.

I don’t think we would have come across each other! We are quite different and it’s taken me a long time to get used to her, but I am a big fan of her now and really glad she’s in my life.

We must share the same one.

@CurlewKate never have I wished we still had the 🤣 for another post since it went.

No! The woman does not have a good word to say about anyone

Truth : I think I'd be really fond of her if she was someone I met at work etc.

But she treats me differently because I'm her DIL. She is quite protective and possessive over her (very much adult ) sons and smothers them. I think it's because she's been a widow from a very young age and kind of done the whole surrogate husband thing with her sons unfortunately. It's all very sad when you peel it back and see it for what it is.

So any woman too close to her son's will always be 'a threat' on some level. We get on well, but at times she's been an utter menace to me , In years gone by. I don't think she would behave like this if I wasn't her DIL.

But on a service level "would I get on with her if she wasn't my MIL?" Yes. I do believe I would. I think unfortunately it's the way in which we're intertwined that causes the issue.

My husband frequently says that if his family weren’t his family he’d never see them again.

He doesn’t enjoy their company, and I see his anxiety peak when we’re with them or have anything to do with them.

They’re not bad people, they just are very different to us and don’t like anything they see as ‘different’.

Loved mine and she was an amazing grandma. She was an interesting person. I would have been friendly with her if she wasn’t family but not close as I was as her DIL as she could also be a diva. I miss her.

I have a view that you marry the family as well as your partner and I accept that that may have been different if she hadn’t of been a loving grandmother and generally great with me.. she overstepped, was absolutely selfish and generous in one sentence, commented outrageously on everything and drove me nuts frequently. As I said I miss her… love can be a strange fish

No, she never liked me from the start, one of those ones who trotted out the old “sons are your sons until they take a wife” shite and so it was doomed from the start as she saw me as the enemy.

But aside from that she’s not the friends type, she doesn’t have any. So, no I wouldn’t be friends with her.

I've never even met my MIL in person cause she lives on the other side of the world. Me and DH have been together 7 years and we have 3 kids.

But I know that no, we would not be friends. She is from a completely different culture. I'm eastern European but have lived in the UK since I was 8 (so I'm culturally mostly British) and she's from a south African country. Her culture is very focused on religion and extremely separate gender roles (basically men sat on their asses while women are treated like slaves even if they work). I see the stuff that she posts on Facebook and I have met DH's sisters who share her views. It's all about women being 'submissive' and men being the 'head of the family'🤢🤮 DH's family hate that he's not with someone from their culture and especially that I'm white. He tries to say they don't but it's pretty clear.

Once I was at one SIL's house, I'd just had a baby about 4 months ago (born at 31 weeks) and also had just turned 2 and 3 year olds and had an EMCS so was still struggling a bit. The SIL was going on about how 'well I had a hot cooked from scratch meal waiting for my DH every single day without fail EVEN the same week I gave birth' and the other SIL agreed. Felt like telling them yeah, you do all this shit and your husbands have still cheated on you about 20 times each while it's never happened to me.