I interrupt MIL selfish monologues with yes I know, you told me this before.

[TheRubyPoet]

MIL always interrupts every conversation into how it relates to her without letting anyone else finish. My son's graduation dinner yesterday turned into what she studied at school, how she was the oldest in her graduation year. I replied yes, you told me this before and she kept talking. So I said it louder, you told me this before.
She got visibly upset but kept talking.

After 22 years of her I have had enough of her boring monologues and inability to let someone else have a moment. When I was sick when I was pregnant she kept talking about how healthy she was and how long she breastfed for blabla.
Everything i say results in her relating it to her.
Plus hours of nonsense about train times, shop opening times, What's in Sainsbury's.
My husband is quiet and unbothered by her blathering, so she gets away with steamrolling us.
AIBU if I interrupt her and say you told me this before.

@Sabire9

My brother in law is profoundly like this - and my husband and I laugh about it when we get home

I prefer a different approach with addressing it to their face, rather than smile and nod and spend your afternoon hostage to yet anotherself obsessed rant, then laugh about them when I get home behind their back. This needn't involve speaking to someone like shit on your shoe, it can be done with kindess. This is how boundaries work and they are essential for healthy relationships.

I think that reading between the lines there's a raw nerve around Autism for you, which is completely understandable as you've now shared that about your DS, but I don't think it's fair to assume that everyone with no social barometer who is happy to verbally mug you has autism.

There are some people that are just fond of an insufferable one-up rant to any poor sod that happens to be available, regardless of the circumstances. I'm not saying that your son is one of them, I am choosing to believe OP, because she knows MIL. We do not.

Because narcissists need to always express how much better they are than other people.
Or if you are suffering, they tell you very quickly they suffer more.

Unless you have one in your life, you don't really understand what OP is explaining here.

OP- when I had my first child during the very difficult first few weeks, my mother had zero empathy and didn't stop saying it was way worse for her. She wouldn't help. She just kept ranting about how good she was with babies and how much harder it was for her.
This is for every single event in my life.
My own graduation and wedding she turned it all about herself. It's a really horrible personality. I feel for you and anyone near somone like this.

A wonderfully eloquent post. I'm mum to a DC who is possibly also neurodivergent - we are currently in the system for screening - and so much of this resonated with me.

Much as I sympathise with the neuro diverse, unless someone is clearly “different” then others will simply see them as rude. Maybe my mil did have autism, maybe not, but my abiding impression was that she was an entitled self-centred woman.

We can all recognise those obsessed with a topic - being “talked at” about something. I give bil a pass for this because no, he has never asked me a single question but yes, bored me to distraction about fly-fishing 😭 or his latest all-consuming hobby - but I can understand why this happens.

Many people are just ill-mannered, however, and it seems a poor show if we have to assume everyone has an issue and consequently excuse not just rude but often upsetting conversational behaviour.

Bullshit: if she’d been pulled up on her constant interruptions when she was younger, she wouldn’t be as unbearable now

I've got two people in my life like this, one I like very much, one I don't.

With both of them I've got to the point that if they start talking over me I simply carry on talking. And talking, and talking, and talking. One of them gets it and shuts up eventually, the other doesn't and I avoid him as much as I can.

What woudl happen if you keep talking while your MiL tries to talk over you?

Total and utter bollocks. The OP is well within her rights to respond to rude behaviour. What is it with people thinking others are rude just for calling out crappy behaviour. Sounds like internalised misogyny to me. It gets said alot to abuse victims adding to the narrative they're to blame.
Simple fact- responding to shitty behaviour does not make a woman rude or difficult. It's should be the norm.

Some people are just rude AF neurodiverse or not. I think this will depend where you are on a spectrum - I am neurodiverse myself and I think I became more aware of how I came across mid to late twenties and I actively work on this. I am aware that I would be talking non-stop, interrupting, having a lot of anxiety about what to talk about and how I was coming across in the moment...so talking about myself just to fill the conversation. Because I became a bit more aware of how this was a neurodiverse trait, I don't think that is such an issue for me anymore as I'm much more aware of being a better listener and being a better conversationalist etc. Obviously I think this totally differs for everyone but I don't think everyone with neurodiversity is just completely blind to how they are coming across.

But some people just love talking about themselves and they don't give AF what the other people in the room think. I love my MIL 99.99% of the time but she does has a bit of a tendency to monologue sometimes when she's visits and having to hear the same old story I've heard 10 times before - usually with herself as the "star of the show" can wear very thin after a few days especially as she'll just talk over any of us when we try and contribute/comment on the story/talk about something else.

So my greatest sympathies OP and good for you for saying something to her. Dominating the conversation and making everything in about yourself is a horrible quality and makes socialising with people like that unpleasant.

To those who say just walk off or go to the toilet. The person in my life will wait until I'm back and pick up EXACTLY where they left off. Even if I return with a new topic coming out of my mouth, they'll wait until the tiniest pause / intake of breath and carry on their monologue.

I can also say, yes, you've told me this before. Yes, I remember this story. Yes, that was when xyz happened wasn't it. Yes, I know.
None of it makes a difference - They can't be stopped!

I have to let it wash over me otherwise I'll explode

Hmm, you deserve each other - rude as each other. You have Set a great example for your kids.

Agree, two wrongs don't make a right.

There are better ways of managing situations like these, as some have suggested.

Being rude to her in front of your kids shows them that they too can be rude to you in future.
No winners.

Yet few have given any suggestions on what to do, ignore that MIL just kept going anyway, made tons of excuses for her, MIL has had form for such behaviour for over 2 decades and this was the second time OP has said something about it (if I read correctly where she did it politely and the woman brought on the tears). She’s had to put up with MIL being rude to her for that long but OP is somehow on the same level for doing it twice in 20+ years.

MIL has been enabled and allowed to do this because people around her seem to have been nice but not kind. Nice to allow her to continue instead of kind and telling her to allow other people speak and it be an actual conversation, not talk at people.

What could OP have done in this situation?

MIL kept talking anyway when OP told her she had told her all this before.

Maybe OP should have gotten up and switched seats with someone if they were ok with that which would probably be seen as rude and more noticeable. If she had finished her MIL sentences, that would probably had upset her MIL and also be considered rude.

Expecting OP to just sit there and take it again when she is trying to enjoy her son’s graduation dinner which she likely planned and had to invite her MIL because she’s her husband mother, son’s grandmother is ridiculous.

Maybe next time MIL starts going on and on OP should just start talking to someone else, but oh.. would that be rude?

Being rude to her in front of your kids shows them that they too can be rude to you in future.

Sure, someone being rude to you for the umpteenth time and you telling them you’ve heard this story before is telling them to be rude to you. They probably know what grandmother is like. Her son is 18, highly doubt he doesn’t know that his grandmother does this.

my mil (abd this is nowhere near as awful as what that mil did) commented about how little weight she’d put on when pregnant every time we went round when I was expecting. A stone, and she played tennis right until giving birth apparently.

it was odd. I did feel it was some kind of one up woman ship for some unfathomable reason. I never mentioned my weight.

OP doesn't like her MIL, it's clear from her writing.
She blames others for letting MIL get away with it, but OP has had over 20 years to come up with a way that works.

There's a way of moving the conversation along without being rude.

"Yes, you've mentioned Moira, let's hear about DS's xyz, DS please tell us ....."

If she's beyond that, a quiet word from her DS may help.

There have been good suggestions from PP.

Doesn't matter if it's a MIL, DM, DF or whoever, being rude is unnecessary.

I don't know what is wrong with some people but they just don't seem to understand that this doesn't work with this kind of person. Maybe you've never met someone like this but they definitely exist. It doesn't matter what polite technique you use, they JUST. DON'T. STOP. And they don't care that it's rude, that others are getting bored, frustrated and exhausted. We have relatives like this and at family events it's a case of 1. what the hell excuse can we use not to invite them and if we do have to it's 2. a fight to the death not to be seated next to or anywhere near them. We all go to extreme lengths to avoid them.

Telling them politely just doesn't work. It's like putting a small stone under the wheel of a bulldozer, it just doesn't even feel it.

My aunt who is like this has been told by her daughter so many times, to the point that the daughter at this stage will just yell 'Mother, will you just SHUT UP' at high level, no matter where they are. It's not being rude, her mother has an illness I think because she has no inner monologue, she has to speak quite literally every thought in her head. Any random rubbish just spills out. Even after the fierce shut up she just carries on. If she's not talking for more than five seconds I think it's physically painful for her. She lives in Spain and she'll do it to any local she's talking to, even if they say straightaway that they don't understand English, she'll just carry on. They walk away and she just follows them, carrrying on blabbering and trying to catch their arm. I've even seen her break into a trot trying to keep talking at someone who is actually trying to run away from her. People used to come and stay with her but they don't anymore because when they're trying to sleep at night she'll just wander into their bedroom and talk, talk, talk. Sometimes she'll get up at 5am and again, just go into people's bedrooms and start talking at them. She's become very, very lonely now because a polite 'let's hear from Fred now' has no effect on someone like that so no-one wants to be around her.

Why should you be rude to an ill person?

Because they’re annoying? Seriously , unless you know someone like this it’s very easy to come up with ‘solutions’ but I can say with confidence. Absolutely. Nothing. Works.