Pervy FIL or just accept it? UPDATE PAGE 6

[MyLilacCritic]

Hi this happened last year but i can’t shake it. One of my character flaws is allowing resentment to build! I’m bad at addressing difficult situations with people in the moment - I just freeze (fawn response?)

Context I am 32F, husband 34F. His PIL are both 70 and his sister is also 32F.

in the first couple of years of our relationship I spent a lot of time with my husbands family. Because I love him and had the newly in love goggles on. Family is important to me. I was also conscious of the age of my husband’s family, i.e. not so many “good years” left.

FIL became ill so i was a dutiful daughter in law and we increased the visiting.

when we would say goodbye, it was hugs all round. I thought I was being over sensitive but his “hugs” made me feel awfully uncomfortable, inappropriate hand placement and lingering. Ugh!!!

I also felt that he would sit there staring at my chest gormlessly. Hard to prove, again - but it made (makes) me very uncomfortable.

for me the peak moment was last year. In laws were visiting us. In front of his wife and daughter, unprompted in the middle of a group conversation as we were standing around chatting, he grabbed my hips with both hands, shook me, and said something (totally irrelevant and non sequitur). I didn’t say anything, just froze. Nor did SIL or MIL they just stood there in stunned silence. Notably, my husband was not in the room.

since then, I can’t bear to be around him. I can’t talk about this to my husband as I can’t bear to crush the image of his father to him - it feels too cruel and I love my lovely husband so much.

However, keeping this from him is hard. I will do anything not to be near his parents (they’re a package deal). I try to wear the baggiest clothes possible and squirm away from any contact with them. Not a great relationship to have with your in-laws. Nonetheless FIL remains pretty determined to try and put a disgusting sloppy kiss on my cheek at the bare minimum. if we were out and about as a 4, (PIL, me and DH) I can’t bear to “pair off” with FIL who I resent so much.

I tried to get support on dealing with this in therapy but didn’t get very far. But I knew the Mumsnet herd might have som experience in this - please help me work out what to to!

My mum recommends trying to focus on the positive qualities of the people who raised my wonderful DH. Unfortunately, I’m finding this very very hard.

YABU - he’s just an old man of a generation that got overexcited. You need to forgive him and move on
YANBU - totally unacceptable behaviour from any man, let alone your FIL

Any advice on how to proceed with managing this relationship?

What did his wife and everyone else say when he grabbed you by your hips and shook you? He's not exactly doing anything covertly is he?

It all sounds a bit weird but I'd just give him a wide berth. We have a couple of rels who hug and kiss lips when greeting or leaving and I hate it, it's not that it's inappropriate just far too close and intrusive so I just duck out of the way.

I wouldn't have a big reveal with your dh unless it becomes actual harassment.

It is probably worth addressing before you have the baby, as if you decide to breastfeed you might find being around your FIL very stressful if this hasn't been discussed and a plan worked out

You don't have to put up with it. I had my exes dad perving at me years ago and it made me very uncomfortable. I used to stay over on weekends when I was heavily pregnant with our son(my now ex lived with his parents). His parents were overbearing and controlling so I didn't really like them very much. His dad brought me and my then partner up a cup of tea in bed he didn't even knock just walked in and I had the blanket over me. Right there his dad tried to pull the blanket off me to get a look at my boobs and I told him to go away. Partner said nothing. His dad then later that morning after I got up told me I had nice tits and asked me to lift my top to show him. I told him to fuck off and went home. I told partner about it and all he had to say was if his dad made me uncomfortable I could always just stay away from him. Which I did. We split not long after our son was born

I work in dementia care, and although sexually disinhibited behaviour can occur, if FIL is functionally normally in every other way - washing, dressing, eating, communicating etc - then his inappropriate behaviour is almost certainly due to him being a dirty old man.

He'll have been a teenager/young man in the 60's and 70's when women were often seen as easy prey for disgusting men. You can raise the dementia issue, certainly, but I would be making it quite clear to the man himself that he cannot touch you or kiss you or make you feel uncomfortable.

Oh OP don’t be so wet. Scared of ruining your evening? Come on. Woman up.

what do you mean he shook you? Side to side or back and forth?

this does not sound like dementia (ffs).

Just say loudly 'I DONT LIKE BEING TOUCHED THANK YOU'
loud enough for everyone to hear.

I don’t understand the 32F, sister also 32F , husband 34F, what does this mean, as it reads as bra sizes but husband… ?

Yes, my ex FIL (RIP) was a bit like this and he certainly didn’t have dementia. He used to greet me with a lick of the lips and a very deliberate kiss on the lips. I don’t know why I put up with it, apart from we only saw him a couple of times a year and sometimes I wouldn’t move my face quickly enough to avoid the slobbery kiss. He was also obsessed with the idea of having a young Filipino maid to look after him, which is kind of ironic as my ex’s new partner is Filipino.
She is lucky he’s no longer around, I dread to think what he’d have been like if he’d been able to get his slobbery lips on her!

OP, I do this too - I think it's called conflict avoidance. (mine comes from a traumatic breakup with my ex -husband, and huge issues arising from that).
Maybe write down a few key points or phrases to help you say what you want to say, and stay focused if you get upset.

FIL's actions might be due to dementia, or he's just 'like that' (yuk), but either way you do not have to put up with it.

One possibility - it's prime virus season, and you're pregnant. Explain to ILs that you will not be having any physical contact to protect your and baby's health - no hugging, kissing, hand holding etc. It's a start?

Good luck!

I hope the chat goes well and isn't dismissed as "pregnancy hormones'

Would it make the conversation easier if you presented it as you being extra sensitive to touch now as part of your pregnancy? Adding that you wonder if he is becoming more disinhibited as time passes. You could also argue the importance of modelling for your child the right we all have to choose not to be touched or kissed.

32 year old female, sister also 32 year old female, husband 34 year old male.

FFS. Some of us have experienced dementia and the devastation it causes. Is there really any need to be so flippant ?

The old man I knew like that definitely didn't have dementia. He was very upright and proper and kissing women on the lips was like the only outlet he gave himself to indulge in his fantasies. Absolutely disgusting. I would firmly wave at him from a distance (say, 2 metres) in a manner that indicated that, as far as I was concerned, we'd done our greeting/said goodbye - without me getting closer.

Other women in his circle would try really hard to turn their cheeks.

Well yes, it could be dementia. It could also be that he's a perv. However given how worried you are about your husband's reaction I think I would just use the suspicion of dementia as a way to broach the conversation. If your husband is sure it's not dementia, if the man gets tested and there's no suspicion of dementia, or even if he is diagnosed with dementia - the result doesn't actually matter. Meanwhile the spotlight has been directed at his behaviour so either your husband and his family will notice and intervene or the offending pervert will realise he's been caught out and will hopefully choose self-preservation and leave you alone. Either way, mission accomplished without you looking bad.

I also think you need to be a bit more forceful in your avoidance of him - I realise you're not one to shout and yell about it in public but if he starts touching you in a way you don't like, twist yourself in knots to physically get away. You don't even have to say anything but make it physically visible to everyone around you that you are making a point of avoiding his reach. They will start to wonder why but can't really accuse you of being rude if you haven't even opened your mouth.

Worst case scenario is that your husband does realise what he's up to and still chooses ignore it and let you deal with it, in which case you have far bigger problems.

Incidentally threads like this make me realise (not for the first time) with disgust and sadness how familiar we all are with this kind of man, how much their behaviour has been allowed to go unchecked for far too long. Who do these fucking men think they are? It is definitely more than time for us all to start standing up to this bullshit. I do NOT want my daughters to ever have to be in these situations.

My mum has temporal frontal lobe dementia. Sexual inhibition similar to that described by OP was one of the first signs. So those of us ‘falling over ourselves’ to suggest it as a possibility have usually experienced dementia in one way or another.

My mother was exhibiting signs of dementia (eventually diagnosed as temporal frontal lobe) in the form of very similar disinhibited behaviour, well before it affected her ability to take care of herself or her ability to communicate.

Whether it’s dementia or perversion, you’re struggling to cope with this because you’re trying to stuff down your feelings to protect your DH. It doesn’t work, sublimating like that, it will just cause you to feel awful and the stress to leak out in other ways.

I understand that you love your DH and want to protect him - but don’t you think he would want to protect you? Would he want there to be a horrible secret between you, and for you to be coping with something like this on your own? He may well be upset at his father’s behaviour, but he’s an adult, he will cope and he’ll have you to support him. Once it’s out in the open, you can decide together how you are going to manage it, so that you aren’t subjected to this behaviour any more. You are putting yourself last here, and it’s not right.

My Dad was like this but very much into dementia by that time and in fact in a Care Home, they called me into the office to tell me. My dad before dementia was very respectful of women in every way so came as a terrible shock. The home said it can be common and that there were medications to 'dampen the urge'. I would suggest your father in law is just a perv as he's been like this for a long time and been able to get away with it unfortunately

Disgusting way to characterise those with dementia and utterly ignorant of the devastating effect it has on families.

characterise them as what?

someone having dementia doesn’t mean I can be perved over. That’s all there is to it.

This. Whether it’s down to dementia or not, OP shouldn’t have to put up with this. He needs proper screening as it is suggestive of dementia, but whatever the cause, OP needs to be protected.

As pervs who are indulging the way they want to behave. You clearly know nothing of dementia, or of how offensive your comment will be to anyone here who has lost a loved one to the disease.

Lots of men are pervs!

Not disputing that at all. But not all men are ‘pervs’ and sexual inhibition affects female dementia parents in similar ways. It’s well known that sexual disinhibition can be of the signs of the onset of dementia. And OP has indicated that this is a recent change in his behaviour, after he became ill, so it’s a real possibility. Dementia is heartbreaking - it takes away every function bit by bit and is devastating for families. You might want to be a bit more mindful of those posting from experience.