AIBU to stop confiding in MIL after she shares personal details?

[RainbowStars27]

I don’t know if I’m overreacting but …
I genuinely get on very well with my MIL and we are close. She comes over and we chat or go for coffee etc.

However recently I have noticed that she has been sharing lots of thing I tell her (even personal things like our finances, health, my friendship issues etc) with other members in her (DP’s) family. This is even after I have said ‘oh please keep that to yourself!’

Nothing I have said is top secret and I don’t particularly mind, but it just annoys me that the whole family now knows me and DPs business when I have explicitly asked she doesn’t share.

DP has just said she has form for being a gossip. It just makes me not want to tell her anything personal now!! I know she hasn’t shared anything awful but it still upsets me.

Am I overreacting?

I'm just very selective what I tell mine. Strategic almost.

Don"t fall out with her, just recognise some people can't help themselves.

No point falling out with her over this,
just stop telling her stuff 🤷‍♀️

Why would you share your business with her? Thats on you. I'd be pissed off if my partner couldn't keep our business private. Information diet from now on.

I wouldnt fall out with her over it but I would restrict further conversations to the weather!

I doubt you are her number one pal whose secrets she wants to keep. She’s probably closer to other family members she’s known longer. I wouldn’t have told my mother in law anything, she had little to do other than gossip. Mind you I have friends I wouldn’t confide in too, or wish I hadn’t! People do like to chat.

Isn’t posting details of this on MN a bit hypocritical?

That’s great advice above. There are lots of people like this, some of them very nice.

Now you know just don’t tell her anything you aren’t happy to be shared with a wider audience.

I have a relative like this, I just filter what I tell her. She’s perfectly nice just a bit gossipy and not much else to talk about perhaps,

When we see my MIL, all she does is gossip about other people and tell us how much they have spent on stuff etc. We therefore had to assume she does the same about us to others and so we are very careful what we share with her.

I stopped sharing any personal info very early on with MIL once I realised she couldn't keep anything to herself. When I confronted her about something, her reply was that she can tell anyone, anything she likes and that she would never keep anything personal!

As a result, she knows absolutely nothing about our 12yr struggle to conceive, 3 MC's and rounds of IVF amongst many other aspects of our life.

How could it possibly be unreasonable?

Why are you starting from the assumption that you have to tell her (or anyone) personal things that you dont want to be spread more widely, is there something in your past that makes you think you'd be wrong?

Just don’t tell her all this stuff and then it can’t get spread around.

I rarely tell anyone anything that I wouldn’t be happy for everyone to know- lesson learnt the hard way

Oh give over. MIL sharing personal things doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t then speak to anyone else.

Unless everyone on Mumsnet knows OP personally and will tell everyone they know what she has posted, it isn't at all the same. You know that really, you just wanted to make a snidey post to criticise OP.

My MIL was like this , she ‘d tell all sorts of very personal stuff to anyone within or out of the family. I finally stopped telling her anything, including that I was getting married until the week before, (we had a very small affair & didn't want to upset extended family, so weren't able to tell her)

no, we don't know who any of them are.

You are not over reacting and you should not tell her anything you don’t want to have repeated to all and sundry. Information lockdown basically.

Idk about you, but I do know some posters on MN in real life!

But unless OP is one of them that has nothing whatsoever to do with it.

OP from now on you put her on an information diet. Nothing personal about yourself, your DH or your relationship. The weather and other small talk only.

Obviously if she’s shared something you told her you wanted kept private the reasonable thing to do would be to tell her you’re disappointed and to refrain from sharing personal things in future. It’s not unreasonable to be annoyed about it but given she’s done it more than once it was unreasonable to give her the opportunity again. Also since you’ve said you don’t really mind it’s unreasonable to start a thread on here which will undoubtedly descend into another nasty, insulting tirade against MILs and older women in general. But I expect you know that.

Some collect gossip so it's something to regurgitate to others because their own life is empty and devoid of content.

I doubt I am the only poster on MN, who knows some posters in real life.

YANBU but why continue telling her things knowing she does this.

I listen to my family and in-laws talk and I know who to talk to and who not to by how they talk about others. I definitely wouldn’t be sharing any information with my own in-laws and have told DH that I won’t be telling him anything if he tells his family without asking me when it deals with me personally. I don’t particularly share anything private with my parents because they’re gossips too.

Growing up around that taught me not to share anything private I wouldn’t want people to know or be caught off guard being asked by someone else later.

Yes, same for me. Mine is on an information diet from us, partly because we realised years ago that she’d discussed our infertility with other people and partly because if we tell her one of the kids is ill she makes a huge deal out of it and I can’t cope with her ‘worrying’. So we tell her very little about health and our finances. She tells us lots about the children of their friends so their friendship group obviously chat away about sometimes quite personal stuff. My DM would have been horrified.