AIBU to feel uncomfortable about my MIL's behaviour around food?

[illtellyouwhat]

Sorry, this ended up being quite a long post.

I don’t know what advice I am looking for and simply wanted to share this with other people to see if anybody else has ever experienced anything like this?

MIL, who is past retirement age, has a not so healthy relationship with weight and food. There are reasons I say this which I won’t go into, but let’s just say it is off topic for this thread.

I put on weight recently, but my BMI is in the green, right in the middle. This comes after years of being underweight, at times dangerously so, and struggling to put weight on, for reasons that are also off topic here.

MIL is now constantly asking me how the weight loss is going, measuring me up with her eyes, essentially fat-checking me… she does try to be discrete about this but I’ve seen it happen. She will ask whether I have managed to lose any weight since the last time she saw me. She then confirms “but the weight is going down right?”

She herself is not underweight for her age but is on the thin side.

In her fridge and cupboard, she keeps lots of out of date, expired food. Often mouldy. She will tell anybody who listens how she doesn’t gain weight and how proud she is of it, then going into details about how she manages to do that. For example, if she has eaten a lot one day she will try to not to eat very much for several days thereafter.

Unless she eats out, she’d does not eat “real” food, instead snacking on things like tomatoes or biscuits or nuts, or if she decides to have a meal, it will be something like canned soup. My understanding is she doesn’t really know how to cook, but that isn’t something you can judge her for because not everybody does.

She will often go out of her way to make sure her son (my husband) gets food when we are there, but will essentially do the opposite with me. This used to happen even when I was very thin. If we would go out for a meal she would order something “healthy” then try to eat my food and actually verbalise that she won’t take any from her son’s plate because he needs it. She would encourage her son to get the most expensive and substantial option on a menu, and although it has never explicitly been said I always feel that I am supposed to pick something cheap, sometimes based on suggestions she makes but mostly it’s based on experience from eating out with her and the sort of obvious conclusion you can draw from the behaviour when I do get something that isn’t the very cheapest option (she tries to eat my food). Of course it is possible this is all in my head but I am fairly sure it is not.

I feel like there’s an aspect to this which comes from a need to hoard food because food costs money. Or making sure you get your money’s worth (since she paid for the meal). So her son eating is getting your moneys worth, me eating is not. This behaviour extends to other situations but again it’s a bit off topic.

She does offer me what is in her cupboard and fridge but as I say it’s all expired and mouldy. In the same breath she will talk about how to ensure you don’t get hungry by snacking on small amounts of food like sweets and nuts.

On our most recent visit she made her son some food (tinned soup). She did not offer me the same. She then told me to join her while she ran some errands, in what felt like an attempt to distract me from eating. At this point it was late afternoon and I had not had anything to eat all day. She later offered me tomatoes and crackers.

I don’t think I will ever try to “set a boundary” because to some degree it is a lost cause and I don’t want to make her cross, I mostly try to eat before and after seeing her, but sometimes there isn’t time to do that.

@illtellyouwhat

I would take a low drama approach at this point but be strategic.

First is to take care of you. So reduce as much contact as possible with MIL - no need to announce you are doing so must be less available.

When you do see her grey rock her nagging about weight and job - just be vague and boring.

Bring your own food backup. In restaurants just order what you want - if MiL starts eating your food just gently move the plate out of reach.

Re Kids: By the time this happens you have time to work on those boundaries and DH / therapy so don’t worry too much now.

When it’s a reality you just enforce even more boundaries - no sleepovers until your child can verbally tell you what goes on. First time they go you send them with the food and portions you want them to eat.

If they come back and you find out that MIL didn’t use your food or reduced the portion then they simply don’t go back.

You haven't suggested that your husband has a current recognised eating disorder or current disordered eating. Does he?

You have described him as a victim of childhood emotional abuse. That is his problem and that is the reason why he doesn't see his mother's behaviour as harmful. It's also the reason he won't stand up to her, and why he is loyal to her before you. The focus your mother used to abuse was focused through food. But the abuse was emotional

A good psychotherapist (one with 1000+ of hours of clinical experience, their own personal therapy, clinical supervion) would be able to help him if he wants to be helped. However, focus on yourself first and foremost. If he refuses help, that's his choice. You can still make your choice to get help.

I’m thinking that is the core thing he needs help which would most seriously impact any future children?
This misses the point. We're talking about food here because that's what you wrote about as the initial problem. Your future children's wellbeing will be impacted by having a dad who is unable to stand up to his own mother in any and all issues. Throughout your posts you've hinted at other issues your MIL has/other methods of control your MIL uses. You and your husband need to be on the same page about what is harmful to a child and how you protect them. Even in families with mentaly well grandparents, sometimes opinions differ between the generations on childrearing (topics like safe sleep practices for babies, insisting on kids wearing a helmet when riding a bike, keeping secrets from parents, using a carseat) and grandparents need to be kindly told to wind their necks in. They're not the parents. Do you think your DH would stand up to his mum if she had a different opinion to you both on anything?

My parents raised me with certain values that include respect, politeness, and being helpful and charitable
These are all lovely qualities to have.
BUT they are one-sided and leave you lacking in other very essential qualities: self-confidence, assertiveness, honesty, truthfulness, courage etc.

I try to not allow myself to react to things in the public sphere because I have learned that it is frowned upon or leads to negative outcomes.
"it is frowned upon" - by whom? You phrased that in passive grammar, with no person attached. Do you think the whole world will frown at you if you are assertive about meeting your needs?
"negative outcomes" - for whom? If everybody else is happy but you are suffering, that is still a negative outcome.

I need to not get into a situation where people might say I have a bad temper or I am difficult or not accommodating and things like that.
People who love to point out your supposed faults are not worth your time or attention. Don't worry about what people think.
If you really must concern yourself with what other people think, concentrate on the people who will admire your confidence, outspokenness, honesty, courage, ability to stand up for yourself, and healthy boundaries.

Brilliant points
Assuming your parents are fairly normal people, they raised you with these values to make you a positive contributor to society. "It's nice to be nice, then everyone gets along". But without the balance of the other essential qualities that StandingDeskDisco lists (self-confidence, assertiveness, honesty, truthfulness, courage etc.) you are extremely vulnerable to anyone who isn't "nice". Do you think it was your parents' intention to leave you open to being a victim? I doubt it - Your dad was upset when you told him about your MIL. But victimhood is where you're existing right now. So just like your DH thinks the sun shines from his mother's bottom, you also need to realise that even with the best of intentions (I assume) your parents have made mistakes too.

You've mentioned a difficult time as a teen/young adult. We don't know if that was beyond the norms for usual, necessary, and healthy teen anger and rebellion. But that experience and what you believe about yourself as a rebel child seems to have done a number on you. You seem scared of your own aggression. Like your big feeling are too big to show to the world. Now if you've hurt or murdered people then fine, you're probably right about that. But I don't think that you're a violent person are you? So why are your emotions so threatening?

It's interesting that you say you rebelled against the concept of respect mainly, in particular towards authority. Because who is the authority figure in your life right now you're prostrating yourself before? MIL, the matriarch with her rules. And DH, the enabler.

Please find some appropriate anger and use it to help yourself. Find your inner teenager. Anger is just a feeling. Its not scary. It's useful. You can change your life with it

Op, a slight derail here but do you know if the parents of the grandkids who have been being taught my MIL how to keep hunger at bay know this is being said to them?

And if they did- do you know they felt about that? Or could you guess? Genuinely curious.

"Anger is just a feeling. Its not scary. It's useful. You can change your life with it"

This is so important. Anger is useful when justified and appropriate. You have been demeaned, dismissed and your bodily autonomy/hunger have been undermined systematically by a domineering woman with disordered eating and weird behaviour around food. You have unwillingly accepted this thus far, but I think you realise now that you have suppressed your anger and your justified feelings of dismay about this whole deranged set up to your own detriment.

Please, now you are starting to see things more clearly, act on it and start putting those boundaries in place.

Oh and this nonsense about 'mouldy food did me no harm', I cannot abide such stupid comments. We used to send children up chimneys, societal norms have evolved and we now realise that this was wrong So is your MIL's behaviour to you and her thoughts about food.

I have a similar situation but it’s money related. It’s his family. When we are all together, food becomes a battle ground. I fucking hate it. We always meet at a mid way point, so air b n b type thing I say I want dinner and everyine looks at me like I’m some form of alien asking to lick the toilet bowl.

Last time I just stated I know you all eat dinner every day, I’ve no idea why you are all reacting like I’ve suggested something strange. My husband jumped in and said we will go out to dinner, you and me, as he knew I was going to kick off, so we did. We simply stood up and walked out.

I also did the same another day with my adult kids. I simply said we are going for lunch at 1, see you all when we get back. They all just stared and blinked, and we put our coats on and left.

i was very clear with my husband, im not having it any more. Everyone sitting there starving as they don’t want to pay for food; and acting like it’s totally normal behaviour. “Oh no, I shall,just have a bit of toast”. My view now is crack on. I’m not. And I’m not arguing about it any more either. Or sitting pleading to eat. Fuck that, I’m a grown up.

thing is they are all quite fat. And none of them remotely skint. They just don’t want to pay for food, it’s pure tightness. so they will go all day with a bit of toast then maybe get a McDonald’s at like 10pm when they can’t cope any more.

i bring food with me now, breakfast and snacks. Make breakfast for us, eat out for lunch and dinner, and I always find when I go to bed they horse into the snacks and finish what they can find. All of it.

Likely as they are fucking starving.

That sounds seriously messed up @Wickedlittledancer . Really disordered behaviour. You're quite right to refuse to play along and to just do what you want and eat when you want, without complaining or explaining

The toxic shit that goes on in families 🙄

I actually hate it, and I don’t say that lightly, to be honest it took me years to grow a back bone and say enough.

Families are so messed up some times.

It actually seems quite bonkers! What's the point in meeting up in an airbnb if you're not having family meals together, whether out or takeaways or cooked for the group?

What does the get-together consist of if food's not involved?

I love the "mouldy food did me no harm". Oh yes except you can't cook, won't eat a meal and tell everyone to go hungry as much as they can bear!

Chat, a few drinks, it’s not shared meals and never has been, I genuinely can’t understand it, and it annoys me so so much, every time.i simply don’t understand why food is such a battle ground with them.

these are people who have their dinner by 6 every night, they have money, they have breakfast and lunch every day. But these are not people who eat out unless it’s a special occasion.

they don’t even bring food with them, other than bread and butter. They are happy to go out for drinks. So I then face the situation of, no I’m not sitting drinking more on an empty stomach, and leaving them to it and then coming back after. So they happily pay for booze. Not too much, but eating out is like some form of alien concept and I assume they don’t bring with them, as they’d be worried about having to cater for everyone.

@illtellyouwhat You asked upthread if the food seems to be the biggest issue.

As a few people have asked, is your husband going to stand up for you/take your side when it comes to his mum, especially when its something sensitive about children? That is a far bigger issue because not only is his mum being horrible to you but she doesnt sound like she should have unsupervised access to children.

The more you say on this thread the clearer it is that your husband's upbringing was dysfunctional and unhealthy at best but being realistic it sounds abusive. Constant battling and appeasing this situation is painful for yourself but will get a million times more painful when you bring kids into the mix.

I agree with @wordler that a strategic, low drama approach is most realistic from how you seem to want to approach things and that your husband doesnt appear ready to address any of these issues (I felt very sad for him when you said therapy makes him feel sad/worse upthread, because it hints at how much there is to unpack for him. However that doesnt mean you need to politely accept this and cause no friction for him).

In line with this, to try and get you both thinking about the bigger issue, my practical advice is to open up some other convo topics with him so you can get more of a sense of the challenge at hand related to kids. This will be a good way to understand better what other batshittery your poor husband has been exposed to and thinks is normal parenting- so you can make an informed decision as to what to do next. Such as:

• whats our approach to discipline?
• what key values do you want our kids to be brought up with?
• what sort of relationship do we want our kids to have with food and exercise? How will we implement that?
• how do we handle it when we disagree on something re parenting?
• what did we love about our own childhoods that we want our kids to have?
• what did we experience in our childhood that we not want our kids to experience?
• what role do we see grandparents playing, both sides? What will we need to watch out for in terms of overstepping/what support will we get?
• newborn visitors and surviving the newnorn period- how are we supporting each other? I.e if our in laws want to descend on the doorstep the minute we're home from hospital, are we ok with that and if not how are we making that clear?

There may be others that are relevant in your situation but you will know that better than me.

You dont have to frame it as 'your mother is a nightmare so what are we going to do about that'- although I think youre well in your rights to do that 😂

Edited for formatting

Really good questions! I’ve had to think about this a lot. Early on I was actually in a very bad place. First meeting with her was in part (from DH perspective) meant to introduce me to a support network (her/his family) since my family are so far away. Although DH has never painted her as warm, don’t think he would describe her that way or maybe he would if that is what he’s learned that warm is… I really don’t know. Anyway, she is, as someone else said here, the matriarch in his family and therefore what he perceives as his source for support(?).

I did perceive her as accepting then, but it also seesawed between acceptance and overt doubt - in me, in the relationship with DH - and I feel like I constantly have to prove my worth. Which I admit contradicts the idea of being accepted.

She 100% tries to find ways to “manage” people - whether they like/want it or not - and I think your read on that front is spot on. That’s definitely the right word. “Manoeuvred” is also on point, and so is “chess piece”.

“Ugh, I don’t know if she was consciously this calculating, but I certainly think that she has played out her life according to an agenda over which she must maintain control, and she uses the people in her life as chess pieces, allowing her to shape it in the way she wants.”

She totally is consciously calculating. When I read that part of your post I almost wondered whether you know her?!😂(this is a nervous laugh). I kind of think her approach constantly backfires though, so she goes in trying to shape things the way she wants, ends up with something close (sometimes not close at all) to what she wanted, but since she still has control/she moves the chess pieces, it registers as a win.

When she took us out to dinner to tell us to crack on and have kids, there was a bit of “you’re getting old - don’t want to have to go down the IVF route” to it, but my understanding is there is also some kind of tax advantage to having grandchildren(?) and that maybe it is also about the grandparents getting old and that DH and I need to create more grandchildren for tax purposes or something along those lines… so you could frame it as implicitly being asked to create a financial vehicle rather than purely a grandchild.

I'd tell my DH to visit his mother on his own, I couldn't put up with how bad she would make me feel, life is too short to be around such awkward, controlling people. I would be NC, Maybe it's because food was scarce when I was as a child but she is beyond rude

I’m just going to refer you to my most recent post about financial vehicles 😔

Stop this dead in it's tracks. Eat what you want, tell her that her comments about food are unwanted and hurtful and stop eating food that's off, (includes your DH) it causes health issues, some of which are nasty!

Ha ha, I promise I don't know any of you!

I just find people (and who they really are behind closed doors) endlessly fascinating. Also, my MIL would keep old/mouldy food but the difference being none of her kids would ever eat it, and most will not eat at her house. My SIL and her husband will go round periodically and chuck everything that is expired out.

That is a normal response by independently minded adults to an abnormal set of behaviours, so the issue here is that your husband does not assert a normal response, because he has been so conditioned into accepting her control over him. And this is the key thing which needs to be resolved because it is actually really sad that an adult is overriding their own natural responses to appease their mother in this way. Disgust is a visceral and ancient reaction to protect our bodies from all sorts of vile matter. Most people would be so disgusted by the sight of mouldy food that this emotion takes over. She has really done a number on him to override this, and its not just about food, its about an unhealthy level of control and dominance. Food is the vessel she has chosen to play this out (or it chose her). But you don't have to continue with this game of tennis. She has already done too much damage.

As some of the suggestions above, you don't need to shout loud and hard about boundaries but you do need to ensure you never have food taken from your plate, you can order what you want and that you do not go hungry/have to face mouldy food. And you can explain this in a very non dramatic and non confrontational way to your husband.

She has already started with the children, anticipating how she can bring these 'blood' grandchildren into her sphere of control. Do not allow this to happen. Do not allow her unfettered or unsupervised access to any child you bring into this world. She has damaged her son and you need to ensure that this does not continue. It is really awful. I am so glad you are seeing this all so clearly now.

Left of field suggestion OP but is there any chance you could both move to the states near your own family? You then have a support network ready made, no risk of being forced to stay in the country if you have children and it becomes too much and it gets him away from his mother.

That could be a possibility. I do now have some questions from this thread around the logistics/legal side of things. Like what if we don’t have time to sort that out but I gave birth there? Would we be obligated to return to the UK if we don’t own outright (let’s say staying with parents or renting temporarily)? And does tax residence play a role in this? I’m wondering about this in relation to someone mentioning the need for spousal permission to take children abroad. Would that also apply to “keeping” out of UK if they weren’t in the UK?

The point is that you cannot take your child away permanently from their normal place of residence without the other parent's permission (or the courts permission failing that). If they normally live somewhere other than the UK, that is their usual place of residence.

OP DO NOT DO THIS. Do not even consider it. It won't fix your husbands issues (or for that matter your own....sorry) That is not just a left field suggestion, its not even in the same country as the ballpark!
There is no tax advantage to her having grandchildren although of course she may believe that there is. I suspect she just wan't more people to rule over.

There are definitely financial/tax advantages to having grandchildren. Google it if you don’t believe me (I just did, because your comment made me doubt myself 😉)

it doesn't benefit her at all. Either she will be dead or she will have to have given away more money than she would have been taxed. What it could do is enable her to use her money to exert more control.

So I was the poster who raised the residence issue. It falls under the Hague Convention, which both the UK and US are signatories to. It applies to habitual residency, which is a completely separate concept to citizenship and nationality.

Essentially habitual residency is where a family is deemed to have established their home. It's based on things like renting/owning a house, where children are in school, where the parents are employed. Once habitual residency is established it is something that can be enforced in the courts.

So if you and your husband live and work in the UK and have children in the UK, you and your children are considered habitually resident in the UK. If your marriage then breaks down and you want to move your children back to the US, your husband could prevent you from doing that as they are resident in the UK. You would be free to move back but you COULD NOT take your children.

If you move to the US and establish residence there - rent a house, get jobs in the US etc then if you split up and your husband wanted to take the children back to the UK he couldn't do that without your permission.

The Hague Convention comes into play because if a parent just takes the children out of the country without the other parent's permission, the parent left behind can sue through the courts to get their children back, and the government would have to comply.

So for example if you have children here in the UK and then realize you don't want to live with this level of crazy anymore and want to go live with your supportive family in the US, it's not so easy. You could book flights and "go visit" and then just not return. BUT your husband could sue for the return of your children and the US government would have to comply because of the terms of the Hague Convention. AND then you might lose your right to visit the UK and lose all access to your children.

Not trying to scare you but this is serious stuff that you need to think about before moving forward.