Aibu for struggling to deal with narcissist MIL

[Ditheringdooley]

Long rant about controlling MIL.

We moved house a week before the lockdown. As we couldn’t put our old flat (mile down the road or so) on the market we moved my MIL into it as otherwise she lived on the other side of London and this made it easier to drop things to her.

MIL is over 70, has had health issues in the past. Not on extrêmement vulnérable list that allows us to get delivery slots.

I’m pregnant and husband has health issues so we have been very careful pre and during lockdown. We have a veg box delivery each week and had a big health food shop order online in bulk that has kept us going. We cook and a couple of times a week on daily walk if my husband finds that the corner shop has no one in it, he goes in and picks up other bits and pays with card, wearing mask and gloves.

Getting her food is a nightmare.
We go to an M&S at a petrol station on a dual carriageway near us because it’s basically always empty and buy her ready meals each week and drop them off (and bread, milk fruit etc).

She:

• is a vegetarian but doesn’t want any cheesy meals
• also doesn’t want vegan meals (!)
• won’t have anything where the saturates is high
• won’t cook (so has to be ready meals)
• won’t have frozen meal deliveries as some nonsense about plastic (plastic you put in the microwave or oven is somehow fine)
• doesn’t tell us when she is running low on something but will call and say I’ve run out of tea/ milk/ bread/ toilet roll
• seems to get through a 4 pack of toilet roll in 5 days?! Wtf?

Initially i sent some cooked food, soups etc, to supplement ready meals and salads but after her nastiness to me via text message and nastiness to my husband I’m not giving up my precious time.

We both work full time from home and have a daughter. She expects us to be at her beck and call and shows no gratitude for anything. Husband has sometimes picked her up a piece of cake or something (again if it is quiet) and dropped it to her and she doesn’t ever say thank you or recognise that someone is trying to do something nice.

All she does is eat toast and drink tea and dream up ways to complain it seems. Which prob explains the to usage.

She is v controlling and I feel like because she can’t control us in other ways she is using the food fussiness to have my husband running around. There are no actual food allergies or restrictions. And when we ate meat in the past she would have some of ours if it looked nice (or at a carvery or something).

Oh and statement of the obvious but thé M&S isn’t a big food hall so there is limited choice and stuff tends to be short dated. And it’s more expensive than we would normally shop for ourselves, but needs must. I don’t grumble about the cost just the lack of reasonableness. We bought blue milk once and she complained because it wasn’t green.

I don’t like blue milk in tea but if someone else was shopping for me and that’s all that was on the shelf. I would take it.

You say ‘we moved my MIL’ into the flat like some kind of executive decision — was she ok with this? Is she happy being locked down for months out of her own home? And to be honest, what you say doesn’t sound that bad — she’s a tiresomely fussy eater who is set in her ways, grumpy from lockdown and not being particularly gracious about what you’re doing for her. I don’t think that’s wildly unusual, though it’s annoying.

My sister, who is the only one who lives close enough to our locked-down late-70s parents (who are generally very meek and grateful people) to shop for them, says they operate a bewildering system of money-off vouchers across three different supermarkets, though the money saved is minimal — it’s more of a pottering routine — and don’t appear to understand that she doesn’t have the time or inclination to carry on their ‘system’ with a FT job.

Hi Vellum - yes she was fine with the move as she saw the need for it and was scared about being on her own on the other side of London (2 .5 round trip drive). She previously said she wanted to move into our flat and sell hers as we live in a nicer area and it’s a bigger flat.

Her flat is small and completely hoarded so much so that although her heating stopped working a few years ago she won’t have anyone in to repair it. No washing machine so goes to the launderette or washes by hand. So there was no way that she could have sent 12w indoors (even if we had been able to organise deliveries or get neighbours to bring things).

She normally stays out as much as possible in cafes, on buses etc, so fundamentally it’s that change in lifestyle that is shaking her up but she is putting it all on us. Apparently our flat that previously she was desperate to move into is a ‘shithole’ now and she is desperate to go back to her actual shithole. Which I think has nice.

That sounds tough for your sister and unreasonable increase in her exposure/ hassle. I get that people feel the need to stick to routines and that they get stuck in their ways but it really increases the strain on those providing care.

I meant that her old flat was a 2.5 hour round trip from us. Not something we could have done several times a week- husband doesn’t drive.

She's over 70 but is she actually so elderly that she cant organise her own food? Surely she can organise her own food deliveries. It may take some effort to get slots but it isnt impossible. Local bakeries and egg deliveries are usually avaliable to. Either that or just stop being so worried about what she thinks and let your DH sort out everything related to her food if that's what he wants to do.

M&S are now delivering, get her to do it herself!

No, she’s 74 but ordinarily able to sort own food, bills etc.
She could do those things but wont- we tried Wiltshire farms which she initially liked as you could get puddings as well as meals but then she began complaining about the plastic. Eggs no good as she literally willl not boil an egg or make scrambled eggs. Our job does not get used.

I do just leave him to it now- I have a bad relationship with her as I won’t be controlled (she used to just let herself into our flat so I changed the locks) so apparently I am ‘controlling’. But she uses it as an excuse to berate and belittle my husband and he is down after any call or interaction with her and that makes me sad. He is no pushover and a very kind person and she is just horrid.

E.g. he shared with her at the start of lockdown that he was worried about losing his job and so she now keeps saying to him ‘you’re going to lose your job, you should never have bought a more expensive place, I told you this would all go wrong’ etc. When he happily told her we were having a baby (last time) she was livid and said he should never have married me etc.

Just forces us to have more contact than we would like.

Are they?! Where?! I thought only via Ocado which we don’t have access to?

This would literally make my day if M&S delivering!

I’m in Scotland, saw it on their TV advert.

It’s via deliveroo

Thanks- will look. We would still have to do it as she doesn’t have a smart phone/ use internet. But at least would save time!

Argh- don’t deliver to this address. Odd.

Ordering catering sized tea and toilet roll off the internet so at least reduces ability to force us to make separate thrips for those things :)