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Relationships

Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

What IS it with mil/dil relationships?

79 replies

bibbitybobbitybloodyaxe · 21/10/2011 20:15

Why are they so tricky?

Why is mumsnet overrun (tainted even) with negative threads about mils?

OP posts:
schroeder · 23/10/2011 19:46

You would think my pil would have been glad to be rid of dh, he was still living at home, having his washing done and his dinners cooked at 25 [hshock]

GloriaSmud · 23/10/2011 20:19

What I find odd is a lot of MILs seem to think that DILs have "stolen" their son away

This is exactly how my MIL behaved. FIL not only taught my MIL that the world should revolve around him/them but also taught her that everyone who marries into the family is a threat to their happiness. Once you realise that this type of IL has a totally different way of viewing family, that you begin to 'get' the way they think. These are people who don't see their adult offspring marrying as a sign of life moving on, being pleased that their children are happy etc, as normal families do, with these ILs, their children's partners are seen as a threat. What my DH was to his parents was the provider of their happiness and taxi service; he had a 'use' to them that made them happy and he wasn't seen as a person in his own right. They thought that because they were happy, then he was happy too and he'd want to do that for ever more. It didn't figure in their minds that he might want more in life and that he might want to do that 'grown up' thing of getting married. Once they realised that they were going to have to tolerate me, they 'trained' him through their tantrums, that they should come first and to be very afraid of upsetting them, no matter what the affect on our family (DH, me and DDs.)

As an aside to this MIL/DIL thread, I learnt several years ago that it isn't just me that the ILs haven't got on with. My MIL had a sister and it's often been said that her and MIL (and then FIL) were very close. This sister used to drive the ILs around as well and when she got married a few years after the ILs did, they say they didn't get on with him because (in their words), "he was a weird Irish bloke." And when DH's sister got married (several years before I came along), it's said that FIL took 8 years to "get used" to BIL being there! So I guess the signs of what DH's parents were going to be like, were there long before I came along. Add to that, that the ILs have no friends or hobbies and even though they live in the same town as their other relatives, they never see them, it all kind of adds up to a weird way of thinking when it comes to family and to life in general.

Blueberties · 23/10/2011 20:38

I think "dil"s are more likely to dance around the relationship because they're newer to the whole "building a family" dynamic, they want to please, they want the two-three families to all get along together, they have a generally idealistic view of how things are going to work out (obviously a generalisation) and they want things to work out well. Whereas an older woman by now knows what she wants, how to do things, how she does things, and she knows the things up with which she will not put. And after all that time, all those years and experiences under her belt, it's now part of her/our job to take a back seat, and that's not comfortable for many people.

I know I'll be in this position and I've already put my husband on warning to let me know if I'm being over-bearing or interfering. I imagine I'll just be so happy that my children have found partners to make them happy that I will be happy to take that back seat. But that's my imagination at the moment - I have no idea if I'll have the strength to see myself "from outside myself", and I'm a pragmatic person, so I'm going to prepare my husband and children to give me a quiet word if I start undermining my dils/sils in the damaging way that I, and my sils, and my sister, were and are undermined.

diddl · 23/10/2011 20:51

A big problem for me was that ILs never really saw their son as an adult who they would treat/converse with on their level.

Conversations always went back to childhood/primary school friends-rarely the here & now.

Really odd.

I´m sure that I´m still my parents "little girl"-being 5ft doesn´t help-but I´m married with too children-pretty obviously an adult!

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