Friends, awful ILs and conflicts of interest

[TheSmallClanger]

Recently, DH and I have been spending time with an old (female) university friend of DH's and her fiance. The friend is a normal part of his social circle, the fiance is an "incomer".

Our Friend has been confiding in me quite a lot about some misgivings she has about her relationship, which revolve around her ILs. She thinks it is the wedding planning bringing out the worst in them.

All of this was dealable-with until I realised that I know the fiance's ex-wife quite well through work - they had divorced before I met her, so I didn't link the two to begin with.

This would all be embarrassing enough, but I know through Ex-wife that Friend's misgivings are very likely to be completely justified - history is repeating itself.

I know confronting her with this information will not help, but I'm not sure I can carry on listening to her going on about her arse of a FFIL without saying something. I also enjoy her company, and don't want to push her away for the sake of not feeling awkward. In the very least, I would like to tell her I know Ex-Wife, as Ex-Wife has worked out that I know Friend.

What on earth can I do here? I am positive that Ex-Wife is not causing trouble, as she told me most of what I know before she knew about my friendship. I do not know how much the fiance knows about the situation.

SO it it to do with the in-laws or the man himself?

The ILs and his inability to stand up to them.

There's no reason why you shouldn't tell her you know ex-wife, is there?
Not sure why you feel there's a conflict of interest here.
Aren't you just feeling awkward about whether you should tell her how awful her new ILs are?

Sit your friend down, tell her what you said here, that you didn't realise it was the same family that your other friend was part of. Tell your friend that you have heard via his ex-W that she struggled with the PILs, stressing that she confided this before your friend's relationship with this man was known. Suggest you are telling her because the ex-W wasn't able to deal with it, and your friend might want to decide how she and her fiance will deal with it.

If his parents' behaviour has lead to one relationship breakdown, he might be more open to a conversation about how to avoid that happening again, particularly if he sees your friend as 'the one'.

You might actually be doing her a massive favour, she needs to know how bad it could be, so she doesn't let things slide in the early days, leading to it being harder in the future.

Tend to agree that you should tell her. He needs to address this - we know from many stories on here that spouses who put their parents first in an abnormal way can be a massive relationship issue.

You could also suggest she has a look at the Susan Forward toxix inlaws book (amazon) so she has a better idea what she is up against.

What LydiaWickham said. Awful in-laws and a husband who won't stand up to them is a recipe for a complete loss of respect, without which the relationship won't last. It wouldn't be fair to let your friend go into this marriage thinking her in-laws' current behaviour is a temporary glitch.

She may not appreciate that now, sadly; she may decide to shoot the messenger.
But she'll be even more upset later if she discovers you knew what they were like and didn't warn her.

I agree. If it were me, and I was confiding in someone about misgivings about a partner's parents and that person knew I was not imagining things, I'D want to know.

Right everyone, thanks for the kick up the arse. I am going to have to say something. You are right, I cannot let her get herself into a situation she might not be able to get out of easily without at least warning her.

But how to do it? Should I just come out and tell her that this has all happened before around and during her fiance's first marriage? At the moment, I try to impress on her that her PILs' behaviour is not normal or reasonable, and that her fiance's reactions to it are not really good enough.

I'm going to have to tell all, aren't I?

Yes, I think you are... but don't worry that you're bursting her bubble, she has already chosen to confide in you about her misgivings, she is obviously aware that something's not right and trusts you.

But as Lydia said upthread, stress that you knew about the ILs' role in your colleague's break-up before you had any idea of the connection with her.

Preface it with 'I wouldn't bring this up, but you have kind of asked for input'

Then explain that you realise now that you know his ExW and that completely independently of her, that this information was imparted to you.

As you know, she's already got her suspicions, so this is not going to be like a bolt out of the blue...

Update time:

Earlier this afternoon, I found the opportunity to have the dreaded conversation with our friend. I'm not sure how it went.
I expected her to get angry, and deny at least some of what was going on, but her reaction was disconcerting. She just sat and listened, and wanted to know absolutely everything the XW had told me, and everything about the XW herself. She knows XW through her DP's children, so this was a bit odd. She gave no indication of what she was going to do with the information.

I'm now going to have to tell the XW what is going on, which will possibly be embarrassing. I have an inkling that our friend may try to speak to her directly, but other than that, I have no idea what she will do.

Thanks for the support and I'll keep you posted if I can.

How tricky, but it sounds like you've handled it really well.

From her reaction maybe your friend is in the information-gathering phase and is now going away to do some serious thinking. She probably wanted to get a sense of what the XW was like and hence whether she might have been over-reacting to the IL issues.

Well done for telling her. It couldn't have been easy. But yes, warn the exW, it won't be nice for her to be ambushed.