Mil provides no emotional support. Am I being unrealistic?

[Mapleissweet]

On the surface my mil is a nice person. She involves herself in her village life and helps us out with our 4dc sometimes who she loves very much.
Dh is her only child and we have been together for 20 years. She is pleasant to me but never ever asks me anything or listens to anything she says.
She provides no emotional support or shows much interest in me. This varies from things like how my births went, breastfeeding, my job, my family, stresses of working, organising family life, my friends, money issues etc. If I try to engage with her I get minimal response and she won't respond by asking any questions.
Yet she will whitter on and on about the most irrelevant, mundane things and it am starting to feel resentful about it. She is only in her 60s so not old and she has been like this for a long time.
I hosted Christmas and spent ages preparing lunch which isn't easy when you have 4 dc including a toddler to care for. She didn't acknowledge the effort beyond saying the 'Turkey was nice'.
Does your mil provide any emotional support? I feel quite angry about it given how busy and stressful my life is.

You do sound unrealistic to me too.

She had one child and no job. You have 4 and a job as well - she probably has no comprehension of what you life is like and doesn't feel qualified to comment Perhaps she even thinks you have got yourself into this situation that is leaving you stressed and thinks you need to sort it out as a family and not drag her into it. Perhaps she thinks you're mad to have 4 children and a job and every time you start about something she takes the line of 'if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all'. It is not her job to provide you with emotional support.

Why does it matter to you what she thinks so much? Where are your parents and husband?

My MIL is great but I wouldn't expect her to care about the things I do. She does take an interest as it happens but she lives 270 mls away and I don't see her often and we rarely speak on the phone. Things might be different if I saw her 3 times a week ( that is a awful lot, maybe too much? I see my oarents once a week and they are 5 mls down the road). And yes, she does talk about people I have never met and know nothing about so I think that is a generational thing too.

Be grateful for the good stuff she does and the lack of interfering and find other ways of getting support if you need it so badly.

Thank you for all your words. This was not intended as a mil bash. Just asking your views on someone who us a close family member.
I am finding life hard work at the moment and mil is not the person to provide supportive words. She expects a happy family life with no stress or upset, which i find unrealistic.

You have been with DH since teens. Perhaps MIL is so used to you being a couple she simply takes your abilities for granted. Has FIL not been around for a long time? If DH is an only child she doesn't have another DIL to compare you to and maye her own MIL was less than complimentary and supportive.

no, it isnt realistic. She does have her limitations, doenst she? But not a bad one, overall.

Mil loves having 4gc. She also likes me working as it provides the dc with a good life. But doesn't comprehend how that pressure impacts on me and how I feel.

Maple,

I get where you are coming fr

How is her relationship with her son? Does he feel the same? And what about your FIL? Is he around?

And how do you know what she expects of you family life when she doesn't talk to you about the stresses and strains of life? I think you might be assuming too much.

Maybe she thinks you go on about your life and don't show any interest in hers so she is doing exactly what you are doing and talking about herself because nobody seems to care. I think you have got yourself into a position where neither of you are getting the support you need as you are both put out by the other not responding in the way you want.

Different people are good for different things. Some are good for a fun night out, some for listening to you whinge, some for rolling up their sleeves and offering practical help. You need to identify the people in your life who are good for each thing and go to them when you need that particular support.

My MiL isn't good for whinging to, but is good for babysitting. If I want to moan about life being stressful, I go to my DH, my sister, or a friend who has the same age kids. If I want to moan about work, I have a sympathetic work colleague.
Instead of trying to fit your MiL into a role you have picked out for her to which she is not suited, you need to find a different go-to person.

I've made this mistake before, tried off-loading onto a friend who wasn't good at emotional support and felt frustrated when I didn't get the response I was hoping for. But I learned to go elsewhere the next time. That friend is still fab for other stuff.

You can't change her you know?

But you change your reaction to her.

My sis-in-law would probably say something similar about my mother. The reason why my mother is so passive and comments nothing is that she had a difficult, interfering MIL herself and she is very worried about coming across that way herself. Really much too worried. My Sil would love her to be more involved in discussing things, but she is really petrified that she will say something wrong. She does care very much, but she reaøly doesn't show it at all. Maybe your Mil feels like that too?

Sounds like you need to sort out the stresses in your life. It rally isn't up to her to say well done etc.... You have to find that yourself. Sounds like something has to change.

Maple,

I get where you are coming from. My mil is like this and it makes me feel somewhat resentful. Mine is a bit different in that she doesn't really provide any pratical support/ help.

It's been very interesting to read all the responses and I do appreciate that she could be very much worse.

I do share your frustration. I work extremely hard in my own job and my DH is self employed and I do a lot for his business too. It is necessary to keep it going in these hard times. I would really value some sort of recognition of this. Sadly the opposite is the case and she can make underhand comments which imply I am lazy. I realise this I'd not the end of the world, but I find it dispiriting. I also really identify with the refusal/inability to engage with what you do in your life or what you talk about. I really don't think that she would do this with other people. It would be too strange to ignore someone to that extent. Thus, I have to deduce she had some sort of problem with me.

I deal with it as you do. I used to make an almost embarrassing effort to engage her. It made very little difference. I now respond in kind. Life is a bit easier.

I think that is it. She couldn't possibly converse with others the way she does with me. No one can manage a conversation where one person does 95% if the talking and if the other said something it was ignored. Eventually over time your patience would run out and that is what has happened.
Unfortunately I see it becoming only a relationship if tolerance rather than one if mutual support.

Fil is around. He is even worse than mil with regards self obsession. He could talk for hours about his aches and pains etc and his own interests.
When they had ds, fil actually had a breakdown as he couldn't cope with working and having a child. Yet they can't seem to understand why dh and I are so tired and frazzled with 4dc and both working.

Sounds like you see her a bit too much - 3 times a week is excessive if she is fairly hard work and you don't get on that well. Could you keep it to one weekend visit where your DH is on hand, or even your DH take the children to visit her while you get a break?

I agree with others, she sounds like a good grandmother but she is never going to be your friend or the MIL you ideally want. But that's ok. Keep things pleasant and polite.

I actually think people are giving you a bit of a hard time. Your MIL sounds pretty horrible tbh. I have a MIL who is similar- not interested in anyone else but only in herself. She is totally self absorbed - it is not a good character trait. She has no interest in hearing about anyone elses life so she witters on endlessly about her inconsequentialities. She is in her 70's but she has always been like this.

She doesn't want to hear how things are with us because then her conscience might prick her and she would have to offer to help in some way and she really really doesn't want to do that. She wouldn't see the point of helping out because to her she wouldn't get anything out of it. Does your MIL help out when she comes around.

So if either Dh or I say anything she doesn't want to hear she either tries to change the subject in mid sentence or runs off. Sometimes recently she actually starts singing to herself. She isn't close to me - tolerates me but doesn't particularly like me but then I don't think she particularly likes any females. Things went downhill when I had DS (after being maried for 11 years) - she seemed to react very badly to that and relations became more strained.
I used to put up with it but after 22 years my patience has run thin as well. I have little time for it. She won't change but with 4 kids you don't really have time to put up with it. Three times a week would do my nut in.

The conversations you describe sound like the one's I have with my MIL. I think she actually pretended my third pregnancy didn't happen at all - not one single question or mention of it from start to finish.

I show more care and interest in my conversations with random pensioners at the bus stop every week, wholly reciprocated, than you describe your MIL shows in hers with you (it isn't a generational thing. Of course there are plenty of considerate women in their 60's! Absurd and offensive to think otherwise).

I think you just sound at the end of your tether with regularly being disrespected at such a basic level by someone who you expect (not wrongly) to have at least a moderate dose of concern for you and your family. I can see how it could start eroding your confidence. Usually we just get rid of people like this, they're a drain, or - if they don't really matter to us - ignore them. This is much harder to do for you and it is so frustrating to feel pushed into a corner, putting up with behavior we wouldn't otherwise, with family.

I think it's interesting that people think that expecting anybody to hold a normal equal conversation is expecting too much! Isn't it a basic prerequisite for having normal relationships? I didn't know it was a bonus! I'll appreciate everyone I know a lot more now

I think when people are reading "support" they're presuming that you want her to be your personal counselor or something, I read it as meaning that you just want her to have a reasonable interest in her family and hold normal conversations with you (which usually include acknowledging the other persons struggles, interests, achievements etc). I don't think that that is expecting too much. I'm sorry that you are not going to get that from her. I just make myself busy now if I see MIL, who knew that crockpot stews needed stirring so much?

Your problem is both that you are unrealistic and that you see them too much.

I have sat out Christmas with my MIL failing to ask a single question about me or my life, but I know I don't have to see her very often. If I saw her 3 times a week I might kill her. It was obvious from the first 5 seconds of meeting her that this would not be a relationship of mutual support.

So you have to adjust your expectations. But would you see a friend this often if you got nothing from the friendship? So you can try to make your interactions different. If you have to see each other this often (do you really?) can you make it focussed on a practical task rather than social chit chat? Can you tactfully (or not - you could just walk off whenever she starts this) point out you don't know whoever it is she's rabbiting on about and so it's not very relevant to you? Or have a massive moan about how hard you are finding everything rather than always having to pretend everything is rosy?

I think you need to adjust your expectations but I don't think you need to be resigned to the situation either.

I do have sympathy for you OP. DH and I have been married 17 years and to this day his parents have NEVER asked me about my own family or in fact anything about me. They do love our three DCS but when I miscarried number four neither of them even acknowledged it. FIL and his second wife were visiting when I lost the baby and his wife did come to me and talk to me and was lovely. I understand that not everyone can talk easily about life events but in this case my DHs family literally never talk about anything significant.

We recently considered a new job for my DH which would've meant we lived much closer to the ILs. We visited for about 4-5 days while he was interviewed and as an experiment I paid attention to see if they asked me about anything at all such as "So Honey, what do you and the kids think about moving 3,000 miles to be closer to us?". Nada. We have lived a long distance from them for a long time and I have finally accepted that I can always expect zero emotional support from them. Therefore I now am acknowledging my own needs, and told my husband I have no interest in living anywhere close to them as I could see us ending up divorced (this is due to them being intensely involved with DH - calling him etc. while ignoring me). We are the only couple still married among their children.

For a long time I gave emotionally to them in the way I do my own family and friends but it is just not reciprocated, they are not made that way. So I no longer worry about pleasing them or caring what they think about my decisions. I used to take them into account but no longer do. As far as I can see I am just the wife of their son and the mother of their beloved grandchildren but they have no interest in me at all. Best to just accept it. They even like to take pictures of themselves with our kids and my DH but without me in them - says it all.

I have a lot of friends who give me everything I need emotionally, including DH so just shrug and move on.

I agree with others saying you probably need to expect less of this relationship.

What you describe is very similar to the relationship I have with my PiL ie basically non-existent. DH and I have been together for more than 25 years and married for most of that. In that time I could count on the fingers of one foot the number of time PiL have talked about my work. They have absolutely no idea what I do for a living.

We will go and visit them in a few minutes and for the time we are there I will quite happily stare into space and nod and smile. It is quite nice and relaxing!

OP - I get what you are saying. Spending 3 times a week with somebody who doesn't want to know about you but wants to talk about themself must be annoying. And hurtful considering who she is. Not being acknowledged can be v upsetting.

Yes there are lots of much worse MIL senarios out there, but it doesn't mean you are not hurt/upset/annoyed about your situ.

But as others have said you probably need to change your expectations. I doubt she is going to change. Has your DP ever said anything to her on your behalf?

I'm not unsympathetic to your relationship with her - I just think you are blind to the person she is. Becoming your MIL didn't turn her into some rosy cheeked grandma. She sounds as dull as ditch water and totally self obsessed. Like way too many people.

See less of her.

I'm still a bit baffled about why you expect her to be grateful for what you do for your adult DH and your children. Your DH is an adult - he can be grateful on his own account, and the children are yours why do you need gratitude

Why do you see her 3 times a week? If she wants to see the kids can't she see them on her own and you get on and do your own thing. .?

I don't think it's even remotely unrealistic to expect someone who has been in your life for this many years to take a bit of an interest.

It sounds really hard work op and ultimately unsatisfying because she isn't going to change. I think the only thing you can do is withdraw, stop looking for it and try and find the support elsewhere.