Answering the same question over and over again makes me want to gouge out my eyes with a rusty spoon...

[isabellavine]

NC for this, but regular.

Also, this is a trivial matter compared to a lot of what people are going through on this board, but I need to vent.

Just got back from a weekend away with inlaws. They are in reasonable health, and there are no issues with dementia, or anything like that.

Every SINGLE time we see them, they ask the same questions:

• How did you get here (and 'by car' is not good enough, every SINGLE road traversed has to be listed IN THE RIGHT ORDER)

Have you thought about moving away from X (poor northern city) into Y (rich country area close by that I would never move to because it is full of cows and other scary creatures, and also has no shops that sell anything useful.. and also we could never afford it)

• Have you thought about getting a new car (despite receiving the clear answer 'We cannot afford it at the moment')
• Do you have plans to build an extension/decorate your home? (see above for our answer)
• Why are you not members of the National Trust? (we have answered this one literally 8 times in the last year - it is definitely not our thing).

Is it unreasonable to think that if I answer a question more than three times, people should at least try to remember the answer, and that not doing so is rude and anti-social? And also, is it unreasonable to think that this is not about the information, but about them judging us and finding our lifestyle wanting? (For the record, we have never accepted any financial help from them, so in my view they have no right to do this).

When we leave, they always angle like mad for an invitation to our house "Oh, I suppose we'll be seeing you at your place soon" etc. etc. etc.

I feel for you. I have just had a weekend of ILs (ie SIL and BIL) and we were so relieved when they left. She is so so so dull. And snobby. And talks at you the whole time. I have no idea how her DH can put up with her.

However, I wimped and said "How interesting" when it wasn't. About 500 times. Instead of manning up and saying, "Do you know, I really don't care what sort of wall paper your neighbours have, I am not interested in which posh school their kids go to, whether your plumber is good, fat, did the work for [famous pop star]...I don't bloody care.

However, I am not planning to visit anytime soon.

It sounds as if you are describing an arcane tea ceremony with traditional incantations. Perhaps your mistake is to ascribe meanings from your own culture

I do understand why you needed to vent, it must be profoundly irritating.

What happens when they come to visit you, Isabella? Do you arrange a frantic programme of "entertainment" for them? Or do you attempt a more relaxed pace? Do you feel more in control, or is your private space invaded? I'm intrigued to know how you cope in this situation.

(Completely irrelevant, but I'm very curious about your work. I recently heard on Radio 4 that working class folks like high maintenance gardens, with lots of weed-free bare earth and bedding plants. Middle-class gardens, on the other hand, have lots of shrubs and ground cover)

Cog - I think you may be right about the dinners. I try really, really hard to do a good three course meal, but I will be the first to admit that I am a very anxious cook. I can do a decent stew, but that's not the 'right' food for these dinner party occasions. As soon as I try to do something a bit fancy, it goes wrong and I end up hot, sweaty, and crying hot tears over rubbery pastry in my very tiny and not very well-equipped kitchen. So this weekend I did olives and crisps as course 1, really spicy fahitas with a Mexican rice salad as course 2, and some brownies as course 3 (the one thing I can do is bake). It did not go down well. On the other hand, I did not end up getting drunk on cooking sherry out of sheer panic.

They angle to visit every few weeks, and DH finds it hard to say no because they have very few friends (a direct effect of their behaviour?). They do go to various improving talks and clubs where people can't really uninvite them, but they don't seem to get any personal invitations at all. The family is also tiny - just PIL, DH and BIL and that's it. I think they are lonely, and the guilt associated with that makes both of us cave.

Oh no I'm very sorry for your DH, feeling he has to see them so often when he is scared and uncomfortable, just out of guilt.

My mum is always angling to visit/blatantly inviting herself and as we have a similarly bad relationship, I would love to just say no, but the guilt makes it very hard. Recently I have said no to one she suggested. It was hard and she keeps going on about it (in emails) but I've given myself a few months off. You can reduce their visits. And/or you can make them less stressful by saying something like "Yes, we are free at X time. However as we have a lot on with work/etc it will be takeaways or something quick and simple at teatime. I'm sure you won't mind a more informal arrangement!!!

Why the hell should they get to impose their lifestyle on you at both homes?? They stay with you, they get to experience your lifestyle.

Is the pressure to to the meals etc partly coming from DH as he's scared to offend them?

Or DH can cook a fabulous 3-course meal? Maybe that would work as it would get him away from them for a bit?

LadyMud - when they come to visit us, we immediately revert to their expectations. A visit to us is exactly the same as a visit to them. It's partly because of DH's fear and issues, but also partly practical. A lot of our life together involves sitting in silence at two sides of a desk. Sometimes we read, and occasionally break off to say 'Oooh, that's interesting' or 'You'll never believe this stupid argument' etc. etc. etc. Sometimes we write - if we are working together, we literally both write the same chapter at once, which mostly works though sometimes descends into ribaldry, farce and silliness. We love it! But I can't imagine anything more boring for other people, though, so obviously we don't subject them to it! When we go out, we tend to go to the pub with friends, or to urban centres for events or just a mooch about.

I am actually very interested in gardens and taste (and space more generally). The politics of 'kemptness' is interesting - hedges (especially privet!), lawns, and the tidiness of planting (from one extreme - rows of water-intensive marigolds in park planting - to 'wild areas' with maybe the odd path mown through) are real flashpoints for class and value tensions about how neat space should look. It's something I want to work on in future - at the moment, I'm up to my ears in a paper on how decisions about architecture/planning that are described as based on 'the public interest' are often more about different ideas of taste.

Hehe definitely do what Hecate suggested!

Sometimes retired people get so stuck in their own bubble they cannot imagine their way out of it. It's the same with my dad and stepmother - they're not critical or enraging most of the time but they are so detached from the realities of our working, busy lives that their line of conversation sometimes makes me and DSibs roll our eyes a little.

There's no changing them though.

" It did not go down well."

I suppose they didn't say anything directly insulting but went for a lot of suspicious sniffing and PA comments like is this what they call 'peasant cuisine'?

Are you and your DH about the same age or are you a lot younger?

Cog - Hahahahahaha! Spot on! That is exactly what happened, only it was 'street food' not 'peasant food'! There were some murmurings about digestion and spiciness too - though this has never stopped them eating hot curries!

I am 36, DH is 41. My parents were part of the swinging 60s and the hippy movement, and in both capacities they swung a little too much for their own good to be honest, as the effects are still sometimes in evidence today ! His parents are only a couple of years older than mine, but their experience of the 60s was more Cliff Richard and the Shadows. So there is a kind of strange, pseudo-generational divide between them, even though they aren't really that different in age. I wonder if this is a phenomenon that is peculiar to people who were teenagers/20-somethings in the 60s when cultures changed so quickly - or whether I'm placing too much emphasis on history, and it's just a matter of different strokes, different folks?

I think you're placing too much emphasis on history... :) However, what are his parents' backgrounds? Specifically his father's I suppose.... Self-made man? Middle-class disappointment struggling to impress?

For example, I know a man from a relatively humble background, rose through the ranks to be a captain of industry with all that entails, and who has 'standards' so rigid and so bigoted that he.... wait for it.... paid for his grandson to be educated privately whilst leaving the granddaughters to the state system and ... I kid you not.... interviews all his GCs when they visit on their career prospects.

Would it help to actually study them? Write a book, or a blog, comparing both sets of parents - their differing experiences in the 60s, the effect on their current lifestyles? I'd buy a copy

Could you give them random and bizarre answers to their questions, for example:

How did you get here?

Well, we flew to Portugal and picked up a night bus that went via Outer Mongolia.

Have you thought about moving away from X (poor northern city) into Y

Well, we would but then you don't have any shops that sell spinning tops round here and we just can't live without them.

Have you thought about getting a new car

Seeing as both DH and I are about to lose our licences for driving steam rollers without the necessary entitlement, it would be a waste of time.

Do you have plans to build an extension/decorate your home?

Yes, we are going to install water features in all public rooms, turn our bedroom into a red room of pain and move the kitchen to a shed at the bottom of next door's garden.

Why are you not members of the National Trust?

I didn't want to have to admit this, but we are banned from every National Trust property for life because, do you remember that man that tripped and knocked over a priceless vase a few years ago, well, that was DH.

Cog - he INTERVIEWS his GC? Jesus.

PIL are absolutely not self-made. MIL had bit-jobs, FIL worked as a lab tech in science until his mid 40s, when he had a breakdown and gave it up. They are both only children and they have inherited a lot of wealth from wider family, mostly in the shape of property that has risen in value due to the changes in the housing market over the last 50 years. Their only child status might explain their lack of negotiation skills, though I know lots of people who are only children who are much more socially literate than I am.

FIL's father (so GFIL) was from very humble beginnings but obsessed with social status - when FIL was a little lad he sent him to a very posh school for a term, but then had to withdraw him because of lack of funds and send him to a slightly less expensive place instead. FIL was trained to have perfect received pronunciation, to which he adds some bizarre personal affectations that I've never heard before (e.g. 'du-VAY' with the emphasis on 'vay' not 'duvet', 'veenue' not 'venue'). Point is, you can see why he would grow up to be obsessed with status and 'doing the done thing'.

FIL is very passive-aggressive and (as I've said) a bully, so MIL has adjusted in the only way she knew how: by becoming socially flat-footed to the point that she just juggernauts over everybody both conversationally and emotionally, leaving a trail of bloodied, half-finished dialogues behind her. If she wants to interject in someone else's conversation, she won't wait - she'll just repeat the person's name over and over again at increasing pitch until everybody is silent, at which point she'll make some terrible joke. Again, not completely her fault - FIL used to abuse her physically as well as emotionally, and I think she walled herself off to cope.

LadyMud - a study might be a good idea as a therapeutic strategy, though I'm far too close to it to be able to see the wood for the trees! It would also be unfit to print in places as I can get quite sweary when annoyed

OnIlkleyMoor - oooh, the surrealist approach. You know, it might work!!

You do sound quite judgy and up yourself, to be honest. And perhaps a bit chippy and easy to offend. Perhaps they find you hard to talk to and thus arrange a day out so they are not faced with not being able to make any conversation.

I think there's two possible reasons: they find you hard to talk to and chippy so stick to subjects they feel are 'safe', or they are just not that interested in you and can't be bothered.

My FIL is very, very hard to talk to, but that is because he is only really interested in himself!

Wipsglitter we're talking about PILS who still scare their own adult son and whose behaviour is extremely difficult. OP knows a lot about class and behaviour (in a sociological sense) so makes sense of it that way. Doesn't mean she's chippy. She find them a PITA because they are a PITA!

I don't mind judging..... So FIL was given a taste of the high life by a social-climbing parent, which was subsequently snatched away and has, ever since, 'underperformed' by his family's standards. As an only child (and I don't buy the stereotypes either) there may have been additional pressure to succeed beyond his abilities leading to low self-esteem, breakdown, half-hearted attempts to rebel... culminating, with the arrival of inherited wealth, in the possibility to finally fit in with the posh boys.

Bullies are always rather pathetic and insecure.

I have known my MIL for 25 years. I have had the following conversations with her over and over again for those 25 years :

• what she had to eat yesterday
• what she will eat today
• what she will eat tomorrow
• what happened at bingo
• how hard her life was when she was raising kids

thats IT, same five topics over and over again for 25 years. Now that she is too frail to get out to the bingo, we don't talk about that anymore either.

She is a nice enough old thing, but its a standing joke in our house that she knows absolutely nothing about me and never asks. I could be running the United Nations and be a freegan never mind vegitarian for all she knows!

Your MIL sounds like she's gone quietly nuts in the face of abuse. Wonder what goes on behind closed doors.... brr....

Cog - spot on, you nailed it. I think that anxiety about social status has run through FIL's family for a couple of generations. GFIL died a long time ago, and was not wealthy at all, but was clever. He came from that generation that never really had a chance to go to university because they weren't 'born to it', so became a clerk. He really did have a class chip about feeling 'looked down on' - and the fact that he married a very middle class girl (GMIL, a musician) with disapproving parents didn't help.

He must have wanted the best for his boy (FIL) and correlated that with being established, wealthy, middle class and conforming with all the social rituals - hence the interrupted public school education. The result of being shoved up the ladder at an early age is that FIL has a morbid fear of failing to conform to the nth degree with social protocols, even though many of these are things I have never heard of and am consequently convinced only exist inside his head (though, really, they probably do, it's just I've never been very formal). I think the fear of failing and being 'uncovered' is partly what drives the need to control everything, and hence to bully.

Paula - that's really sad. It must hurt a lot inside at times.

Hi OP,

I have a similar job and also in laws of a similar demographic to yours!

I always find that accepting several large glasses of wine / gin and tonic shortly after arriving makes small talk much easier.

Surely if they're good "socialists" of the south east they'll have booze a-plenty? Don't arrive before 5pm, that's the mistake.

rosepetalsoup - high fives!!

I am not good at small talk (and I do not say that as a kind of backwards boast, I wish I was), but booze does help me to get through being talked at. I sometimes even manage to answer the recurring questions with a smile under such circumstances.

It always starts with gin and tonic, and then progresses to copious amounts of red wine and the occasional beer (but only warm craft beer or real ale of the type that tastes like soap, never anything that might resemble lager) before the unavoidable, inevitable, unmissable-even-in-the-event-of-apocalpyse coffee and liqueurs, which have to be drunk with the 10 o'clock news blaring away (if you do not put it on in your own house, they will do it for you).

Alas, however, they live so far away that we always have to do mornings as well as evenings. If only life had a fast forward button for these occasions.

Aha! I've not had the ten o'clock news bit but the rest of the drinks menu is textbook. Be thankful they're sozzled and asleep by midnight.

Also can you make a joke about it with your DP? That way, and particularly a bit pissed, you can giggle covertly together ticking off the questions as they arise.