Just that, really. It's not the only problem in our relationship (she's also controlling, although that's another story) but it's the constant nastiness, almost exclusively about other women, that wears me out.
Sometimes it seems as though she can hardly open her mouth without sneering at or damning someone. She's constantly "shocked" (read: crowing triumphantly) over having caught another woman doing something that she wouldn't do, e.g:
- using a buggy for a three year-old as a one-off on a long day out in the city;
- occasional dummy use in toddlers;
- breastfeeding beyond six months;
- letting a small child sleep in your bed after a nightmare;
- sending a four year-old to preschool for a whole day rather than half days;
- using a nursery (which apparently is the same as abandoning your child in an orphanage):
- letting a sensible ten year-old walk a short distance to the shops;
- having a "sallow" and "unattractive" three year-old DS;
- having a DD with long hair at an age that my mother has arbitrarily decided is too young for long hair;
- having more than two children:
- being "matronly";
- being "tarty";
- being "common";
- being "pretentious";
- putting on a few pounds ("that's her life ruined");
- being "ageingly" thin, etc etc.
It probably doesn't sound like much but I've had over thirty years of her inability to say anything positive about ninety per cent of the people she meets or sees on TV (ninety-nine per cent of the women). The other day, she bumped into the daughter of a former friend of hers whom she hadn't seen in years. The young woman in question has four gorgeous kids and has managed to gain a qualification to work in her dream career in the meantime, but my own mother's comment to me afterwards was a smug "She looks scrawny. That family always did have weight issues". Her comment on another old friend's daughter - who was pushing her new baby in a pram - was "well, she's not as glamorous as her Facebook photo, is she?". Of course, she's always gone on about how bitchy and untrustworthy other women are, despite being phenomenally two-faced herself.
Honestly, I keep telling myself "grey rock" and "you don't have to like someone to love them", but sometimes it's bloody hard to keep a lid on my feelings. She's only in her early 60s and it's not a recent change - she's always been like this.
Apologies for the long rant!