Monologues monopolising conversations

[Pinkyponkalonk]

My MIL is a nice lady, very kind to my husband (her son) and our toddler daughter, has lots of friends and had a long professional career. She adores her family and would do anything for them.

However my relationship with her is floundering due to her absolutely monopolising conversations with long dull monologues on any and every subject. I find myself silent or monosyllasbic a lot of the time around her as any topic at all that is raised, she will then proceed to tell you every tiny thing she has ever experienced or knows about it - even something as simple as a potato.

If someone else is speaking, she will say 'yeah yeah yeah' eagerly (without realising she is) as she is anxiously trying to interject and take over again. If she asks you how you slept and you say 'good thank you' she will then launch into a long monologue outlining every detail of her nights sleep - and if someone else comes into the room, she will start again and tell them with exactly the same detail and length.

There are other issues with her being quite overbearing in her children's lives but I could cope with those if time with her wasn't sadly so dull and actually quite stressful due to her constant need to be talking. She is quite an anxious person and always so eager not to offend and to get everything right so I am baffled how she doesn't know how frustrating it can be to be around her. Her children get frustrated and annoyed with her but she just shrugs it off and carries on.

She is a nice person essentially but apparently has always been like this and everyone just lives with it. I am however finding it increasingly difficult to navigate and wondering if anyone else has ever come across this?

I am not looking for solutions such as spending less time with her or getting my husband to talk to her but wondering about coping strategies as I feel I am starting to be rude around her and I am generally quite polite and kind.

@GumbalinaToothington I have never related to a picture so much in my life!

Sil does this. She doesn’t have much of a social circle and doesn’t work. Her main points of conversation are about parents at the football team nephew is in. She will drone on to mil on the phone, then arrive at the office and repeat the same thing in person. (Joys of a family company so I can’t escape from the room, and as mil is working and only ‘hmm’ every several minutes she puts her phone down on speaker, so I hear it twice too)

She can’t hold a conversation, she asks questions and it’s like an interrogation. Her chat with DS:

'Do you like school?', no wait for answer.
'Are you a good boy?' yes
‘Do you know RandomPerson I’ve heard mentioned at football at the same school?’,no wait for answer, 'are you their friend? And they a good boy too?’

Then she walks off to tell mil about how DS is best friends with random person not even in his year.

She also gets louder and louder if she thinks people in other parts of the house can’t hear.

BIL is like this. In fact, DP and his entire family have traits of it, but BIL is on another level entirely. He’ll always end up sitting at the centre of any occasion holding court on… cars, covid, his job being stressful, his diet, what he has cleaned in the house that day, people who have given him grief recently and how he put them in their place etc etc.

The only solution is to just get up from the chair, say “soz, just need the loo” and get out of the room.

There’s a get together on Weds at his place, so I’m getting myself mentally prepared.

What are the other overbearing behaviours?

Very concerned that your toddler put her hands over her ears - does she need to be exposed to that level of physical and no doubt emotional agitation.

I would bring that up directly with her - if she doesn’t care about you - surely she cares about the impact on her granddaughter.

Also if you do live far away from each other can you meet half way for a family day out / lunch etc instead as this would be much less intense and there are likely many real distractions to interrupt.

Often we have to get over our own discomfort of letting someone know the impact they are having on us - short pain long gain - if you do it with positive intent - ie your aim is to improve dialogue and the relationship because the current dynamic is eroding it then you can stand firm in that. Don’t approach at it as potential conflict or confrontation as they will sense your defensive energy - approach it as neutral expression a preference “I would prefer if you would let me do x or you didn’t do y as it would be better for our relationship”

They may well flounce or sulk but like a toddler that you are trying to put manners on they will come round in their own time if they want the relationship.

@anotherbrewplease

More and more I simply don't visit her on my own anymore. She'd talk at me for hours- a captive audience. Better to visit with other family so at least you've got someone else to talk to or who can roll their eyes and throw her the vicky behind her back

that's pretty bad. I wouldn't visit if you hate her that much.

I love her. She's my gran. She's old and lonely. But she's still an individual who is very self-centred. I cannot change who she is at 90 years old. I cannot undo the damage years of being so selfish have done to her children. I visit her, I bring her flowers and I sit and listen to her utter drivel.

It's just easier with other family members around to buffer it and share the humour of how difficult she is to deal with.

Take your to something actually shocking.

My H has always had this tendency but it's amplified over covid and WFH. As I'm often his only company for days at a time I have to listen to long, boring, ranty monologues and he won't let me speak. Constant interruptions. I feel like my head's caving in.

I wonder what happens when you put two or three of these monologuers in a room together? Do they just talk at/over/on top of each other or does a power struggle ensue?

I had a colleague like this. Her and another colleague would talk at each other all day and have no idea of each others lives. She would interrupt any conversation to talk at someone even if you weren't in her team. It was stressful and rude.

Some of my relatives can be like this and I find it hard going especially when they do it together or over the telephone.

"I wonder what happens when you put two or three of these monologuers in a room together? Do they just talk at/over/on top of each other or does a power struggle ensue?"

Sounds like your average episode of Big Brother

I think the monologuers would fall out, accusing eachother of being horrible because they weren't letting eachother speak.

I had two colleagues like this. Once I sat opposite them both over lunch and they both talked at me at the same time. I was looking from one to the other in astonishment. I never sat with them again.

Not RTFT but are any of these people autistic? Long monologues, difficulty picking up social cues and anxiety are all classic signs. I'm an autistic person myself before anyone accuses me of anything.

@jules that's what I was wondering too. Because my friend clearly has no idea what she's doing or how rude it appears.

My OH and SIL are like this. Whichever PP said about it draining the energy from a room/conversation has it bang on. A normal conversation would be back & forth, brief interjections of agreement or disagreement, but with them it's just waiting for an opportunity to speak and then maintaining their narrative flow.

My OH doesn't do it with an unbroken stream of speech but she never concentrates on what she's actually saying, it's like she's constantly interrupting her own thought process, so she stops to think about what she's going to say next all the time but leaves her speech hanging with things like "and, ummmm" and if you start speaking you get told she's not finished and not to interrupt.

If someone else is telling a story or speaking about something, as soon as it triggers a related thought OH will interject with her 'related' item and then the conversation is lost to her. Mention a certain European country she'll interject to tell you about when she went there on a school exchange and the story of how she met the family she was staying with and the odd transport arrangements. Mention school exchange and she'll interject to tell you about when she went on a school exchange to this place and the story of how she met the family she was staying with and the odd transport arrangements. Mention a certain mode of transport and she'll interject to tell you about when she went on a school exchange... you get the drift.

There are a couple of 'stock stories' I have about funny things that happened to me and I know to pretty much the word where she'll interrupt me with "so I was..." and pick up the narrative from her perspective, then it becomes 'her story' and I might as well just walk away because there's no way I'm getting it back.

Our eldest was excitedly telling us something that happened at school and mentioned another girl's name. "Is that Name Surname? No. was it? Doesn't she live, errrrm... no, she lives by errr, what's it called?" The wind was totally knocked out of DD's sail and I just wanted to yell IT DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER JUST LET HER TELL THE STORY.

Another PP had a great point about emotional distance, which SIL is a fucker for having no regards for. I DO NOT need to experience the thing you have through your recounting, especially when it's about one of her friends who I've only ever heard about through her stories.

None of them have any idea about social cues either. All the usual 'conversation over, got to go' signals just pass them by. It's like they'll just talk until forced to stop.

@JulesRimetStillGleaming

Not RTFT but are any of these people autistic? Long monologues, difficulty picking up social cues and anxiety are all classic signs. I'm an autistic person myself before anyone accuses me of anything.

I also wondered that.

I don’t know if it would help, OP, but here’s something I was told by a counsellor about setting boundaries.

First maybe have a tactful conversation, as advised by zenlifeforme. Then next time she talks at you try 3 steps (all said nice and calmly):

1. Do you realise you have been talking at me? If she carries on:
2. If you keep talking at me, I will go out of the room. If she carries on:
3. Go out of the room.

Someone acting like this would send me screaming up the wall.

In my experience of people who do this they genuinely don’t seem to understand that they take up way too much space in their interactions but often added to that they are not the types to take feedback well and what you get if you try to say anything is extremely passive aggressive responses, making it extremely difficult if not impossible to navigate without putting in some distance.

@Skye99

I don’t know if it would help, OP, but here’s something I was told by a counsellor about setting boundaries.

First maybe have a tactful conversation, as advised by zenlifeforme. Then next time she talks at you try 3 steps (all said nice and calmly):

1. Do you realise you have been talking at me? If she carries on:
2. If you keep talking at me, I will go out of the room. If she carries on:
3. Go out of the room.

Someone acting like this would send me screaming up the wall.

I like this very much. It does require one to be assertive and matter of fact though.

I suspect that those who have parents (or partners) who do this have been conditioned to put up with it

My Mum has no awareness that she does this.
She has the absolute cheek to criticize one of our neighbours for being overbearingly talkative. He will follow you up the street and it's impossible to get away.

My eyebrows go right up my forehead when she complains about him.

Pinky, you could be talking about my MIL but without any of the nice sides. My MIL combines this monologuing with a nastiness that means neither of my DC actually wants to spend time with her. She criticises them and complains about other family members they are fond of, frequently. So they are low-contact now too.

She has always criticised me, that I am used to and can deal with - but when she tears into my kids - once for bringing the wrong coloured cheese knife to the table... or tells my eldest "You're not very organised, are you... well it's not surprising given your upbringing", then they basically vote with their feet.

Zen, those are interesting tactics and I think I'm going to try this next time I see her. In the past I've tried to get her to tell me in what way her story might interest or concern me, and she just brushes me off and continues with the prattle.

It drives me insane and I have to limit my time around her, even though I love seeing my FIL.

@Zenlifeforme, you said:

"First you might say ‘I’ve listened to you a lot today. You had a lot to say/you had a lot of stories’."

"Next time bring it up a little more forcefully ‘you are telling me lots of stuff again. I’m listening a lot to you. I really like hearing your stories but it’s a lot to listen to.’"

If I said this it would be not at all true. I don't like listening to her prattle... do I say I do anyway - basically tell a white lie?

"Then next time you take the bull by the horns eg ‘the way you tell really long stories is actually a bit of an issue for me. I really love spending time with you and I love hearing a story or two but can we talk about this, as I need it to stop?’"

Once again here, I really dislike spending time with her because of this behaviour. Lie again? What do you think your boundaries coach would advise?

My mother is like this. My brother had brain surgery at a hospital near me and she when she came back from her curtailed holiday she spent the first hour of our conversation telling me about her flight, about the people on the flight, about the disruption of cutting her holiday short. No interest in having an update on my brother, sitting in hospital with stitches and an actual dent in his head.

Having said that, things seem to have got a little better since she got a hearing aid. I wonder now if some of it was fear that she couldn't hear what she might be told.

So my advice for you is to get your DH to suggest to her that telling long stories without listening could be a sign of deafness. He could ask solicitously if she needs a hearing test, as she seems not be able to hear what people are telling her. Framing it as a health problem rather than a personality quirk might make her reflect?

It’s striking that in a lot of examples in this thread, the monologuer is not only interested in just speaking and never listening, but only wants to talk about themselves. I can’t agree that these people are “kind” or “lovely really” if they are so self obsessed they don’t want to hear or talk about their own children or grandchildren for a change. I had a relative who did this. She’d get really aggressive if you tried (however gently) to stop her telling the same story about herself for the thousandth time. There was zero interest in hearing someone else talk except as a way to start a me-too story about herself.

@Zenlifeforme that’s really interesting about boundaries and I have seen people like this be boundary violators in other ways. I would struggle with that strategy because to say I enjoyed hearing their stories and enjoyed seeing them would be a flat lie and I don’t think I could say it.

@Catsstillrock I’m sure that’s true - kindness and favours can be used to create an obligation, including an obligation to let the kind person do other things that aren’t kind without being criticised.

We are all socialised so much into not making a fuss or being rude to people who do things like this, they end up being indulged and carry on doing it, which makes them happy (maybe) and has a detrimental effect on everyone else. I feel so sorry for the pp who struggled to stop the verbal tsunami for long enough to announce her pregnancy!

I’d question whether a relationship like this is good for a child. She’s already winced and put her hands over her ears. She doesn’t like this. When she’s older she’ll understand that this is frowned on socially and will have to suffer in silence. So the mil benefits from indulging her hobby of monologuing at a new victim, and the child has to endure it. Why are the feelings of the talker more important than those of the people subjected to this rude, selfish behaviour?

Solidarity. I've nicknamed my mum "podcast" (not to her face obviously) as it's basically just listening to her talk. We went for a walk once and she told me about a 45 minute phone call she'd had with her tech support for her laptop. I'm sure her telling me took longer than 45 minutes.

My DMum is exactly like this too. But funnily she says that my Auntie does this and that she doesn’t get a word in edgeways!

I wonder if it is generation thing but also I know my Mum lives alone so when she does see me ( not too often) she literally retells her life since I last saw her - which doesn’t consist of very much really but oh so much detail!

Eventually I just go quiet because I think if I do say something, we will fall out.

Not sure what the answer is really other than less contact.

Alcohol makes bores worse - cliche of the pub bore is true.

Bores are miles worse than you’d think to put up with. There’s a reason they’re social persona non grata. It’s aggressive, exhausting, depressing narc behaviour.

Biological reasons include autism, brain damage (frontal lobes), ARBD, and perseveration is a symptom of Alzheimer’s.

Whatever the reason, get out. They don’t improve with age.