BristolUK

We had a thread on relationships with parents some time back. Why not one for mother in laws?

I was making egg on toast for breakfast the other morning. MIL was up early too - unusually for her - but she doesn't normally have breakfast.

"Damn!" I said as my egg yolk broke just before or on arrival in the pan. "It broke."
"I'll have that one, you do another" she told me.

The supreme sacrifice. I love my mother in law.

macadian

My MIL just turned 93 and is amazing! Can't fault her.

scilly

You guys are soooooooo lucky!


My m-i-l was great for the first 17 or so years that we were married, then her husband died and she turned into the m-i-l from hell

It seemed that she had to have someone to blame for everything that went wrong. It had been her husband, poor man, but it then became me .............. I was responsible for everything that had gone wrong from the time we married until the day she died. That included her daughter emigrating, and a determination that I had married her son only for her money

I literally could not do or say anything right, and our lives were made miserable until she died in 1993. We could only be glad that we were here and she was over there or it would have been much much worse.

moneypenny20

My Mil is the opposite. She hated me for the first five or six years then when she realised I wasn't going to sod off anytime soon she decided to like me and we've got on great ever since. When her first husband (my husband's father) died she tried to hold me responsible even though he had been terminally ill for about 10 years. Me and the boyfriend (husband) were on holiday and got back to the news that his dad had died, therefore it was all my fault and I'd kept my boyfriend away from his dad blah blah blah. Grief talking but it took about four years to stop!

scrubbedexpat091

My MIL is okay. We are not close and she annoys me at times but she tries her best.

I cant do long visits with her though and could never live with her.

Teaandtoday5

I think that when my father-in-law was alive he 'moderated' my mother-in-law. Unfortunately he died a year after we got married. I made an effort when the children were little, but she couldn't seem to help being deliberately antagonistic. We reduced a contact a couple of years before we came to Canada, and didn't see her to say goodbye.

She is an old lady now (at least 10 years older than my parents) so I try to keep her informed about them, and send photos and flowers for birthday/Christmas. The kids also write a couple of times a year. I have suggested she contact them on social media, but she won't. She is perfectly capable, a smart engaged woman, who could get help with this from her daughter, but as I say, a fully paid up member of the awkward squad.

scilly

My m-i-l thought the way to encourage people was to say

"you have done very well, BUT ........"

BUT would be followed by ..........

your uncle/aunt/cousin got a higher mark

your father is a better driver

your cousin A, B or C plays the piano better.


She would then tell the other person that you were a better whatever than they were, eg you are a better piano player than your cousin A


Fortunately for us, this tactic never succeeded in driving apart my husband and his sister, not our daughter and any of her 3 cousins ............. but it could have done.

She did succeed in reducing people to tears, and left some of them with little self confidence


OH wrote religiously every Sunday, with only the occasional lapse. His sister wrote regularly. The children all wrote religiously at Christmas and to thank her for gifts.

I wrote only to thank her for my gifts at birthday and Christmas.