(Closed) Things your MIL says that drives you nuts

• UsagiTsukino
• 6 years ago

• Wedding: February 2013

My Mother-In-Law is really an awesome person, but… yeah.  Sometimes….

For one, she’s obsessed with getting grandkids.  She told Darling Husband to get me to look up “fertility foods” that supposedly up your fertility, “So you’ll have twins!”  Um, we’re not even TTC yet, and I DEFINITELY don’t want twins!

Also, when we mentioned that we were thinking of trading in my car, and debating whether to do it now or try to coast on it for one more year, she said that we should totally trade it in ASAP “So next year you can save all your money for the baby!”…. again, not TTC, there won’t be a baby next year.

She’s also super clingy.  We live about 2.5 hours away, and they “never” see us, even though we’re litterally killing our cars to do that trip about once a month, spending the whole weekend every time.  We also spent a solid week there over Christmas.  But they “never” see us, okay…

• prettylittlemrs
• 6 years ago

• Wedding: October 2013

Mother-In-Law has taken to talking about my eczema. I get eczema on my arms, although lately it’s gotten better. She’s started saying my husband and I shouldn’t have kids because they’ll get eczema and she doesn’t want her grandkids ‘tainted’. I told her fine she doesn’t have to see them if that’s the case.

• SarahCF
• 6 years ago

• Wedding: October 2013

First, the qualification: I like my Mother-In-Law. We get along. For the most part she is perfectly fine, very sweet.

But she really rubbed us the wrong way with something she said the other day.

 Here’s the backstory: She recently sold a house that she had been renting out of state. Before we got married she gave Darling Husband a cut of that money and told him she’d like him to put that towards a house for us. We were very thankful for this and told her we would absolutely do that. We had absolutely no intention of using that money for anything else, and we made that clear.

A few weeks later Mother-In-Law and SIL tried to pursuade us to use the house money to buy a new car (we did need one) but we said no, we’d rather make payment out of our other accounts and save the house money. They thought that was a little silly, but let it go.

Meanwhile, we were planning a wedding. We weren’t too vocal about budget or where the money was coming from, but we did make it clear that we had been saving up and were using money that we had saved ourselves. We never said anything about the house money, because it had been sitting in an account accruing interest until it was time to buy a house.

Last weekend we decided to start looking at houses. We told Mother-In-Law that we were looking and we reiterated again how thankful we were for the money she gave us, as it will be our down payment. All sounds good, right?

She bursts into (happy) tears and tells us she’s so glad to hear that we didn’t spend all the money on the wedding. She’s so glad we’re using the money as intended.

WELL NO SHIT! Of course we’re using the money as intended. We haven’t touched a cent of that money since we got it, we’ve been telling her that. It’s so insulting for her to assume we’d just take it and use it for other stuff. Both Darling Husband and I were really annoyed. We reminded her about all the conversations we’d had earlier about it and told her it was not really nice of her to assume the worst, but she kind of brushed that off.

It’s insulting. We love her, and we are so, so thankful. But that was insulting. We’re not selfish idiots.

• Evie19
• 6 years ago

• Wedding: January 2012

I love my Mother-In-Law. She has good intentions, and I know she loves me.

Our personalities are different- so it takes some patience to understand that some things that bother me/hurt me aren’t intentional- we’re just different.

Compared to some of the other crazy Mother-In-Law behavior described here this probably seems like peanuts, but here goes:

1) She will say nice things about me to others, but NEVER to my face. That hurts my feelings. My mom is a lot more outwardly sweet and expressive, so it’s hard for me to get used to my MIL’s way. I am expressive with her, but she does not reciprocate.

2) She is insecure about herself in some ways, so I can tell she is a little jealous when Darling Husband goes on and on about my cooking or when she sees how clean and neat I have the house all the time. She has a small competitive streak in her that is never verbalized, but I pick up on it.

3) Her manner can be judgmental and negative at times, which I find tiring and draining. I get annoyed when she is quick to criticize people.

4) She needs to cut the cord with Darling Husband. She is pretty respectful of our space, but she radiates the “needy” vibe. lol.

Other than that, I feel a lot of love from her, and I know if I needed ANYTHING she would be there for me. I know if our child needed anything she would be there for him/her. I can trust her. She is also mostly very polite.

But in law relationships are difficult, even when everyone has good intentions…it’s like having to getused to a whole new different family dynamic overnight!

• Andthepupmakes3
• 6 years ago

• Wedding: March 2014

@Mermaid1082:  Yes, This!!!

MY Future Mother-In-Law is the sweetest most well-intentioned woman.  But, sometimes it seems like there’s a malfunction in her record player, because I will hear the same thought 5x before she drops it.  It’s not rude or meanspirited like some of these evil women on this thread, but it’s exhausting.

• Footballwife
• 6 years ago

• Wedding: November 2014

To simply answer your questions, everything she says annoys me.

I know im a horrible person for this, but seriously listening to the things she says makes me want to jump into shark infested water rather than listen to her be a negative wench any longer than I have to. So here is a list of the major things that bother me on a day to day basis with her.

We dont have kids yet, we wont for quite some time yet she finds the needs to lecture me on how to parent and what I should/shouldnt do. The only problem with this is we have hugly different oppinions on how to parent. She hovers and is over protective and is into this whole holistic approach. She doesnt want us to get our kids vaccinated and the whole lot. Not that there is anything wrong with people who do that, its just not the appraoch we would take and since we dont ahve kids and wont for a few years I dont know why she needs to bring it all up and make me feel like im going to be a bad mother because I dont want to parent the ways she says I should. Also, her own daughter doesnt speak to her, so a woman who has a failed marriage and a failed relationship with one child is not the person I want to take my parenting advice from.

She is divorced from FI’s father, they have been for over 14 years. Every time we see her, no joke, she says multiple negative comments about his father. We get it, you hate him, you blame him for everything, we dont need to hear this regulalry, especially not after 14 years. Its not fair to tell your son you hate his father all the time, afterall half your sons genes and personality traits are from that man, its like she tells her son she hates him too, in a way. 

When out at dinner, she recommends what drinks and food we should get and if we dont order the selections she has told us about she will ask us multiple times “are you sure you want that? because blah blah blah is good, you should really try it”, “I am sure it is, but this is what I want”….”are you sure, we can order an extra dish so you can try it”…”no thanks, I can try it another time” and on and on it goes.

• Overjoyed
• 6 years ago

• Wedding: September 2013

My Mother-In-Law tries to be a good person, but unfortunately she has a lot of issues from her past with which she has not dealt (and she needs to do so…professionally) and it prevents her from having normal relationships.

She has always treated my husband horribly and even physically abused him as a child and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t even love him. He has forgiven her, but it’s very hard for me to see the two of them interact because she has zero respect for him and it’s obvious. She orders him around and screams his name at the top of her lungs even when he’s 20 feet away from her. She complains a lot that he left home when we got married, but I mean what did she expect? The man she abused and emasculated for 30 years was supposed to stick around for the rest of his life and keep surrendering to her manipulation? Ugh.

She thinks she can treat me the way she treats others in her life but she cannot. I have stood up to her multiple times but she KEEPS trying me. By trying me, I mean making little comments about my cooking (which is effing excellent, btw) and making baseless assumptions about aspects of my life she knows nothing about. She has even tried to call my house to talk crap to me about MY husband, which I shut down immediately. I think she’s conflicted between liking me because I’m so spunky erstwhile being frustrated because I won’t let her bully me. Whenever she calls, I give her the perfunctory 30 second greeting and immediately hand the phone to my husband. If he’s not home when she calls, I don’t answer. I’m not interested in getting to know her better and any future children I have will not be allowed anywhere near her. She’s toxic.

• Footballwife
• 6 years ago

• Wedding: November 2014

@BrandNewBride:  Hahaha my Future Mother-In-Law is like that shes thinks everything is a secret mission to destroy the human race for political gain. We had a really bad ice storm a few months back and there was a massive pile up of like 20-30 cars on the road and she told me, not joking, she was completely serious….”I know the deomcrats caused the ice and the pile up, they did this because they want to raise taxes again”

• Tibbs
• 6 years ago

• Wedding: September 2013

My Mother-In-Law calls my dh “my little boy”, always with the emphasis on my. It makes me sick, because it sums up her whole attitude: he is hers. She also thinks I’ll hand over my child to her when he’s born. Umm… no.

• LindyLu
• 6 years ago

@ConRtist:  everything. Haha, just kidding. But she is very bossy. We both have strong personalities so it can be a struggle. 

The thing that bothers me the most is she specifically sends Fiance greeting cards (with only his name on the envelope and card) for everything (birthday, Valentines day, Easter) and never sends me anything. Clearly I see where I stand here!

• NightOwl27
• 6 years ago

• Wedding: September 2016

She’s not my Mother-In-Law, but I met my SO’s mother for the first time last weekend and at the end of the dinner she said “I’m so glad I got to meet you.  You look much cuter in person than in your facebook pictures my son showed me”  I couldn’t hide that I was a little offended by the look of surprise on my face.  After dinner I said to SO, well I guess we need to go home and take down all my FB pictures now! He felt bad..

• StoriaCrissosa
• 6 years ago

SparkleBee11:  I completely agree that she shouldn’t be so high and mighty about the organic thing all the time (organic is better…. but she doesn’t have to be annoying about it haha). I just wanted to let you know a few things about MSG…. it’s not actually dangerous to use. It’s as dangerous as using sugar. The only reason the rumor that it is bad for you is going around is because some people are allergic…. as some people are allergic to salt, or strawberries, etc. Just so you know that you Mother-In-Law isn’t poisoning herself 😛

• seegirlmarry
• 6 years ago

• Wedding: April 2014

Well she normally doesn’t say too much that upsets me. But there was one thing that foreshadowed a fight in the future:

Mother-In-Law: “I don’t understand why people pierce their children’s ears at the age of 2. I think it’s uncouthed and crazy.”

My ears were pierced at the age of 2 and so were my sister’s. My mother on the other hand never had pierced ears. Instead of having a fight later down the line about the idea, she instead got our ears pierced early. I saw what she meant later when Maid/Matron of Honor went through a big argument with her mom about getting her ears pierced when we were teenagers. I understood my mother’s logic. Long story short, my girls are getting their ears pierced when they are 2. No matter what my mother in law thinks.