Women and their mothers-in-law

dilbert2

Have always been curious to here about stories of women and their relationship with their partners mother as I've been hearing a lot of stories over the years. Has it been mostly good, or have you dealt with the mother-in-law from hell so to speak!? If so, what made it so difficult?

Asphyxia

Love my boyfriend's mother She's nice and I always have a brilliant night with her on family nights or random nights out on the town She always gets me up dancing! I've never had a bad experience with her and I doubt I ever will.

She's very strong minded and not afraid to stand up for herself which I admire, she has a great sense of humour as well and if you are in her company but seriously stuck up and ignorant she would take the piss out of you I could talk to her for hours as we have similar interests our last chat was about books we like to exchange them, read them and then natter about them

CathyMoran

I called our only daughter after her, she can get to me at times but she is a good strong person and a real mummy and grandmother...if our daugher turns out as well as her we will be doing well.

Lucyfur

I get on great with my boyfriends mum. She's so easy going, nothing fazes her and she doesn't interfere in any of her kids lives. She's extremely good to my son which means so much to me. She's always saying he's a lovely mannerly boy:)

I have a friend that really doesn't get on with her MIL. MIL makes life very difficult for her and has done from the start. I don't personally know the MIL but my friend has been in tears on several occasions-and with good reason too. She tries so hard to please her and it's never enough. My heart goes out to her, it's horrible.

Ickle Magoo

I love my mother-in-law. She doesn't have any daughters and I guess I've become here surrogate daughter and she my surrogate mother since my own is in another country.

My sister now, she has the mother-in-law from hell! :eek:

SadieSue

My mother in law is 83 and living in a home with her husband (who is 85). Unfortunately they both have Alzheimer's.

tomissex

I get on fantastically with my OH's mammy. She's really lovely and always has been. Himself has two younger siblings, a brother and sister, but his sister is only 8 so I think I make for nice female company

borderlinemeath

Was it this that got you thinking?

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Mother-In-Law-Email-Carolyn-Bournes-Stern-Etiquette-Message-To-Heidi-Withers-Goes-Viral/Article/201106416021513?lpos=UK_News_Second_UK_News_Article_Teaser_Region_2&lid=ARTICLE_16021513_Mother-In-Law_Email%3A_Carolyn_Bournes_Stern_Etiquette_Message_To_Heidi_Withers_Goes_Viral

I get on great with my OHs mother, she's a lovely woman, not a chance she would behave like the above!

LenaClaire

My mother in law is great She is very friendly and lovely.

Jack B. Badd

I have a reasonable relationship with my OH's mother. I'm not a particularly touchy-feely person & found her overly familiar to begin with but once I put my foot down regarding certain topics (marriage, kids, excessive physical contact, etc) things picked up.

LegacyUser

Honestly, I'm a bit nervous of my boyfriend's mother. When we were first going out he always made excuses not to have me back to his house, we always hung out at mine, and I didn't meet her for about six months... It turned out that she's an alcoholic, and has been for years, and my boyfriend was worried about us meeting in case she was drunk. Most of his school friends have never met her, because he made excuses not to have them round while she was at home.

We've been together a few years now, and neither of us live at home anymore. I have spent more time with his family now, and have seen his mother drink so much that she cannot walk and needs to be tucked into bed on the sofa. I've seen her get drunk at dinner and verbally attack my boyfriend for being a 'bad son'. I've seen her drink so much that she wet herself. I don't know how to react, except to squeeze my boyfriend's hand under the table so that he knows I don't mind and that I still love him. I'm sure it affects how I talk to her when she's sober, and I wonder if she knows that I'm nervous of her. In ways I would love to know her better, because she is a very interesting lady, but towards evening she starts drinking straight vodka and then she can get vicious with her words, and I daren't say anything.

mollybird

nervousofher wrote: »

Honestly, I'm a bit nervous of my boyfriend's mother. When we were first going out he always made excuses not to have me back to his house, we always hung out at mine, and I didn't meet her for about six months... It turned out that she's an alcoholic, and has been for years, and my boyfriend was worried about us meeting in case she was drunk. Most of his school friends have never met her, because he made excuses not to have them round while she was at home.

We've been together a few years now, and neither of us live at home anymore. I have spent more time with his family now, and have seen his mother drink so much that she cannot walk and needs to be tucked into bed on the sofa. I've seen her get drunk at dinner and verbally attack my boyfriend for being a 'bad son'. I've seen her drink so much that she wet herself. I don't know how to react, except to squeeze my boyfriend's hand under the table so that he knows I don't mind and that I still love him. I'm sure it affects how I talk to her when she's sober, and I wonder if she knows that I'm nervous of her. In ways I would love to know her better, because she is a very interesting lady, but towards evening she starts drinking straight vodka and then she can get vicious with her words, and I daren't say anything.

he's very lucky to have you.

mollybird

i get on with my OH mam. she is a great woman. not so much a touchy feely like my mam but all the same i do like her. since ive met her she has always been doing language courses and goes travelling around europe quite a bit. i know she likes me as she had been asking my OH a year ago bout when he would be going jewelary shopping and she asked not too long ago did i want her to talk to him again, which i thought was sweet but said id handle that.

wouldn't like to have a "mother in law" that i didn't get on with.

ElleEm

I get on really well with my partner's mother. She is lovely and kind. She is very different to me, in that she's a bit of a stress head, always late, always anxious about stuff and a bit highly strung. She's also a bit into the "keeping up with the Jones'" mentality.
It took a while for me to get used to this, as being in her company is so different to being in the company of my mother, who is laid back and always up for a laugh.
She gets me now, and although underneath it all, she would like me and her son to conform to certain "traditions" (religious ones, mainly), I think she finally realises that we are individuals and won't be bullied into anything. She respects that and I know it was hard for her to come to terms with.

squeakyduck

I get on really well with my boyfriends mother. We've gone out a few times and we have a blast trying on different outfits and getting each others opinion. She's a great lady.

I always feel included in the family, and that even reaches to her mother (bf nanny) too.

Neyite

I get on great with my partners mother. Her only complaint is that I should be a daughter in law and not a sons girlfriend. (awwww)

My partner and my mother... well, he likes her, but in small doses. She can get worked up over little things, and exasperates me, and I'm her flesh and blood, he finds her a bit of a head wreck.

terlywerly

I get on brilliantly with my mother in law, always have really. My husbands family pretty much took me in very early, they were always calling me 'our terlywerly' when they were talking about me to other people. Myself and my husband were together a long time before we got married so I was pretty much a permanent fixture in the whole families lives while I was a teenager and on into adulthood. I consider my husbands grandparents my own at this stage, and his cousins are like my cousins (I actually get on better with them than my own!). My MIL is definitely a woman set in her ways, and she can come across at times as being very stubborn or against other peoples ideas but she's a woman who knows what she wants from life, and I only hope that when I have children that I can raise them as well as she raised my husband

Catari Jaguar

My mother -in-law to be is awesome, I was welcomed and treated as one of the family from the start. Actually get on great with both of the parents, they were young when my fiancé was born and we hang out having a laugh, go to concerts and drinking and stuff. Better relationship than with my own folks - that's all aggro.

Contessa Raven

I get on really well with my partners mum. She treats me like one of the family. I appreciate the nice relationship I have with her as I barely have a relationship with my own mother. So it's nice to have a maternal figure in my life.

Das Kitty

I love my Mother In Law too. A diamond of a woman.

My own mother can be a bit difficult if you're not used to her, so I suppose my husband had a bit of tension to get through.

A friend of mine had an awful mother in law, I say "had" because she divorced her husband because he was forcing her to try to be friends with a woman who clearly hated her and told her so regularly.

Malari

Going against the grain a little, I don't really get on with my boyfriend's mother. She refused to meet me for months and I still (after 5 years) rarely get invited to the house. Actually I think it's because we are still just going out after 5 years! She has plans for her son that we are not conforming to - that's WE, not ME - and she gets in digs often.

It's all very superficially civil, but I know at this stage not to hold any opinions that are different than hers. Pity, but she's a difficult woman and I have no interest in getting to know her better.

My boyfriend gets on great with my parents, we meet them regularly and they treat us like adults.

temply

I pity the woman whoever ends up marrying my brother

Tought timez

dee.

I haven't met my boyfriends mother yet but I have a feeling she (and his sister in law) dislike me already. He chased after me for four years before we actually got together so I can understand why they think I'm a biotch. Dreading the day I meet her because of that!

The Big Red Button

My OH is the only son in his family, and the youngest child by quite a lot. His mammy is the real typical Irish mammy, she loves to absolutely spoil him and mother him to bits ... right down to pouring the milk onto his cereal for him every morning, and packing his lunch every single day (seriously!)

You'd kind of expect that, because of that, she'd be dead set against any girlfriend he'd ever have. But both herself and his father were so lovely to me since the first time I met them - I consider them a second set of parents at this stage! They're both absolute sweethearts.

Then again, mammies tend to love me anyways. My exes used to complain that their mammies liked me more than they liked them!

The Sweeper

I don't speak to my mother in law. There's a lot of history there, but basically it makes life a lot easier that we just don't talk. Not everybody's family are the Brady Bunch, and OH's certainly aren't.

The biggest step forward we took in our marriage was accepting that, in spite of the enormous modern and cultural pressure to hold your family as the single most important thing in your life, if they don't fit in that role then it's an exhausting and emotionally draining process trying to make them fit.

Some families just aren't great. When someone has a great family, it's really difficult to accept that someone else doesn't speak to theirs. We come up against a lot of external criticism for lack of contact with my OH's mother - though I've never stood in the way of him visiting her. In fact I've encouraged him to continue his own relationship with her independent of me, and only request that he doesn't impose compulsory attendance on me.

Outsiders looking in who judge don't know even a quarter of what's gone on, and it can be really tiring sometimes to listen to them delivering opinons based on a terribly superficial understanding of the whole relationship.

tatabubbly

LOL Love love my OH's mammy, she's a fab woman that despise whats happended to her, she remains optimistic!!

Now, the only complaint i have is that she loves to pop into the house at times when business is going on, if ya know what i mean!

xoxyx

My OH's mother is just a lovely woman. She reminds me of my own mum so much and she always goes out of her way to make sure people are feeling comfortable and she's very easy to talk to and great craic.

Now, a previous OH's mother was a different story. A heavy enough drinker, she was always bursting into the room where me and my ex were sitting and getting into my face asking things like "do you want to have sex with my son" !! :eek: I was a teenager at the time and didn't know how to handle her at all. It didn't help matters when she came home early one evening and found us getting... um... amorous. She belted the two of us out of the house and arrived up to my mum's house at 2am that night steaming drunk and calling me every name under the sun. My mum was great and just got rid of her, but, needless to say, I never went to that house again unless I could be guaranteed that she wouldn't be there!!

caprilicious

xoxyx wrote: »

Now, a previous OH's mother was a different story. A heavy enough drinker, she was always bursting into the room where me and my ex were sitting and getting into my face asking things like "do you want to have sex with my son" !! :eek:

That sounds so like a mother of a guy I used to date. Only boy, NO ONE was good enough for her boy.
I remember calling to see him one evening, we were going to babysit his nephew & niece when she said to me 'I hope you don't intend on having sex with my son in this house tonight'.
I had only walked in the door, it wasn't like she had caught us mid clinch getting amorous!

If we were 15 I might understand this type of question.......we were both mid 20's!
I was so glad when things ended in that relationship it meant never having to see that woman again!

My mother in law passed away earlier this year. She was an absolute dote of a woman, I can say nothing bad about her.
She doted on our daughter and was always there when we needed her. I feel very lucky to have had the time with her that I did. Especially reading some of the horror story mother in laws on here

shinikins

I get on very well with both my boyfriends parents, they are such genuinely lovely people though, I would find it very hard to believe if anyone said they didn't like them. Even though he is the only boy in the family, his Mum doesn't have the typical Irish Mammy attitude to him, but then she's not Irish!! She often asks me if I'd like to join her for a coffee, and is always there for a chat,and when I was extremely ill over Christmas she did so much to help. She can be very direct when she wants to be, which was very disconcerting when I first met her, but I can appreciate it now! I used to joke with himself that they love me more than they do him, but secretly I think its true

dashboard_hula

I don't get along well with my OH's mother. We did for a while when we first started seeing each other, but a couple of incidents (for which both parties, herself and myself, bear responsibility) have made it clear that there simply isn't going to be a good relationship there. It's a pity, because my parents adore the ground my OH walks on, and he reciprocates.
It took a very, very long time for me to realise that not everyone in life is going to like me, and I am not going to immediately take to everyone who I have to have in my life either. It can be quite difficult, and there are things that have been said to me that I have hidden from my OH because they would make him think less of his mother, and I won't do that to him.
It's hard tbh, I wish things could be different.

liliq

I get on great with my mother in law (to be)!
She's a headcase (in the good way), an absolute stress ball, wired to the sun, moon and stars. She's very straight forward with me, which I appreciate- if she wants to say something she'll say it, and has no problem at all if I do the same. She's always extremely warm and welcoming, I felt comfortable with her from the moment I met her. She's full of chat and fun, but not in an overbearing way where I can't get a word in edgeways.
She's very protective of her son (her only child, her baby!!) but realises that he's a grown man at the same time (most of the time...!)
She's extremely generous with her time- she works full time but would go out her way on her day off mid- week if we needed her for anything, and loves to see us every couple of Sundays so she can feed us

She doesn't like the fact that we're not getting married in a church, but has said her piece about it and it's over and done with. She's reallly not happy that we may not baptise our baby though!

If we didn't get on- it definitely wouldn't be the end of the world. I'm with my partner because I love him, not because I'm looking for another extended family!
I think we're lucky in that although we both get on great with our both our families, both our families are quite clannish and very close, but we live just far enough away from them both that we can be involved as much or as little as we want!

ChloeElla

My boyfriend's mum is quite old-fashioned, but really nice. I'm always paranoid that she secretly hates me or doesn't think I'm suitable or something! She comes from a fairly posh background, & had my boyfriend & his brother at a late-ish stage so I just feel very separate from her. She also thinks that when I go to college this year that I'll cheat on him once I'm far away from home :O but she was cheated on in marriage so she has that state of mind. Leaves me feeling a bit nervous of her though.

Siuin

I absolutely love my boyfriend's mom- she's a real no-nonsense Russian lady, but great to go to for advice and also makes the most amaaaazing cakes!

janielane

dashboard_hula wrote: »

I don't get along well with my OH's mother. We did for a while when we first started seeing each other, but a couple of incidents (for which both parties, herself and myself, bear responsibility) have made it clear that there simply isn't going to be a good relationship there. It's a pity, because my parents adore the ground my OH walks on, and he reciprocates.
It took a very, very long time for me to realise that not everyone in life is going to like me, and I am not going to immediately take to everyone who I have to have in my life either. It can be quite difficult, and there are things that have been said to me that I have hidden from my OH because they would make him think less of his mother, and I won't do that to him.
It's hard tbh, I wish things could be different.

The Sweeper wrote: »

I don't speak to my mother in law. There's a lot of history there, but basically it makes life a lot easier that we just don't talk. Not everybody's family are the Brady Bunch, and OH's certainly aren't.

The biggest step forward we took in our marriage was accepting that, in spite of the enormous modern and cultural pressure to hold your family as the single most important thing in your life, if they don't fit in that role then it's an exhausting and emotionally draining process trying to make them fit.

Some families just aren't great. When someone has a great family, it's really difficult to accept that someone else doesn't speak to theirs. We come up against a lot of external criticism for lack of contact with my OH's mother - though I've never stood in the way of him visiting her. In fact I've encouraged him to continue his own relationship with her independent of me, and only request that he doesn't impose compulsory attendance on me.

Outsiders looking in who judge don't know even a quarter of what's gone on, and it can be really tiring sometimes to listen to them delivering opinons based on a terribly superficial understanding of the whole relationship.

I am so glad to see other people on here that don't get on with their MIL. tbh I think that this is strange and not right as I don't know of anyone else who doesn't. it is very upsetting and takes alot out of me. I go out of my way and i know my OH does too, to not talk about her. this is very hard when i am so close to my own mother and i want to get along with his. her attitude and interference has made sure there will never be a good relationship between us and I feel sorry for her more than I do me. My OH is all she has and she has ruined their relationship with her ignorance.

R.D. aka MR.D

My mother in law lives thousands of miles away but she always shows me a lot of love when I see her (and father in law too). They are both lovely people and very accepting and welcoming.

One of my husband's sisters on the other hand........ :rolleyes:
I'm probably going to call of my trip of a lifetime for my 30th next year just so we can attend a family function there just so she doesn't throw a hissy fit. She really upset me when I was there after we got married and I don't want to have to deal with that again.

My brother's wife has the hardest time with her MIL(my own mother). I feel very sorry for her. I hate when people judge her because my own mother puts on such a victim act when she is 'wronged' but she has been so rude to my SIL on so many occasions. I'm the only other person that my SIL can talk to because I'm the only other person other than my brother who has lived with it! I don't know how she puts up with it.

SarahMollie

My OH's mother is lovely - as is his father too. We took ages (10ish months) to do the whole meet the parents thing and she was beside herself when it actually happened. Because it had been left for so long, she thought there was some ulterior motive behind him finally bringing me around to be introduced, like that I was pregnant or something!!! Actually we were just planning on moving in together, which turned out to be a great relief!

Shes very sweet, and although we wouldnt exactly be close (I have some friends who'd be texting their BF's mams etc) we get on great and shes a very kind woman.

eviltwin

I love my mother in law. She's a good friend and I'm probably closer to her than her son is! She's been a surrogate mammy to me in lots of ways and I don't know where I'd be without her.