Really struggling with my MIL
My MIL has a very strong personality and from talking to my partner it’s the way she’s always been. The family have learnt to deal with it. She has her husband and 2 boys so there’s never been another female presence so closely involved if that’s the way to explain it!
I am engaged to the eldest son of hers and have always found her difficult but even more lately!
She gets these horrible tantrums when things aren’t going her way to the point she’ll make nasty and quite personal comments but in a brush under the carpet way. Like we are just meant to take it and nothings up for discussion.
A recent example that has sparked me to write this post but a bit of background first. My partners grandparents have a caravan at a lovely quiet place we all absolutely love. My partners parents pay half the ground rent to use the caravan when they want and his grandparents pay the other half. The rest of us pay gas and whatever the caravan needs while we are there but only bob up for odd week or weekend. Whereas them two couples get a week a month let’s say so their money is really worth while. My partners parents are self employed so can book off however much holiday they want a year and the grandparents are retired so get a lot of time when they want. There’s a group chat for us all to put dates in we’d like to go. It’s under a first come first served basis to make it fair. Even tho it doesn’t always go like that at all!
Anyway back to the example. We got engaged up there exactly a year ago on the 31st May. So me and my partner mentioned to his parents that we’d like to go up for exactly a year and spend that weekend there. My partner does on call in his job and unluckily for us it had fallen on that weekend so we needed to sort some bits out and get that covered before we could say yay let’s go book it in! Anyway a few days later my MIL booked that exact weekend in the chat for her and her friends. We thought on no! But we knew we had spoken to her before so thought oh no she’s forgotten and technically we got to it first. So we spoke to her. Oh my goodness she got personal! Started making out I’d said things I hadn’t said about people, I was thinking if this gets back to them it going to be awful! Had an awful stinking attitude with us, to the point we just turned around and said we’ll leave the caravan we’ll find something else. Anyway we spoke again yesterday a week after all this happened and she basically said to me ‘you need to start paying towards the caravan if you want more of a say’. We can’t pay for the caravan we don’t get enough holidays in our jobs to make it worth our money. Also it’s booked up most of the time so we never really get to go. I think we get about a week and a half all together every year with the weekends we go up. So paying thousands would be something we can’t do unless we got more chance to go. We are happy putting money towards what the caravan needs and helping the maintenance of it however. We were talking about buying a campervan all together and obviously using it separately. She wants it 90% the time but us to still pay half. I did make jokes (I didn’t mean anything by it at all, it was light hearted) ‘oh do we have to make a group chat to book the camper in’ everyone laughed apart from her.
I don’t know if i’m coming across as I think I own the caravan??? I absolutely don’t think i do. I’m so grateful for everytime we get to use it. It’s a treat for us because we don’t get to use it a lot at all and we absolutely love it up there. I just thought for that one weekend we’d get first choice because it is one year since we got engaged and it’s important for us. I didn’t agree with how she dealt with it at all. I felt we could have had a conversation about it rather than an argument straight away. We will never get that 1st year again and honestly it’s been the best!
Little comments like that are getting worse, starting to make bitter comments about my dog being out of control etc. Just little ‘get a reaction’ comments under her breath or with a laugh after it. They seem to be aimed at me.
I’ve spoken to my partner and he said to ignore it because she’s getting a rise out of me so that’s why she’s doing it. I don’t know how much longer I can put up with it. It’s making me not want to see her at all and feel quite isolated.
How would anyone deal with this? Should I back off and not use the caravan because it’s not mine anyway? Speak to her but from her behaviour she doesn’t do speaking. I’ve said to my partner he needs to sort this because it’s his mum but I don’t want anything to get between them because she’s an amazing mum to him. I would honestly do anything for a mum like her.
Please tell me if I sound like the issue!
She’s lovely most of the time but these little bites are ruining it for me. Me and my partner are getting married next year and i want to nip it in the bud or learn to deal with it the best way possible. It’s having quite adverse effects on me where i’m not sleeping because i’m stressing i’ve upset her, I’m not myself around her anymore, I’m dreading seeing her but feel like I have to put on a brave face. I just can’t live the rest of my life like this. Any tips please 😭
many thanks 🫠