It has begun. Xmas survival thread

Her mum is just horrible and puts her down at every opportunity. Of course I couldn’t say anything (or Christmas armageddon would have ensued) and Mrs Squad just disappeared into the utility room and burst into tears.

To be perfectly honest I think you should say something! If anyone upset my wife, even my own family, they’d get an earful. No one speaks to my wife badly and gets away with it. I promised to love and protect her 15 years ago and that includes verbal insults!!
It’s amazing how many mums can be so mean to their daughters – how does this happen?

Gotta agree with Charlie. Why didn’t you say something?

Well i’ve tried to put it off for a long as possible but tonight had to watch Love Actually.

I didn’t say anything because Mrs Squad has told me not to.
I’ve put up with this for 33 years now and to say I’m ready to blow up is an understatement.
She’s put up with it for 48 years and still manages to come back for more.
As for how mothers can treat their daughters like this I have no idea. I honestly don’t know a sweeter and kinder person on this planet than my wife and all I can say is that I hope her mum realises that on her death bed, or I’m going to tell her.
We don’t have any children but I know that if we did I could never treat them the way she does.

and all I can say is that I hope her mum realises that on her death bed, or I’m going to tell her.

Maybe if she is told now then a better relationship could start and in her remaining years she might be less nasty to her daughter. She might not realise.

True, but a gamble. Either MIL changes for the better and improves everyone’s future lives or she uses the challenge as another tool to attack and diminish her daughter.

I love this thread as one who has endured many a Christmas and other family gatherings with “hated” in-laws. To the point where I had to move out for my own sanity as my wife could not understand my stance of not accepting the In-laws incessant nasty behaviour.

Anyway long story short, I recommend fellow thread members to research Transactional Analysis. The pyschology of Ego states. Parent, Adult and Child. Some parents are incapable of treating their now adult children as an Adult. This is usually down to their own childhood and perpetuates through generations. Unconditional Love versus Conditional Love. Fascinating.

This dynamic which was present in my marriage was identified by a counsellor and has allowed my wife and I to re-build our life free of the constant undermining comments of her parents.

Merry Christmas!!

Belated entry but we managed to survive relatively unscathed.  MiL who is generally Ok but prone to ‘mild’ Daily Mail racism and the like arrived Christmas Eve and stayed 3 days.

Christmas day was at my parents who are both elderly and my mum in particular is frail / unsteady so everyone did some prep in advance at their houses (peeled veg, parboiled spuds, etc.) so all my Dad had to do was the beef and then my wife ran the show when we got there; she’s an amazing cook, patient mum, and did a brilliant job while I sous-cheffed for her (ie: carried out her barked instructions to the letter and washed up)

All went well until later when my over-excitable 4 y.o nephew clonked my daughter with his new light sabre and the MiL decided she needed to show her parenting skills, which my sister reacted badly to (MiL was by all accounts a pretty awful mum herself, and my sister took it as a slight on her own skills). Nephew has some difficult behavioural issues at times and a bollocking off a stranger in front of the family isn’t the recommended course of action. I took the opportunity to take him, the dog and the light sabre out for a walk – it was dark but not hard to follow the wild swinging sabre action and gave him chance to calm down, while the adults de-escalated def-con 1 at home. But i missed out on the cheese course.

Rest of the MiL’s stay was mainly harmless apart from being ordered out to the local newsagents* to buy her a copy of the Daily Mail. I was going to refuse but said I’d do it under protest and in disguise at which she said that while I might not agree with its politics it does have some good articles. I was about to embark on a diatribe about forgiving Mussolini then because at least the trains were on time but the look off my wife stopped me (wives are so expressive with their eyes aren’t they….. how can one look say ‘yes I know she’s a racist but she’s going home in a few hours and we’re better letting this one slide’)

* this was the bit that still makes me seethe. I didn’t hear properly but can’t think of another word it could have been. And if I was right I don’t know what my next step would have been – but I think she called the local newsagents ‘ The Wog Shop’. Which given she’d spent the day before eating Christmas lunch with my family including nephew and niece who are mixed British – Antiguan race I would find pretty offensive. I can’t imagine why anyone would use that term, but particularly an educated lady – 1/ it’s not even really a phrase; 2/ even if it is you wouldn’t use it given the company she was / had been in; 3/ unless it was deliberate to see what reaction she’d get. Which is why it was ignored. I might raise it at another time though……..

Is it a prerequisite of the average singletradeworld forum (male) member that he has to marry a woman whose mother is the (female) reincarnation of Mussolini?

to buy her a copy of the Daily Mail. I was going to refuse but said I’d do it under protest

Really sorry, they were out of stock. Here’s a Telegraph/Guardian/Beano. Not too hard, that one.

I get on well with my in laws, although in the last couple of years they have demonstrated that old, doddery, distant aptitude whereby they forgot what having kids was like and how the Nespresso machine works.

One of thier most annoying traits is leaving the oven open. They’ll open the oven, remove the contents and put on the side, unwrap it, baste it, do something else etc – all the time the door is open. Surely it’s cooling down and inevitably dinner is always late. Just shut the door!

We had a fine normal Christmas until we got home and my mum phoned to tell me that my sister’s marriage is breaking up because of his erratic abusive behaviour. Apparently my mum knew before hand but didn’t tell us so we’d act normal, which everyone did. She then thanked us for acting normal.

‘ The Wog Shop’

Should have just casually replied that there’s a lack of “wogs” for sale due to Brexit.

Had a meal out with the extended outlaw family this evening – called out one brother in law for blindly repeating a nonsense news story as it fitted his anti-Police narrative, even though repeating the headline back to him made it blatantly clear how the quote had been misrepresented, then sat in stunned silence while the other one told us the hysterically funny tale of how he keeps speeding in his 19 year old daughter’s black box equipped car and the insurers have given her a final warning before they cancel her policy. I finally cracked and called him an irresponsible prick, in his local pub, in a noticeable gap in the background chatter.