He/she is too good for you

Apparently some British mother sent an ugly and hilarious email to her future daughter in law.

The article and the text of the email is here.

The dynamic between the guy dating Mommy and Daddy's little princess or the girl that managed to snare the guy who is too good for her and his or her parents is rife with potential complications. Share your stories.

FOCUS: Run-ins with the future in laws or significant others parents.

 

I just spent the weekend with the SO's parents. They're nice enough and we get along OK. I find that there are, broadly, two kinds of in-laws: dogs and cats. Dogs make a big deal about you being there - they're either very welcoming or territorial, but either way as the outsider you're right in the center of attention. Cats just go about their business as if it were no big deal at all. My SO's parents are definitely cats, which is weird. I feel like as a visitor I should be doing something or whatever, but it's just like "oh, hey, how's it going?" Not that I mind.

 

Sounds to me like everything the mother-in-law said was spot on. If that's really how the bride acted, that email certainly should have been sent. I especially liked this bit:

Damn straight.

Can we have an Alt-Focus about weddings in general, especially lavish ones? Perhaps I'm unique in this, but whether you're a bride or a groom, your wedding is not and should not be "all about you." It's a celebration of all the support and hard work your respective families gave you to make you into the person you are, and the focus should be on having a good time with and celebrating with your family.

 

Try once or twice a year for both sets of parents. Mine live in Florida and hers live in Taiwan, the unfortunate part of this is seeing them is never cheap.

 

You're not a bad person for agreeing with her, but if you agree with the venue in which she addressed her future step-daughter-in-law, then I think you're way off base. Who the fuck puts that kind of shit in an email? The wife-to-be also used poor judgment when she forwarded this to her friends. That's going to cause some huge strife between this family for some time...if the wedding even happens. Both of these women are idiots.

 

My mother-in-law loves me. Obviously, because she hasn't found my Twitter account yet.

But seriously my family has close to zero drama. I love my in-laws, and my parents love my husband - and it's basically one big awesome circle jerk, in the most non-literal sense.

Also - I totally agree with everything the mom is saying in that email. Who cares that she did it by email. Everyone does everything by email nowadays.

 

This is easy for you to say at this stage of the game. But as circumstances change, say if you and Futurewife pop out any Futurekids, you may be seeing a lot more of them. Not to mention dealing with their care as they get older. If you are lucky you have some brother and sisters in law to help with that.

Case in point - I rarely saw my mother-in-law, but contact with her has increased after we had the Missanthropic and she has aged to the point where she needs help changing light bulbs. Luckily she is a great woman and we get along very well. Conversely, my mother has always been a needy, bipolar, emotional vampire, and due to her advancing age and the death of my father, we see, and hear from, her much more than we would like.

 

I gotta agree that I don't see why the email venue is such a big deal. Should she have called her and yelled it at her face? Or "made it known" via the husband? There's really no easy way to say some things that need to be said. If I was the father of the groom, I would have taken her aside right before she left my house and laid it all out. But who knows the circumstances there.

I repped the 'sack about this, but I'll put it here too: my father's mother lives with the family, due to that whole Indian culture "take care of your parents in their old age" thing. So my mother has to put up with her nagging every single day. Also fun fact: She collects Social Security despite never working a day in her life, and she's listed as a dependent for tax deduction purposes. Ain't that a bitch.

 

It is different for different families. For example, we live in the same town as my parents, as well as my wife's parents. We see them both, at minimum, once a week, and chances are good that we'll see them much, much more when the kids come along.

My parents absolutely adore my wife. My wife's parents are a pain in the ass (specifically, my mother-in-law). They don't hate me, but they're an epic pain.

For example, we moved back to this town just over a year ago. We looked at several houses, and settled on one that happens to be only a couple blocks from my parents. We chose this house because it was the 2nd biggest house we looked at, with lots of room for improvement (i.e. the basement is unfinished, which we can finish and radically increase the value of the home), and it was at the lower end of our price range, making it a great deal. Besides that, it is in a really nice neighborhood, making it perfect for what we wanted. My mother-in-law is convinced we chose this house because we hate her and like my parents. She has also started looking for houses on our street. She has looked at the house next door, and another few houses just down the street, because she absolutely MUST live closer to us than my parents. Mind you, she only lives 10 minutes away by car, but it still bothers her that we live closer to my parents than to her. She is now trying to talk my father-in-law into fixing their house enough to sell it, then moving closer. Luckily, my father-in-law sees this as completely silly.

I should also mention that when we talked about moving back to West Lafayette, the mother-in-law said she'd move down there with us, and that she'd love to move down there. She just assumes that, where ever we go, she will be following. Her life revolves around us, and it bugs her to no end that our lives do not revolve around her.

Another incident is that the mother-in-law loves to give us a never-ending stream of shit about not having kids yet. My wife and I have just started trying. Before that, we were trying to get somewhat established financially by paying down her student loans and fixing up our home. Still, every time we see my mother-in-law, she makes back handed comments about how my wife is going to "dry up" soon, and how she will never see her 'grand-babies' because we'd rather go on vacations to the beach or go out to dinners regularly, or just enjoy being in our twenties with some disposable income. My wife is 26 fucking years old, and she has been told that she is 'drying up soon' by her mom. Seriously?

I could keep going, like about the time my mother-in-law made my wife cry on her wedding day, or the time my mother-in-law made my wife cry at her wedding shower, or about the absolute batshit insanity that is my wife's extended family (two people have records, one is in prison, one aunt married a guy that went on to kill someone, and someone on that side has also been brought up on molestation charges). My mother-in-law is the "normal" one in her family. Given that, I can see why my mother-in-law is so insane, but still, that doesn't make it less annoying.

 

Maybe I'm cut from a different cloth, but there are just certain conversations you have with someone face to face, or at a minimum, over the phone. You say there is no easy way to say things that need to be said? Yes there is, and that's exactly why she did it over email. If she was a good parent, she would have called her up and said "I've got some beef with you, but you are obviously important to my (step)son, so let's talk this shit through like adults". If that's the approach she had taken, none of this shit would have spiraled out of control.

 

My in-laws are good people, and they only live a mile away, so we see them rather often, especially since my father-in-law has gotten his new kidney we have been helping out a lot, and my sister-in-law was out so we took care of her, her husband and the kids.

However ever since the transplant, my mother-in-law has gotten to be a pain in the ass. I don't know what it is, but she has always liked having things done according to her special way (she is a very organized hoarder. When they die, that house will be a bitch to clean). But since the transplant, everything has to be her way. We gave our apartment to my sister-in-law, and the MIL told us "Well, you have to clean it for them" to which my wife replied to her face "No fucking shit" then my MIL asked: "do you even have a vacuum?", which caused my wife to lose it, as we are neat freaks.

I guess my brother-in-law who lives in America's house is pretty gross.

Surprisingly though, the mothers-in-law get along great and go on trips together, but my wife does whatever she can to avoid having to deal with my mother. My mother is as Frylock put it, a dog.

She has to be in everyone's business while you are there. You can't get a second to your self.

Are you looking in the fridge? Well she will stand behind you and narrate the contents you are looking at. She basically overhosts, and tries to plan out every second of your time when visiting, and you can't get out of it.

Then, she will corner people with concerns. I had apparently forgotten to return a book to my college library when I graduated. I had checked out about 60+ books, and must have misplaced that one. My school never contacted me about it until it was sent to a collection agency. Apparently they sent the letter to my mother's house as that was the old address, and she opened it.

She then cornered my wife about how "I was in debt, and that our credit score was ruined now, and we would never be able to buy a house". All over a 45 dollar collection fee.

 

Who the hell has a problem with someone sleeping in?

Seriously, though the mother-in-law makes a few points, say it to someone's face.

 

My ex in laws were not fans of me, I used too many big words and questioned their racism, religion and morals(lack thereof). It was mutual, I still think they're shitty people.

The best was when my oldest son was born and she was worried about my heathen status. Instead of talking to me about it, she talked to several other family members and employed them to try to get me to baptize him. When I asked all of them to back up their concerns of purgatory, they all confessed that it was ex mother in law's worry.

I called and left her a message on her voicemail asking her to speak to me personally about it. I asked her to show me in the bible where it says god is going to throw my baby in Purgatory for not being baptized. I was willing to have him baptized if it meant so much to her. I just wanted her to talk to me about it.

She NEVER asked me, or hardly spoke to me after that. Maybe I was being rude, but it still feels right.


Mr. P's parents love me. His mom calls randomly to tell me so, and to make sure I don't need anything. This is such a departure from my own mother that it throws me for a loop.
His dad is a bit neurotic, but he's cool with me. They are far better than the ex's and that is all that matters.

 

I'm guessing from the cunt-ish tone of her email that there is a history beyond just that email.

Or maybe she's one of those crazy fucking mothers that hates any and all women her son has dealings with.

Either way - I don't see why the email as a huge deal. I'd bet they're both raging cunts and that the soon-to-be husband is fucked on both fronts. Might as well just hand one of his nuts to his mommy and the other one to his future wifey.

 

My GF's brother is a couple years younger with similar issues, except he doesn't have anything close to a background in the military, just two failed attempts at college. Not because he was dumb, but because he didn't show up, and not just to class, he didn't show up to the exams. The kicker though is that he's not a heavy drinker or drug user, he usually designates himself DD at parties and probably only smokes pot a couple times a year. He's just fucking lazy, has a chip on his shoulder and thinks the world owes him something.

My plan at the current time is that when the bank of mom and dad runs dry, we'll loan him $500, if he doesn't pay it back in the agreed upon time (which is what I assume will happen) he'll never get a loan from us again. I figure it's enough money to knock out rent for the month, but not so much that it'll be a big loss.

 

I agree that there's probably a history. Shit, maybe the step-mother is smarter than we all think, and she put it in writing because she knew exactly what was going to happen. I guess I just learned a lesson early on that if you don't want something you said to come back and haunt you, definitely never put it in writing.

Focus: Oddly enough, I'm 33 years old, and I've never been in a serious relationship with a girl whose parents were still married. I've had 4 "serious" relationships (including my wife), and all 4 of them came from fucked up families. Well, I guess that's just relative since I come from a very traditional midwestern family (parents still married, dinner together every night until I left for college, yada yada).

My wife is completely estranged from her mother, and has only recently (past 5 years) gotten close with her father (who is remarried to a woman with 3 kids of her own). Oddly, this dynamic has actually benefitted our relationship. We never argue about whose family we are spending the holidays with and she loves to see my parents b/c it's the first time she feels like she's been in a stable family situation. I get along really well with her dad, although I don't necessarily agree with how he raised (or didn't raise) my wife and her sister. He is pretty self-aware about that, and is trying to right his wrongs, so we don't discuss it. Her mom is a huge piece of shit, and we're lucky that we don't have any sort of contact with her.

 

I agree with pretty much all that the MIL in the e-mail said. If you are going to be staying at someone else's house for any period of time, you adhere to the way they do things, even if it irks you, because it's THEIR house, not yours. It sounds like, from that e-mail, that the bride forgot she was actually a guest in MIL's house... This sort of self-entitlement sickens me.

I think the MIL should've sent this as a letter though, and not as an e-mail. If I was the MIL, I wouldn't bother going to that wedding anyway, but maybe I'm just a dick.

 

I guarantee you that she just simply does not like her daughter in law and decided she needs to let her know. Bitch if you're so appaled at her behaviour why didn't you confront her on it on the spot? Instead she chose to wait for her to leave so she can write her a cunty email where not only does she have the nerve to comment on her bad manners but also you comment on her parents financial situation.

So she didn't want to eat your shitty food big deal. By the overall tone of this email I'm willing to guess the girl was a vegeterian or something and refused to eat meat. No way to know for sure, but all of her complaints seem to be embellished to me.

She made a joke that the old bag thought was innapropriate? I bet everyone in the bar was not as shocked as she made them out to be.

Even if all of this happened EXACTLY the way the mom claims. Is sprouting off a snobby email chastising the other person really the way to go. That shows an almost exact lack of manners to me. If that womans son has any balls he would have called his mother and put that bitch in check instantly. Even if you have a large problem with this girl call her up or talk to her face to face. This woman didn't have the courage to do either because she hoped she would just get to have the last word and feel superiour.