Impossible In-laws of life

I have four father-in-laws and two mother-in-laws. I get along with my wife's (blood) father great. He's a stoic, slightly gruff guy who likes to drink beer and watch sports. Her mother is a gold-digging libertine who uses husbands until she can't anymore then discards them. I get along with her, she's generous and funny and she lives with us every month of May since she's from the U.K. but I still see her for what she is.

 

My mother in law is a very nice person, my wife is a realtor, I work as a loan officer and the mother in law runs a title company so there are times when I work very closely with her, she is still a little bit afraid of me so my shit gets done post haste. Outside of work I get along great with her, and have been on vacations with her and her husband who is quasi father in law due to a few divorces, but the one problem I have with her is when riding in a car with her she is a fucking outloud sign reader, every fucking store, billboard and whatever else has words on it she reads outloud. I have a 10 hour car ride coming up with her from Virginia to Maine and I am seriously considering renting my own car because I will lose my shit if I have to listen to her read signs for that long.

 

A very timely thread...There recently was a debacle with my wife and SIL because my wife dyed her hair purple. This wouldn't be a big deal except that I was the best man in SIL's wedding to my brother and my wife and I were to sit with the bride and groom at the head table. My wife's seat was changed because the couple believed the hair color would be distracting in pictures and the video. The shit storm which followed was terrible because I was caught in the middle of a pissed off wife and obtuse couple. Unfortunately at the reception we found out that my whole side of the family knew about the argument between my brother and I and had been talking about it. Cue my wife being pissed and us taking an uber back to our home, not the hotel.
So just like that it went from my wife enjoying parts of my family to wanting nothing to do with any of them.
My dad understood both sides but stayed out of it (which was wise) but now he is carrying on like nothing ever happened, which is aggravating. It looks like for the future my wife will come along to parties but she will not be wanting to get there early or stay late. So much fun...

 

The Mrsanthropic tolerates my crazy mother and "difficult" sister, and that's all I could ask of her. She gets along very well with my extended family.

I get along famously with my in-laws. I was friendly with the Mrsanthropic's one brother before I knew her, and we get along very well. I also get along well with her older brother, and her mother. Her mother is very fond of me, and she damn well should be. Dragging your mother-in-law up a flight of stairs can bring people together.

My father-in-law died more than 20 years ago, so I never knew him.

Fun fact: nearly every woman I've had any kind of relationship with has not had her father around due to death or divorce, including my ex-fiance and my wife.

 

I hit the in-law jackpot. Unlike my family they like to drink and are not super uptight Southern Baptists. They have a huge bay house down at the coast where we spend, at the least, every other weekend. I even like my brother and sister in laws and most of their kids. As lucky as I feel to have married into such a relaxed, fun family, I have to say... it's not by chance. Bad in laws are a deal breaker for me - mostly because of previous experience. My ex-fiancée’s mom was a total lunatic. I could regale you with countless stories of her insanity and creepily close relationship with her son but I think the fact that she had his foreskin saved on a silver ring sums it up nicely. Bullet dodged.

 

Oh, in-laws. Things are great with most of them. My brothers and sister-in-law are fun and genuinely good people. But, my relationship with my MIL isn't the best. Very soon after meeting me she began ranting and raving about the other DIL (my BIL's wife) to me. Every single time I saw my MIL she would go on and on about SIL's many faults as a wife, mother, DIL and human being. She said nasty, rude things about her, and acted like her best friend when we were all together. It made me feel really uncomfortable. Like I was expected to join in on the bashing. Or believe that she's NOT saying similar things about me when I'm not around. My husband stepped in and talked about it with her when they were alone. Luckily, it's helped her tone it down around us.

I don't really enjoy being around her because she has a habit of making passive-aggressive comments about my parents and brother or just doing rude things. On several occasions I've been in the middle of a conversation with her, and she physically turned her back to me so that I was speaking to the back of her head. Because she didn't like what I was talking about. That's awkward. But, that doesn't bother me so much. I can laugh about it or shrug it off, but it's much harder for me to do when she's bringing up my family in a snarky, snide way. I feel protective of them and feel my blood pressure start to rise when it happens. I can talk shit about them, but nobody else can. Especially if I make a point of not talking about them much around her or I change the subject every time they come up.

The crummy thing about being a newcomer to someone else's family is that I don't think I can really stand up for myself to her. It's not like it's MY mom where I can tell her to fuck off and the next day we're perfectly fine. I'm pretty sure it would create more tension and drama, so I just try to let things go in one ear and out the other. And minimize my time around her. Fortunately, my husband understands why I feel this way.

 

My wife and another SIL feel the same way, especially because my family is quite large and they both come from very small families. Obviously no side is 100% innocent in any situation, but if the whole point of a family is to come together and support each other, how come DIL/SIL feel left out in so many families?

Since about day one my in-laws have been supportive of me, they even paid my first quarter tuition when I went to get my MSN. They are crazy in their own way but both have been inclusive and generous to me. Back when we first started dating my MIL said to Wife "Would you love him even if he was the garbageman? Because that's all that matters". Of course she also calls me the son she never had, so I think she is biased

 

I adore my mother-in-law, and she loves me. She has her funny quirks for sure. She's hyper alert about food safety, so everything that comes out of her kitchen is dry as a bone. So dry that my poor husband thought he didn't like chicken until I cooked it for him. She's from a small town where people Never Leave, so a 20 minute road trip requires snacks and a place to stay when you get there. This also makes her pretty freaked out about cities and plane travel, so getting her to come visit us is a production and a half. But she means well, and she cares about us, and she's slowly letting us convince her to try new things which is a total kick, and that's really all you can ask for.

My father-in-law, other other hand, is probably clinically insane. He proves my theory that the political spectrum is in fact a circle rather than a line, because his philosphy exists where communism and facism meet. He believes literally every conspiracy theory you can find, including the ones that contradict each other. He hates me and the elite university my husband attended because we represent everything evil and brought my husband over to the dark side, to the extent that he wants my (very successful) husband to move back home and work at Walmart (without me, of course). Everything that has ever gone wrong in his life (including multiple disastrous real estate transactions which left his family near desitute when my husband was in middle school) was someone else's fault. If you like dogs, you're worthless as a human being. He sends emails and letters to my husband every few weeks outlining exactly what a shitty person my husband is and how he has brought shame on his family by living the life he does.

We, uh, don't talk to him anymore. But the festive part is, they're still married.

 

Oh shit, where to start.

My mother in law is crazy. Kinda simple. However, she is the type of crazy that is difficult to deal with because it is "victim" crazy. She is always the victim of some plot by anyone and everyone to keep her down, and damn it she is too strong to be kept down! A short list of the notable fights with my mother in law:

--Called my wife "stupid" when we asked her not to put a blanket over our newborn, (note: he was wearing a flannel sleeper and it was 75 degrees in the house, this baby was sweating). She said it was tantamount to us saying she was a cruel, unloving grandma who was trying to kill her grand babies. My wife pointed out that doctors recommend newborns not sleep with blankets anymore. My mother in law said all doctors are stupid, too.
--She gave my daughter her first hair cut. Without asking us. We just went to pick her up from babysitting and BOOM! New haircut. My wife almost murdered her for this. she also gave our daughter her first solid food, and changed her formula and tried to hide it from us. This is our first child and it was like she wanted to steal all those little "firsts" so she could have them and we couldn't, but that is her in a nutshell. Fuck everyone else, I want to be the first to give her solid food or a haircut.
--Got into a literal shouting match with my wife over taking my kid and putting her in preschool/daycare. She said we were saying she was a bad grandma that couldn't care for her grandkids. In reality, I've had to take 6 days off this year because she backs out of watching the kids at the last minute, but even without that, we just want our kid to play with and be around other kids, so she can socialize and learn to play with others. But in MIL's mind, it is strictly because she is a bad grandma, making her a victim.
--Any time she does watch the kids, she always mentions how sick she is, how she has so much to do, and how it is so inconvenient (going for full martyr). Now I just say "oh, ok, I'll watch them," and she says "no no, I'll do it, it's just not a great day." This has happened every time we drop the kids off for months.
--She made my wife cry at our wedding. There was a flag in the church. My father in law is pretty patriotic and wanted it kept there. For him to even mention it means it meant something to him, because otherwise he never, ever says shit and let's his crazy ass wife run shit. So my wife said "leave them, dad wants them there," and mother in law went full berserk, calling my wife a bridezilla, yelling about how we're ruining the wedding (OUR wedding, mind you), until my wife bursts into tears and leaves.
--finally, she constantly argues with my wife about shit like vaccines and medicines. My wife is a fucking pharmacist, my mother in law barely graduated high school, but she constantly talks to my wife like my wife is an idiot.

This is just a tip of the crazy iceberg. She is self centered, stubborn to a fault, thinks she is the smartest person in the room, and she is constantly the victim of every injustice imaginable. She's the type of person that finds something wrong with everything, but if you tell her to stop criticizing she launches into a 20 minute tirade about how everything she says is because she loves her kids and we are just so unappreciative of how hard her life is. Meanwhile, she has no job, all her kids are out of the house, and her husband is semi-retired (collecting pension from his decades working in a steel mill) but still working a job from home that results in a near $200,000 income, all told. She takes 4 vacations a year, and literally does nothing all day but sit in her pajamas and watch soap operas (unless it's the one day a week we ask her for babysitting) but every day seems to be the worst day of her life, and she'll let you know why it's your fault.

I'm doing everything to convince my wife to move away. Far away. its not working yet because she really likes my family (as do I, my family is pretty laid back and always helpful when we need it), and leaving her crazy mom means leaving my family behind too (including my nieces and nephews that my daughter loves), and she doesn't want to do that.

 

Boyfriend's immediate family is great (perhaps a little crazy and lacking in boundaries, but I love them), and his parents get along with my parents pretty famously, even though they don't hang out very often. We threw a big mothers day brunch for both sets of parents this year and it may need to become a tradition. No worrying about splitting time, and an excuse to get all the parents together and feed them too many mimosas.

Boyfriend is super popular in my family, immediate and extended, and even my hard-to-please grandma has started asking when we're going to get married. I keep telling her to ask him.

His extended family is a little nuts, though. Recently, his grandpa (then 82) surprise divorced his second wife (of 39 years) and married her best friend, who also happens to only be 1 year older than his oldest daughter. He is also politically and ideologically WAY more conservative than anyone else in the family, and likes to bring up all sorts of touchy subjects at family gatherings. So he creates massive amounts of drama all the time. Both of his daughters (Boyfriend's aunts) are also nuts, although one of them is just supremely type-a while the other is probably diagnosable. Boyfriend also has an insanely smart theoretical mathematician cousin, and we have to LARP once a year with her, which I usually start dreading about 6 months in advance. Regardless, I think I've really lucked out in the not-quite-in-law department, and I love them all despite their quirks. Except for Grandpa's new wife. I don't love her.

 

Went out for dinner for my mom's birthday yesterday, with my dad, sister and her husband. To give him the absolute most credit I can, he does have some problems with depression and apparently bi-polar disorder, though the latter hasn't been officially diagnosed. But I call bullshit on most of it because I've met people with REAL problems and they generally don't advertise them (bordering on pride) and they never (or rarely) use them as cover to be an asshole. The gap between my sister's all around catch-ness and his utter fucking loser-ness is astounding, and he's not even the worst she's been involved with. Of course, she never had to marry him.

Anyways, he generally tones it down around me, I'm told, but for some reason he needed to vent at his mother-in-law's 65th birthday dinner (you would think returning the day before from two weeks in Hawaii, during which I took care of their dogs, would put him in a better mood, but apparently not). A snippet of conversation included these quotes:

"I'm done being social. Literally every friend I've ever had, or client I've worked with long-term, has screwed me over. Even my parents. They moved to the coast, and they're doing their own thing. We don't need to talk."

"I can't believe how awful we have it in Canada..."

"DEY-TOOK-AR-JAWBS!"

"I'm moving to the coast, too. There's nothing for me to do here when I'm all landlocked." (He's been 'landlocked' his entire life -- he fishes occasionally, apparently, but can't scuba or do any water activity that involves a board or other humans).

Outside of special family occasions, my parents only invite him out as a courtesy to my sister, knowing full well he'll bail last minute, if he even commits to begin with. On the rare occasions he has come out over the years, he gets drunk and stoned before they leave the house. And not in the fun way, like I do, but so that he "can handle it," -- it of course being social, public life, and the horror of potentially talking to a friend-of-a-friend for upwards of minutes of his life. Oh, except the World Cup or Euro Cup. They actually invite my parents to watch with them at the German cultural centre, with a catered meal and everything. Despite not giving a fuck about soccer, my parents happily attend, easily socializing with the friends that have apparently screwed him over. They stay long into the night, dancing and chatting with people they -- gasp -- had never met until then. Sis and her hubby are long gone, though, no more than an hour after the game, lest he meets someone else who will inevitably screw him over.

He's also a fucking moron. I won't even bother with the details other than to say he was in extreme, and extremely easy-to-avoid debt before they met, and they have since "invested" in "These tree in Africa that produce seeds that will someday replace oil in the world..." and an owners-only resort community in fucking HONDURAS which, brace yourself, fell through. Not only did they not visit the place to see if a shovel had broken ground, they didn't even hire a lawyer before signing papers. Last I heard they got back *almost* $100,000 of the nearly $400,000 they put in. For him, that honestly could be considered a win.

My sister obviously deserves much of the blame, considering EVERYONE said from the beginning that he's a dud, just like EVERYONE has said about all her past relationships, too. Based on her choice in "men" over the years, you would think we had a horrible upbringing that resulted in major daddy issues, but we actually had the opposite. Anyone who's ever gotten to know her has been flabbergasted by her choices in relationships, because with everything else in her life she is absolutely on point.

While my sister has never been big on having kids, she has told my mom that she specifically doesn't want them with him. He's also told my sister she's the only good thing in his life, strongly hinting (if he didn't say it outright) that he'd kill himself if she left him (he does have the sense to share everyone's puzzlement as to why she's even with him). Not gonna lie: the thought brings relief, and a bit of joy, when I think it.

 

Holy shit. This whole thread makes me glad I don't have in-laws. (Yet?)

 

My in laws are awesome. I tend to relate to them better than my own family in a lot of ways. Though my mother in law can be high strung and she and my wife can clash occasionally. But yeah, overall they're great people and I'm super lucky.

My wife, then girlfriend, forever endeared herself to me when she met my brother and afterwards remarked "You know, he's kind of a tool."

She gets along with my side of the family too, probably better than I do, and they love her. So, overall, no horror stories like you see in movies or anything. And really, it's long been settled in my mind that if I need to pick between my wife and my family in some kind of dispute, my wife will win out so if it even came up it'll be pretty easy for me to decide.