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My mother-in-law has opinions and shares them at dinner

Started 29 August 2024 · 24 replies · 282 hearts · read 3.2k times

RufusGuildford, UK · 29 August 2024
1.9 years ago

Starting a thread on this because it keeps coming up in ones and twos: My mother-in-law has opinions and shares them at dinner

Anyone else navigating this? I feel as though every piece of advice I read was written for someone with a completely different week.

I have worked out a system that mostly holds and there is one part of it that keeps failing, and I would like to hear how other people solved that part.

I would like to know what other people say when asked, because my current answer is too long and invites more questions.

If anybody has an arrangement that works and is willing to write it out, I would be very grateful.

94

MapleToronto, CA
#1

Something I did not expect was how much of our relationship had been organised around food, and how much we had to rebuild.

10me too 8

WrenFacilitatorLeeds, UK
#2

Facilitator note: this is a logistics thread rather than a clinical one, which is a relief, and I would still rather nobody offered instructions.

24

NikitaYerevan, AM
#3

Picking up Wren’s point rather than starting a new one.

My family's reaction was the hardest part and I have had to accept that some of them are not going to come round.

6

TeganNewport, UK
#4

What I would say is that telling people is a separate decision from doing it, and you can take as long as you want over the first.

13

RuaridhFort William, UK
#5

We used to eat together in a particular way and that changed, and neither of us said anything about it for months.

9

BessLouth, UK
#6

Reading Nikita, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

What helped was one honest conversation where I said what I actually needed rather than expecting him to notice.

11

OzrenZagreb, HR
#7

Recognition rather than advice, if that is any use at all.

11

NolwennRennes, FR
#8

I asked him to stop commenting, once, clearly, and he did, and I had spent four months building up to a two-minute conversation.

15

ObiLagos, NG
#9

What surprised me was that the person I expected to be difficult was supportive and the person I expected to be supportive was not.

12

CormacWaterford, IE
#10

Ozren, thank you for that. It gives me somewhere to start from.

My mother cooks as an act of love and my appetite changing felt to her like a rejection, and naming that out loud helped both of us.

11

OssieWolverhampton, UK
#11

He does the injection, which was his idea, and it turned out to be a way for him to be part of something he had felt excluded from.

10

RufusGuildford, UK
#12

What Ossie described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

My partner was frightened for me, which came out as disapproval, and it took a long time to hear it as the first thing.

10

MapleToronto, CA
#13

This is the honest version, and the honest version is harder to write.

14

OmarAmman, JO
#14

My sister started too, six months after me, and it has been unexpectedly lovely to have somebody in the house who understands.

7me too 6

NikitaYerevan, AM
#15

Omar said something I want to sit with for a second.

The comments at family meals were relentless for about a year and then stopped, mostly because I stopped responding to them.

12

TeganNewport, UK
#16

Something practical: I told my partner exactly what would help during a difficult week, in advance, in writing, and it worked.

8

RuaridhFort William, UK
#17

I hid the box for six weeks in a two-bedroom flat, which is ridiculous, and it was about shame rather than about him.

13me too 1

BessLouth, UK
#18

The thing that changed our house was me being honest about the tiredness rather than pretending I was fine and then being short-tempered.

11

OzrenZagreb, HR
#19

I would gently say that a partner's worry is usually love with nowhere to go, and asking them what they are actually worried about often unlocks it.

12

NolwennRennes, FR
#20

Holding this with you rather than answering it.

9

ObiLagos, NG
#21

Gently disagreeing with Nolwenn, or rather adding the other half of it.

Coming back to say we are fine, that it took about eighteen months, and that the conversation I dreaded most was the one that fixed it.

8

CormacWaterford, IE
#22

My body changed how it works and the household did not get a memo. Working that out took about a year of small friction.

12me too 2

WrenFacilitatorLeeds, UK
#23

Gently: three replies have suggested the same thing and the fourth has said it does not work for them. Both are useful and neither cancels the other.

21

RufusGuildford, UK
#24

What Cormac described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

We renegotiated who cooks and it has been better for both of us, entirely separately from any of this.

13