Why do so many of us have issues with our ILs?

[Anonymous]

I get it, DCUM is a great place to vent, and anonymous commiseration can be helpful. I have done my fair share of complaining about my MIL. And I have also come to the defense of many.

But in the aggregate, what is the reason why so many of us are so easily irritated/annoyed by our ILs? Logically it doesn't make sense that we all married someone with objectively annoying parents, right? What is the psychology behind it? Is it a subconscious sense of competition ("DH is MINE now")? Is it because we didn't get to choose them like we did our spouse and our friends?

[Anonymous]

Because you have to spend a lot of intimate moments with people you didn’t get to choose to spend that time with. You choose your spouse. You choose your friends. On some level, you choose what job you want and the co-workers that go with it.

But what you don’t get to choose is your in-laws. They’re basically these random people who after one ceremony become your family. They then spend time in your home during your vacation days. There are so many opportunities for things to go wrong.

[Anonymous]

Most of that. Because they are family we didn't pick and we have to be nice to them. Because our spouses don't always stand up for us or the young family needs over old traditions. My inlaws are nice people but i wouldn't hang out with them if they weren't dhs parents. Same for my SIL who i fine nice but grating and frustrating in many ways. But shes nice to my kids so we see them a couple times a year and its enough for me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because you have to spend a lot of intimate moments with people you didn’t get to choose to spend that time with. You choose your spouse. You choose your friends. On some level, you choose what job you want and the co-workers that go with it.

But what you don’t get to choose is your in-laws. They’re basically these random people who after one ceremony become your family. They then spend time in your home during your vacation days. There are so many opportunities for things to go wrong.

This. I would never in a million years choose to have a conversation or share a meal with MIL/FIL. If I met them on a cruise or something, I would avoid them. They are attention-seeking and gossipy, two qualities I cannot stand in anyone. And it’s not an ageism thing; I can think of two dozen of my parents’ friends and my husbands’ parents’ friends who I would go out to dinner with in a heartbeat.

[Anonymous]

Because you come from a family with its own habits and values and plenty of years invested in loving those people and now you all of a sudden have to adapt to a completely different way of doing things.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, I wouldn't choose to be friends with my in-laws either, if I just randomly met them.

My BIL texted my husband TODAY (four days before Tgiving) to tell us that everyone in his family is now vegetarian except him. Why are they just now telling us this? We've planned and bought everything for Tgiving already; I guess I'm headed back to the grocery story this week.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because you come from a family with its own habits and values and plenty of years invested in loving those people and now you all of a sudden have to adapt to a completely different way of doing things.

Yes and I think a lot of your own family's quirks are normalized for you plus how much you care for them over time. And then ILs just seem so strange but are supposed to be this close relationship.

[Anonymous]

I was thinking about this also. Although I get on well with my in laws (above and below generations) so people I know do not.

I was wondering if we are a little hard wired to be defensive around in laws? Especially women? Our biology takes thousands of years to evolve while society and the status of women has been changing rapidly in the last 100 years. In the past, and in some places still now, women had to leave their families of birth to move in with the extended families of their husbands. Often in non western societies there was more than one wife. Daughters in law were often treated like cheap labor, criticized endlessly, abused and held in outright contempt unless they could give birth to healthy sons (The entire Church of England was born of King Henry Xiii wanting to behead/ divorce childless wives who bored him. I have lived in non western countries where young women are often treated horribly but they can gain more respect as they age if they keep their families together.

Just thinking aloud here ..

[Anonymous]

I think more women dislike their in laws more than the other way around. Guys have the ability to let things roll off their back.

-sign a woman

[Anonymous]

I think it has to do with mismatched expectations. I think people get these ideas in their heads of what married life will be, or what it will mean when their kids marry and/or have kids. And those things rarely line up. Plus if course individual families have their idiosyncrasies and as an IL you get a front row seat most people don’t get.

For me personally, my ILs have somewhat misogynist ideas of how families work, and I want nothing to do with that. They get annoyed with me for stuff like failing to write thank you notes on my kids behalf for gifts (yes, my DH is a literate adult, but this is not expected of him), not sufficiently planning ways to entertain them when they visit, not being sufficiently supportive if my BIL (by helping him “set up” his apartment— yes this was a task my ILs randomly thought I’d take on for literally no other reason than that I’m a woman and ladies love decorating!). Obviously I hate this, and they hate that I’m so different than what they expected. I think, 10 years in, we’ve finally reached an ok place. But yes— lots of conflict over surprisingly different expectations of how are relationship should work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think more women dislike their in laws more than the other way around. Guys have the ability to let things roll off their back.

-sign a woman

People of my parents generation expect way more of women than men. My parents are excited my husband has a job and isn’t a jerk. My MIL is annoyed if I don’t notice that she has a new purse and make a point if complimenting it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, I wouldn't choose to be friends with my in-laws either, if I just randomly met them.

My BIL texted my husband TODAY (four days before Tgiving) to tell us that everyone in his family is now vegetarian except him. Why are they just now telling us this? We've planned and bought everything for Tgiving already; I guess I'm headed back to the grocery story this week.

Don’t be a ninny. Text him right back and say: “With more notice, I would have happily accommodated this, but now I’ve prepared everything and I’m not going shopping for yet more ingredients and doing yet more cooking. You’re welcome to bring whatever you like.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because you come from a family with its own habits and values and plenty of years invested in loving those people and now you all of a sudden have to adapt to a completely different way of doing things.

Yes and I think a lot of your own family's quirks are normalized for you plus how much you care for them over time. And then ILs just seem so strange but are supposed to be this close relationship.

OP here. This makes a lot of sense to me. It isn't truly that the ILs actually have more "quirks", just that we aren't as used to them as we are our original family.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, I wouldn't choose to be friends with my in-laws either, if I just randomly met them.

My BIL texted my husband TODAY (four days before Tgiving) to tell us that everyone in his family is now vegetarian except him. Why are they just now telling us this? We've planned and bought everything for Tgiving already; I guess I'm headed back to the grocery story this week.

Don’t be a ninny. Text him right back and say: “With more notice, I would have happily accommodated this, but now I’ve prepared everything and I’m not going shopping for yet more ingredients and doing yet more cooking. You’re welcome to bring whatever you like.”

You're right; I will encourage them to bring things they can eat.

[Anonymous]

Forced relationships with people we would never be interested in knowing or hanging out with. Luck of the draw.