Family Matters
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Rude IL Contest
ILs are in town and I need help not getting in the ring with them. Please share the rudest thing your IL has ever said to you/about you. Hoping it will make me feel better about mine.
For me, it's so hard to narrow it down to just one thing, but here are the highlights...
When we announced we were expecting, she made a big deal about letting me know (at the dinner table, surrounded by family oin Christmas night) that she thought I actually looked pregnant a year ago.
We were leaving DS with her for an hour to run errands and she said to him, "Well, Max, Mommy and Daddy are abandoning you now. That's OK. Who needs them anyway?"
Re: Rude IL Contest
Why are you going back to college, you don't do well.
BIL had a winner, "Don't fork with the family." I replied: "But I'm forking your sister." He went to jail, DWI that night...
My MIL used homophobic slurs in reference to women in the Army to reassure me that I didn't have to worry about my husband cheating on me while he was deployed.
When my husband told her we were moving in together before we were married, she said, "You REALLY should be married first." My husband is the product of her relationship with a married man. She and her current husband had a shotgun wedding because she got pregnant with H's half-sister. But apparently, receiving mail at the same address and splitting the electric bill out of wedlock are the height of sin.
When she heard that my sister was moving to the Dominican Republic, she told my parents, "Well, I hope she doesn't end up like that Natalee Holloway- raped and thrown in the ocean!"
Fortunately, my husband is very good about calling her out when she's being rude, ridiculous, or just plain offensive, and is completely on board with limiting contact with her.
Oh let's see...
Once MIL almost caught DH & I "in the act", but luckily, she didn't literally catch us or see anything - but she knew. This was when DH and I were a lot younger and just dating & didn't live together yet so it was at IL's house when they weren't home & MIL came home early. MIL says to DH (then BF) in front of me, "I don't know why you were having sex with her, you don't love her.."
When we moved out of our first apartment together and were looking for a new apartment in a different neighborhood, MIL thought we were moving too far and said, "You are just moving there for her, she controls you."
One year DH & I hosted a Xmas morning brunch for IL's (the brunch was their present along with a dinner g.c) and the next day MIL decided to call us and say, "I didn't realize you two were so broke & can't believe that's all you got us."
Those are just a few from MIL off the top of my head.
Now, as for FIL...
He calls me 'princess' and/or 'Mrs. Boss' frequently. He thinks it's cute, I find it degrading & annoying. He too, has made off color comments on DH and I not being equals and that I control DH.
My favorite scenario is BIL's graduation party...somewhere, somehow, FIL got the idea in his head that DH (and I, or just DH) were coming over bright & early the day of the party to clean and set the whole thing up, when in actuality, DH agreed to coming over 2 hrs beforehand to help set up tents & chairs. When DH and I showed up, I greeted FIL and he blatanly ignored me. Yep, I tried to say "Hi, how are you?" twice and both times walked away from me. I have never been treated so rude, especially for something that wasn't in my control!
I usualy lurk on here but I think I can win this one.
When my DP was in the hospital having emergency heart surgery. My Futer MIL announced in the waiting room infront of all of our friends and relatives that "Patti loves me more than she loves you. If I asked her to chose she would chose me."
I calmly replied "She should love you more, you are her mother, but is now really the time to discuss this?"
All of this was completly out of the blue! I knew she was "upset" over her daughter dating another women, but we had been together for 6 years.
In the spirit of the holidays, I will share a holiday story:
MIL (on Christmas morning at her house): "Is anyone hungry? TNRB will make waffles!" Did I offer, no. I was not hungry out of principal!
This was after I received an email from her 2 days earlier about how my engagement to her son was ruining the family.
Your MIL and my MIL should get together and go bowling.... seriously.
I think most of you know my worst thing.
My MIL screaming with joy over the phone when she found out how much my recently deceased father's life insurance policy that he left to me was.
But here is another gem.... less awful but really annoying.
EVERY YEAR, and I mean EVERY YEAR.... when we visit them for christmas... she shows me a christmas ornament that my one of my DH's ex's got her for christmas and tells me how she always thought that "They" would get married and how when they broke up it was a complete shock. Last year, I walked away while she was in mid sentence.
Part of me wants to see if she does it again this year, It's almost like a christmas tradition now.
Sara, Friend?
glove slap. I don't take crap.
Is it an ornament for the tree? Because it would be really sad if it were to coughaccidentlycough fall and break. Devastating....
I'm Jewish. H was raised Catholic but is atheist.
I first met MIL & SFIL after H & I were engaged. We went to their house for coffee... and that's what they served. Coffee. Thankfully, I brought a cake, or we'd have nothing to eat. During what was essentially dinnertime, about 7 p.m. on a weeknight.
MIL, knowing full well my ancestry and H's opinion on religion, since H had told her, looked straight at ME and asked, "Are you going to get married in the Catholic church?"
I got out, "Um... before H jumped in and told her in no uncertain terms that we were NOT."
During my bridal shower, she texted H with "I want to poke out my eye with a fork," and then afterwards had a complete hissy fit, literally crying her eyes out to him that I was a complete bridezilla because I didn't pay enough attention to her at the shower, and though I thanked her for her gift, I didn't gush over it enough.
H managed to get into a full fledged fight with her over me before the wedding, during the course of which she claimed never to have gotten my answering machine message OR apology email to her post-shower (yes, I tried, and yes the email went through) and that the Christmas card I sent them was "too little, too late." H thereafter refused to invite her & SFIL. They still haven't spoken, and it's been nearly 2 years since the fight.
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Oh, I have quite many to contribute....
DH's SIL, visiting our home for the first time...."Well, everyone else said you lived in a huge house. This isn't THAT big." (Coming from someone who lives in a two bedroom apartment with four kids.)
MIL asking how my grandparents were doing....two YEARS after they had passed away. Then got an inquisitive look and said, "Well, DH told me once that they were loaded....did you get some money out of it?"
MIL throwing a hissy fit when she realized we were not coming to her wedding (this is wedding NUMBER FIVE people!)...."Apparently nobody cares about my happiness....I will remember that when J_____ (my DH) gets married again! I won't go!"
BIL showing up for our rehearsal in a Catholic church, wearing cut off jean shorts, a wife-beater tank top, and steel toe work boots. Looked around and realized everyone was in dresses, shirts and ties, and suits, and said, "Oh we were supposed to dress up for this? Figures, I knew J____ (my DH) was marrying up. Oh well, F*&^ em."
SIL (this was overheard at my baby shower)...."Look at her up there opening gifts, they could have bought all that baby stuff themselves with their hoity-toity jobs and cars! I think she is a total b&^%, don't you?"
Wow let's see....
My parents came into town to visit my H and I (we usually go see my ILs every other Sunday) which would have been that Sunday we would have normally gone to see them, it was also the same Sunday after my SIL found out she was pregnant.) They called my H almost every 15 minutes to understand why we weren't there, apparently my family coming 10 hours to see us isn't important. They kept going on and on why we just didnt bring my parents to their house and this was a big deal she is pregnant...like she isn't going to be the next time we come.
They threw a fit when we told them we were spending Christmas with my family and tried to re arrange our schedules so we could do both...Um no we switch every other holiday sorry.
My SIL told me she knew we were ttc when she "accidently" got pregnant we should just stop trying since she is now having the first grandchild. (Um no were not going to stop trying)
My SIL (who is a bigger than me) always makes comments about how much skinner than her I am and how she can't wait to see what I look like after I have kids. Sorry I believe in healthly food and working out and didn't gain 30 pounds in my first month of marriage.
When we were planning our wedding, which my parents hosted and paid for, my ILs took my parents out to dinner, handed them a written list of their "demands" and then informed them of all the things they were doing wrong with the wedding (ie having a band not a DJ, having a sitdown dinner, not passed apps, etc). Nevermind that DH and I were planning it. Even my dad who is very low key was about to go postal.
MIL drank an entire bottle of wine in the church bathroom before the wedding.
She got all of her friends to wear black to "mourn our marriage."
When we told her we were expecting her response was "No, no, oh God no" and has since said "she is pretending this ins't happening."
Every year they give a special present to "their favorite child" at Christmas. I kid you not. DH hasn't "won" in about 8 years.
When we told the IL's we were engaged, MIL got up and left the room crying. She went to bed and would not come out. When my husband confronted her, she confessed that she was sure that he would eventually get back with his ex-wife.
When our daughters were little she came by our house one day and gave the girls some dresses that she had bought them shopping that day. When she got ready to leave she told me how much I owed her for the dresses. I had not asked her to buy them dresses. I thought they were gifts, not so much!
Our youngest daughter is severely disabled, she blamed me until the day she died, because I was induced. My daughter has Rett Syndrome, it is caused by a sporadic mutation. This was the hardest thing I had to deal with from her over the years. My husband would chew her out and she would get all sorry and in a few months, she would start up again about it.
I could go on for days about her. She passed away in 2002 and as horrible as this is to say, I don't miss her at all.
"Don't marry a man unless you would be PROUD to have a son exactly like him." ~ Unknown
My SIL told me I was crazy. Just because I had been ditzy a couple of times. So has she! Just because I talk about things, I have read before (I never said I believed it) that doesn't make me crazy! When we got engaged, she turned her head when I showed her my engagement ring! She liked BEFORE we got married and even asked DH if we where going to get married.
One time when we weren't coming to HER parents house for Christmas, she called me up and harrassed me and kept to trying to catch me in a lie about having to go to my parents house instead. I didn't tell her parents, but I should have.
I did this last time however, she started yelling at us (Iitterally), and was assuming a lot of things (she does this a lot apparently), that weren't true. I was fuming! I yelled at her when I was telling her "I DO... this, this and this etc." I was polite, but I was mad. We told her DH parents because she will NOT talk to us like that again. The girl is 30 ! She is adopted which explains why she is so different, but she wasn't raised like that. (I have know the parents for 11 years now)
I wouldn't know where to start. My favorite story is a few years ago, at Xmas at her house (after several years when I would not attend, due to her extreme rudenesses to me).
So we're all sitting in the living room, and it's time for Xmas dinner. We all start to get up, and she says no, I'll call you in one at a time and then seat you where I want you in the dining room (where she had three tables set up for 14 people, beautifully and formally set).
One by one, people file in and get seated with their food from the buffet. She calls me last. I get up, go in, fill my plate (every one else, including my MIL, my children and spouse, are already seated with full plates.) I look around, and she says brightly "I set up a table for you in the hallway". A tray table, with its own little chair, was out there. In the HALL Alone .Out of sight of the entire dinner party. I stood there for a minute completely without words, trying to think of what precisely I was going to do. Just when I was considering smashing my plate of food in her face, my younger son pipes up and says "I WANT A TINY TABLE TOO LIKE MOMMY" and I said sure son, and went to get him another tray table to sit with me out there. Older son, pissed now because he doesn't have a little tray table, starts agitating for his own table.Dh snaps out of his food stupor and gets a table for himself and older son and we ALL ate in the hallway.
We left soon after dinner. This is par for the course with her.
And the beast (I'm loathe to call her a woman) is still breathing? She hasn't ceased at your hand?
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Wow. This is almost word for word what I was going to put-minus the expecting part....
Let's see..
1. MIL got between DH and I at wedding while we were getting ready to feed eachother cake, telling us to "smash it into eachother's faces" We did not, but turned our backs to her and kept smiling for the cameras.
2. SIL blames me for "stealing" her brother.
3. ILs resent that DH and I lived an hour away after graduating college.
4. MIL saw me out without DH one night and told me "you have evolved."
5. SIL told me my stomach was fatter than hers.
6. FIL has a "child of the month"-he seriously likes whoever is more "successful" at the time. Success=who makes more $$$$$.
I could go on and on.......
MIL did not come to my wedding shower-lied to my mom about when she had off work, but never called to tell me she couldn 't go-just had my SIL call to tell me a few days before.
MIL gave DH 10-12 gifts last year (even though we do a gift exchange/random pick) and got me nothing-not only this, but she made a BIG AZZ deal about our niece (SILs daughter) going to the tree and getting each gift, "oh go get him the red present, ok....now go get the green one"....on and on and on...
My BIL and MIL were arguing this summer. I sent a text to my SIL asking if it was about me and DH because they always have an issue with us for some odd reason and I had just found out I was pregnant. After I announced we were expecting, she stop wanting to walk with me saying she was "too busy with wedding stuff." The wedding was 7 months away. So I asked if the argument had anything to do with us b/c i wanted to make sure if there were any issues we could clear it up. She responds back saying "It's none of your business, it's between BIL and MIL." I said "Ok, just making sure." She goes "Like I said before, I am not giving you any details." I was offended b/c it felt like the attitude you'd give a bum so I go "I could give 2 sh!ts about BIL's issues. It was just a question." she responds back "Wow, either you're being hormonal or your a complete psychotic crazy b!tch." She never said sorry so she can suck it because I apologized for bothering her at work.
there's more of a back story to why DH and I think the fight was about us, but I don't feel like getting into it.