There’s a widespread stereotype that when a couple gets married, they’ll butt heads with their parents-in-law. Of course, life doesn’t always play out like the script of a family comedy: your in-laws can be just as wonderful or abysmal as any other person on Planet Earth. However, the stereotype really does turn out to be completely true in some fringe cases.
Reddit user u/fuzzyloulou sparked a lively online discussion, as people spilled the tea about what they hate the most about their in-laws, and we’ve collected the juiciest stories to share with you. Check them out below, but be prepared to witness what it looks like when someone has no respect for anyone’s boundaries.
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My mother-in-law is always cooking good a*s food and making me fat. It’s all her fault!
My FIL called my wife and her 3 sisters wh*res all while standing I’m MY house. Reason you ask? They all got married outside of the Catholic faith. We haven’t spoken in 6 years. Best 6 years of my life.
They live 3,500kms away. It’s a little closer than I would like.
The secret to getting along with your parents-in-law, as well as anyone else, is setting, communicating, and enforcing healthy boundaries. If someone keeps walking all over us, butting into our lives, and making us miserable all the time, clearly they have very little respect for us.
It would be wonderful if they suddenly became fully self-aware and changed their behavior, but life rarely works this way. So it falls to you to let them know how their behavior is affecting you and to tell them what you expect from the relationship moving forward.
My husband's mother and 2 sisters really went out of their way to make me feel unwanted and unliked early in our marriage. They judged me, gave me the cold shoulder. Criticized everything I did. Jokes on them. My husband and I have been married for 30 years. So I learned a lesson: screw the naysayers. Haters gonna hate.
Oh God, do I have stories. My MIL is one of the cheapest people I have ever met and a hoarder. For my sons first birthday she gave him a roll of paper towels because..."Look! he loves it, doesn't even know whether it is a toy or not!" At age 3 for Christmas she gave him some random toiletries and cleaning supplies she bought at the dollar store, wrapped them and everything. Now I have to give my boy credit on those...after he opened them he said "This Christmas Sucks!" which caused major drama for my wife and I.
My mother-in-law is a religious zealot who legit hates more than half of her children. One is a lesbian, one is trans, my wife is non-binary, their other brother is gay. But she doesn’t know he is.
It's very interesting seeing extremely religious people hating others for their choices while most religions tells you to respect other people's choices and never to be rude to anyone.
Some of the signs that you might have toxic in-laws include them disregarding your feelings, being invasive in your marriage, and being overly self-involved. Not only that but psychotherapist Dr. Susan Forward also notes that the worst parents-in-law will also try to one-up everything that you do and will gossip about you behind your back.
A few other red flags to look out for include in-laws who are overly critical of everything and anything that you do (nothing will ever be good enough for them), hold grudges, make you feel like you’re inferior, and enjoy stirring up as much drama as they can.
I loved them so much. They expressed their love for me, for almost 40 years. I hate they got old and died.
The way they come over to my house unannounced. Just show up then get mad at me for being in the shower or not home because I’m running errands. I know I’m a SAHM but damn I still have to go run errands outside the house. The way they insist they can have our baby whenever they please without our permission.
The constant criticism. I married their only son and nothing I do is good enough. My house is never clean enough, my one year old doesn’t “behave”, and my cooking sucks. The passive aggressiveness is so overwhelming.
Aside from setting proper boundaries, it also helps if you try to emotionally detach yourself from whatever drama your in-laws whipped up this time around. Don’t judge yourself too harshly even if they keep criticizing you, and if everything else fails, spend some time apart from them.
For instance, if they keep butting into your lives, you may want to ask them not to come over so often because you and your partner are both incredibly busy. You can do this gently, politely, and diplomatically, but it still needs to be said. Your in-laws might think that they’re doing you favors out of love and they might not realize they’re being a nuisance. Or they know exactly what they’re doing and you need to be firm with them.
My MIL is overly Christian... And reminds us regularly we're going to hell because we don't go to church. My incredible wife responds with either, see you there or, that's where all our friends are going, why wouldn't we want to go!
I absolutely love my in-laws, but compared to my family they are *REALLY* loud. Like instead of taking turns talking they just talk louder over each other until someone listens. I leave with a headache, and that's including times I sneak to an empty room for peace.
At the in-laws table. Seven people means four different concurrent conversations - all the time. Yes loud.
Their concept of time. They're all always shamelessly late to everything. And they all act like it's a cardinal sin to be early. They think they're "early" if they stroll in just in the nick of time. For example, I've told them, "We have to be there at 7, and it's a 20 minute drive, so we should leave by 6:35 at the latest. So you need to be at our house at 6:30 so we can load the car".
"Why so early? I'll be at your house at 6:45".
Then they show up at 6:55 and can't understand why I'm pissed. And we get to where we're supposed to be at 7:15 and can't understand why everyone there is pissed.
At least my husband has gotten better about it. He still hates to be anywhere early but he plans and takes steps to be on time, not late.
My MIL isn’t too nice to the kids. Granted, she has 15 grandkids, you can tell which ones she likes more. And less. My kids are in the middle.
Its hard to like 15 kids of different ages. Some kids you may see often others not so often. My mom had a saying about 5 minutes is enough over 15 minutes too much. She loved her grandkids but her mind and senses couldn't keep up with them and it tires her out. The older she got the harder it got. Not all parents are cut out to be award winning grandparents no matter how much they love the kids.
I hate that my father-in-law was a pig headed son of a b***h and refused the vaccine. Left my wife with ashes.
There's nothing I hate about my in-laws but my MIL occasionally says some things that give me pause when she's in the room. For example, she wished me a happy birthday recently to which I casually replied, "Just another trip around the sun." My comment resulted in a 20 minute lecture about how the sun actually orbits the Earth based on her visual observation of it rising in the east and setting in the west every day. I often wonder how much of my partner's childhood trauma is a direct result of her mother's "unusual" beliefs.
How critical they are of my partner. He is loving, kind, smart and unique. Nothing he ever does will ever be enough for them. As a result he has major anxiety and perfection issues. He’s hard on himself and constantly apologizes over minor things. I wish he knew how awesome he is. For this reason I’ve chewed out both his dad and mom with them being clueless as to why. What issues? I’d love to be close to them if things were different; however see how dysfunctional they are and am totally okay with zero contact.
My wife’s dad is a very “I’m right, or you’re wrong” kinda person. If he’s not right, he refuses to admit it and will just leave and not speak to you for a long time. Then show back up and act like nothing happened.
I hope that your wife didn't turn into the "sorry, sorry everything is my fault even though it has nothing to do with me , I gladly take the blame for everything" person.
My mother in-law abused my wife physically and emotionally. She is the cause of her PTSD, and I suspect, her anxiety. The woman is a narcissist who uses people and then drops them if they lose value. When my father in-law was in the hospital for his third stroke, she preyed upon his family, asking them for money to pay her bills. No one knows what she did with the money, and my heavily disabled father in-law swiftly lost his home (despite the loans supposedly being for the mortgage payment). We have gone as no contact as possible.
I can relate to your wife at an extreme level. I literally start flinching whenever someone touches me , have bad reflexes.
That they were neglectful parents. I realize that they weren't in the best financial situation while my partner was growing up, but they kept his learning disability diagnosis a secret from him and he was left to his own devices most of the time. He's the youngest by a lot, and likely was not planned. He grew up without being encouraged to do well in school or to set goals in life. He also struggled a lot with affection early in our relationship because it wasn't modeled in his home growing up. My partner doesn't hold it against them though, merely sees his childhood as a way to not raise our child so I have to commend him on that. I just wish he had been given the support and love a child deserves too.
Hate is a bit strong, but I judge my step-MIL because she posts EVERYTHING on Facebook. I swear she can’t take a s**t without posting.
Oh God same with my mother... pretty sure she's bad for business in terms of turning people away from fb
How fake they are. They just care about their image and how they appear to others, very little, if anything, is genuine about them.
MIL refuses to discuss anything that bothers her. She just goes dead silent for a moment, then pivots to a different subject.
Oh man, how much time do you have? Number one thing is that they are drama vampires. They can’t live without it. Everything is about them, and if it isn’t, it will be soon. They are cartoonishly childish and it’s as ridiculous as it is sad. I feel terrible for my spouse and her siblings. Every family get-together is a sh*tshow. Number two is that they can’t make a plan without overcomplicating the ever-loving s**t out of it, which my wife has inherited.
Dang that's my wife's family all the way! Except that last part, "This is what's happening, this is the time. No excuses, don't care if you need to go to the hospital, whatever the reason it's not important. Be there or suffer endless amounts of name calling, belittling, told how much you are a brat and are ruining the family." My wife is on month two of of never speaking to them again and it's such a relief!
They are all incredibly judgemental, a lot of times very self-centered and a hodge podge of other cliches of in-laws from Hell. MIL once called me a lazy a*s because I lost my job and couldn't get another one. We had just lost our home and that job at the beginning of the pandemic due to the pandemic. I was a "lazy a*s" because I couldn't get a job during a time when the world had just shut down, people were dying from Covid and my wife and I are homeless. I'm a lazy a*s though, apparently.
Their refusing to acknowledge our kid(s) due to not being baptized in Christianity. They now do but it took years. What's even worse is my spouse won't acknowledge it even happened. Or he'll say it's in the past. Pisses me the f**k off. Still does. They were a******s for years. I refuse to go see them. I'd rather study in school.
They disowned my wife for marrying me and they hate me because I'm non-binary.
People, don't have children if their choices are not similar with yours and if you are extremely against LGBTQ+ community.
They are christian, right-wing, QAnon'ers. If it gravitates to politics, I feel like I can't keep up with all the conspiracy theories unless I keep my phone out to Google topics. If I don't know of some backwater story, they delight in trying to make me seem like I'm ignorant to the world's biggest news reveal. We are getting better at shutting down these conversations with simple phrases or just walking away.
I can't begin to imagine what that is like. Reading about these people, and what they are managing to do in some states is stressful enough.
Outlier here I think. I love my in-laws like my parents, and I have known them since elementary school (I married my childhood friend), but here goes: Please stop telling old stories about me and my wife to my kids. I didn't need them knowing I was a wimpy kid that needed to be protected by my wife from bullies.
When we go to my in-laws, we never leave the house. We sit in the den, watch TV twelve hours a day and listen to my father-in-law c**p on anything and everything he sees on the idiot box. We finally told them that the condition for our coming was to turn off Fox News. And it's not because he's 84 and a grump old man. He's been doing this for the past thirty years. Everybody, everything is stupid but him. Just this constant stream of negativity. And my mother-in-law isn't much better. She will sit there and talk about everybody else under the sun and how stupid those people are. I've started just leaving for a couple of hours for a sanity break. I have to demand my children go visit them once a year.
My MIL is a major narcissist and racist.
My SIL homeschools her kids in a Bible-based, unregulated, hogwashery-ridden make-believe educational program because the secular world might corrupt her children. I have a masters degree in counseling, and I can draw you a map of how many fallouts she is creating in her children's future due to her own inability to deal with her traumas and insecurities. I cannot even say the word BUTT in front of her 8 and 11 year old children. Forget the dinosaurs-are-fake narrative, I just see all the future casualties she is blindly creating so that she can be certain that Taylor Swift never comes through the speakers, Family Guy never comes on the TV and the kids never know what it feels like to eat Halloween candy for a week.
Question: can you report these type of people? Shouldn't it be considered "neglecting towards children" or something?
My MIL treats her son like a baby. She also says things like, 'No one can love you like I love you,' and seems to assume I’m just using her son for money and childcare…because she was like that when she was raising her kids. Other than that, she’s a super funny and charismatic person. I try to give her the benefit of the doubt, as she’s just a protective mom, but I can say I will not be treating my children or in-laws like that.
Girl, if your husband is also acting like a mamas boy , you need to run.
The way they travel. Constant need to overpack,shop for s**t to take home, etc always results in like half a dozen overweight suitcases and carry-ons that they then ALWAYS have to re organize to handle the weight and they ALWAYS expect everyone in the group to pack light to accomodate incase they have to dump s**t on you….. I hate it and it pisses me off everytime.
not an in law but my ex did this! If we were going on holiday, I would pack what I needed, a few extra bits if we were going out for dinner. He HATES packing, when he finally packs he packs wayyy too much, stuff he doesn't need and then I find he has packed his stuff into my stuff. It drove me crazy.
They have no concept of privacy, and they are fighting each other all the time, then come to me as if they wanted me to take sides. Nope.
My MIL still blames me for moving her daughter away and still can't believe we moved for better economic opportunities 11 years ago. She will call my wife and cry almost every other night about how she doesn't know how much time she has left and refuses to visit even when we offer to pay the travel expenses. She puts on this poor me sob story everytime we visit. My GOD just STFU!
My MIL is the cheapest woman I have ever met. I have hundreds of stories and examples. Last Christmas, she gave me a can of nuts from Goodwill. She said she didn't feel comfortable getting us a wedding gift. She won a cruise to Alaska, and she took our son, which was very sweet, but she refused to pay for anything during the trip. They ate sandwiches in the room and spent most days walking around Juneau. He wanted to come home on day two. I have fixed things, helped her move, mowed her lawn, and a dozen other things. She has never once bought dinner as a thank you or to celebrate a special event. I remember years ago, we had a bad time and asked if we could live in her house for two months. She insisted on charging us rent. She has missed funerals and weddings because she will not pay for travel or a hotel. I will stop now because I could go on forever.
I had a step monster in-law from hell. It took about two hours with her before she started the southern Baptist c**p and how everything was hell. My kids figured it out when they were young. My ex wouldn’t stand up to her and felt obligated to visit, etc.
That they loved my husband the least of all three of their kids and massively enabled their drug addicted mentally ill "special" child at my husband, mine and my kids expense.
OMG I relate with so many of these posts! My husband is the youngest of three. He was unlucky to lose his father when he was a young adult. He was still living home with his mum and his siblings had already moved out. He immediately replaced the father dealing with all the problems of the problems of the family. 20 years later it is the same. He has to solve all the family problems just him. According to his mother, his siblings do not have the skills to deal with any problem , even their own problems, and he is always the one that should take care of everyone.
They have four kids, the only boy is their favorite and they ignore their daughters which includes my wife. The heartbreak on her every time they blow her off to go spend more time with their son is gut wrenching. They took him to Vegas, on her birthday, two years in a row.
I know this isn't Inlaws, but my grandparents did this to my mum! Her siblings all went off around the world and left me mum to look after the grandparents and do everything for them when they were getting old. Yet oh the song and dance that would happen when her siblings who barely did anything to help my mum with THIER parents, would come to visit. When they died my Aunt made the whole funeral about her family and no recognition to my mum, never forgiven them. Thankfully I have a very healthy relationship with my siblings and parents.
They are very nice people. They paid for our wedding and honeymoon and I can't thank them enough for doing that for us. The only thing I dislike is how they talk to their daughter. They promise things and then act like they didn't promise anything. Ever since I've known her, they treat her like she knows nothing and she has to do everything that they say otherwise they won't help her at all.
Their behaviour towards their daughter, suggests that in fact, they are definitely not very nice people.
They are terrible with money and have tried to drag my immediate family down with them. I've had to stop acting like an ATM for them, and they're resentful that we won’t support their BS anymore.
Mine used my wedding as their own personal photoshoot, often taking their son/my groom away to snap family pictures. They then posted all the pictures of themselves in the group chat, and only one of me, which was just of my back at the altar. They also managed to get a photo of just the groom cutting the cake alone, without me in the photo, though we were obviously standing close together. I don’t think they were malicious; they're just very self-centered people with zero social awareness.
The gossiping about us to anyone who will listen. And the guilt trips. Every single guilt trip tactic to get us to drag our family of four across the country to go see them. Also, that they were absolute shut parents to my husband. Both allowing physical, mental, and verbal abuse to run rampant and then have the audacity to expect a relationship with their adult child.
How do they even expect that the child will keep contact with them ? Like bro.
They don’t ever communicate to my wife about really important s**t. Hey 👋 driving down for radiation let’s meet up What … 👀
Don't want to burden the children with your own problems. I can relate. I'm not telling my child I was just tested for early onset dementia.
My MIL shows no emotions at all, can’t tell what the hell mood she is in. My FIL RIP was just genuinely fun to be around, he was a cut up, and would go out of his way to make sure everyone is having a good time.
Was she always like this or became like that after your FIL's death? Some people shuts themselves.
Constantly undermining my parenting and treating my husband and I like we're children. It's so frustrating especially since we live next door.
Toxic boomer traits. Treated my wife like s**t while she lived there. Now they trying that s**t again on my daughter. Swiftly dealt with that s**t.
Same thing I hate about my own family- religious extremists. But TBH, his are not nearly as bad as mine.
I get along great with my MIL and FIL as individual people and have close relationships with both. But good god they have a horrible relationship. It’s really awkward sometimes. I have no idea how or why they are still together. They literally hate each other. Edit: early in our relationship I attempted to gently inquire about what I had observed after getting to know my wife’s parents a bit. Before I even finished asking she just casually said “yeah they should have divorced a long long time ago, we (her siblings) all think they need to give it up”
My MIL loads the dishwasher like a f****ng animal.
My sister-in-law is one of the most toxic people I know. Total narcissist. Everything must be all about her at all times. And her husband is a codependent simp who enables her behavior. The rest of my in-laws are cool though.
They are amazing people. If the world was like them, we'd have kindness and peace. But since you asked, broke-people mentality. They live beyond their means and the *second* you bring up anything regarding budgeting/saving/investing, you (me) are viewed as cheap/don't know how to live life/etc.
The best lesson is a bought one. Your in-laws may have to learn that the hard way. You may not be in a position to help them financially, especially if you have a family to support.
My husband has a twin. Both of them feel anything of his is hers. This seems to include full access to our house, fridge, computer, TV and occasionally my wardrobe. Also he tells her everything so anything I want to confide in him will also go to her and I guess whoever she chooses to talk to. I think I actually hate her. Also MIL for being a d**k, ditto FIL.
You know those white women who start drama with black women and then turn around and act the victim. My MIL does that. Spends too much money on a gift you already said you didn't want(Kurig) and gave multiple reasons. Open up the gift, smile politely and say thank you and put it to the side with the other items. 20 minutes later she just randomly throws a tantrum about how we don't like anything she gives us. We said NOTHING other than thank you. We didn't act crazy excited but we controlled our faces and were polite She cooks exactly the food you don't like and then gets upset when you try it but don't like it. So much around the bad food and her two face behavior when she is around her family. She magically made it infertility problems all about her. Should have never told anyone tbh
How little they seem to care about my partner. Since he didn't choose Maga or the LDS church, he's lucky if he gets a phone call on his birthday.
They are good people, but they are also the pickiest eaters I have ever met. It has to be genetic. Their entire diet consists of Rice-A-Roni, overcooked, baked chicken, and Ragu pasta. They will not venture out and try anything that they deem too 'exotic' or potentially mildly spicy. For example: Chicken tacos sound too wild for them. It has to be Taco Bell-style ground beef.
Mil is the sweetest person on earth, but she loves to touch people. I dislike anyone but my husband and son touching me. No reason for it, I just don't want to be touched. FIL looks like the villain from Up and acts like Sheldon Cooper, only throw in Boomer humor/racism with it. The important thing is, HE knows he's charming and the smartest person in the room, even if no one else thinks so. Luckily, MIL divorced FIL 30 years ago.
That she died too soon and won't get a chance to see her grandchild grow up.
Alcoholism.
My MIL? Love her, she's great. My FIL? Cheated on my MIL with her sister, and still sees said sister on a weekly basis while somehow still remaining married to my MIL. Bought himself and the sister a new car while my MIL drives a 20-year-old F-150. When he is home all he does is drink Budweiser from 11 am on while watching TV. And complains about everyone else in the family. Doesn't come to his grandkids' birthday parties and just hands us some cash to go buy something and to say it's from him. On several occasions, he's been at nice dinners and gets drunk and belligerent to the point of embarrassing everyone with him. So when it comes to my FIL, to answer the question...just about everything.
Your FIL has successfully emotionally manipulated your MIL . Hope she founds actual love.
My SIL is fun to party with but doesn’t know when to cool it. She’s had a lot of jobs and some have included professional photography and photography as a hobby. SIL is from way out of town and volunteered to be our wedding photographer. Not just take pictures, but as a major gift to us, the whole package. We discussed what it entailed and thanked her plenty. Night before she wanted to throw a party and we asked her not to knowing how much she drinks. SIL ended up showing up to hair and makeup barely able to stand and never really recovered into the wedding. And yes, people have talked to her about her drinking since.
How s****y their relationship is. It's gotten bad recently. My mil was diagnosed with terminal cancer a few months ago and my FIL immediately acted as if she's already dead. Ever since I became a part of that family, almost 20 years ago, I wondered why they were together. Mom has moved out of the house and wants to sell it; FIL wants to sell and move to Florida where he doesn't know anyone and keeps saying, "no on will take care of me." FIL makes no sense and I'm here for the ride. It sadly makes me happy that my family is dead.
Mil will be replaced so quickly that fil will bring a date to the funeral.
All the meth, thievery, and abuse of people kind enough to try to help them.
I got sooo lucky with a narcissist in-law but also she lives her own life that doesn’t involve me clubbing out with her anymore so yeah. This lady had the audacity to say I didn’t want to let her family see my baby first day out of the hospital, while her family was on the way to my house (which is a couple of blocks away) and she stayed home. Smh.
My FIL is a piece of s**t alcoholic that makes my wife an emotional mess. I’d like to think she’ll feel better after he finally drinks himself to death, but I doubt it. 23 years of putting up with that f*****g guy and his ability to make my wife sad.
I really really like my in-laws. That being said… They keep a “Young Earth” book on their coffee table. They are super conservative and religious.
They cook their bacon to an absolute C R I S P
For the most part, nothing, I love them more than my own parents. However, my MIL can be a little mean and impatient with my FIL, his hearing is not that great and she knows that. I wish she would just chill a little.
I'm divorced now but when I was married I honestly liked my in laws. They had much different upbringings than me but surprisingly similar worldviews. MIL could be kind of rude with service workers like waitstaff and what not, though, which is a big turn off to me.
MIL is incredibly overbearing to my wife.
Your MIL needs to learn boundaries, what she can do and what should never be crossed
Majority if not all of husband’s family members are racist, homophobic, bigoted people. I don’t know how he turned out so great though. They’re also conservative Christian and it blows my mind how they have so much hate inside their hearts when Jesus loved everyone. They’re not really a fan of me simply because I’m a foreigner and not Christian. I put up with my mil’s awful comments about people for a couple of years until i finally exploded and let it all out. Every since then I’ve been calling her out for anything bigoted or hateful she says about others. She’s learned that I’m not going to put up with it.
My almost entire family on both sides is like this. Any advice for how to deal with it? Some are worse than others, some not so bad, some awfully terrible, but they’re all this to some degree.
Load More Replies...My in-laws are divorced. I LOVE my MIL; she's terrific. My FIL? Child molester who doesn't understand why he never met my daughter. Never will either, a*****e; and she knows why.
Majority if not all of husband’s family members are racist, homophobic, bigoted people. I don’t know how he turned out so great though. They’re also conservative Christian and it blows my mind how they have so much hate inside their hearts when Jesus loved everyone. They’re not really a fan of me simply because I’m a foreigner and not Christian. I put up with my mil’s awful comments about people for a couple of years until i finally exploded and let it all out. Every since then I’ve been calling her out for anything bigoted or hateful she says about others. She’s learned that I’m not going to put up with it.
My almost entire family on both sides is like this. Any advice for how to deal with it? Some are worse than others, some not so bad, some awfully terrible, but they’re all this to some degree.
Load More Replies...My in-laws are divorced. I LOVE my MIL; she's terrific. My FIL? Child molester who doesn't understand why he never met my daughter. Never will either, a*****e; and she knows why.
