My fiancé and I have been dating for 4 years. His sister has been dating her boyfriend for a few months. After seeing how my future mother in law treats my fiancés sisters boyfriend, I’m reevaluating how she feels about me.
When it was the boyfriends birthday, my future mother in law went out of her way to celebrate. She made it a big event within their family which I haven’t had in 4 years of being around.
When my fiancé and I got engaged, she did not do anything to celebrate us. When his sister and boyfriend announced their unexpected pregnancy, she threw them a baby shower. My fiancé says his mom is more excited for our wedding than the baby (because the sister is not doing it the traditional way). I find that hard to believe based on her actions. I understand a baby is a big deal. I’m just looking for some acknowledgement on our big life events too.
This situation has upset me and I want to calmly bring this up to her just so she is aware of my feelings and we can move forward. However, my fiancé is nervous it will make his mom sad. I think I’ll forever question how she feels about me if I don’t bring it up.
TLDR: My (26f) future (30m) mother in law shows favoritism to her other in laws.
16 comments
Don’t bring it up with her, it will only piss her off.
What would you do if you found out she didn’t like you? How would this knowledge change your actions?
MAJOR “Yay she’s finally got a man to take care of her!” energy coming off that woman.
What sort of acknowledgment of your engagement would make you feel “equal” here?
Did she fail to congratulate you? Will she be attending the wedding and whatever other relevant parties? Will she be buying you a gift? Seems there is a lot of acknowledgment coming very soon here.
You compare this to a baby shower, but that comparison doesn’t make much sense. The to-be-grandma throwing a baby shower is normal. Generally speaking, bridal showers are organized by the Maiden of Honour and/or the mother of the **bride**.
Do you know the context of the birthday party for the BF? Can you maybe think of motivations that MIL may have had, outside of “this BF is sooooo much cooler than No_Area8138. I’m going to throw him a big party in order to make my future daughter in law feel like shit 😈”?
Like, maybe this guy is scared of MIL because he knocked up her daughter alarmingly fast. Maybe MIL wanted him to know that he is welcome in the family. Maybe this guy has never had a proper birthday party, so SIL and MIL did it to make him feel special for once.
It seems like you’re internalizing things that likely have nothing to do with you here. I’d step back and re-assess. You have 4 years of evidence that this family welcomes you. Why are you comparing yourself to someone else now?
I will say that keep in mind that this likely not something personal towards you. It’s probably has more to do with that for weddings the brides family is usually more involved then the grooms family. I know for me my parents were super involved in my wedding but they are minimally involved in my brothers wedding.
I think you also might be witnessing how family dynamics might be different for a daughter over a son.
Who cares what she thinks? You’re marrying your man and will move away with him and make your own life. With wedding planning, house hunting, honeymooning, (possible baby making?), work, etc taking hold – there won’t be a lot of time left over for either of your families. You’ll see them during the holidays mostly. Just do you.
You shouldn’t make an already strained relationship more uncomfortable by bringing it up. She’s made it pretty clear that she’s willing to be friendly with you but not go out of her way to throw you parties, and that’s fine. That’s the extent of your relationship for now. If you want to be closer with your MIL, try inviting her for brunch or a find a hobby you both like, but accusing her of favoring her in laws is not how you build a better relationship.
Be as objective as possible: who is the golden child? My husband isn’t, and so I have low expectations. We’ve been together for 13 years and I don’t think she knows the name of the city I grew up in or my middle name lol. But her granddaughter’s fiancé? Aka man marrying the golden child of the golden child? She knows everything about him. Pretty sure he could shoot me in the face on Christmas and she’d be like “well he must have had reasons…”
Point is, drop the rope. Focus on making your life together lovely. If she wants to participate then great! But the golden child will always take precedence.
>When my fiancé and I got engaged, she did not do anything to celebrate us.
What did your parents do?
I’m not sure why you think your future MIL should have done anything for your birthday or engagement. You’re 26, marrying a 30 yo, which surely means you dictate your own events instead of leaving it to parents.
Frankly I find it really weird she threw a party for the sister’s bf. Was that by any chance *after* the pregnancy announcement? Because if so, the answer is fairly obvious and has nothing to do with you or your relationship with her, and everything to do with “this kid we hardly know has knocked up my daughter, action stations”.
You are asking for trouble and it won’t end well. This woman is not obligated to love you as equally as other people she chooses to love. What exactly is missing from your life with her obviously favouring the new boyfriend ? Many women suffer from hostile MILs and you have one who is at least civil to you. What will her loving actions add to your life? Are you happy with your fiance? Do you feel blatantly excluded? What you are not getting from her, you can get from your own parents. Stop making drama and putting your fiance in the middle of your petty jealousies.
A lot of times it is a lot harder to let their eldest sons go and have a relationship than with all of their other children. Usually the eldest son will end up as a weird replacement for a partner when the father is either not in the picture anymore (like divorce or death) or if the father is completely useless. So for the MIL it feels like she looses her partner – which is weird and which they should have never had allowed to happen in the first place. This is were all the entitled MILs come from. Maybe that is the case with your fiancé too?
She might like you, she might not like you. But confronting her isn’t the way to get her excited about you. It will hurt your future hubby, your future MIL, and in time, it will hurt you.
Instead, start reaching out to her. Make all of your interactions with her positive. Ask her out to coffee and spend time getting to know her. Write her a letter for mothers day that expresses your love and appreciation for her raising the man you love. Have a girls day with her at the spa or nail salon. The best way to have a good relationship with her, is to CREATE one.
Confronting her will make every future interaction between the two of you strained, and you don’t want that!
You have the ability to create whatever relationship you want with her, you can choose to make it a positive one, or choose to make her always feel like she has to walk on eggshells around you.
She literally owes you nothing, if she doesn’t want to throw a party for you it’s her decision and it doesn’t mean she doesn’t like you. Your fiancé already said she’s excited about the wedding so don’t treat it like it’s her obligation to do that for you. Confronting her about it will just make it more icy between the two of you and will in no way make her like you more. You’ll break the poor lady’s heart.
Just ignore it because I’m sure she’ll be excited at the wedding.
I haven’t seen any responses related to this so I have two theories:
1) Your fiance’s sister is closer to his mom and therefore, shares her life events with her. The reason I say this is because from my observation, sons have a tendency to leave the nest and somewhat “disconnect” from the family. It isn’t because they hate their family or anything like that, it’s just the nature of men while women will generally come visit home often, call mom/dad, etc. So, basically because of the relationship mom has with the sister, mom is more interested in the significant other.
2) Perhaps she isnt as welcoming to you as you want would like because you don’t reciprocate the same to her. Maybe the bf is waaaaaay more sociable, fun, and welcoming than you are. Therefore, mom likes him more.
Overall, I find this to be a you issue and an issue that you need to get over. It isn’t that serious especially if she is respectful to you.
Lastly, isnt it normal for the brides family to be more involved in the wedding planning than the grooms??
Some things are more normalised for mother-daughter than mother-son. My MIL never threw me a baby shower, but it would have been awkward for me if she did as that is HIS mother, not mine. MIL did do one for SIL, and I didn’t bat an eye as that is her daughter. 🤷🏽♀️
The birthday thing is a bit weird, but I wouldn’t take it as a jab. What does your fiancé say? Does he feel you have a point? Either way, I think it would be HIS responsibility to seek clarity from his mom, not yours. But IMO, you should pick your battles, you aren’t even married yet and are already finding issues. All my issues with my MIL started when I got pregnant. Try and keep the peace for the sake of your future.
It’s really important to pick your battles when it comes to things like this. I think bringing it up would only stir things up. My kids’ grandma absolutely hates me and I have been nothing but nice and respectful, I learned that you can’t make everyone like you. I don’t necessarily think that’s what you have going on here though, I’m guessing it’s just you reading too much into things. It sounds like she’s been otherwise nice to you, you’re just upset that you think she’s being nicer to him. What if she is? How she treats him imo has nothing to do with you, especially if she’s not treating you badly. It’s also possible that he needs this kind of positive attention more than you do right now and she can see that. She may know things about him that you don’t.
Sorry I made this longer than I meant to lol
TLDR Try not to take any of it personally, it’s likely nothing to do with you.