Hey , not really wanting advice just commiseration. Anyone else treated like “the little woman” by your In-laws?
I never get asked about my work -just my kids and my husband. If anything does come up about me they act disinterested or the subject gets changed. Especially my FIL. I get complemented on my cooking. I am in school and working -but it doesn’t get discussed. It seems everyone else follows their lead a bit -so I feel like a bit of a non person sometimes.
They are 80 -they have always been kind to me- I know things could be much , much worse. I just got home from several days with them and just wanted to vent a bit I suppose.
No -occasionally he tries to cheerlead a bit for me -but it doesn’t really stick. He could try a little harder though -maybe a little poke in the ribs next time.
But when my MIL was living, I always felt like she measured me by my homemaking abilities (uh, lack of). Granted, that was her field of expertise. Cooking, feeding her loved ones, laundry, keeping a clean and organized home. She never worked outside the home, but she worked very, very hard as a “homemaker”.
None of those things are particularly important to me. She must have thought her son married such a strange woman.
My husband comes from a family of all boys. As his widowed father ages he keeps saying how much he wishes he had a daughter to take care of him. I finally couldn’t hold my tongue anymore. I told him if he had had a daughter she would be just as successful as her brothers and would have moved on to better career opportunities out of state.
@thumper1 -you are right. I could be much worse -I just get a bit tired of it. Since we live away from them our visits are longer so I have several days of being shunted to the side.
I understand and sympathize, OP. I’m divorced. My former mother-in-law has had Alzheimer’s disease for several years. Before her descent into the illness, she was very interested in my daughters but she had a short attention span (ADHD possibly?) and so she’d change topics in conversations often and quickly. My former father-in-law is very self-centered. He was not very interested in anyone other than himself.
Dh’s cousins, with whom he used to be very close, were very athletic (two girls and a boy). So is DH. So no matter what I did, I was deemed uncoordinated, a klutz, whatever. It infuriated me. Still does, even though we haven’t seen those people in maybe 15 years.
I think assumptions on the part of the in-laws are painful. It’s obvious they’re not looking at you, only at their offspring and how you’re “supposed” to behave in relationship to them. They never see you for who you really are.
Gawd – I now have one DIL and am about to have a second. I hope I don’t do that to them.
I am feeling a bit better now.
Another thing -they don’t eat much anymore. Which I know is common. However one evening there wasn’t quite enough food for dinner. My husband got offered seconds and I didn’t. I was seriously hungry. I am going to pack a couple of protein bars in my suitcase next time. @VeryHappy -this does make me think a lot about how I will treat my Son in Laws if I ever have any.
I think it is that generation. My mother is 82 and so proud that she still does her own “housework”. She acts as though cooking and cleaning is something amazing, rather than just necessary chores. Of course, my father does not lift a finger. So, they are both retired, but her workload is pretty much the same. A big compliment from her is that a woman is a “balibuser” - I don’t know how to spell it - Yiddush word for a great homemaker.
Balabusta (Yiddish: בעל־הביתטע) is a Yiddish expression describing a good homemaker among Ashkenazi Jews. The Anglicized form is baleboste, and the term derives from the Hebrew term bá’alat habáyit, meaning “mistress of the house”.
I am not one, and apparently my professional accomplishments pale beside my lack of interest in homemaking. When doing “housework” is the focus of my day - just shoot me.
@veruca , this is a picture of my now three-legged dog. To give you an idea of what my ex FIL is like, if he knew about the situation with the dog, who I found out had cancer two days after I adopted him, FIL would “joke” to my face that I should shoot the dog. I say this because this is what FIL said about a previous dog of ours that had cancer. Sometimes I felt singled out for such comments, but I do know that FIL also doesn’t have a good relationship with any of his own children, including my ex-husband, who is his caregiver.
The only time my in-laws ever bring up my work is to needle me about it. When I was working in reproductive health, my FIL actually asked me how many babies I had killed. (I didn’t work in an abortion clinic or anything.)
And they’re in their 50s, so it’s not just a generational thing.
