I just re-read the first post again and it sounds like M and K are very different women so you are naturally going to have very different relationships. I don’t think it means there is anything wrong with you or K or anyone has to ‘reflect’. Different is different, that’s it. When around her ask questions and learn about her life, goals, struggles etc. listen more than talk
Are your sons different? My Gil and his only brother were very different men who married very different women. From family lore, the mil clearly had a fave dil
ANd the two dil did not get along. How do K and M get along?
Maybe I’m way off base, but…is it possible K just doesn’t agree with the way @VeryHappy and their family spend money?
For example, not everyone would be thrilled with having a MIL choose a person to do hair and make up and then NOT pay for it. Now, if VH simply described the options and daughter in law did the choosing knowing all along that DIL would get the bill, then fine. But not everyone would be thrilled. In fact, not everyone would hire someone to do hair and makeup for a wedding. In choosing a budget, that’s the first thing a lot of people I know would ax. It MIGHT have come across as “I have to have my hair and make up done to x standard because that’s what my MIL to be thinks is appropriate. I’d rather have saved the $ and had my cousin Susan do my hair.” Sometimes, it might even be "How do I explain this to Susan? I know she intended that doing my hair and make up would be her gift to me. "
And then “colluding” as to what to buy S for gifts?! If all VH is doing is asking DIL what she thinks S would like, that’s fine. If VH is saying “Why don’t my H and I and you go in together and get your H/our S the following (probably expensive) item?” then I don’t think that’s a good idea. VH and H should give their S a gift from them if they so choose and let DIL give a gift of her own choosing to her H. It could really be awkward if S gets some super expensive joint gift from his parents and wife and then feels pressured to give DIL an equally expensive present to DIL without any contribution from her parents.
I don’t know, of course and it’s possible I misunderstand completely, but if your idea of a suitable birthday gift is a homebaked cake and an original poem, then having your in-laws suggest an item you think is overpriced and nonessential might not go over that well.
OP asked for help to become closer to her DIL. Most of the examples she gave have a similar theme. We gave financial assistance and DIL wasn’t appreciative enough. The truth is that her DIL’s view of the situations OP describes may well be negative. How is ignoring that helpful to her? If OP had some examples of interactions that don’t involve money maybe the advice would be different, but we can only work with the information we’re given.
Maybe K is given a pass because men have been given passes for, oh… forever. And now couples are going out of their way to handle these chores more equally. Nobody would have batted an eye 50 years ago if the DIL had written the thank you note for any gift from son’s family or from “that side” for the wedding, and if son had nothing to do with it. Now couples split the chores more equally. So be sure it isn’t an outdated expectation creeping in about the role women are supposed to play.
I gave my D a large contribution for their wedding. I know she acknowledged it, but don’t recall that SIL did. I’m not bothered — I know he appreciated it, and am not looking for reasons to not get along.
I took on this task at DIL’s request.
I’m enjoying reading all the responses, as my DS’s GF is hard to talk to even after 2 years. It’s a little better, not much. She’s smart, kind, thoughtful, comes from a close, nice family. My son will be lucky to have her as a wife. But she’s done dang hard to talk to. She’s naturally more serious and shy.
I think I’ve stopped caring so much about having the relationship I’d like with her. I just try to be warm, and friendly and welcoming. When I tire of making conversation, I just start doing something. Maybe as time goes by and they are together, she’ll open up more.
@VeryHappy . My DH was one that never said thank you to my parents when they did big ticket items for us as a couple when we were young. He always said the gift wasn’t for him, it was for me. They would have done the same thing if she was married to someone else. It felt weird saying thanks for him (like my DaD would be thinking, hey it’s not for you). Just another thought process you might be interested in.
Oh, and being one of 2 DIL, p,ease never show favorites or talk about one to the other…even good stuff. My MIL did that all the time, and it drove us crazy.
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Not singling out this thread, or any comments on it, but often it’s not what you say, but how you say it. And usually how one relates to another on an internet forum should not be different than IRL.
I know you want things to be close and wonderful and it sounds like you’re very kind to her. It just may take time to develop a rhythm and relationship and sadly it may not ever be what you’d hope.
Round of applause for @VeryHappy wanting to have a warm, close relationship with her DIL - even if it’s not easy or may not materialize. 
It’s interesting how quickly this thread on “Sons/Daughters-in-Law” has resolved itself into daughters-in-law only. The daughter-in-law/mother-in-law relationship seems more fraught with potential conflict than any of the other three possible pairings.
My mother had a pretty terrible relationship with her mother-in-law (in considerable part because everyone understood that my father’s relationship with my mother was based in rejecting almost everything about his parents). She was determined to have a great relationship with my wife – despite not actually liking my wife much, and having reservations about our relationship – and treated my wife just like one of her daughters. Except . . . my wife had her own mother, and wasn’t in the market to be anyone else’s daughter. Then, there was terrible conflict when our first child was born (my mother’s first grandchild, too). My mother wanted to descend and to take care of everything. My wife felt very insecure about her ability to care for her baby, and therefore extremely threatened by my mother’s intervention. It didn’t help at all that my mother’s attitudes were based on 50s-era general knowledge, which was meaningfully different from the 80s-era general knowledge my wife was inhaling from childrearing books, her doctors, and her friends.
Bottom line, it took a decade or more for the two women to come to a place of comfort in dealing with one another, and the relationship was never as close as my mother had hoped. My wife did come to appreciate my mother over time, and my wife says now that one of her real regrets in life is how prickly she was early in their relationship. (The fact that she’s a mother-in-law now has something to do with that.)
We are still in the very early stages of getting-to-know-you with our daughter-in-law. We had very little chance to spend time with her before she and our son got married. They lived in different cities, and if we were visiting she tended not to be around. For cultural reasons in her family, she traveled with our son only very rarely, and her own large, close extended family soaked up pretty much all of her available family time. It is clearly going to take a while for everyone to get truly comfortable with one another.
@
VH, just FWIW, one SIL and I have been with our partners for nearly a decade now. Our relationship with our in-laws has continued to deteriorate at a rapidly increasing rate.
The clash with our MIL (especially) is that our husbands (brothers) come from a very “traditional” family where dad brings home the bacon and mom does everything else. My MIL still tries to plan everything with me even though I have asked her repeatedly to plan with Mr R since I do not have control or knowledge of his variable schedule. I’m not his keeper.
Just because two people love the same person, it doesn’t mean they have to love - or even like, really - each other. And again, that’s OK. Not every familial relationship needs to be close.
With a DIL/SIL, learning to listen and develop a relationship can be fraught because there is a lot of immediate ‘intimacy’ in the relationship which may not be earned. It sounds like you are still learning who K is, at the same time she is learning about you, your husband, your other children, etc, etc. As someone else on this thread said, that can take years, if not decades. Your son is your child and has had a lifelong relationship with you and while you might see K in the same adult-child position - she came to this relationship with your son and you as an adult. Not as an adult-child. You are your son’s mother. You aren’t K’s mother. And I think there is often a bit of tension (not necessarily bad) within that relationship as everyone learns how the relationship will work and where work needs to be done to make it work better.
Money is a tricky subject to navigate, and what you might see as generosity might be interpreted as a possible attempt to control the relationship or extract certain behaviors. I am not suggesting that you are trying to do this, merely that your intentions are not necessarily how the action is perceived. That’s the tricky stuff with developing a new relationship. What you might be offering in love and support may not be how the other person receives it because you don’t necessarily know them well enough to know how they will react. The bigger the gift, the bigger the potential baggage attached.
I also think there might be a lot of value to trying to develop this relationship through your son, as opposed to trying to just do it with K. Ask him for his thoughts on this, and be willing to let him take the lead. Be ready to bite your tongue (I’ve just spent the better part of two years trying to remember to do that) and bite it again. Try your best to listen to what they are saying and hear what they are telling you, without getting defensive. You are doing your best, so are they. We have to be willing to hear stuff we don’t like without trying to defend when we want to change a relationship that isn’t working.
I have, I think, pretty good relationships with my DIL and S2’s GF. The latter is now affectionally referred to in our house as our, “not DIL” as was DIL before the wedding. After a recent conversation with S2, I suspect an engagement will occur in the next 6 months.
I’ve been comfortable with my DIL from the minute we met her. She is smart, funny, and extremely comfortable with herself. Her family’s financial circumstances are not different from ours, though her parents had a difficult divorce many years ago, so my S has always thought she found a father in my H. She is also a reporter, so she connects with people for a living!
S2’s GF was a little more nervous when she met us and it has taken a while for her to become more comfortable. The outward manifestation of her nerves was to be very loud, effusive, and a little "much."When we were together for my birthday last year, she was uncharacteristically quiet and we all asked if anything was wrong. My S2 let us know that this was more her personality and she was just now more comfortable. I think she also felt a little overwhelmed since her family is a little different from ours. Culturally, we come form the same tribe (if you know what I mean!), but her mom never attended college and I think she’s sensitive about it. However, she, like my DIL, is warm and funny and loves my son. To be honest, that’s really all I care about but I must say it’s easier to be around her now.
In our family, the issue is less me than my D. She has a lot more in common with her SIL than S2’s girlfriend and it’s been a journey but they have developed a better relationship overtime. D’s last BF connected with no one in our family ( nor she his) and I think that contributed to the demise of the relationship. We’ll see what comes next, but the only counsel I can offer is to just be who you are, continue to let her know how happy you are to have her in the family, and, if possible, ask your S how you can make her more comfortable.
I have two SILs and one lives in the same general area, we see him with and without DD and, I believe, all of us are quite comfortable with each other. SIL2 lived thousands of miles away during the dating years, I believe we met him 2-3 times in 2-3 years. Now they live 500-1000 miles away, we see him at least a few times a year and usually for a week or two, he seems comfortable with our crowd, but we don’t presume to say we know him well. We know many things, but not nearly as well as SIL1.
I don’t think either one would complain about us and each have families with a different culture than ours, SIL2 dramatically so, but one of the biggest reasons, I think, we have very positive relationships with them is that my in laws were atrocious and we choose to be entirely the opposite and have bent over backwards to make it easy for the guys to be comfortable, figuring the real comfort level will be more easily attained with an easy/mellow/non-judgmental relationship at the start
This thread makes me sad. S was living with his GF whom I had come quickly to regard as a DIL. Loved her, loved her parents, and vice versa. Looking forward to grandchildren at some point. They were together for 2 years. Then life stresses affected the relationship, and she dumped him. Just blew it up. We are all devastated.
That’s terrible, @Consolation. It’s especially hard when it’s fast, unexpected, and preceding the holidays.
This thread is interesting to me, both as a DIL, and as a mom who will meet S1’s GF for the first time when they come for Christmas. I’m mostly nervous for their visit because it will be long - around 10 days - and I don’t know if H and I can be on our best behavior that long! LOL.
MIL - I get along with her, but we aren’t necessarily close. When H and I first dated, I felt his parents were quite smothering and I wanted us to have our independence from them. We got along fine, but I didn’t want as much contact as they did. She also commented very early on how I was a nice girl for not being *** (their heritage). She has a gift for backhanded compliments.
I posted early on–it can take a lot of time, effort, suspending judgement to reach the point where you are comfortable with a DIL (or SIL). I never ever believed I would enjoy my DIL. SIL are nearly clones. Yes, D married me :x . And I have had to learn to be quiet and let him lead (not my strong suit). With DIL I had to find the niche I could fill and do it. It took years. Now I cannot wait to see her next week and she leans on me from time to time. I had a perfectly nice, I guess, MIL. Everyone thought so except me. She made comments…I knew what I felt but received no support. My own mother was nasty so MIL seemed benign in comparison. My mother literally hated each and every in-law ever except my H. I never told her a single thing that he did wrong as she would never have forgiven him.
“one of the biggest reasons, I think, we have very positive relationships with them is that my in laws were atrocious and we choose to be entirely the opposite and have bent over backwards to make it easy for the guys to be comfortable, figuring the real comfort level will be more easily attained with an easy/mellow/non-judgmental relationship at the start”
This is my situation and approach. I promised myself I would be a much more accepting and welcoming MIL than I’ve had and, although my kids aren’t married, I approach their relationships like they might be “the one” and do my best to start off on the right note.