“Zero Social Awareness”: 30 People Reveal The Thing They Hate About Their In-Laws

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.

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.

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.