I dare say MIL is older than most people on this board (she's 80). More and more I've come to the realization that she has taken it upon herself to act as the supreme representative of Mormonism on behalf of TBM family when it comes to dealing with us, the apostates. She gushes to us and uses the "we" pronoun when clearly she speaks only for herself. On a number of occasions she has invited us somewhere or told us something on "behalf" of other family members and we have found out that they had nothing to do with the information supplied or the invitation.

The rest of TBM family in UT deals with us on a very limited basis. In fact, except for one or two of DH's brothers, we have very little communication. On the rare occasion of a visit to UT (they don't visit us) most of the family interacts with us on a very superficial and abbreviated level. Yet MIL still insists on speaking in the first person plural in order to make it look as though everyone else agrees with her when in fact that couldn't give a flying fig. How embarrassing.

What this does, in effect, is make it appear that everyone in the family (all TBMs) is being very kind and thoughtful towards us, when in fact they are not.

For example, MIL recently on one of our rare UT visits, TBM MIL invited the huge TBM family to her home. She presents this "party" to us as being a gathering in "our honor"..i.e. the purpose is that we are visiting. As we mill around and speak to different people we find out that they were all brought there under different pretenses....least of all because we are visiting. Of course all of this is an effort to prove what wonderful TBMs they are...to show how open-minded and loving they are towards us.

In the end its all phony.

Just musing at what a ploy all facets of Mormon life seem to be.

mormonism is about orchestrating an appearance. All something has to do is appear to be what they say it is.

Avoiding the appearance of evil equates to creating the appearance of good......real or not.

If you can handle being a perennial project for these people, you're stronger than I am. I gave up at age 49. I was just worn out and tired of the gaslighting.