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jsard09
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HELP! In-Law Problems.
I'm going to try to make this as brief as possible for everyone's sake. But, I'm really struggling with this situation, so I feel I need to explain from the point at which the problems really started.
My now husband and I had been dating for 4 years and he asked me to marry him in June of 2013. I was very excited and we were so happy. His family and I had a decent relationship, not having any big blow outs or fights or anything of that nature. There has always been some tension between his mom and I, but nothing terrible and we were always very cordial and decent to each other. I will call her Kathy. However, when I started to plan the wedding, things got crazy. My first mistake was asking his two sisters to be in the wedding. For the purposes of this discussion, I'll call them Olivia & Amy. Olivia is very volatile, but we have gotten along well. Amy was always kind of a background piece, we never really had a relationship, but were still very nice to each other and we never had a problem.Olivia lived in California and Amy lived where we live. Everything was fine at first, they seemed genuinely happy to be in the wedding and Amy, especially, was very involved in the beginnings of the wedding planning.
I'll sum up everything that went down in some bullet points:
Kathy:
Amy:
Olivia:
There was a ton more, but all of this contributed to the most stressful period of time in my entire life. Long story short, the wedding came and went and was very successful. Through the entire period of planning the wedding, I was looking forward to the moment when it was all over so that things could go back to normal because obviously all the above caused strain on all of our relationships. But, alas, no - things have not improved. If anything, things are even more awkward. I can't see them or talk to them without feeling this tension between us and feeling super awkward around them.
The had another brother who moved away when he was 18, eloped and the barely see him. So, they somehow translate this to my husband and I. That I'm basically going to take him away and they're never going to see him. The whole family is like this, including his grandmas and aunts. They are so touchy about when we can't attend something or if we have to leave early. The last time we had to leave early (because my husband had to work) his aunt asked him "Will I see you before I leave on Monday?", to which Jake said "I'll have to see when I get out work." because he often works late. Amy piped up in front of the whole family and said "Don't lie. Just tell her you won't."
Now every time Jake talks to his mom on the phone or sees Amy, they always make a point to say "I miss you. It's been a long time." even if it's only been a week. I feel as though they feel like I'm trying to alienate my husband and as if I'm trying to take him away from them and that is HONESTLY so far from the truth. My husband harbors a lot of negativity towards his family for many reasons ( a lot of junk happened while he was growing up) and he has flat out said "I could care less if I see my family or not." But, I actively work hard to make sure he calls his mom, keeps her in the loop and that we're always there for main events. I ensure we always get his mom a present for her birthday and mother's day and try really hard to invite her over for dinner and accommodate family parties as much as I can. But, it's exhausting - especially when I feel so uncomfortable when I go there.
I'm sure that me feeling uncomfortable contributes to this whole awkwardness/tension factor, but it's hard not to feel uncomfortable when you know you're being judged and that they don't like you. I know I'm a push over and I have a really hard time standing up for myself, as you could probably tell through the bullet points with the wedding. I basically changed everything to accommodate them as much as possible, until my final straw was broken when they didn't want to be in pictures either.
Kathy swears up and down that she likes me, but her actions speak louder than her words. Amy, at the wedding when she was very drunk, told me "I just want to let you know that I'm sorry if anything I did ever upset you. When you're unhappy with yourself, nasty things can happen and I just want to let you know that it's not a reflection on you." I told basically told her "No harm done, I love you like a sister, and thank you for saying that.", but yet again her actions speak louder than words too. Constant negativity comes my way.
On top of it all, this family is very dysfunctional and family functions are never fun. Someone nearly always gets upset and there's always some type of yelling or some type of tension. "Calm and rational discussions" are never a thing and it's honestly not a source of relaxation to spend time with them - you leave and you feel all wired up and tense. This eats away at me and it's really starting to weigh on me. I'm really nervous for the holidays because I know I won't be able to make it to all the events for their family and I also want to be able to see and spend time with my family.
What do I do? How can I proceed?
I don't feel like sitting them down and talking it out will accomplish anything because they are so volatile. They will not take to that well and it will not be settled. It will just be new ammo for them to have against me.
My husband is not just absent through this all either. He's very supportive and supports me fully, even stating that he'd be willing to move away so that we don't have to deal with them. But, I don't want to do that because not only is my family here, but this will just feed into what they already think is going to happen. He speaks up when he can, but it's like he's in between a rock and hard place.
I'm so frustrated. Can anyone out there help me?
My now husband and I had been dating for 4 years and he asked me to marry him in June of 2013. I was very excited and we were so happy. His family and I had a decent relationship, not having any big blow outs or fights or anything of that nature. There has always been some tension between his mom and I, but nothing terrible and we were always very cordial and decent to each other. I will call her Kathy. However, when I started to plan the wedding, things got crazy. My first mistake was asking his two sisters to be in the wedding. For the purposes of this discussion, I'll call them Olivia & Amy. Olivia is very volatile, but we have gotten along well. Amy was always kind of a background piece, we never really had a relationship, but were still very nice to each other and we never had a problem.Olivia lived in California and Amy lived where we live. Everything was fine at first, they seemed genuinely happy to be in the wedding and Amy, especially, was very involved in the beginnings of the wedding planning.
I'll sum up everything that went down in some bullet points:
Kathy:
When I tried to include her in wedding planning, she was very distant and seemed uninterested. Yet, made comments about the fact that she didn't have "much of a say in anything."
We decided to have a cookie bar instead of wedding cake, which she was very vocal about how displeased she was with it. She even decided to have wedding cake at our rehearsal dinner because we weren't having it at our wedding.
Amy:
Ordered the wrong size of bridesmaids dress on purpose because she didn't like the style of the dress. I found out that it was on purpose because the manager of David's Bridal pulled me off to the side when I came in for a fitting and stated that she wanted to let me know because I quote "She will not fit into this dress, against our advisement, she ordered two sizes too small."
Threw a fit when the dress didn't fit, so I changed the dress and tried to talk to her about it because I didn't want a fight. She eventually was fine with it and seemed satisfied. Found out later, she was still mad and telling his whole family behind my back that I had never "honored her wishes."
Posted multiple things on social media (they were indirect, but so obvious) about how much she wasn't looking forward to the wedding and how nervous she was for it.
Amy helped Kathy plan the rehearsal dinner. When my family offered our house to them for the rehearsal picnic to save on money. They agreed, but Amy cornered me two days before the wedding and said "I know your family might want to help, but we don't want them too. We want things our way and I'm not afraid to be the bitch that says "No, we don't want it this way."
She told my husband that they didn't want any photos of her or her husband put on Facebook. Since they are both in the wedding party, that would mean I could put up no pictures of the ceremony that included them or any of the formals of the wedding party. So, we told them, we wish we could accommodate that, but we have too many relatives who can't make it to the wedding that would love to see those pictures and if we excluded any picture that include you, we would be very limited. If this is an important issue to you, we understand and we want to accommodate your wishes, so if you would prefer to step down, we would reimburse you for dress and the money down for the suit rental and there will be no hard feelings. They said "We'll just have to be okay with it. We shouldn't have even said anything."
Olivia:
She wouldn't order her bridesmaids dress even though I reminded her multiple times.
Decided two months before, she wasn't going to be coming (because she lives far away)
Talked about me behind me back as well and fed into the rumors, didn't dispute them.
The had another brother who moved away when he was 18, eloped and the barely see him. So, they somehow translate this to my husband and I. That I'm basically going to take him away and they're never going to see him. The whole family is like this, including his grandmas and aunts. They are so touchy about when we can't attend something or if we have to leave early. The last time we had to leave early (because my husband had to work) his aunt asked him "Will I see you before I leave on Monday?", to which Jake said "I'll have to see when I get out work." because he often works late. Amy piped up in front of the whole family and said "Don't lie. Just tell her you won't."
Now every time Jake talks to his mom on the phone or sees Amy, they always make a point to say "I miss you. It's been a long time." even if it's only been a week. I feel as though they feel like I'm trying to alienate my husband and as if I'm trying to take him away from them and that is HONESTLY so far from the truth. My husband harbors a lot of negativity towards his family for many reasons ( a lot of junk happened while he was growing up) and he has flat out said "I could care less if I see my family or not." But, I actively work hard to make sure he calls his mom, keeps her in the loop and that we're always there for main events. I ensure we always get his mom a present for her birthday and mother's day and try really hard to invite her over for dinner and accommodate family parties as much as I can. But, it's exhausting - especially when I feel so uncomfortable when I go there.
I'm sure that me feeling uncomfortable contributes to this whole awkwardness/tension factor, but it's hard not to feel uncomfortable when you know you're being judged and that they don't like you. I know I'm a push over and I have a really hard time standing up for myself, as you could probably tell through the bullet points with the wedding. I basically changed everything to accommodate them as much as possible, until my final straw was broken when they didn't want to be in pictures either.
Kathy swears up and down that she likes me, but her actions speak louder than her words. Amy, at the wedding when she was very drunk, told me "I just want to let you know that I'm sorry if anything I did ever upset you. When you're unhappy with yourself, nasty things can happen and I just want to let you know that it's not a reflection on you." I told basically told her "No harm done, I love you like a sister, and thank you for saying that.", but yet again her actions speak louder than words too. Constant negativity comes my way.
On top of it all, this family is very dysfunctional and family functions are never fun. Someone nearly always gets upset and there's always some type of yelling or some type of tension. "Calm and rational discussions" are never a thing and it's honestly not a source of relaxation to spend time with them - you leave and you feel all wired up and tense. This eats away at me and it's really starting to weigh on me. I'm really nervous for the holidays because I know I won't be able to make it to all the events for their family and I also want to be able to see and spend time with my family.
What do I do? How can I proceed?
I don't feel like sitting them down and talking it out will accomplish anything because they are so volatile. They will not take to that well and it will not be settled. It will just be new ammo for them to have against me.
My husband is not just absent through this all either. He's very supportive and supports me fully, even stating that he'd be willing to move away so that we don't have to deal with them. But, I don't want to do that because not only is my family here, but this will just feed into what they already think is going to happen. He speaks up when he can, but it's like he's in between a rock and hard place.
I'm so frustrated. Can anyone out there help me?
Re: HELP! In-Law Problems.
Beyond that, let HIM deal with his family. It's nice that you want everything to be close and amicable, but it doesn't sound like he's on the same page. You call the shots with your family, and he should do the same for his. Even with the best intentions, it sounds like they'll probably interpret anything you do as meddling or malicious. Honestly, it's not your responsibility to fix the issues in their family dynamics. Sometimes people end up close to their in-laws, and sometimes that just doesn't work out.
I agree with previous comments - let your husband take the lead on the level of involvement that he wants to have with his family. If they think you're the reason why they see him less, so be it. If they sit, and stew in their bitterness, it doesn't affect you one bit. I wouldn't go to the extreme of cutting them out of your life completely, but if seeing them is stressful, then see them less. Stop putting forth a great effort to include them in your lives on a regular basis. See them when you want, and when you're able, and don't worry about the rest.
Who knows....maybe one day they'll mellow out and it won't be so stressful to be around them. Or maybe you'll be the one to mellow out, and you won't be so concerned about how much they do or don't like you. You have to understand that even when you're nice to people, they might not like you because of their own personal shortcomings. You have no control over that - so learn to let it go and don't let it bother you.
which is why I FULLY agree w/ everyone else. Stop trying to force a relationship w/ them. Why are you making it your role to be the savior here? This is his mom , his family. If he doesn't want to talk to him mom - HIS choice. If he doesn't want to see them - HIS choice. Why are YOU stepping in and trying to be, basically, his mother???
Let him navigate his relationship w/ his family.
And I'll tell you this:
Now every time Jake talks to his mom on the phone or sees Amy, they always make a point to say "I miss you. It's been a long time." even if it's only been a week. I feel as though they feel like I'm trying to alienate my husband and as if I'm trying to take him away from them and that is HONESTLY so far from the truth.
You are SOOOOO reading into this. SO reading into it. Which goes back to my first comment. You're making all these issues about YOU when they aren't. And as dysfunctional as his family may be, they might actually MISS HIM when they don't see him for a week. Why is that such a bad thing for them to say? Why does that have to be about you???
My FIL is liek this too- 2 days could pass and DH gets "I haven't seen you for awhile. I miss you. When will we see you again?". It's NOTHING about me. NOTHING.
Is your MIL my MIL??? Seriously, that whole section on her was EXACTLY what mine acted like haha. I despise my MIL, she is incredibly immature, passive-aggressive and takes zero resposibility for anything she does. She tells H all the time that she "loves" me, then continues to talk behind my back and spread rumours about me and members of my family. She has no respect for any of the boundaries we've set. At this point, I honestly feel sorry for the woman because she doesn't know what it really means to love someone.
When she started acting that way, I distanced myself from them. H decided that he would be the only form of communication between them and us, which isn't often because he's confronted her a couple times about how she needs to stop her ugliness towards me but each time she freaks out on him and tries to blame us for things that she does. My SIL actually had to balls to confront her about how my MIL was being incredibly rude to her and MIL blew up at her too and called her a bitch. I have no time for two faced people that talk shit about me then act like nothing is wrong to my face. It's just incredibly bizarre.
We don't see them much anymore because of this and honestly I'm glad. Nobody needs that kind of negativity in their lives or relationship.