Presents, cards or nothing?

[youmaycallmeSSP]

DH has one sister who lives abroad with her husband and their three children. I have never met any of them but made a real effort to be long-distance friends with SIL up until a lot of small incidents ended up with her being extremely nasty and me calling her on it. Since then I've given up and she and her husband have bad-mouthed me to DH and his family. Lovely.

So, since DH and I have been married I've been sending birthday and Christmas presents every year for SIL, BIL and the DNs. These have never been acknowledged until I've asked about them before putting 'lost in post' forms in to Royal Mail. Given the past behaviour towards me, I feel like I can't really be bothered carrying on sorting this out. The DNs' birthdays are coming up. If I leave it to DH to do then they will get nothing. I'm inclined to just send cards.

Any objective ideas?

send cards if you want.

I'd leave it to dh under the circumstances

If I leave it to DH he will procrastinate and forget and they won't get anything even if I remind him every day for the next three weeks. Then I'll get the blame (from them) for nothing happening. Gah.

Why is it that female partners always get the blame if birthdays and Christmas of DP relatives are not remembered ? I don't expect my DP to remember my family's birthdays.

I had this with DP's parents many years ago. I had bought the birthday card for his DM's birthday but he hadn't signed it / sent it. Next time we meet up with DP's parents she asked me why she hadn't been sent a card - she wasn't nasty, just asked. GRRRR. Sorry don't mean to take over your post.

I agree though - leave it to DH - remind him once and explain the probable consequences for you if he 'forgets'. And then forget about it - it sounds like a situation which you can't win anyway.

So you buy them presents and cards, which they don't acknowledge. You're thinking of stopping and fear you'll get the blame. Why would you even think of continuing with this?

Do they reciprocate?

I'd carry on sending cards to the children, they've done nothing wrong. Your SIL sounds just lovely!