How much effort do you make with in-laws?

[giraffes2021]

Just out of interest here wondering from a female perspective how much effort do you make with your DP family?
Is it you that would reach out to arrange to see them so they could see DGC ? Or same with their sisters and brothers?
Or do you leave it all to DP?

I love my SIL and see her often just the two of us. We also go out for meals with in laws, cinema etc. MIL is now elderly and very frail and DP does most of her appointments etc but I’m happy to help out if he’s stuck for any reason. We all live fairly close to each other. Most of my own family (apart from DC) can’t be bothered, so lucky for me, my in laws are my family now.

I get on well with my ILS but I leave the vast majority of arrangements,contact etc to my DH
As he does for arrangements with my family 🤷‍♀️

I used to make the effort but then realised that DH didn't make any effort as regards my own parents (his ILs) and figured, why do I bother? So now the ball is entirely in his court.

My in-laws live abroad and DH arranges all the travel (us to them and them to us) so I don't get involved in that side of things.
However I make an effort in the sense that I give them a lot of my time. I spend two weeks with them in their country at Easter, two weeks in the summer. Every other Christmas I'll spend a couple of weeks with them. Then we also host them here a couple of times a year and I make a huge effort to make them feel welcome, cook lovely meals etc.

Quite a lot, a bit more than my husband does anyway
as he works a lot and I have more time. They are all round good people, they adore my son, I’m very fond of them and they do a lot for us, whenever they can. I’m happy to make the effort with them particularly as the effort is reciprocated. Same with one of his brothers.
The other, not quite so much. We don’t always quite see eye to eye and so all contact and plans are generally left to my husband, altho our relationship overall has improved in more recent years.

I'm at the other side of this but my adult children contact me, I very rarely speak to their partners except face to face when we visit them or they visit us. We get on, no issues but it just seems appropriate to communicate with my children so I phone them or they phone me.

I mainly contact their partners when I've had birthday/Christmas presents as I thank them as well as my kids. No idea who buys the presents from two of them but with the other two I do know it is my son and daughter who choose my presents.

I suppose all families have their own way of doing things.

They live on the same land as us, just down the road. I see them most days.

I make loads of effort as they are so good to us, doing school runs, taking in parcels and so many more things

Quite often pop in for coffee just me or me and dc - they have only been my in laws for 3 years and I am know I'm very lucky to have them! My dc are not their gc but they don't treat them any differently. Dd was calling mil granny on our second meeting!

I put as much effort into them as they put into me. Ie, none. For 10 years they didn't even bother to know what I did, and never bothered to make a relationship with ds (or dh to be honest).

Exactly. I get on well with my in laws but DH does the arrangements for his side and I handle my side.

I did used to make an effort with my (now deceased) parents in law. They were lovely, and much much nicer than my own parents (who I avoided). It's not about the relationship, it's about how well you get on with the people/person.

It depends on your definition of effort.

My DH was close to his parents, so would keep in regular touch with them of his own accord. I didn't need to do it for him.

They lived two and a half hours away so we'd go up for the weekend every six weeks or so. That might have felt like effort in the very early days, but I quickly came to love and appreciate them, so it wasn't an effort at all. They would come and stay with us similarly, at his suggestion.

DH also saw to their birthday cards and presents, but because I loved them (and probably had more ideas for his mum) we'd often shop together. Not an effort.

My MIL (widowed at that point) developed Alzheimer's just after DH died. I tried to do as much for her as my husband would have done. But I still wouldn't call it effort. I wanted to do it, not just for him, but because I loved her.

I used to make the effort because my DH didn’t, then I became ill for several years and was unable to visit them with DC and they didn’t contact me or visit at all during that time because I wasn’t their ‘real family’. I realised it was all one sided and my DH was right not to put in the effort with them and so I don’t either anymore. The only thing I do is send them birthday cards.

It's more the the mental load etc sometimes feels like it's too much, then I have to push DH into making the effort or making sure he's sees them of a weekend etc and I feel like I need a fresh approach now. Don't get me wrong have a fairly good relationship (issues in the past) but it's ok now I guess, however unless we invited them round or made a trip to theirs to visit they wouldn't think to come and see us.

I see them as my family.

I’d call in without DP for a cuppa quite regularly and now we have a baby they mind him twice a week so we stop in for dinner of an evening when theyve looked after the baby. Same with DP’s siblings and their partners & kids, they’re my baby’s cousins and auntys so I love that they spend time together.
They’ve done a lot for us over the years and we’ve done the same for them without obligation, just purely out of love.

I'm more of the natural organiser so I tend to coordinate with them over visits etc but I don't invite DH's parents without speaking to him first.

My MIL is on here and to be honest it's quite good because I'm sure reading all the awful MIL posts has helped! But I also think she reads the one with all the Dil's saying I leave it to DH for organising but this annoys me because DH is hopeless and I get annoyed when I'm the last one to know about arrangements - I'm like - put it on the group chat because that's what it's for!

But I like my in-laws for the most part, I see them as my family too, and they are forever blood related to my DC - so I look at it like we're all in it together rather than his family Vs my family. For our unit - we're all related to each other.

So the only thing that bugs me is when things by-pass the group chat that do involve me.

They’re dead now but unless we were on holiday we used to take the children round to see them every weekend (they didn’t drive) my parents also saw the children each week. We’d only be round there for about an hour. We were lucky as my parents only live in the next street and my PIL a lived about 1.5 miles away. I would get the PIL a few bits when shopping and DH would drop it off to them. Where my parents were born 1948, DHs were born 1925 & 1932 (both mums had children in 68 & 71) I miss them and I’m grateful that they saw our children reach 17 & 19 they adored their grandchildren and they were adored by them. They had a lovely relationship because we made it happen.

Compared to some horror story's mine aren't too bad. But I do get some passive aggressive comments/digs. And they use to moan whenever we asked them for childcare (which was only when my mum was seriously ill)

I leave the contact /arranging to dh now, I use to do it but because they can be unpleasant I stopped trying. We do see them every couple of months and seal every couple weeks ( either dh rings them or they ring us.)

I feel so much better to leave my husband to manage the relationship. And I think they prefer it too.

I used to be the organiser, gift buyer, present thanker, IT support for the inlaws but then PIL started automatically coming to me for other organising (e.g. family holidays) rather than asking DH or BIL.

I guess I just got a bit disillusioned - DH is more than capable and BIL is their son too, so why was I called on to do so much? So I gently stepped back and DH stepped up. Now they go straight to DH and he's responsible for everything to do with his family now.

Edited to add that PIL are lovely, no falling out or anything. Just a bit fed up with them coming to me rather than their two adult sons.

@SlidingInto2024 this is me!!

100% this. If he can't be arsed to deal with his own mother then I definitely don't see why I should.

I get on well with his parents but still leave it up to him to sort! It's more the mental load side of things so it's not another job for me! We're 50/50 with things and this is just one of the things we've split so he deals with his family and I deal with mine!

None.
They aren't bothered about seeing family.
DH phones them etc.

MIL always rings once a week during the week without fail unless she knows he's working away and then she must decide that she doesn't need to speak to me. 😆Dh does his best to visit them each Sunday (they live about 20-25 mins drive away)and me and the kids used to go with him too when they were little and I only worked part time but I'm shattered from fulltime work these days and need a lie in most Sunday mornings as well as seeing my own mum/catching up on housework/shopping/gardening so I don't go often. He won't change the time he goes and they don't seem to want to come to us, so......Kids are now young adults and doing their own thing/away at uni but I will nudge them to go when they can every couple of months. DH doesn't think they should be made to go so left without my nudge they probably wouldn't go.

We used to get a visit on birthdays but they rarely bother these days and they always get presents sorted in advance so they can give them to DH on one of his regular Sunday morning visits. Unless it's one of the years they come to ours for Christmas.

We just used to have more time for seeing relatives when we were younger. I didn't mind shopping for the inlaws' presents if DH told me what to get. But these days we just split it so he sorts his side out and I sort my side.

Fil is in a nursing home with advanced dementia, I let dh deal with that side of things.

Mil is a joy. She's been divorced from fil for 30 years and is brilliant. She and I will phone about once a fortnight for a good natter. She comes (lives in NI and we're in Scotland) for kids birthdays and her birthday and Christmas. We go over a few times a year to visit fil (not that he knows who we are any more) and always stay with her.

It wasn't always like this. She cried (and not with happiness) when dh phoned her to say we were engaged. He had to go and visit and sit her down and tell her that I was going to be his wife and that was that and she'd better be nice to me or she'd lose us both. She also had to hear that she was giving the children so many presents that the children were more interested in the presents than her when we/she visited. She was good about both, and this Christmas when she came, my daughter (23) told her she didn't want a present, just to see her "wee Grannie" - of course there were presents too.

Dh gets on well with my parents and brothers, talks to them relatively often and occasionally joins in a fishing trip if ds is going along. He was good at handling communication when I was diagnosed with breast cancer and couldn't face the phone calls to everyone. They all seem to like him!

I arranged things with MIL when I was in maternity leave. But I do get along with her very well. I prefer her to my own mother!
Now I'm back at work full time so if we see them it's all together at the weekend so generally DH will speak to them about it.