First time poster, so don't flay me!
Over the last few years, basically since I gave up full-time work, I've noticed increasingly snide, disaproving comments about my employment status from DP's parents. In actual fact, I gave up work to concentrate on running our rental properties and still lecture part time in my field at university level. True, we only have 3 rental properties but they are all large multiple occupancy and I do everything, from finding tenants to drawing up the leases to repainting and cleaning them when the students move out and I change to holiday lets for the summer. Its an extremely successful business and makes about the same as my (well paid) DP does. Combining this with being a solicitor was incredibly stressful and increasingly difficult to do and I make more money running the rental properties full-time. I also usually have a renovation project on the go. It was me that paid the large deposits on all of the properties from my savings!
But this is not good enough for DP's parents. During the summer when there is no lecturing, I am subjected to comments that I am "unemployed", constantly asked what work I'm doing or if I've found a job yet (although I have explained to them many, many times that I have rental properties that I manage) and constantly subjected to little digs about how I have plenty of time on my hands. When we're visiting them, its disaproved of that I go to the gym or out running (apparantly I'm "too old" at 36 to be spending much time on sport).
I'm perplexed by their attitude and can only assume they thought their DS had hit the jackpot when he started going out with a lawyer and would prefer it if I worked full-time as well as running the properties to keep him in the standard they think he should be!
Now I know much of this is because, unlike DP's two siblings, I have not yet produced children. They seem to be getting more and more rude each time we visit. They see nothing wrong with asking me to run around after them doing errands such as visiting elderly relatives of theirs they can't be bothered with, whom I've never met, or providing them with legal advice, usually about how they can challenge their brothers and sisters over inheritances, which they never listen to. They are not the slightest bit infirm and would be fit and active (if only they ever did anything!). They are wealthy, mainly due to inheritance (a great cause of dispute in their family) and generous public sector pensions.
In short, I'm really offended and have tried to drop hints but the slightest critical tone results in "not in my house" type comments and then they walk off. I find it an unpleasant, pressurised environment. I'm really close to reaching boiling point and tearing a strip out of them, which is why I'm now avoiding them. True, we only see them a few times each year, because they live 150 miles away and seem unable to visit us (despite being offered free use of a holiday let - apparantly it wasn't the most expensive period so no good to them, and even when driving past on their way to their second house in France). They have never made an effort to visit DP here, neither have his siblings. Which is OK, because we have our own social life and good friends. Unfortunately, there are certain family occasions when my "attendance is required; no excuses will be entertained" - yes that is the way they phrase it!
So what I want to know is, AIBU in not working all hours in my qualified field because I have no children yet, mainly to please his parents and to sound more impressive? DP and I are perfectly happy with our situation, we have no financial worries, a nice house and two Mercs in the drive.
Or are DP's parents just odd? His father took very early retirement from the public sector at about 53 and never worked again, his mother worked full time as a headmistress until retirement. I went to one of the best private schools, which they have never heard of, yet am subjected to comments which suggest that I have come from a poverty stricken background and am ligging it off DP!
Its clear we are slightly unpopular in the family, because they bought DP's brother's £250,000 flat for him when he was still living at home at the age of 33 - he immediately acquired a wife and a new house with a tiny mortgage, closely followed by 2 DCs and the wife being unable to work due to disability. DP's sister works hard as a mother to two children and full-time teacher. Saying that, they don't babysit for any of their grandchildren.
They just seem to have no sense of what DP and I have achieved, with no help from anyone, in a far more difficult economic climate than they spent their working years in. How do I maintain a cordial relationship with these people?