why????

[drudgetrudy]

AIBU to wonder why on earth MILs ( DMs too) want to spend days on end intruding where they are not wanted over Christmas. Can understand wanting to see son or daughter and DGC over Christmas but WHY is it the end of the world if they want to go elsewhere? Can't they watch TV or read books? Have they no friends? A Gran talking here.

Because I would want to be with someone! I don't get why that surprises you.

x post.

I can understand your answer. But it is to be expected that a young family would spend time at other relations or have the occasional christmas by themselves.
Slightly different if the person has no one else, as is sometimes the case. But not a lot that can be done about it sometimes.

bowelsarm - no, it doesn't seem strange at all. I'd hate to be alone at Chritsmas too.

Thank you BitOut and Bling, I was feeling like a bit of a selfish saddo for a moment.

I'm a total child about Christmas though. I am a lot more excited about it than my teens for example. Hopefully having three DC someone will want me at their house when I'm old and decrepit.

Incidentally, I would be fine home alone with DH and the dogs. I just wouldn't want to be home alone, literally alone.

I'd hate to not spend Christmas with my parents. I guess I'll never understand why some people don't want to, fuss and all. I'd hate for my mother or MIL to feel they are unwanted.

Don't generalise I love my mum and mil. In fact we descend on mum for a week at Christmas.

I can imagine her AIBU "AIBU to think dd should bugger off now?"

In our case, MiL is not alone. She has a husband and DH has 3 other siblings. It's just us who aren't going to be there on the day. We will be there on Boxing Day though

Bowlersarm I completely understand. I find it odd that people wouldn't want to be with parents / siblings / extended family at Christmas.

I don't know why people think it odd that you're strange for not wanting to be alone.

It would break my heart if my mom thought for even one second that she wasn't welcome / wanted here. Because she is.

Bowlerarm wrote worried as opposed to wouldnt like it. That is why I queried it. I thought that she meant that she was fearful of something which is why I queried what she had posted.

Semantics golddigger. You knew what she meant. It's something that concerns her because she wouldn't like it. As, I suspect, most people wouldn't.

I didnt. But totally up to you whether you choose to believe me or not.

It would be very odd to spend Xmas without family around.
Surely that is the whole point?
Everyone is welcome round here.

But when it involves hundreds of miles, expense, time and no sleep it's not so simple is it

It will just be me, husband and the kids this Christmas and has been for the past 3 years. Many people don't spend it with lots of their family. Not completely our choice but just how it is. And then some folk don't have the happy family set up. To say it is odd or the whole point is a bit in your face to those who don't have the big family Christmas thing going on.

I feel absolutely heart sorry for a lot of MILs on here, they are so categorically unwanted, it makes me so sad. I would love to know the real stories behind the mil dramas.

I haven't been with my family at Christmas for the last five years and I really wish I could be. I would hate for my mother to be on her own, I think that would be really grim, and no watching TV or reading on her own really really wouldn't be the same as having your family around you, wherever that might be. Luckily I have three siblings so my mum won't bee too lonely I hope (my father died in January).

However that's what happen when you emigrate a long way away and so I'm not complaining, and we do have lovely friends who we will visit on Christmas Eve.

Not an issue for MIL as she has been dead for many years, and FIL and partner have turned into rather unwelcoming hermits.

Personally when I'm old and grey the idea of being cast off at Christmas, the ultimate family occasion is not very appealing, and I'm slightly bewildered that anyone should find that puzzling.

It's not a case of being unwanted, it's a case of not wanting to cut yourself in so many slices there's nothing left for yourself, we don't all live on the doorstep, and some of us would have to sacrifice one family over the other to please one person, and never ever pleasing themselves,when you work full time, never see your kids and have to spend all christmas in a car at some point something has to give... And have you ever noticed it's hardly ever the dads of fils kicking up a fuss, and you will often find the mum or the mil, when pressed didn't spend their Christmases in peoples back bedroom... Imagine being 40 and never having cooked your own dc's Christmas dinner, or have woken up in your own bed, or lived out of a suitcase each festive season

i cant imagine christmas just me, dh & DD, to me thats just a normal day with a roast dinner.

i enjoy spending christmas with our family.

Iamusally - that is different from many of the recent threads where the tone is about DIL's resenting having to spend time with their MIL's especially over Christmas. Think many just want the MIL to fuck off and die and stop being an entitled PITA. Think Karma might bite them in the ass one day. Fed up seeing thread after thread about MIL's lately.

I don't resent spending time with anyone, but prefer to stay home and relax, if people were on our doorstep would be fine, but their not, so only us end up exhausted and skint as a result... So we stopped doing the Christmas roadshow and guess what no one comes to us, they have been invited but it's too much effort for them ( but fine for us ) and they still moan and sulk, sometimes you just can't win!

No, I understand that as we are in the same position. I would love to be with family at Christmas but want the kids to wake in their own beds and home. We used to be scattered all over in different family homes and the trip could be horrendous - not relaxing at all.

MiL is like this. They live in another country. Plane tickets are very expensive at Christmas and both dh and I have to work over the holidays. She cries on the phone to dh every year and says he's breaking her heart . She has fil and bil there every year so we are the big disappointment. They are always invited to ours but she 'doesn't like to travel' .

Luckily my parents don't put any pressure on us to visit them. I think the difference is that my parents had pressure put on them to visit my grandparents every Christmas and suffered many car breakdowns in the snow, whereas my il's always stayed at home every year so don't understand what it's like.

I miss my extended family, but to be honest if I felt like my DH and children weren't enough to make it feel like it was special, then something's wrong with our relationship as a nuclear family!

Nothing is wrong with your nuclear family just because you want to include parents and grandparents in Christmas.

My fabulous Mil sent me an email 3 years ago after we'd got over the newborn Christmases which are pretty special. She said we were always welcome and she and Fil would love to see us, but we had our own lives and family which was more important. Unless we decided otherwise, they'd come and see us every 3 years - let them know how many people so they can bring enough wine and cake.

My mil is fab.