To think this is not such a good idea to blame me for DH's decision with PIL?

[logosthecat]

Ok some background.

PIL are difficult - DH and I both agree wholeheartedly on this, there is no argument (fwiw, BIL and his partner also agree!). However, DH loves his folks and does want to maintain some kind of relationship. Long history of domineering/bullying behaviour, DH has had counselling to deal with it. They live at the opposite end of the country.

They have been retired since their 40s (inheritance), and they don't really remember what it's like to deal with the stresses of the working week. I think they don't really understand the difference between 'rest' and 'relaxation' - that, if you're absolutely exhausted by work, the things that you might normally find relaxing, like going to nice places, can become a chore.

DH has a VERY demanding job. Long hours, lots of responsibility, lots of aggro. And it's just got worse as he's been promoted. We tend to use the weekends for rest and recuperation. However, when we visit them, it is a cacophony of noise and activity for day after day - we are literally marched around visiting places from first thing thing in the morning to last thing at night. DH is harassed and stressed and upset by this (they are also terribly insensitive, which doesn't help). He frequently becomes ill during or after the visit, and we then hobble through the following week with him going to work and returning to collapse with exhaustion in the evenings, because he hasn't had the downtime he needs. It really bites into our quality of life.

For this reason, we are trying to have shorter visits with PIL. We used to do 4-5 days 4 times a year. We are trying to see them for 1-1.5 days more frequently, every couple of months.

So here's the issue.

We are due to visit their home in August, and DH outlined to them that we'd only be spending one night (2 days). (This has been clear from the start, but they have been conveniently ignoring it to now). All hell broke loose. FIL went into full emotional blackmail mode: 'This is TERRIBLE, your mother will be terribly disappointed, she's been so excited with all the days she's got planned, we're not getting any younger' etc etc etc. We hosted them for a long weekend last month, and we also saw them at a beer festival the month before!!

DH kept his cool but framed the decision that it was pressure from me. 'I need to spend some time with my wife, I've only been staring at screens the last few weekends, and she says she wants some time for just the two of us'. This is not actually true. We agreed together that we didn't want to do the long visits, and I have not, in fact, asked for more of his time! The issue is simply with the way that they are stressful to deal with and both of us reach our limit of tolerance (beyond which we are simply gritting our teeth) at about 24 hours in their company.

AIBU to think that this is likely to lead them to dislike and blame me for the changes? And that there might be better ways of handling it, like being more honest about the actual state of affairs? (I don't mind being told I AM being unreasonable if it is a good plan, I am just not sure we are handling this as well as we could).

Oh yes hotel! I wish we had done this with my PIL although DH thought their place was amazing (small, cramped and smelly) - I think being able to get away from them and decompress would help a lot.
It would have helped me - PIL thought it was acceptable to stay up all night (3/4am) and didnt understand I can't sleep in, I would therefore get exhausted and then sick after every single visit.

The days out might not seem as awful ( and you could go later with a lovely hotel breakfast in you!)

What on earth are they waking you up at 4am to ask you? What is so important and how is that not so far removed from being socially acceptable that they think it's normal?

It sounds awful really and YANBU. They sound very bullish and are obviously not listening to what you are telling them. So I think the only way forward really is to get their attention and explain loud and clear in words on single syllables that you cannot tolerate the situation and that if they refuse to take on board what you are (both) saying then you will be forced to curtail visits until such time as they can be more reasonable. And if they kick up a fuss then let them get on with it. They will turn it all around on you of course but dont engage. You know they are being unreasonable. Dont tolerate it.

Also I would lie and say you have free hotel nights from something that need using up if they complain.

I would have the stand up row. They're bullying you. I'd go and I would do my own thing regardless of how hostile they were and how insistent they were.

Learn to say NO it gets easier as time goes on but as soon as you are presented with an itinerary, just say, NO that doesn't work for us, we will and invite them to join you at a specific time for a specific time that day. Rinse and repeat.

Take your car on trips out so you can return to theirs or your hotel whenever suits you.

Stay in a nearby hotel so you can have uninterrupted sleep.

Ask the hotel reception to filter their calls so you are not disturbed by them during hours of your choosing. (Switch your mobiles off.)

You have a couple of options
A) go with 2 days worth of clothes etc and on the day you had planned to come home just come down with your bags packed and say ok mum/mil and dad/fil we are off now as we have already told you we are going home today, bye. What can they actually do - physically restrain you ??? .
B) say we have said we can't come down for longer than 2 days if that's not ok we can't come at all. Turn off phones ignore them and have a relaxing break,

YNBU. He fed you to the wolves there. I would be furious.

My word they sound absolutley bonkers!

Who the heck would,want to spend anytime with people who behave like you've described, playing loud music and waking you up in the middle of the not too ask questions

I do think you need to be totally honest with them and say you just cannot keep up with that routine. Could you stay in a hotel when you visit them, you'd have much more control and you'd get a good nights sleep.

I wondered how long it would take for people to pop up suggesting going NC.

Your PILs sound awful, but in a way it's not fair to them to reduce contact without explaining why. To them it just looks like their son is pulling away. If you explain the problems to them it gives them an opportunity to change (granted, they probably won't). I'm guessing your son still loves his folks. Maybe if he felt he was acting in their interest it would help him to stand up to them a little? I would certainly hope that my DC would tell me about problems before deciding to reduce contact.

I dont understand why you cant say 'we do not want to visit national trust, the pub or x, y or z so if thats the plan we will just stay home thanks'. And put your foot down on what you want to do on your days off.

We have done some visits inbetween us, but to a holiday cottage not a hotel. They are extremely averse to any arrangement that would give us our own space out of their control (which is the very reason a hotel would be positively brilliant). However, I think they would just refuse to go for a joint visit to a hotel - they'd find a cheaper holiday cottage and insist we went there instead. They would be very, very against the idea of us staying in a hotel close to them for the same reason. It would be VERY hard to do the work to persuade them to let us do this. (This is not saying it might not be worth going through that, but it would be An Ordeal. There would be emotional blackmail, tears, tantrums). It is the same if we were to suggest in a 5 day visit that we went off for a couple of hours to do our own thing - passive-aggressiveness would ensue.

Even if we changed the accommodation, I suspect the same objection would be raised about the length of the visit as before, though. It is the fact that we are not headed down for an entire week that bothers them. Having done dozens of long visits, all of which have ended in misery and illness, I am just not willing to do that any more. Don't get me wrong - if they are ever ill or need help, we will be there like a shot. But I am not making myself and DH ill going around National Trust houses because they refuse to be reasonable! We will do that for 2 days instead!

alfresco - last time, it was FIL asking me if the front door was locked at 3.45am. they just don't have the same standards of acceptable behaviour as others and they have no idea that there is anything unusual about their behaviour.

murmuration - (lovely name, one of my favourite collective nouns) - 6 days!! You are a SAINT! I am glad I am not the only one who gets tired. Sometimes I feel that it's ridiculous - we are in our late 30s/early 40s, and they are in their 70s, and we are the ones exhausted!! I think pngirl has it- our downtime is their uptime. It's hard to explain, but they don't really engage with other people as other people. In my family, we sit around and have a cuppa and we find out how each other are - health, happiness, career, general life stuff. PIL don't talk about anything personal - they never ask how DH is, how he feels, what he's thinking. We are just there to be bossed. Sometimes I wish we could send robots in our place, because the effect would be the same. (I need that evil villain off Buffy to invent the logosthecatbot)

DH is the kind of man who likes everyone around him to be happy. (This is one of the lovely results of their bullying). He's not a pushover or a 'people pleaser' because he can be hugely strong at times. He can and does take some really hard decisions. But his style is that he would prefer to compromise, to work together, to negotiate, to be diplomatic. He is the kind of person who very calmly uses charisma gently to make others feel like they are being listened to fully, while also using what he hears to get the job done- which is also why he is incredibly popular as a leader. Bizarrely, PIL's bullying when he was younger gave him this incredible skillset for managing in the rest of life. They are the only people he can't really deal with, and that's partly because they interact with both of us as if we are children all the time.

My mum is a bit like your PILs although a bit better now she is 80 and slowing down physically. We also have a 5 hour drive so I am quite strict now in that we make sure we have a day of downtime to wind down from work before a visit and a day after to relax.

I think they sound so insensitive that the only way to resolve this is to limit visits as you have done and say you won't be rushing around as this is your leave which is precious. Why don't they do NT visits on their own when you are not visiting?

reluctant - I agree. I think it would be fairer to them to tell the truth and give then a chance to change. If they don't - and I suspect this is all too ingrained by now for that to happen - at least they don't just think he's pulling away. We have, however, given them a plausible explanation (which is half-true) that DH got promoted earlier this year to what is basically the head honcho position in his department, and therefore is now working longer hours than before, and needs to be on hand more than previously.

The worst thing is, they don't MEAN to be horrible. They DO try really hard, but they have zero social skills and no ability to understand that there can sometimes be a mismatch between what they want and what other people want that requires some negotiation. It is VERY strange. I can only assume it is the result of having been retired since their 40s, and therefore not having really to deal with anyone saying 'No' for such a long time? (FIL did not deal with that well when at work).

I also would say that they are acting like children and the only way to deal with people like this is to be firm and stick to your guns. Personally I would go further and if presented with tears and tantrums I would say we only get a few weeks leave a year as we still have to work and this is not enjoyable so we won't do it any more. We will meet at a hotel half way if you want to still have contact. Relatives or not they don't get to act like spoilt children.

doreen - it's hard to explain. Basically, they would not accept that as an answer. There would be wheedling, emotional blackmail, anger, resentment, passive-aggressive statements. We can sit there and endure it, - and we have done so at times when we've just been too tired to move - but it's not pleasant, right? It's very stressful, being in a situation of conflict where the people in whose house you are staying are upset with you.

Part of the reason we want to limit the visit is that we can do what they want in smaller chunks. This means we have boundaries that are safe for us, and they get a bit of what they want too! They, however, want to go back to having it all their way.

My blood pressure is rising just reading about them. They sound HORRENDOUS!

I wish I had something more constructive to offer, but you do have my sympathies.

Thanks, logos. We cross an ocean to see them, so 6 days is a short visit! This year we visited PIL too, which made it okay to spend less than a week.

They're sounding more and more like my parents, especially with the not engaging as people thing. I totally understand what that's like! Throughout my childhood I felt more like a possession than a person, and it still feels like I am just 'daughter' that they can hang on the wall. I originally thought it was great when a bunch of my friends moved near to my parents, as I could combine visits, but it's actually turned out to be a massive trial - they complain incessantly about me doing anything other than being with them, but then when I'm with them they either want to drag me out to whatever thing they have decided they want to 'do with a daughter', or sit in a room in silence. Every once and while they'll tell me their views of the world (oh, the whole world would be so much better if my father was in charge...), but whenever I try to venture some observation, I would get cut off mid-word by my father going "yeah, yeah, yeah" or even "I don't want to hear it."

I honestly don't know what you can do with people like that. They just don't operate in the same social world as everyone else and typical strategies don't work. I've kept up the relationship as I can tell there is no way, ever, they'd understand why I didn't want to see them, and all it would do was increase the unhappiness in the world. And sometimes the thing they want to 'do with daughter' is got to a store and buy me clothes (which they never wanted to do when I lived them, strangely, but now for some reason they want to clothe me; it's really weird), so at least I get something out of it in a very materialistic sense.

OP, you & your DH sound lovely. Your in-laws sound bonkers!!

Do they never leave their house unless you pair, or BIL & SIL are present?

Why can't they do these National Trust type places on their own?

Sounds exhausting just thinking about it!

Do they have any other interests or hobbies apart from bossing you around?

You have to remember, you're getting pissed-off me, after threw a wobbly on the phone toadgirl

To do them justice, they do try. MIL makes marmalade, sews cross-stitch cards, makes little decorations on the top of food that are supposed to (and do) show love, if in a rather infantilising way. I try to reciprocate and make her jam and cakes she likes, which are normally subjected to a thorough critique but hey, my jam can take it .

It's not that they are ungiving, or that it's totally dysfunctional. Rather, they just don't understand a world in which people are different: they have an agenda and they don't like having to compromise on it. I think they are bored and lonely - they don't have many friends because of the way they behave, and most of their social life seems to be going to clubs where people tolerate them rather than enjoying their presence. (I have seen them several times with different sets of people, which is how I know). So I can see why they are reaching out to us to occupy and entertain them, but it's really not our job and nor should we be pushed beyond our limits of coping in order that they feel better. The emotional blackmail and passive-aggressive actions the moment they don't get their own way are not OK. Basically, being with them is like having to constantly shore up your boundaries, as they try to override them in ways that pay little attention to how stressed and frazzled you're getting.

It's sad because if they could just stop being so controlling, things would actually work way better and we would want to see them for longer!

murmuration - oh, so many bells ringing there! FIL is similar: he will ask you your opinion of something, and if it disagrees with his, he will just pretend that you agree and sort of bulldoze you anyway! Your opinion doesn't even get dismissed, because that would be to admit that you differed - you are just reabsorbed into their world in a form that agrees with their views, no matter that it's not actually what you said at all!!

I think you are right about it being 'different worlds' - I guess some people can't open theirs to otherness. Perhaps because it is family, accepting that otherness is all the more difficult, because there is a feeling that it ought to be sameness? And that difference is a kind of criticism, rather than just being difference? It is sad and strange about your clothes, and their desire to buy you things. I suppose that, when things aren't working, the little things that are gestures that reach across the divide matter more. I think that's what I was trying to say above about the cross-stitch and MIL making me 'dinner in the shape of animals' (yes really).

So cross that people think there is something wrong with your DH if he can't cope with that sort of torture! Not everyone is the same and your PIL's itinerary would exhaust a lot of people without a stressful long hrs job. Some of us need quiet headspace to reboot our batteries it isn't so much about physical rest as mental rest and you may as well be going to a five day festival with a dozen teenagers with their plans!
I am amazed at how long and often you go and stay. We are on very good terms with my PILs (though MIL can be hard work sometimes!) and we see them less (& they are under 3hrs away) and usually a max of 3 nights - it is enough for all concerned!

YANBU maintain a united front and just say NO!

Christ almighty, I'm thoroughly exhausted from reading all these further updates! How do you even tolerate this crap for one hour, nevermind DAYS! I totally agree with needing the weekend to have a lie-in (something I don't have anymore though now I have a toddler!) Having to socialise with anybody non-stop 24 hours a day is just insane. I would go absolutely batshit with the waking you up about the front door being locked! I actually would be telling them to fuck off at that point!

I would be stopping all visits and telling them that the visits will resume once they start behaving like normal people. And start practicing the word NO. Nobody is the boss of you. You are the boss of you. If they throw a tantrum, then pack up all your belongings and leave. Do that a few times and they'll start to cop the fuck on.

PS
there is nothing wrong with your DH - a 5 hour drive after a 60+ hour working week is exhausting because eh it's a FIVE HOUR DRIVE!!

Serious question - what do you think they would do if you just stood in front of them and SCREAMED "Will you just fucking stop? We don't want to visit yet another NT house we want to sleep!! Just back the fuck off!!!" Or words to that effect.

The reason I'm wondering is that you say they don't respond to 'normal' social prompts, so I wonder what they would do faced with a seriously unhinged situation? Would they be unable to assimilate it and so actually need to engage with it?

You and your husband are absolute saints for not having already gone NC with them by the way. I think I'd be in jail for burying them under the patio long since.