To think that they should be happy for us?

[Hozzer22]

I’ve name changed for this as, coupled with my previous posts, it would be outing.

Basically DH & I have a rocky relationship with my in laws (his parents). This began when DC1 arrived when I was fairly young & naive at 24. They wanted me to just fall in line and bring up our children exactly how they wished. In all honesty, I think they wanted to parent via me, if that makes sense. I have always been non confrontational but I suppose becoming a parent sort of gave me a back bone. After the first few months passed, we figured out there intentions and DH called them and told them how we were feeling about certain things that had been going on. Nothing changed after this. In fact, they refused to speak to DH for a month but then started talking to him as if his discussion had never happened.

Anyway, fast forward 5 years. We now have 2 lovely DC and are very happy. DH has to move due to his career on occasion and our accommodation is subsidised through his work but we don’t get to choose our house. We’ve had some poor accommodation in the past but we’re recently moved to a beautiful new build house. It’s really lovely and a massive step up for us. We’ve had loads of visitors lately and they’ve all been delighted for us and just complimented the house, which has been a nice change from welcoming people into the run down hoyses we’ve had in the past. The information we have from DHs work leads us to believe we’ll be here for quite some time so we’re thrilled.

We recently had DHs parents down and they had very few nice things to say about the place. Our (south facing) garden is on a slight slope, this was mentioned repeatedly. The fact we’re mid terrace and not end terrace, the fact our garage isn’t directly attached to the side of house (but is accessible from the back garden). We’d walk past another house and they’d say “oh that would have been much better for you, wouldn’t it!” We had a visit recently from DH’s sister and it was much the same sort of comments. “This is a weird layout isn’t it?”, “what were they thinking not levelling the garden” etc etc. Literally not a single nice comment. She hasn’t seen our children for 6 months and she didn’t even have a single compliment to pay either of them. Literally joked one of them was scowling at her and said the other had got big, but not a single nice thing. I’m quite an intuitive person and I just know MIL, FIL & SIL all bitch about me/us when they get together. When one of them visits, it almost feels to me like they’re just trying to gather more info to bitch about. Every time I see them, it eats away at me. We are welcoming them into our home and they just aren’t nice to us. It’s DH I feel most sorry for, even if we had the perfect life, they’d come in and find a fault. DH says we just have to put up with it and let it all be water off a ducks back, but he’s a better person than me. It sort of boils my blood that they can’t ever be happy for us and I just don’t understand it. DH basically wants me to not care what they say behind our backs but I just can’t seem to let it go. I feel like DH has some serious misplaced loyalty to them. Am I the problem here? Help,

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Are you doing better than the ILs/SIL? Sounds like it and sounds like they're jealous. Some people resent others getting nice things, they feel they are badly done to and so snipe to make themselves feel better.

It's DH's parents so he's not going to wade in easily unfortunately. He may have brought up with the gossip and sniping and find it absolutely normal.

I suggest you keep away from them. Just little by little stop having contact. You don't have to answer the phone to them (DH can do that - get caller ID if you haven't already on your landline) or make arrangements or deal with their birthdays or Christmas. Try to get them out of your thoughts (easier said than done I know) and on the (fewer and fewer) occasions you have to see them, just smile and know that they are jealous as hell.

Just noticed that you have started two thread OP. The other one has more replies!

Thank you for the replies. After each visit, I end up spouting all of this off to DH and I think he finds it draining, so I really need to stop doing that. I don’t want to upset him. I just find it difficult because the dynamics in my family are so different. Although I’ve been non confrontational in the past, it’s a little different with my own family. I’d have had absolutely no reservations about saying to them, “why do you never have anything nice to say about our lives. Your negativity is getting boring!” or something along those lines. I think it just pains me that DH doesn’t say anything. His argument is that he tried saying something to them in the past and it massively went south. Now it’s just made our relationship with them even worse (which is true because it’s just very awkward between us now). I, on the other hand, am sick fed up of welcoming people into our home that are only going to ridicule us. It really gets to me.

They’ve always been a little bit on the rude side, but at the moment the negativity is just constant. To me it feels like jealousy but I’m not too sure what’s triggering the jealoust. SIL & her DH has just bought new cars (and very fancy ones at that), new house and various other big purchases. Each purchase is plastered all over Facebook though, in a ‘look how well we’re doing... be jealous of us’ sort of way. We have one car (not fancy) and we aren’t home owners. I’m a SAHM at the moment as DC are young. But I do often think that there must be something lacking in the lives of people who feel the need to put everything they buy on facebook.

We had similar - constant sniping about everything. Our house, our parenting, pretty much everything. Our house is lovely and we are pretty good parents who do nothing weird or outre.

Dh had to speak to them about it - there were tantrums and tears but things did get a bit better for a while. The problem with people like this is that a one off chat doesn’t do it. You need to be constantly putting boundaries down and that’s exhausting.

So how much you want to engage is up to you. I have a few lines in the sand that I won’t compromise on. Ds s safety for example. Everything else I try to rise above, deflect or distance from.

If they can’t be nice don’t invite them. If they do arrive and start sniping then have done set responses ‘I like the garden, you always see the bad side’ ‘no we love it here. It’s great, very happy.’

Talk to dh. Explain to him that it’s getting you down. Talk to him about what you can let go and what you can’t, agree your lines in the sand, together. Then talk about strategies to cope. You have to be a united front on this. We use a combination of ignoring it, deflecting it and if it gets too much direct polite facing it. However that is dhs job, not mine.

It is difficult