MIL expects to come on family holiday

[DisneyBaby]

My husband and I have been together 10 years, I am 30 and he is 28, we have just had our first baby together this year.

I have a big family and have always been very close with them throughout my life, and when I got together with my husband 10 years ago, my parents welcomed him in to the family like one of their own and we have had numerous holidays and good times altogether ever since.
My sister and brothers partners are the same and have been welcomed into the family, and we all get in very well and have a great time whatever we do.

My MIL, was a single mum and has always been a little jealous of the amount of time we spend with my family compared the amount of time we spend with her. We have fallen out with her numerous time over this, as well as over other things eg most recently when she made comments about how we are doing things with our baby daughter (which she says is caring, but we find negative and judgemental).

My family have gone to Florida every 4 years since I was young and have continued to do this even as we’ve grown up, we’re all big kids and love all the rides and shows, and now that we have started having children, we still intend to keep up the tradition of going frequently.

My MIL feels that we should invite her on long to Florida with my family as she is single and wouldn’t have anyone else to go with.

This puts me and my husband in a difficult situation because my family enjoy going to Florida as our family and wouldn’t want an additional person coming along on our family holiday.
My family do know her as she has been there for the odd Xmas etc, but they also know about all the rows we have had with her in the past and find her a little annoying, so aren’t particularly keen on her.

I appreciate that she is single and doesn’t have as many people to go on holiday with, but why should my family have to have her tag along with them?

We have suggested doing a separate holiday to somewhere else but she is adamant that Florida is where she wants to go to and she thinks we are being inconsiderate that she’s not invited to come along with us on my family’s holiday. I think she’s being unreasonable, and find it strange that she wants to come away with a family that isn’t hers.

Am I being unreasonable or is she being unreasonable?

@greentulips

There would be about 17 of us. Where are we going?

Op, I promise you I will not be gatecrashing your Florida holiday :-). Never in a million years.

This is all academic anyway, it's not going to happen this year and a lot of things may come to pass before it is possible. Worry about it then if you really need to. For now just tell your mum in law it's not on the cards for the foreseeable and you are trying not to be disappointed, "let's talk about more positive things". Or something like that. Then don't mention it again.

I'd never feel that because somebody else had a family situation that I would have preferred (we don't know for sure that MIL does in actual fact yearn after the OP's Walton like existence, it could be that she has a bad case of FOMO) that this in some way entitled me to attempt to impose myself or insert myself into it.

Particularly if I wasn't on the best of terms with the people who are legitimately a part of the family situation - in this case her DIL and apparently her son.

nomorefencepostsplease

I’m thinking Las Vegas with a 3 day New York stop over then a beach week.

First two weeks of July

This puts me and my husband in a difficult situation because my family enjoy going to Florida as our family and wouldn’t want an additional person coming along on our family holiday.

I hate to break it to you, but she is your family. She's your partner's mum. I felt so sorry for her when I read that. I wonder how you would feel if your children didn't see you that often and cut you out of things they were doing with their partner's family.

She must have had a hard time bringing her son up on her own, and she seems to have done a good job - you seem happy to be with him, and it sounds like he's a good father as well. Why be so mean-spirited?

@GreenTulips count me in! Just me though, I'll leave the rest of the family at home. Cos I'm mean like that.

She must have had a hard time bringing her son up on her own, and she seems to have done a good job -*

Sorry but she didn't bring him up on her own.

And they don't get on well.

And she doesn't want to go on the holiday they offered her. With the 3 of them.

@GreenTulips

I know it sounds odd but I don't really know you lot that well so it's a pass from me.

But MY MiL on the other hand...

@sleepingpup

I want to see OPs parents take on this.😁

I'm interested in her husband's!

Ok, lets suppose everyone feels sorry for her and lets her go. Mil has a great time, but everyone else feels the dynamic isn't the same and may be, she's actually really pissed off a couple of family members.

Mil will feel she now knows everyone really well and is "part of the family", so she'll expect to be invited to every family gathering, party and holiday with the ops family from this day to eternity.

How do you get out of that one?

Best nip it in the bud now, and tell her she can't go, as it is a family holiday. No, not her family - the ops family.

Ps Green Tulips, I love LV and I'm telling you I'm coming too, whether you want to invite me or not.

I agree with posters who said it's not for op to make the decision.

If you wanted to, you could ask the rest of the family if they'd want her there. But if they say no your mil is likely to feel even worse.

Tbh I get that you don't really want her to go. I could see it would be awkward and difficult if she's the sort of person to want everyone to change their plans to suit what she wants. Plus how well does she know everyone.

I'd be tempted to let your dh decide if he wants to put it to your family as a vote, if it's a no, then tell her you're inviting her on another family holiday and if she says no then so be it.

People on here are nuts! It’s fucking rude to invite some else onto someone else’s holiday, even if they are related by marriage. Even if they are on their own. Are they thinking that makes it okay, so a couple wouldn’t be okay but an individual is okay?
It means another adult coming to stay in accommodation PILs have organised. I’m assuming MIL isn’t offering to get a separate villa and car?
People are ridiculous on here.

And why should the op be put in a situation where she has to juggle the needs and wants of her Mil, and ensure she isn't left out or feeling lonely on the holiday, instead of relaxing into a lovely family holiday where everyone likes each other and it is proven they all get on.

Is that fair to put the op in that position, regardless of the impact on the other members of the holiday party?

Also the fact that MIL turned down the other holidays shows she doesn’t want to spend time with them.
She just wants a nicer holiday at someone else’s expense.

Can I come on your Florida holiday, OP? PRETTY PLEASE?

Promise to help with the baby (after asking your preferences), and happy to entertain and fit in with group plans.

Your MIL could learn a little something from your parents’ approach to life: put in effort to create and keep fun family traditions alive; welcome new daughters and sons in law so well they make reciprocal love decisions without any stress. Your parents know these things aren’t going to just happen by accident. They reap what they sow, in such a lovely way.

Your MIL is lucky to get any holiday offers from anyone. That’s what happens when you live as though respect and affection and effort (from others) are your due, somehow.

And, just quietly, if I were your BIL(s) or SIL(s) I’d be very shocked if anyone merrily suggested that in-laws beyond the ‘adult kids & partners’ were invited along. It opens the gates to dozens of other relatives feeling put out. You’re not excluding anyone with the current arrangement, you’re just not including the rest of the world. And that’s OK.

Some of you on here are batshit crazy, and many others need to RTFT.

Can we also just address the repeated rhetoric that the more the merrier? Well damn, I couldn't disagree more. I HATE being stuck with people I don't know or feel comfortable with. Not everybody wants to spend thousands of pounds to go on a long awaited holiday, to then spend forced together with a perfect stranger! What about the siblings and their partners who have invested money in this holiday? One person can make all the difference to a dynamic! MIL has NO PLACE enforcing herself on all those people, none whatsoever.

Perhaps also try considering an opinion outside of your own: that some people value privacy (such as any of the 8 other adults impacted!)... that the parents having invested their lives raising their children and probably look forward to intimate family holidays with those children... that just because big families are close to eachother doesn't automatically make them cliquey and fahhhmily snobs incapable of considering others.

At the end of the day, only OP and her partner know if they treat MIL respectfully and fairly, and how much truth is in how difficult she is. But either way, she can't force herself on another family.

I could understand if it was a birthday event for the shared grandchild or something. But someone else's family holiday?! Bonkers responses you're getting here, OP.

Well said. I could even understand if it was Christmas Day and the MIL would be on her own. Then I would think it would be kind to invite her given there’ll be a massive turkey anyway and nobody’s that bad for an afternoon after a couple of sherries in a group of 15. But a two week family holiday? Totally different kettle of fish!

@disneybaby the least you could have done is put enough little fact changes so you didn't out yourself or your poor family. I guess you'llove all the attention you'll entice with the pretend rage your MIL induced?

Whilst a few people are piling on with the nasty greedy lonely single MIL please take a minute to wonder why dear DIL's family know about all the 'rows' (hint - they aren't rows, it is a DIL not getting her own way every time and acting like a spoiled 5 year old).

Did you forget to mention on here how you respected your MIL when she gave you room to get to know your newborn baby, just mummy, daddy and baby for the first two weeks, MIL was 'the only person who got it' but in those two weeks the house was filled with DIL family almost staying full time.

I'm sure such a kind caring DIL would realise how hurtful that could be to a new Nanna? A first visit where a DIL sat upstairs and wouldn't bring the baby down, then rang the midwife for an excuse to stop MIL touching the baby urgent problem and naturally the. MIL, not wanting another reason to be hated, quietly left, with no fuss. Do you think MIL is being unreasonable wanting to see and get to know her little grandchild?

You could perhaps mention MILs allocated 1 hour visit and one cup of tea once every 5 months? Are these the visits where MIL is scowled at, where she feels nervous because she knows as soon as she has left DIL starts texting complaints to MIL - MIL looked at her grandchild for too long, asked to hold the grandchild (?) or said a wrong word! MIL is acutely aware she is not considered to be an equal Nanna - how can MIL not know when the DIL is so vocally petulant!

It is surprising how open you have actually been on here, but it is. saddening that someone who clearly cares about you, your husband and your little family, and loves you is despised so readily.

Was this perhaps a MIL who had quietly saved up for a year to pay for a family holiday, only to hear one thing that wasn't to the DIL liking so the holiday didn't happen.

Anyway, DIL, at least the MIL now knows why and how much DIL hates, despises and would cast off MIL as irrelevant to Mils son, grandchild and extended family. And, knowing all this, do you think MIL may perhaps stop paying for the rare (expensive) days out, the gifts for the grandchild, repudiate the good looking savings account?

The light shining for MIL shines bright, and she is quite looking forward to the Karma when this DIL herself becomes the MIL and DILs children will have subliminally absorbed how to be a nasty, selfish, self-indulgent petulant adult and hopefully your new 'child-in-law' will have absorbed the same from their family. Some things are worth waiting for.

@DILsMIL so if you're the MiL in question and are treated as badly as you've inferred, why on earth would you want to go to Florida for two weeks with such a vile, spoilt and selfish person as your DiL? And what does your son make of the way his wife behaves towards you? Because not once in that whole post is he mentioned.

Yikes

DIL, at least the MIL now knows why and how much DIL hates, despises and would cast off MIL as irrelevant to Mils son, grandchild and extended family.

But the OP didn't say any of the above at all.

She just said she's not keen on MIL joining her family holiday as a) it's not her organising it, and b) MIL has made things uncomfortable in the past with her behaviour.

She hasn't said anything about hating or despising. She sad she was happy to go on a separate holiday with MIL and had suggested as much.

OP also pointed out that her DH and his brother doesn't have a close relationship with MIL either.

I'm not sure why, in view of the above points, this somehow equates to hating and despising.

I think you need to re read the lost - it’s OPs MIL putter her tuppence worth in!!

Oh dear

Is this going to make things awkward at Christmas time?

So the alleged MIL is here now. Any proof?