Selfish for not wanting to help?

[Saltysnail]

My in laws both need support at the moment. One has a broken hip and is having surgery today, we also found out that the other is unwell but refusing to face up to it.

We have a really strained relationship and I just cannot bring myself to help them - AIBU.

My children are now young adults/teens and ILs made it very clear when eldest was born we couldn’t ask for help, they would offer if they wanted too. DH and I are so stubborn that we stuck to this bar one time years ago when we asked one of them to come over for under two hours in an emergency, MIL said no as she was meeting friends. They also bullied us when the children were younger as they wanted everything done at their convenience. I would have happily cut contact but DH didn’t feel he could.

Despite seeing each other regularly my children have no relationship with ILs. We all just have stilted superficial conversations. In order to protect myself I completely distanced myself emotionally a few years ago.

I feel no compassion towards them and can’t see myself helping them but DH really needs help with this.

OP, ignore the GFer on this thread picking apart your posts and putting you in the wrong for everything. They're not reading what you've written and seem to be making their own narrative for what really happened to a complete stranger they have never met.

I get it. The in laws said on day one, rather rudely and unnecessarily that they wanted to provide no help for their grandchild. That's okay I guess. Bit shitty but their choice.
They then rigidly stuck to it and didn't form a decent grandparent/grandchild bond despite you performing the expected duties of visiting with the children over the years.
The children picked up on the attitude so now they're older, make no real effort to visit or change their social plans for when their father's parents do visit.

Aka the grandparents never wanted to help their adult son and his wife and you should take the same stance and decline the help back.

I would be okay with DH helping as much as he likes but not at the detriment to his own family. I wouldn't be picking up all his home commitments/chores to enable him. I would encourage him to seek out paid help for his parents and then stick to the usual brief usual visits.

I agree with this too.
It’s very tricky when elderly parents or in laws become ill and needy, but happens often and may eventually happen to all of us when we are old and unwell and need help from someone. Negative feelings from the past make the situation even more difficult. I would have thought its reasonable to give a bit of a hand at this stage and also give emotional support to DH. You don’t have to suddenly turn into carers 24/7, a bit of help either from DH or from other carers or services could make a difference. I’m not surprised DH doesn’t know what to do about his DF not getting doctors help, this is one of the most painful aspects of being in this situation, ie not knowing really what to do for the best. You can’t control the elderly person, you can’t control the doctor or hospital services either. It’s natural to worry about how on earth you can help out, when you have your own life work and children to manage, and in addition you don’t really want to because of the way they’ve behaved in the past. Take it a step at a time and try to find services or carers who could improve the situation.

My own mother is in her nineties and lives a long way away. I’ve tried to help her but she has been extremely difficult to help and she has done things like cancel carers when I have organised someone to come in a couple of extra visits so I knew it would only be a couple of days at a time before someone came to the house to give her a hand, as I couldn’t do it myself. It’s a worrying situation and there’s nothing clear cut about any of it. In an ideal world the OP doesn’t want anything to do with it, but if it’s DH parents he probably can’t just turn a blind eye even if they deserve it