It's an in law one...

[inlawproblems]

First of all, I must start by saying that I love my PIL... 99% of the time.

DH has two brothers. One of them lives in the same town as us with his wife and children, and the other lives five hours away with his wife and child. We get on well with the one who lives five hours away but we haven't seen them for over a year due to the distance. They will be visiting next weekend and we are looking forward to seeing them.

Things aren't so great with my other BIL and his wife. His wife hasn't spoken to us for 18 months since our daughter was born, for a really stupid reason. He is backing his wife up but we don't think he really believes they are in the right. Before my daughter's birth we all got on well.

Literally everyone thinks they are being completely ridiculous and the thing they are upset about is utterly trivial. To avoid drip feeding, they are upset that we named our daughter a very common top 10 name which also happens to be their daughter's second middle name.

Anyway. We have invited the visiting BIL and his wife and child for Sunday lunch next weekend. We were also planning on inviting PIL.

When I mentioned this to FIL two weeks ago he said he was rather hoping that we would do something all together. I said that until BIL and SIL acknowledge how hurtful their behaviour has been and apologise to us, we don't want to have a relationship with them. FIL said they will never explain or apologise, and so I said in that case we won't be seeing them. He wants us to just let it go and play happy families. I made it very clear that doesn't work for us.

Today PIL came round for lunch and everything was normal, nobody mentioned next weekend. And then an hour or so after they'd gone home, MIL put a message on the family WhatsApp group saying they want us all to come round for cake next Saturday afternoon and Grandma will be there too.

We have not replied yet. We don't want to go. We feel that we are being strongarmed into seeing them and pretending everything is normal, when what we want is to have a discussion. (They have refused multiple requests from us to meet and talk.) PIL are banking on the fact that if we go next weekend we won't want to cause a scene in front of Grandma, or be unpleasant to SIL who is two months postpartum. (I wouldn't piss on her if she were on fire at this point but I recognise that the optics of having a go at a woman who's just had a baby in front of the entire family aren't great.) They're right about us not wanting to make a scene in those circumstances. That's why we don't want to go.

AIBU?

Thanks for reading if you made it to the end of this!

If they only invite you and DH or BIL & SIL then your PIL are choosing sides. They're trying to be impartial and invite everyone (not taking sides) and you're accusing them of taking sides!! Go or don't go, but don't blame your PIL. This situation is entirely of the making of you four adults and not them.

Apologies for my last post, which was too harsh. I also didn’t know you sent a heartfelt letter. It’s such a tough position you’re in, OP. But I still think attending the event in a show of goodwill is a good idea.

You really need to move on. You don’t sound any better than they do tbh and I feel sorry for poor PIL who are stuck in the middle. There is no love lost between me and my SIL but given that we are both adults, we are able to be polite and pleasant when we need to be. It must be exhausting being so dramatic

We couldn't care less if they invite BIL and SIL and not us. We assumed that this would be their plan for Saturday anyway and we would see them on Sunday.

Because it's killing them. And there's no prospect of things improving if they just leave you to it.

They completely ignored the birth of your child? Their own relative? Because they didn’t like what you’d called her?

Then ignored you for six months without telling you why?

Then ignored you for another year after you’d made multiple approaches to them to mend fences once you realised what was up?

Some people will tie themselves in knots trying to make this out to be your fault OP. Ignore them.

For your own sake, I would let this go now and don’t let it eat you up. It hurt at the time because you expected her & BIL to behave with love towards you and take your explanations in good faith and they didn’t. You still sound hurt. But you know who she is now and can moderate your expectations.

@inlawproblems why not accept that family meet ups are not possible at the current time?

Maybe because I assume grandma is of advancing years and likely time could be running short? And therefore they want her to be able to see all her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren together and hope that they are able to conduct themselves well and be polite for a few hours.

You know, it's not all about you and your BIL/SIL arguments, no one is really interested.

Their child was fucking ill in hospital and you ignored her completely! Own your own role in this and stop playing the victim!

I'm with you - if you go, they'll feel they were right and you've acknowledged you were somehow wrong to give your daughter the name you gave her.
Your SIL is nuts.
I'd do the same as you - go no contact, you're not losing anything by not seeing her, she adds nothing to your life.
Like they always say, you can't choose your family (but you can go no contact 😀)

We do care about them but frankly it wouldn't be a nice day for anyone. My husband and I are not good at acting.

Grandma is pretty away with the fairies these days and will not question why anyone is there or not there, she'll just be enjoying her day out.

This.

I'm with you - if you go, they'll feel they were right and you've acknowledged you were somehow wrong to give your daughter the name you gave her.

What? There's no logic to that at all.

I would go, and be super duper happy and nice. Bring a modest but appropriate gift for SIL baby. Not apologizing or anything, just doing the right thing.

Let the scabby SIL be the one who misbehaves and then you can be the smug, perfect DIL.

I mean…. It’s all so playground. Sometimes people make mistakes but struggle to say sorry later when the dust has settled. Neither of you are perfect and it sounds like you BOTH could have handled things better and have things you could say sorry for.
Just let it go. There’s no need to perform an autopsy, just start by being civil. You don’t even have to like each other, just stop making everyone around you walk on eggshells with who is invited where, can these people sit together etc etc. I feel so sorry for your PILs and the rest of the family whilst you and SIL make every family event about yourselves.

We do care about them but frankly it wouldn't be a nice day for anyone. My husband and I are not good at acting.

Yep stay away, no one wants you making the day awkward, if you're not mature enough to be civil, you'll ruin everyone's day.

Poor grandma, she may be "sway with the fairies" but she'll deserves respect of her family being pleasant.

I don't get your obsession to meet and discuss this.
Clearly they do not want to. Many people do not like confrontation.
You need to be the bigger person here, just go to the party, if they are there be polite.
Do this for the benefit of your children and pil. You will most likely never be good friends again but you can be civil.
This is an example you need to set for your children. And forget about what you think they have done wrong. Having young children is tough ( especially a child with medical needs). Don't let this cast a shadow over your children's childhood and your memories of this time. Life is short, just be civil. Try to forget about whatever slight you feel. Don't keep contacting them asking for an explanation, apology etc. When you see them be civil without any passive aggressiveness.

That was pretty much the moment I realised that she'd gone no contact with us but I didn't have a clue why.

Literally, started typing, and realised that the the last communication between us had been months previously when I'd literally just given birth, sent her a message to say thank you for her helpful advice and that I was looking forward to seeing her soon, and she'd sent me a thumbs up emoji, no congratulations, nothing else.

Would you honestly send someone a message in that situation? Because I felt massively awkward and decided to just send BIL a message intended for them both. Maybe that was the wrong thing to do but we now know that she'd spent three months arguing with BIL about us being terrible people who stole their daughter's name, so when I picked up on a vibe that we didn't have the kind of relationship where she would appreciate hearing from me, I was not wrong about that, was I?

I think you'll find it's OP and DH that can't act and are going to be the scabby ones. By her own admission.

Again poor rest of the family, especially PIL.

How could I have handled things differently, out of interest?

Other than overruling my husband on our daughter's name, or just accepting that they've gone no contact with us but being nice to them anyway.

Is there anything else you think I could have done?

Because I am honestly at a loss.

I've tried so hard to fix this and they just don't want to know.

I think they’ve behaved really poorly in not coming to see your little girl, and I really can understand how hurtful this must have been. You seem to have a good relationship with your parents in law. Don’t let the behaviour of your Sil impact on your family life.
Go , let the children have a nice time and know that you’ve been the better person.

Yes, I would. Because a sick child is more important that your petty hurt feelings.

You ignoring her when their child was sick was revealed later in your thread. I wonder what else you have done to hurt them. This is about more than just a name and you have done your fair share in making it worse. Own it rather than acting the victim.

Would you honestly send someone a message in that situation?

Yes, absolutely I would. If someone's baby is in hospital, any disagreements or hiatuses in messaging get put aside.
At that point you had no idea what had gone on. Simply that she hadn't messaged you for ages.
I'd have been straight to the ward with a care package.

Look, we're just not good at faking so we want to stay away from the whole situation.

Clearly we can't win here.

Do you not see that this must be really upsetting for pil and they arent necessarily expecting you all to be friends again, but just to be able to act like civil adults in the same room? Which is not unreasonable. Adults should be able to do that and conduct themselves in a sensible way.

It's bound to worry pil when you think about them getting older and what help/ care they might need in the future - care that their sons will maybe need to work together to arrange. The family they've spent an entire lifetime building is crumbling infront of them and in their mind they probably feel they've only a limited amount of time to be able to try and influence that. To me it's very selfish on all your parts to affect them like that.

To me pil sending out a message but leaving you guys out of it would have been the rude thing to do and it's putting pil in a situation where they need to act differently to keep you and dh happy when it's their invite - to me they did the right and polite thing extending it to everyone equally. They probably don't want to pander to what's happening because they want it put to bed, why would they start trying to arrange seperate events for everything to help you avoid being in a room with sil and bil? Why should they make it easy for you?

Every family has fallouts but you do need to be able to put things to one side to be able to show up for the important things and other people in the family.

I just skim read all your posts. You come across as being extremely angry for something that happened a while back that is a bit annoying but really does not warrant this level of venom. People do things now and again to piss other people off. No one is perfect and they probably have other stuff going on in their lives. Cut your SIL some slack. They were annoyed with you, you got annoyed, now get over it for the sake of the whole family. Why do you want to thrash it all out in a discussion? To what end? I think you just end up making yourself look very bitter and obsessed. How sad for the grandparents right now and for your children and their cousins in the future - and every other member of this family. Do you really expect the grandparents to be hosting two days running to convenience your grudge? I have ILs who I'm sure have pissed me off before and undoubtedly I've pissed them off, but we suck it up and get along just fine because we are adults and we don't put ourselves first ahead of the whole family.