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!

No she hasn’t all 4 of you have by frankly acting like school children. She may well have arguably started it but my god have the rest of your continued it.

plus all she did was quietly withdraw and not want to interact with you (right after having lunch with you) which is perfectly within her right to do so and I imagine I am not alone when I say I can see why she decided to do that. Everything else has escalated from her decision not to want to interact with you (and to be honest I suspect the name may just be a convenient excuse as to why she didn’t want to) and yiur DH and BIL have imploded their relationship all by themselves

so you can either decide to be civil for any events you come in contact with or just not see them again because whatever else you want just isn’t happening

They're two years apart in age and very similar to each other. There is no toxic dynamic between them.

Pretty sure what SIL saw was a strong, loving, healthy relationship that she needed to undermine in order to have greater control over her husband.

I have it from the horse's mouth, via WhatsApp. I am the villain of the piece because I knew about their children's middle names and failed to communicate the importance of this to DH.

Erm, she's destroyed the relationship between her husband and his brother???

Your absolute hatred of her comes out in every post and I don’t think it is just since the naming I suspect it has been there awhile and it is why she has gone no contact

and I thought your PIL were at the party as well

Poor, poor SIL.

No wonder she’s gone low contact with you two.

Fair enough about the brothers' dynamic, but your spite towards your SIL is coming off the page in waves now. Have you always acted as though you are superior to her? Has she always detected it, I wonder?

Yes, I loathe her, I said that in my OP.

Because of what she has done following my DD's birth and the impact it has had on the whole family.

I had no issue with her before and as far as I am aware she had no issue with me before either.

Nope.

What did you supposedly know about them?

Erm so your SIL should have known her place and given her kids "culturally Muslim" names rather than a name that belongs to do, and she's jealous of you and you're children because you're white and she's not?

ooooo kaaayyyy

Also I don't understand why you seem so confident about what went down between your DH and BIL when they had that showdown in public given that you weren't there? You've said your DH has a nasty temper so how do you know he didn't blurt out soemthing unforgiveable?

Poor, poor SIL. We didn't ask her permission before naming OUR child. How tragic for her.

That's what you think. I bet SIL has a very different take if we take all the nasty comments you've made about her on this thread at face value.

Pretty sure what SIL saw was a strong, loving, healthy relationship that she needed to undermine in order to have greater control over her husband.

OP, stop! You're projecting all over the place

That is absolutely NOT what I said at all!

She is entitled to give her children whatever names she likes, for whatever reason she likes.

She apparently thinks DH and I are not entitled to do likewise, because her uterus works better than mine and she popped out her baby first and then bagsied three names instead of one.

Nope you drama llama - she’s not made two grown men do anything they didn’t decide to do themselves.

You are equally as responsible for the relationship between the brothers as she is. Did you make your husband yell at his brother in public?

No of course you didn’t - he did that completely on his own. Just like BIL is responsible for his own actions.

You are the one who sounds like they are stoking the flames of this estrangement now though.

@inlawproblems there is an awful lot of "I don't know", "I wasn't there", "BIL said SIL thinks....", "DH told me...", "According to BIL.. "

This 18 month feud seems to be built on third-hand information. I think you are best off just removing yourself from it all. Go no contact with the whole family, but encourage DH to attend family events and bring your children. I suspect all these issues will resolve if you and SIL stay out of the way.

Erm, this is clearly all coming from her. BIL didn't think the name thing was a big deal and was trying to get her to let it go.

His main failing here has been refusing to communicate.

He doesn't want to attend. We're a family. He's as hurt by this as I am.

I would say that probably isn’t the case though there is certainly glimpses of a more tricky relationship with your infertility and your belief she had it easy and the lunch timing seems odd. I suspect something happened there she has withdrawn and your BIL has created a fuss over names to try and justify it and to see it can be sorted and it has blown back in his facr

Do the names have any family significance to your BIL?

Maybe there is something else, maybe there isn't. If there is, they aren't telling and we are stumped.

Nope. They just liked them. I've actually helped my FIL research his family tree and these names do not appear at all.

Life is too short to fall out over names. Be the bigger person and go for your in laws sake. It really isn't worth it.

I've read all your posts in detail and you really, REALLY hate your SIL. She's a piece of work...her and her DH are going to split up...you're projecting all sorts of malevolent feelings and motivations onto her...

You're obsessed with her.

Please leave this poor woman alone. Stop demanding that she prostrate herself to you and beg forgiveness for her many wrongs and slights.

Show respect for your PILs. They are elders. Go for cake. No need to speak to your SIL at all. By the sounds of things, she definitely would prefer if you didn't speak to her.

From your posts you come off as a bit bullying. Please just leave it. Forget it.

Don't worry about your kid; when they're older they'll seek a relationship with their cousins off their own bat and all the cousins will have a good laugh at how silly their parents all are.

Just leave it. Your rage and your need to control are...concerning.