In-laws crashing vacation cause husband invited them

[Sensitiveappeal485]

I’ve never had really a relationship with my husbands parents because they don’t speak English or live in our continent and I don’t have the time or capacity to learn a foreign language. And the few times we have been together he never translates anything so I sit there like I’m watching paint dry.

I have been deeply affected by when I was on maternity leave 9 years ago and they came from overseas to move in with me for 6 months without anyone asking if I was okay with this. We cannot communicate, they made messes in my house (father left urine on my bathroom floor, mother spilled tea on my light computed rug) and I was pumping exclusively for my baby and had to go hide in my room to get privacy. It’s not like they had nowhere to stay, the mom’s sister has a massive suburban home not far from here with 3 furnished uninhabited bedrooms. I was hurt that my husband didn’t stand up for me at that time that this was my time off from work to spend time with my baby and I basically had to hide in my room or make an effort to leave the house cause they were in my house and he was at work all day. As a result of this time and the fights it caused, I have further disliked his family, even the ones that speak English as I felt I had zero support during this time of disagreement with his foreign parents staying in my house.

anyhow fast forward to today, we have a long weekend trip planned away with close friends and a bunch of friends from our kids’ school that we planned a long time ago. Since the foreign MIL is coming he has turned it in to a famjam and invited them all and I sense he’s also funding the entire trip for them. Add in his sister that lives far away wants to come and bring her kid that is significantly younger than my kids to spent quality time with my kids who are on the trip with their friends and want to hang with their friends.

im not saying his family can’t go I’m just internally annoyed that they’re coming and he’s finding it cause they think he’s so wealthy (we aren’t). It’s not a cheap vacation spot either. I am trying to buffer my feelings I can hang with my friends but his sister is gonna ask me to have my kids hang with her kid and the age gap is a lot in terms of a water park and heights and abilities to do activities based on age. We already went to an amusement park with her and her kid recently when they were in town and rides were hard due to different ages and her daughter got tired so easily and became unruly and would push boundaries on me (ie I asked her not to walk with dirty feet on my picnics blanket and she would laugh at me and proceed to purposely dirty my blanket).

how do I respond if the sister reaches out. My kids are going to be with their friends on this trip.

Did you not speak to his parents (via a translation app) and ask them to go to the aunts during your maternity leave?

There's loads of people going. Let your kids do their thing with their friends. If sil asks just say your kids are with their friends.

You shouldn’t have married someone foreign.

Do you not realise how it makes you sound with you repeating foreign so much op?

The picnic blanket comment sounds petty. You not wanting to learn basics of a language you can use to talk to your inlaws even if it's hello, goodbye, do you want a cup of tea and yes and no. Yabu. However the inlaws and sil coming to a holiday where your children are with their friends....sounds madness and yanbu. Why on earth has your husband invited them. Yanbu re them staying for 6 months in your house even without you just having a baby. You need to talk to your husband.

Plan to and actually do stand up for your daughter. She's there to enjoy time with her friends; not babysit her little cousin. Because that's what it's really about.

Tell your husband he can entertain his parents, you're out.

"The foreign MIL" Jesus Christ

The marriage sounds an absolute shambles.

You married into it, you need to suck up a bit of it OP.

However, I'd be telling husband to enjoy the trip with the kids and that you're staying home this time. Ask the kids if they want to stay or go with dad.

If you just moan about it, nothing will change.

I'm wondering about this. He bulldozes OP's wishes, is financially abusive, does nothing in the house at all, ignores what she wants. Her PA way to hurt him back is to hate his family, particularly the female members, interestingly.

OP, do you have some weird sexist/misogynist script in your family?

'the foreign MIL', lovely.

You clearly dislike them at least partly because they are foreign. And they have been invited how are they to know you don't want them there?

So the OP should learn another language to communicate with her husbands family, but they don’t need to make any effort to speak hers. Okay then 🤨

But she moans they haven't learnt English to communicate with her. Works both ways

I don’t have the time or capacity to learn a foreign language.

translation : can't be arsed to be polite and make the effort.

OK, some basic questions for you, OP, to help me understand the context:

1. do you live in the UK?
2. where is your DH from and what languages does he speak?
3. are you bringing up your DC to be bilingual? (a great gift!)
4. have you tried learning some language, even if it's just in the car or in the background as you do something else?

Presumably you had at least a year after getting together before you had at least one of the children though?

Nobody invites family on. Friends holiday. Why did he do that?

he needs to sort this out and you need to make it clear that your kids will be with their friends and that this is his mess to sort out

It appears that the OP doesn't have the time. She works full time and does all housework and parenting. Sounds exhausting.

You have a DH problem.

If I were your friends Id be really pissed off that it had suddenly become an extended family trip - has your dh considered that? If dsil asks, then you need to be upfront about dc being with their friends and theyll be doing age appropriate things for themselves and you wont be minding anyone elses children so she will have to watch her own dc herself.
Harsh but true. Fh should be sorting this but seemingly you have a dh problem. He sounds clueless

I learnt the basics of Polish because our neighbour's wife was lovely and we wanted to play poker together.

I've learnt some Japanese phrases for an online game I play.

I'm hardly a genuine, it doesn't take much to learn just some basics if you wanted to.

But you couldn't even be bothered to learn your husbands language? Language tied into half of your own dc's culture?

During the time after marriage and before my first born I was completing a post secondary certificate for my career advancement through night school and online courses and working full time.

I am now planning to just hang with my friends on the trip as the kids will be together.

So OP, this is going to continue like this for several pages - could you speed things up by answering some questions? You've got a DH problem, what are you going to do? Why doesn't he respect you? Is there anything good about your marriage? Are you intending to just put up with this shitshow and complain about it? What do you actually want out of the thread?

Can your kids speak the language?

It does sound exhausting and I think OP has legitimate reasons to feel angry at her husband for not doing his fair share at home.

That said, I don't think being tired and busy is the reason OP hasn't learnt at least a limited amount of the language. As someone who comes from a biracial bilingual family, I know it would be very difficult not to soak up a few basics over a decade of marriage, no matter how busy you are. It's more likely to be because OP resents the situation she finds herself in. Refusing to learn the language is one way to express that resentment and maybe even to pressure the husband to do more (as his life will be harder if his wife and in-laws can't communicate, so it would be in his interest to deal with some of the causes of friction). As she doesn't like her in-laws, she also has no motivation to learn. I'm not saying that OP is doing this consciously, but this is how it's coming across to me (especially with the repeated emphasis that her in-laws are foreign, as if it's their nationality and not the unequal division of household responsibilities that's the issue here).

OP, you need to have a straightforward and honest conversation with your husband about how to change things. You're obviously tired out and he's not pulling his weight in the family, and from the sounds of it you don't communicate openly. You "think" he's funding his family's holiday, but this is the type of thing you should be discussing openly with him and that you should always know for definite.

I'm also getting the impression that there's a cultural mismatch in your expectations. For example, in some cultures it's the norm for parents who live at a distance to come and stay when a new baby arrives (especially if it's the couple's first baby), often for a very lengthy visit. This is how it is in Morocco where my mum is from. If the visiting parents went to stay with another relative instead and left the couple and their newborn on their own, it would be considered the height of rudeness. Is this the case in your DH's origin culture? If you were looking forward to quiet 1:1 time with your baby, this must have been a nightmare, but that might not have been something that naturally occurred to your in-laws - any more than it naturally occurred to you that they'd want to stay long-term.

The only way to work through cultural differences is through good communication, and that just isn't possible when there's a language barrier and an unwilling translator. You've said that your DH never translates what you say, so you can't really know how he's representing things to his parents. This isn't a sustainable way to live with someone.

Sorry just driving to visit someone.

i am in North America. Didn’t realize this was UK based but found similar topics via Google.

His language is mandarin.

Some people answered with great answers about how to respond if his sister asks me about her coming with her kid and she wants them to hang (she lives on the other coast). I wanted to know how to handle this trip that is actually an annual thing with friends recently established in past year and planned with the friends months ago.

Handle the trip in what way? It seems as though your husband has invited his family and you are expected to just get on with it.

What is your plan going forward? Your husband doesn't ask for your opinion on things that affect you, he does nothing at home. Are you just going to continue like this because if so, he's going to keep doing it