Excluded from grandchildren's life

[GrandmDEA]

I'm going to try and keep this short but I have 3 sons, one of them moved abroad many years ago for work, it was meant to be short term but he fell in love with a girl 10 years his junior, married her 9 months later and they had a child a year after that. A couple of years ago this same country that they were living in and she was from ended up in a war, they moved to the UK with their 2 children immediately. They live in London, fairly central, they pay way below market rate in rent as someone he works with owns it but it is a tiny 2 bed and they have 2 children, one who has just turned 5 and the other just turned 3.
We have always had issues with them, we weren't invited to the wedding, in fact we didn't know they were married until after the wedding happened! We had never met her. She clearly has no respect for our family but we try to keep the peace.
This year we have seen our grandchildren 2 times, we only live an hour away but they don't let us visit, if we show up uninvited on the weekend, they are always busy. If we ask to go up to see them it is always "no the house is too small for guests". My sons is meant to bring them to see us once a month but most times he ends up coming alone with some excuse. We haven't seen his wife since Christmas!
Our son was meant to be bringing them to see us tomorrow, we have spent £100s on birthday gifts for them as they both had birthdays at the very end of August. Today he has messaged saying sorry we can't come the girls will be too tired after a week at school/nursery, we will see you during half term! This happens every time.
We have had some big fall outs over decisions they make such as his wife continues to take their tiny children to a war torn country to visit her family, putting them through 24 hours of travel to get there and back! My son never goes with her and I don't think he actually agrees with her but lets her do it anyway. It stresses me out when she takes them to there, I worry for their safety so I have voiced that I don't agree with it. We obviously also got off on the wrong foot with the lack of wedding invite to anyone in our family. We only mention things that concern us out of care but it is always taken as an insult.

AIBU to be really hurt they keep excluding us? The grandchildren have spent several weeks this year with their maternal family and they all live in a war torn country, but barely 2 half days with us who live much closer!

I really don’t see what the DIL has done wrong here. The son is clearly low contact with his entire family and always has been, I bet my left knee OP knows what this is about but prefers to blame the foreigner.

Always easier to blame the dil than take a deeper look at your own adult child and your relationship with them.

Straight out the Terrible mil 101 book 😅

Haven’t read the whole thread, OP, although have read all your updates. It seems to me that PPs are very quick to blame you, but the fact you see a lot of your other DCs and other DGCs, combined with the fact that your other DCs don’t see much of your DS either (and weren’t invited to the wedding) suggests it’s not necessarily your fault — although I suspect the gold digger comment didn’t help matters… The only thing I think you can do is be as pleasant as you can and, where possible, offer alternatives — I mean, if it’s only an hour away and the DGCs are too tired to travel, can you go to them? There’s no need to stay the night if it’s just an hour, presumably, so the fact it’s a small place shouldn’t matter. It does sound as though neither your son or his wife are particularly keen on having a close relationship though, so there may well always be a reason why whatever you suggest won’t work — in which case, sadly, I’m not sure there’s much you can do…

Your blaming HER for the issues in the relationship. You are a stranger to her. Your son doesn't bring his kids to visit you. He chooses not to. Maybe that's because you can't mind your business or respect boundaries.

You're blaming your DIL when the one who doesn't make the effort to see you is surely your son.

On reading your posts your disapproval of your DIL is clear. If my MIL had been as judgemental as you have been I would have avoided her too.

We don't have a right to family relationships. They're a privilege. You're going to have to earn yours if you want a better relationship with the four of them.

Sadly, it is very clear why this is the situation. It is not your place to comment on his choice of a wife and it is definitely not your place to comment on their parenting decisions. By all means you can have these views, but you do not get to express them to him/them and have everything be alright after. They do not like your opinions and do not want them in their lives. Hence they are keeping you at arm's length. Your DIL owes you nothing - it is your son who is responsible for any relationship between you and his children. He has chosen to go low contact.

If you want that to change, you first need to take accountability for your behaviour and stop being negative about his wife, the mother of your grandchildren. Be someone who deserves those grandchildren.

The other week there was a post about being summoned to dinner by a MIL so she could air her grievances about how the OP and her family treated MIL. I think it was that story but not certain.

Somebody posted a link to a site about how narcissistic parents never tell the whole story, leaving out the bits that make themselves sound bad, when they complain about their terrible treatment from DS/DD/DIL/SIL/GC in online forums etc.

A very informative site and, for the life of me, I can't remember what it was called and failed to save a link.

This thread's OP really reminds me of the examples on that site. Leaving stuff out to support her side of things.

I've googled to see if I can find it but no luck. It's buried in the thousands of results you find if you search "narcissist parents". Does anyone know what I mean? OP could do with reading it, even though I doubt she would allow herself to see the parallels with her own behaviour in it, so it would probably be futile. But you never know, maybe?

Maybe I'm wrong but I'm copping a strong whiff of narcissism, scapegoating and prejudice. The son moved away a long while before he met his wife. There's more here than OP is letting on. A big untold backstory is my guess.

I'm not sure why people would share their problems with others on here. People are totally unsympathetic. It is just a big pile on - with people seeming to revel in the chance to say hurtful things to others.

You don't sound nice and your son knows you well enough. To not even be invited to the wedding speaks volumes about your relationship before his wife even came on the scene.

Maybe some of your concerns are not unfounded but they're the kind of thoughts you keep to yourself.

As an immigrant from a poor country myself, I would absolutely have NOTHING to do with in laws implying I was some kind of gold digger. You had your shot and you blew it. It's hard to come back from that and it's not helped by you still criticising their choices.

If truth telling is a crime, I’m guilty

I don’t accuse people of being gold diggers and expect to be greeted with open arms though…

My mum was labeled as a "foreign gold-digger" by my dad's parents. They never said it to her or his face (like you apparently did...), but it was always implied. My grandmother would constantly tell my dad about hir former girlfriend, how she was doing, and how great they had been together. I remember mom crying after one of their visits. It's no wonder that we had little contact, mom didn't want to visit them and I didn't either because they always talked badly about her in front of me (of course, always pretending that it was out of concern). Not surprisingly, they blamed her, just like you are doing. As an adult, I have no contact with them. And this is your future, if you don't change how you treat your DS and your DIL.

More hurtful than telling your son his wife is only with him for his money and that they are terrible parents for taking their children to Ukraine?

Often I’d agree with you Shortshriftandlethal but I think this is one of those times when the OP is so entrenched in their way of thinking that it makes no difference what anyone else says.

When you imply the bride is a golddigger is it really surprising you don’t get invited to the wedding!!!

'one of them moved abroad many years ago for work'... at that point the relationship with your son was already frayed for some reason. After he met his partner you've expressed disparaging things about a girl you hadn't met, and made your son think that you dissaproveof his choices. I suggest you fix that the relationship with your son. He is very likely talking to his wife, and saying... 'I can't put you through seeing my mum, she's fixated that you are after my money, I'll go by myself give you a rest from the little ones'. His wife clearly takes family seriously.

How long was your DS living there before he met his wife OP? You say he went 'many years ago'.

I am assuming that his wife is beautiful looking and you have applied prejudice to her motives and your son has become very defensive and subsequently told her of your opinion. I am unsure why he would do that if you otherwise had a good relationship.

If my 30 year old son announced impending marriage to someone 10 years younger (regardless of where they are from) I too would be surprised and would question motives. Difference is, my judgement would be towards him, a grown man in a serious relationship with someone barely out of their teens.

I also find it strange that nobody from your side was invited to this wedding. There is far more to this I feel.

OP, you have been piled on enough, but going to anyone's home unannounced is really poor form and you should own this.

If everything in your OP is true then you should be directing your ire towards your son who seems to have not done much to temper this discord and spare his wife of your scornful opinions, while trying to build bridges.

I think you deserve a chance with them, but you need to offload this idea that it's all on your dil that you don't have regular contact with you dc.

Ps, Her travelling to her homeland, particularly at this wretched time for Ukrainians, is none of your business - however much it troubles you.

They don't like you and don't want their children to spend time with people they don't like. It's a sad situation but there's nothing you can do to force a relationship.

Embrace the grandchildren you are close with and hope that time will heal wounds with your son and DIL.

Even if you think it, you do not say it! Do you not know this???

That. I've been there, and had reservations about my offspring's relationship choice. But while the concern night be reasonable, voicing it is not. It simply will never end well.

OP maybe you can write your DIL an incredibly humble, lengthy and grovelling apology and promise to never overstep your mark again. Tell her you do value her and the mistakes you made you now recognise and how you would love a relationship going forward. Plus flowers? And give it time. I think that might be the only thing you can do.

Sometimes it's to just rant from frustration, sometimes it's to seek advice. Sometimes they just want to be told what they want to hear, usually that's a closet narcissist.

In a relationship were both are from different cultures, some decisions of the couple might not necessarily be seen as standard by one of the families of the couple. However, as a relationship and marriage, it is a combination of traditions and backgrounds. For your DIL it is easier to travel to the Ukraine than for your DS, as there are travel restrictions in place for men. I also know multiple Ukrainian women that travel from and to Ukraine, sometimes even for work to visit conferences elsewhere. It might be that by her travelling to them with the kids, they have a sense of normalcy where possible in a country at war. Your DIL and DS will have fears over her family there I presume. By questioning his choice you have made it clear that you do not agree with his choice. No apology will fix that. i am in mixed marriage and have effectively cut out majority of my extended family, so most of my aunts and uncles. I can do without the hidden remarks about my DH and DC.

Maybe her others sons married lovely British wife’s so where not considered gold diggers.

Only this one went 😱 abroad and married a women from there where he already knew his mum would not approve.

This is going to sound awful, but here goes anyway: Ukraine isn't a hugely dangerous place for civilians in the scheme of things. (I say this as a huge supporter of Ukraine, with some occasional activist work to my name.)

A PP quoted a report showing 42 civilian deaths per day. That's awful, and all of the incidents we see are gruesome and make me very angry about Russia. But scaled to the population it only works out at about 3 times the death toll from road accidents in the United States.

People fled Ukraine because they feared the country being taken over by Russia. That's still a possibility, but much less likely than it was in February 2022. In fact one of the reasons the West is supporting Ukraine, apart from the obvious issues of morality and the strategic need to weaken Russia, is because if it looked like the country was about to collapse and even half of Ukraine's 20 million population moved westwards, we would have a huge humanitarian problem, far bigger than what we saw in 2022.

So while OP's DIL going to Kyiv is certainly a somewhat risky activity, and I wouldn't want to live there full-time, the risks to her and her children of spending a couple of fortnights there per year are actually not all that great. Hundreds of trains make exactly the same journey every week, carrying refugees who are in exactly the same situation and have made the same calculation. It's surely nerve-wracking, but people will do a lot to be close to their loved ones — especially in a context where they don't know for sure what will happen to those loved ones if the situation changes in the next few months. And it's really important for the DGC to have contact with their Ukrainian heritage.

All this is to say that I hope the OP will be able to take some time to think about DIL's choices and see that, first, they are not suicidal or even wildly risky, and second, that they are a completely normal reaction from a young married woman when she is stuck in another country thousands of miles from her entire family.

Whether or not the relationship can be repaired is a separate question, but in circumstances like this it's generally up to the senior people to move first. Getting married means that when push comes to shove you side with your spouse over your parents if necessary, and it would be unfair to expect DS to to anything except back DIL's choices.

It is at the moment as you can't fly direct, it's a flight to somewhere like Moldova and then a coach/bus.

This.
I do know of a young man who was incredibly close to his parents ( I have known him since he was born)
However he met someone ( can’t say any more as possibly outing)
and since he met the partner, everything has changed-

It can happen.
Mothers of sons who say they dislike in laws

Remember that your sons may meet a cold woman who has issues- in this case all bets are off.

There is a saying that a daughter is a daughter for life

But a son is a son til he gets a wife.

A Gay friend says a lot of wives and mothers in laws are “Fighting over the same man”

An astute and probably accurate observation.

In the end OP, it comes down to the fact your ds has chosen a wife and a way of life that suits him. From what you have written you seem to think you have rights and input in to his life and you don't.

He is an adult and if he doesn't want to see you, that is his free choice.

And you have no rights over his children either.

Perhaps it would be better if you stopped trying to interfere and left them alone. Your input is clearly not welcome so butt out. Focus on your other sons.