I have gone NC with PIL and feel great. DP is sad.

[amispeakingintongues]

NC with them for last 7 months, and have felt huge relief. I don’t let them in my house anymore, at least while I am here. Kids are welcome to see them whenever but I don’t trust PIL to look after them unattended because;

FIL shouted at me/ us in his house over the fact I gently reminded my own children (ages 1 and 3) to be careful of the boiling hot cup of tea stupidly placed by MIL on a side table right behind them. He heard me say this, then spat out “No what (dc) needs to do is go next door to get his snack)”. I was taken aback by this blatant undermining but ignored it as he’d already been rude to me over something else and I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of a response. 30 secs later, my partner walked in, saw the hot tea. Without a thought, he moved it immediately and the unhinged outburst from FIL went something like “NO DON’T MOVE MY TEA. YOU DON’T CHANGE EVERYTHING YOU DO WHEN YOU HAVE KIDS THEY MUST BE TAUGHT TO AVOID THINGS” (again, kids are 1 and 3) to which I managed to reply, whilst stunned “They are my children and they are so little, if I see something dangerous I will protect them” - and he replied “DON’T TELL ME HOW TO RAISE CHILDREN WHEN I’VE HAD X5/6/7” (he’s estranged from half his kids all with different mothers so)
… afterwards I just found the car keys and politely asked MIL (who heard all of this and didn’t say a thing) to let me out the house. I sat in the car and burst into flames (and tears). Never seen them since.

Some context: They felt (their own words) that I wasn’t good enough for their DS when we met over 10 years ago. Since then their opinion according to my DP has changed, and they apparently think i’m a good mum to their grandkids etc but never once have they said anything positive about me to my face about my character or anything that made me feel genuinely liked and respected, rather than tolerated. Even though I have bent over backwards in my people pleasing ways cooking, hosting, long heart to hearts with MIL, taking her out on lunches, taking the kids to see them etc, there has always been an undercurrent of disdain towards me. Which has worn me down in more ways than i can explain in one post.

Anyway. My DP is getting pressure from them to nip this all in the bud whilst maintaining they absolutely will not apologise to me. And that somehow, I am in the wrong. DP disagrees with them but that doesn’t change much because they are withholding attention/love/affection which is upsetting him. This master manipulation is no surprise but my DP is not well attuned for seeing this for what it is. DP wants me to put it all behind me for his sake, just so they can come to the house. I don’t want to not uphold my new found boundary but also don’t want DP feeling upset. I know i’m not being petty, just feeling like I don’t know what’s best in the long run.

I hear this - emphatically. I'm disappointed that my DH has never once taken this responsibility. In the end I told him that if he didn't, I would, and no one would like what I had to say. I did. They didn't. There was a lack of contact for a long time after that, after which point came the straw breaking the camel's back moment, as invariably happens. I've now been completely NC for three years.

DH's concern was that if he confronted them it would end with his mother cutting him and DC off completely (he's already NC with his siblings). Their behaviour is strange - they'd treat me like dirt under their feet, refuse to speak to me under my own roof having eaten my food and accepted my hospitality, then the next time when the mood was passed they'd want it all forgotten and would behave (and expect others to behave) as though nothing had happened.

After 20 years of this crap I got sick of it. The crunch happened when DC witnessed one of these situations and caught me crying in the laundry room a few Christmases ago. MiL had refused to speak to me all visit and cut me dead with a sharp gesture when I wished her a safe drive home. Only 2 months prior I'd suffered an accident which nearly killed me and she didn't even ask me how I was - not that I expected her concern, but a simple 'hello' would have sufficed. I genuinely think she wishes I had died. DC asked me 'why is Nana ignoring you, Mummy?'

That was the point at which, after 20 years' of what I see as great patience, I was done. Letting my son watch his grandmother treat his mother atrociously is not something I'm prepared to tolerate.

DH, whilst embarrassed and hurt by his mother's behaviour, still didn't confront it, and I've told him straight that whilst I otherwise have every respect for him, this makes me respect him less. It's not as though I'm expecting him or DC not to see the woman. This is the only black spot in an otherwise happy, loving and trusting marriage.

Christmas has been so quiet and conflict free since (I hadn't realised beforehand how much I dreaded it) that it makes me wish I'd done it years ago.

Not always, and obviously there is always 2 sides to every story.
But before I met dh , I’d only ever experienced, lovely supportive, extended families.
Fun weddings , fab Christmas get togethers. Meals out with the chatty clan.
I once heard of vague friend of a friend, who had met a woman , got married / lived together, and cut his mother off
it was shocking and totally unheard of ( I was a very naive, 18 year old back then.
We all judged - he was a bad son etc (I mean maybe he was, but he always seemed ok to me )
Anyway , then I met mil.
People warned me, but I thought she can’t be that bad - and I’d make up my own mind.
My dh was already lc, so it was fairly easy to keep her at arms length, but ….,my goodness…, the bat sh***y was off the scale.
This was from a mature woman, who quiet frankly, just should have know better.
What threw me initially was that she could be so nice.
But also she was … manipulative, attention seeking , demanding, drama queen, gossip monger who told such big lies , and was totally lacking in any kind of self awareness.
It was sad …..she could have had such a different life.

So yes , it very obvious who’s come across this and who hasn’t.

YABU not to let them come to your house. It is mean and unfair to your DP (if a woman on here posted that her DP did not allow her parents to come to the house she would be told that he is an abuser). It is unfair to your kids, who should be allowed a relationship with their grandparents (and even people who are bad parents and ILs can have positive relationships with their kids). Also if you are concerned about your kids' safety then it is obviously better for the ILs to come to your house to see them. I think that it is fine to say that the kids should not be left unsupervised with them, and that you do not wish to interact with them.

appreciate this and i’m so sorry you’ve been through so much! X

Yes! You have hit the nail on the head with him needing to deal with the crap i’ve been dealing with for 10 years.,

i actually had a productive conversation with him last night and i think another penny dropped when i explained my perspective as previously he was very wrapped up in his own feelings, and I genuinely believe (most) responses on this thread have helped me discuss this in a productive way. So thank you.

I also have a friend who has awful scars from a hot cup of tea falling on him as a toddler. Which i guess subconsciously was the reason why this incident was the catalyst for change.

Oh come on, it's not like he was threatening to pour tea over your child, he just objected to how you were handling the situation- e.g. said DS should go into kitchen and have his snack.

I'm not saying your FIL was right in how he behaved - he was rude, but ultimately it was an argument over a cup of tea. That's it. That's not a justification to ban your partner's parents or your kids' GP from the house.

Have you read OP's posts at all? This latest incident is the final straw - OP's put up with 10 years of crap from her in-laws.

It was an argument about FIL forbidding OP and her DH from either warning their children not to go near the hot cup of tea or moving the hot tea out of their reach. His argument was that it was his house so he can do what he wants and children (aged three and one) should learn for themselves to avoid the tea.

I presume that being treated for third degree burns, if one of the children pulls or knocks the cup of tea over, will teach them a lesson that they will never forget. I'm not sure whether that's a price worth paying to placate and pander to OP's FIL's massive ego.

I'm 55+ and had in-laws who didn't understand why I wanted things safe for them in their house, garden and car. I remember one day when we went they had some thin glass against the house wall in the garden, daughter was still pretty wobbly and likely to trip or otherwise fall liver, honestly, my grandchild isn't old enough to walk but when I found out about them I started making sure that things in my garden (and house obs) were safe, still some things to finish but its in hand iyswim
MIL would leave her bag with her meds in easy reach, not everything was in childproof containers, some was in blister packs. When you've got a little one who is into everything that's not on
The FIL behaved awfully. He has no clue about keeping children safe. Also bear in mind that if a child did get an injury from something unsafe they did it would be you that got the blame from social.sercixes if you knew they were like that
In-laws lived a distance away, so it was always staying, we didn't even need them to keep things safe all the time just when we or my sister in law and family visited

A lot of people in their 50s on MN joined when they had toddlers and young children and have been here ever since. In my head I'm still getting my head round the idea that I've had a baby and am a parent at all, and it's been 20 years now.

OP I wouldn't burn all bridges for the sake of an apology. I think we do (I know I did) set a much higher bar for ILs than for our own family or even friends because ILs start off as strangers we don't care about. We never chose them so why on earth would we cut them any slack when it turns out they are rubbish in some way or other? That isn't necessarily fair on the rest of the family though.

I had one terrible IL but found there were pragmatic reasons for keeping at least a tenuous bridge there, while being 100% intolerant of any safety risks. You can't control what you're not involved in at all. Being there at get togethers to protect kids from toxicity and safety risks might be horrible but necessary.

I'd also say that if you can't completely convince a thread of people on MN (people who are predisposed to be on your side) that going fully NC from now (rather than setting some clear boundaries and being very distant) is the best thing to do, then later you might not be able to completely convince your grown-up kids that it was the best thing to do, either. Gritting your teeth and keeping that connection going (with boundaries!) and therefore some control over it might stop you ending up seen unfairly as the baddie later, too.