It’s a long story so I’ll try keep to relevant points.
I’ve been with dp 5y. Due to horrific DV kids have zero contact with paternal family (significant trauma requiring professional input, support at home etc). My dp has raised them as his own, he didn’t give up on any of us, they call him Dad. In that time my in laws have not once acknowledged my children’s birthdays or included them as ‘family’, or even spoken about them to their wider family who send Xmas cards to dp with only our 2 names on etc. For a few years I overlooked it all - confrontation is now difficult for me and dp is terrified of upsetting mil (as is fil and other family on his side)… until we had our own child (now a toddler). Xmas cards from wider dp family last year included only bio child’s name, fil quietly gave dp cash to give the non-bio kids. I knew this was coming and refused to go near their house at Xmas, told dp it was not ok to make children feel different or ‘less’ so they would not bear witness to the excessive present giving etc to youngest child. They also seemingly will not visit when non-bio kids are here, meaning they constantly were turning up unannounced if I was home with youngest even though dp wasn’t here… just to avoid having to interact with the other kids at all. This became intrusive and they ignored my requests for a text to check or to organise a day/time. Won’t visit on weekends or evenings 🙄 On the rare occasion they did message it was always ‘we’ll be coming over in half an hour’, if I said that wasn’t convenient they came anyway. This went on for ages until I told dp he needed to make this explicitly clear to mil because it is unfair and rude to ignore boundaries. I believe some drama came from this but dp didn’t share with me and point blank will not discuss anything to do with them now.
I feel bad for dp as he does want his family involved, and I keep trying to get myself in a place mentally where I can try to rebuild the fractures… but I can’t. It always comes back to my need to protect my kids from this behaviour, they’ve been around enough bad behaviour from grown ups who should know better and if they are not prepared to treat us as a family then why should I ever welcome them into our family home?
I would never stop dp from taking bio child to visit but all the kids are very close so I imagine bio child will be quite hurt once old enough to understand the dynamics? Aibu to keep them out of our family unit just as they have chosen to isolate my kids from theirs?