How would you manage this in-law relationship?

[Daisychain1987]

What do other people make of this situation and how we should manage it going forward?

In laws are difficult. MIL is highly strung, intense and pushes boundaries. She portrays herself as a victim and as such her family members are quick to rally and attack any criticism of her as unfair. This makes most interactions very tense, and DH is quite intimidated by them. They’re quite an explosive family when angered and there’s a lot of guilt-inducing language thrown around. He’s aware of all of this, but it doesn’t make it any easier for him to actually live through it.

They live far away (4-5 hours) which is great in some ways, but also rubbish as it means an overnight stay. We’ve decided to use a hotel if we go to visit them in future and expect them to do the same when they come to ours. It’s just too intense and unpleasant to share space otherwise.

They absolutely ADORE our DC and desperately want to be hands-on GP. They are constantly suggesting we visit them, buying things for our DC and keeping them at their house etc. They seem to be in complete denial about how awful it is most times we see them (though we do communicate our issues, it has always been met with minimising or various excuses). We haven’t been to their house in over a year. The latest time we saw them we asked for social distancing and FIL insisted on giving DH a huge bear hug in greeting and MIL was all over our DS. When we challenged this it was met with excuses about being out of love and the risk so low.

We’ve kind of accepted now that we won’t change them, but we want them to have some form of relationship with DC. How often would you see them? And is it bad to mainly expect them to make the journey to us, seen as we have young DC and don’t get much enjoyment out of contact with them?

Gosh 4/5 hours is a long way. I don’t think I’d fancy doing that more than a couple of times a year as it would need annual leave etc. What does your DH think?

Maybe you go there once a year and let them see the DC when they come and see you (staying in a hotel).

What do you do about Christmas?

Why would you want your children, your most precious resource here, to have a relationship with such difficult people at all?. Not all family members are nice and your kids are seeing you two as their parents further intimidated and disrespected. They being family is not a good reason to see them!. You would not tolerate this from a friend.

Your husband is unsurprisingly intimidated by them and you find them difficult as well. A good rule of thumb here is that if they are too difficult/batshit/awkward for you to deal with, it’s the same deal for your children as well. These people as well will not and do not respect any boundary you ask them, it’s their way or no way as far as they are concerned. Their actions here are about power and control and that is what his hugging was all about.

You already have physical distance here to your advantage, now put in place mental distance as well.

They were not good parents to your husband when he was growing up and they are not great examples of grandparents either. You all need to stay away from them. If your parents are nicer then concentrate your efforts on them. I would suggest you read toxic in-laws by Susan Forward, your husband could read toxic parents by the same author.

@BenScalesIsAGod before DC me and OH would spend Christmas with our respective families. There was big drama one Christmas when he suggested to his mum that he would spend it with my family. Since having DC we have just spent one Christmas with both sets of parents - awful - one Christmas with my family and this Christmas we intend to do just with ourselves.

@AttilaTheMeerkat the DC aren’t yet old enough to see all of this and OH wants to give his parents a chance at changing. It’s quite heartbreaking because of how desperately they want to be grandparents and not so easy to just stop seeing them. I’ll look into those books though.

We have had loads of issues with in laws. Something that helped with mine was to plan regular trips in advance. They felt more secure and had something to ‘look forward to’. We felt less stressed about the frequent requests to meet up and having to make excuses. We live close to mine so we can just meet for an afternoon / morning which is a bit different to your situation. There are only very polite superficial conversations (so far!) that seem to prevent big fall outs and any emotional damage. Our DC seem unaware of any tension at the moment but I’m sure they’ll work it out when they’re older.

I personally find this way easier than going NC and my DH didn’t want to lose contact with his DC. If I were in your shoes maybe one trip there (short) and they could come to you once or twice a year?

I’d book a hotel 40 miles away
Drive down/up to the hotel and visit the next day,
Plan to do something nice in the area
Leave to drive back to the hotel

Breath stay the night go home

Glad that one trip a year isn’t perceived as being ridiculously little and the idea to still stay a little drive away is really good. It will just give an extra feeling of space.

We’re stuck in such a rut right now trying to plan what contact can look like, what’s the reasonable minimum we can put forward and how to preserve our sanity when we do see them. I wish so so much that we had a different relationship and it wasn’t like this.

Honestly, have as little to do with them as you can get away with!

Once a year is fine, I think, given how draining it must be.