Almost a year ago now there was an argument that happened between my parents and my long term partner (20 years) that has still not been resolved and I have no idea what to do, I can't believe i've even found myself in this situation. Apologies this will be a long thread to explain.
Basically I was due to give birth and my parents had come to stay in the run up to my due date, this was so that they could look after my eldest child when I went into Labour. (Both our families live in Scotland and we live down south in Surrey so they are a flight away.)
While they were here my dad seemed very stressed and when I questioned it my mum just said it was him worrying about me and maybe they shouldn't have come down. To be honest they were kind of being annoying going on about how stressed they were when i was massively pregnant and relying on them to help me out, but I ignored it as they seem to always be a bit stressy anyway when I see them and I just put it down to old age / becoming a bit grumpy. My dad also was going teetotal to ensure he was able to help drive me to hospital if need be when the time came and he made it known he was really missing a beer (they are overly social drinkers in my opinion but i've given up lecturing them about it). Anyway when it came to the weekend I said why don't you both go to the pub for a couple to the local pub in the hope that it would chill them out a bit and this is where it all went a bit pear shaped.
They came back from the pub only a couple of hours later but seemed hammered, not sure if it was because they hadn't ate. Over the course of the evening my parents did seem to keep making digs to get at my OH, silly things but sort of sideways remarks, annoying but nothing to fall out about. When we sat down in the evening they are still having a drink and are quite drunk at this point (obviously me and OH are sober). The argument started over some silly political argument over pension age for women whereby my dad was arguing one point of view and my OH the other. It escalated out of nowhere with my dad saying well when you get to xx age then we'll see and my OH replying, I probably wont make it that long (he was trying to joke a bit to take the edge off). My dad then said 'well I f*cking hope you dont!' and repeated this a couple of times. Its at this point my partner lost his temper and said 'talk to me like that again and you can leave my house' and stormed out of the room and went upstairs after my dad kept going on about it and made a comment to my dad he has to watch his drink.
upsetting as all of the above is, I feel we could have got over it however what happened in the fallout made things 1000 times worse. Now remember i'm a huge pregnant woman with loads of hormones at this point, my OH refused to come back downstairs claiming they were too drunk to reason with and my dad shouldnt have spoke to him like that. I then go downstairs to say maybe we should all just go to bed and its at this point my mum and dad really let loose.
They started saying my OH is an arsehole, that I must lead a miserable life with him. That they couldn't believe that I had decided to have another baby with him?! My mum said she couldn't believe I could possibly be happy with him and that she was dissappointed in the person I had chose. To be honest it was mostly my mum and this is the part that really hurts as we were so close.
Now to be clear, I didnt think they loved him but this completely blindsided me because he's done literally nothing to deserve any of this. Maybe he's a bit of a grump when they are around and doesnt show his best side but its seriously nothing worth the things they were calling him. In all the time that I've reflected on it over the last year the only thing I can think of is we do biccer in front of them and perhaps I did over share a bit too much with my mum in terms of moaning about him over things. Other than that it's totally not warranted, my OH does LOADS around the house, ironing, dinners, washing up etc. He also does loads of nice little things for me. I just thought they had personality mismatch but thats it.
Sorry this is becoming a bit of a novel to explain!
Anyway after they said all these horrible things about him I told them enough is enough they can stop talking about him like that. They said they may have to go home and started looking at flights and I just said do what you have to do not thinking they would actually do it.
Next day they flew home and I had to scramble at the last minute to get OH's mother to fly down instead to help.
Since this time they have made attempts to apologise to us both (over email) and I have been speaking to them but my partner point blank refuses to. I didnt tell him everything they said but I did tell him a bit because he couldn't understand why I was so upset with them and was also shocked they had left. He feels they have known him for 20 years and can't believe they have done this, he went as far to say he tried to take his family away from him. The thing is prior to this they would often come stay (at least 3 times a year) and we would go stay with them on holiday as they have a house in spain. Looking back it all feels like it was fake and actually they were just enduring having us stay.
To this day I've never had a full conversation going over it with them, its only ever been talked about on email. I know this is bad but I just can't face bringing it up as the heartache is painful. Everthing said that night upsets ME not just my OH. It hurts that they had all these views and that they feel I've got such poor judgement. I still can't stop thinking about it on a daily basis, I just wish I could be free and happy again. I also don't really speak to my partner about it because when I do he makes it abundantly clear he wants nothing to do with them which is tricky because I can't easily go see them by myself with the kids as we live too far away.
They did come visit right before the first lockdown but they stayed in a hotel and were only here for a couple of days and only I and the kids went and met up with them. They questioned it as if why hasn't OH forgiven them but I feel it's irreversible.
Even just the other day my dad's going on about post-covid he cant wait for the kids to come out and visit them in Spain like we used to but that was before all of this happened. I can never see that happening again as a family, I'd have to take the kids myself and even then I don't know if I would want to because of this massive elephant in the room as to why OH isn't there. My eldest has no clue any of this is going on (he's only 5 and we just made excuses).
On one hand I'm like how can you just expect everything to be normal, it's never going to be normal again. On the other hand I can't help but wonder if I'm being too considerate of OH and he should just be willing to put it all in the past. I literally dont know what to do, it's almost 1 year on and I still feel hurt from it and I'm still dealing with it. How could they do that to me at the worst possible time right before I gave birth? I can tell you I was in constant tears before my baby was born but once he was born I talked to them just because up to this point they had been amazing parents my whole life. I know I can't keep brushing this under the rug but I literally dont know where to go from here.
If you have read this long I thank you, I tried to make it short but It's so hard.