I have a terrible relationship with PIL. They are rude and cruel to me, make fun of me, judge me, openly criticise me. They comment on our house, relationship, careers, our parenting, anything really and it’s never ever a positive comment. I normally shut this down with a ‘thanks but we’re happy with what we’re doing’ type comment but it’s relentless. Whilst they aren’t often horrible to DC they aren’t always the nicest either.
I ask them not to be rude, I have protected dc and DH defends us all too. but a lot happens subtly, and it becomes a waste of time as they deny everything or say we are just being sensitive if we raise any issues. Or occasionally they get incredibly mad, and will scream and swear at myself and DH even in front of DC. so when they’re in our house really I’m just trying to not let things blow up. There’s a lot more examples but we are now LC, with periods of NC after any particularly bad behaviour. Though they do pretend like nothing happened the next day, and then the rest of the family will comment on how cruel we are being in not having them over to our house enough.
My main issue is that sometimes even though we are LC, they just show up at our house uninvited. When they show up they will look in the windows and they won’t leave if they think we are in, so just ignoring them isn’t an option. They once stayed for 15 minutes whilst I was bathing dc and couldn’t get to the door. The entire time they were banging on the door, looking through the windows, and even shouting my name. DH was at work, and saw them on our security cameras. So he called them and asked them to come back later when he was home instead as I was obviously either out or couldn’t get to the door. But they said no, then they carried on knocking on the door and windows at the front of the house and then walked around the sides and back of the house, knocking on all of the windows and still shouting, letting themselves into our back garden and trying to open the side and back doors to let themselves in, getting more and more angry as time went on. I couldn’t hide upstairs with DC indefinitely so had to let them in, they were angry and started talking to DC about how silly mummy was, and can’t she hear anything? Why did she spend all that money on security cameras if she’s not going to look at them when people come to the house? Why won’t she let PIL see DC, aren’t DC much happier with PIL rather than just mummy, don’t DC love love PIL more than mummy and daddy…and so on…
Ive obviously asked politely and then more firmly told them not to come round uninvited. DH has also told them. But still they just turn up.
Sometimes I feel like I can’t relax in my own home because I know they could turn up any minute and we have to let them in and have them be rude to us in the house, or have a confrontation at the door where we tell them they can’t come in. I can also feel my anxiety building at any occasion that’s supposed to be nice like birthdays or even when dc2 was born because I know there’s even more chance of them turning up than normal.
I just don’t know how to stop getting so anxious about this. I don’t think it’s my decision to go no contact as they’re not my parents. I have attempted NC myself and DH can go visit at their house whenever he wants. But still they turn up at our house.