The sadness of losing family members after a divorce. Can anyone relate?

[Purplepenguin2022]

NC for this.
I've been divorced for a few years and due to the carnage that was our divorce and an extremely bonkers and vindictive OW, I decided to cut off all of my ex husband's family (as is generally the norm). It was just easier this way as hearing about new babies and weddings was just too painful.
Roll on 4 years and I've bumped into my ex MIL recently on two occasions whilst out shopping. We had long chats and of course she still engages with my kids etc and is a good grandmother. Now the pain has subsided, I just feel deeply sad that other relationships from a long marriage died purely because my husband I divorced.
Just wondered if others felt this sadness?

I really sensed that my ex MIL felt it too when we chatted. She wanted to know about my family was keen to hear the answers. Needless to say, we didn't talk about my ex.
I know if my exes new wife found out, she'd go absolutely bonkers. Sad really as I'd like a coffee and catch up with someone who was in my life for 25 years.

Added to the above, I'm sure my ex husband would go mad too. We despise each other.

Absolutely with you Op!

My situation is exactly as Peach2021(I could have written your response - in fact are you me?!).

It is a source of great sadness to me and combined with deaths within my own family and friends means we have no older people in the family at all.

I thought my in laws would separate being in-laws from being Grandparents and am so disappointed that they haven’t. The level of lying by ex-h is considerable I know.

I have made attempts of contact over the years, offered to transport my dcs so they could meet up but the in-laws don’t want to and now the dcs are grown up and don’t want to either because they feel their GPs abandoned them at a horrible time.

My dcs don’t see their Dad now either, their own choice because of his idiotic and traumatic behaviour towards them. It makes me very sad. Xxxx

@GenderAtheist That's very cruel. I do wish one could sit down with these types of people and ask why? to understand what train of thought goes on in their heads.

I had a 4 year live-in relationship which ended (fairly mutual decision because we decided that marriage was not the way forward for us). We weren’t married and had no children and it just wouldn’t have been appropriate for me to stay in touch with his family. But I lived with his parents for several months and I genuinely loved them. I never give my ex a second thought but I really miss his parents. They would have been wonderful grandparents (but their son would have made a crappy husband). Almost 25 years later and I still think of them occasionally and miss them.

I miss 2 of my sister's ex's. They were great.

I was so glad to get rid of my in laws. MIL was selfish, always put my ex, and his children, far down the list of her priorities in life. Far lower than my SIL and her children.

Prime example...me and ex divorcing, she does nothing to contact or visit her teenage GC more to see how they are. Has only seen them once in the last 2 years. Never calls. Only messages to reply to my teens wishing her a happy birthday/Christmas etc. This is similar to the years ex and I were together. My kids got dropped by her as soon as SIL's kids arrived.

SIL moved to US a few years ago and her kids get a zoom every few days and she's been to visit them in America for a fortnight 3 times.

MIL even had the gall to send me a "don't be vengeful" email. I sent her a very full explanation of what her son had done to her GC and me. Wanted to tell her what a bitch she was too, but I held off. Never liked her, nor her entitled daughter and subsequent FIL she married.

So glad to be rid.

I feel sorry that I can no longer be in touch with my BIL after he and dsis got divorced. I would have been set upon by her and my parents if I had, so I just sent him a Christmas card and Happy New Year text. He texted back to say it would be lovely if we visited his new house someday, and I agreed it would, but I would be hung, drawn and quartered if I did (despite dsis having kept in touch with one of my ex boyfriends when we split up). A shame all round. They were married for 30 years and we went on quite a few joint holidays.

@GremlinDolphin4 no I don't think I'm you 🤔and I'm sad we're in the same boat. It's not nice is it?

As @Intrigueddotcom says I'm probably better off without the lot of them (I could definitely do without the spiteful silent phone calls from MIL) but as everyone here says, when you've been with someone a long time and are supposedly part of their family, it's hard when that just disappears.

I feel it most for the DC, who must be wondering why Nan and Grandad don't ring here any more...and the thought of the DC going to visit them if XH ever does get his act in gear is just horrible, knowing she'll be pitying them for whatever I am supposed to have done (and 100% haven't)...

My SIL dropped all contact with our family after her husband cheated on her and they broke up. However, it was a fairly straightfoward split as they had no shared assets or children to sort out - so she was spared that particular heartache at least.

I miss her but I fully understand that's what she needs to do to heal.

If or when she makes contact again, I'll pick up where we left off in whatever way is comfortable for her. As far as I'm concerned she's always going to be my DS's auntie, and part of our family in that way.

My PILs showed their true colours as soon as Golden Boy and me split up, so no, I haven't missed them. I'd have been happy to see more of my sister in law, but we're very different and our lives didn't gel.

I can only assume that deep down they feel that the children are mine and not my exs. That we all come as a package. So if he's not living with me anymore, the kids are nothing to them.

Even though the kids are his biological children and we were married for more than 20 years. In fact we still are as we are not divorced/ legally separated yet.

I think about the two decades of my life I spent attending his family events, buying gifts for the hoard of nieces and nephews ( and then their partners and children), attending weddings and christenings, making hospital visits, entertaining then In our home, sending get well cards, flowers and home made cakes, making phone calls, spending precious annual leave going to visit them.

And the day he walked out it’s as if they all disappeared off the face of the earth.

Ds visited today and announced he has been seeing someone, and intends bringing her to a family party in early June. I feel so sad, although I can't and won't show it and I will be nice and friendly to her, its not her fault that I love my ex DIL, it's just sad

Was it yours or your ex dils decision to sever links?