AIBU to expect acknowledgement from in-laws in this situation. I'll try to make this long story as short as possible. Thanks in advance for reading.
I had my second baby 8 months ago and the birth coincided with my husband starting on anti-depressants (he's not 'depressed' as such, but a bit panicky when under pressure since youth - he says it's because he fears failure - and doctor thought these would be worth a try). Started out on higher dose than necessary and dose has since been halved and he's now doing well. He was on the higher dose when I had the baby. Baby was a month early and arrived under very stressful circumstances. He was very slow to grow and I was very concerned about him - I was struggling to breastfeed (I breastfed my first son until he was two and only stopped midway through this pregnancy). It was an immensely difficult, stressful and emotional time. It almost broke me! My husband was regularly falling asleep while holding the baby and generally being less than responsible. This caused me a lot of distress and it meant that even when he would take over to let me get some rest, I couldn't relax or sleep because I was afraid of harm coming to baby or our toddler. When I expressed how distressed I was he told me that he was struggling to care about anything and was emotionally numb. I acknowledge that I may have been somewhat overprotective...but I think that's to be expected. Anyway, I reached the end of my tether when baby was about 10 weeks old and I asked him to leave the house. He seemed confused (wasn't getting it at all even though we discussed it about 20 times) and he went to his mother's house. It was a holiday, so a lot of his siblings were there. He spoke to them and they went in on me saying he had done nothing wrong and I was being really unreasonable (he was never held accountable for anything by his family in my opinion). There was his mother, sister and brother sticking their ore in, and his brother then drove him to his other brother's house (to keep the drama going IMO), and he and his wife joined in. Another sister (whom I've never liked tbh) joined in later by texting him telling him he has a heart of gold and not to let anyone tell him otherwise. Two other siblings stayed out of it completely, thankfully.
He arrived to our home the next day with a really bad attitude after taking to them for hours, and I responded by telling him I wanted him gone as I felt safer doing everything on my own. He took all his stuff (I didn't ask him to do this) and went back to his mother's. Again, they went in on me (to him) and just had a field day calling me any name that came to their heads...mostly things like coercive, controlling, abusive and manipulative.
I digress for a moment - We have had issues in the past with trust - he went away for a lads weekend and brought girls back to his hotel room, 'to continue having fun' - I believe nothing major happened, but I was disgusted. I went to my parent's house for the night (I had a toddler and was 6 months pregnant at this stage). I rang his sister to tell her what happened and that he was home alone, so she could check in on him - he was really down and regretful and I feared for him being alone. On this occasion she also badmouthed me to him, saying that I was 'just trying to make him feel like a bad person' - wtf?
Back to the most recent issue with baby - They encouraged him to leave me and were saying they would give him land to build on and he shouldn't try to fix it because it was toxic (these people know VERY LITTLE about our relationship as we see each other maybe 4/5 times a year at most (once a year for some of them). I've never had an argument with any of them and they've never addressed any issue that they have with me).
Anyway, he and I began to work towards resolution (although I wanted him gone because of the danger element and sheer frustration with him for not listening to me, I didn't actually want my marriage to end) and I told him his family's input was really unhelpful and would be the undoing of us. I made only one call to him during his time there, where I was really angry and shouting because I was mad at him for lapping up sympathy from his family when he knew the reality of what had been going on. His sister overheard this call and was shouting to him to hang up the phone on me. I asked to speak to her and he gave her the phone and she hung up on me.
After 2 days there, he moved back and we worked on it (that's when he told me the things they had said about me). He stayed in a mobile home on our property for the first week so that we could have distance but still work on things at a pace I was comfortable with. We have moved on now, baby is thriving and we're in a much better place.
I am really hurt by the things they said, because they are totally baseless. They have issues with another daughter-in-law aswell (the wife of the brother who drove him to his other brother's house to continue the bitchfest)...this has been the case for as long as I've been around, so I don't know what caused it. He seems to take his family's side over his wife's though.
This incident is now almost 6 months ago. My husband has been keeping his distance from them, but talked to his mother maybe weekly since. She has never even mentioned me but asks about the kids. Last week he addressed it with his mother and sister and asked if they had any intentions of trying to put things right. He said he told them I'm a reasonable woman and would be prepared to repair things, but they need to acknowledge the things they said about me. They said a strong no and told him he should move on with his life with me if he thinks they're so bad and his mother said that the next time he'd hear about her is when she is gone. They guilt-tripped him like crazy and took no accountability for their part. In this interaction they didn't give any defence for why they said all these things about me...you would think if they thought them to be true they would say...but I think they just went into 'lynch mob' mode at the time and threw out any insults they could think of. My husband said he told them at the time that these things weren't accurate but they wouldn't listen to him. No truth to any of what they said, in my opinion, but these accusations have caused me to really doubt myself at a time when I was already extremely vulnerable. I let it go twice before (one if which was the lads wkend and the other is less serious but a similar pattern - won't bore you with the details) when they came for me, and I sucked it up and moved on for my husband's sake. I'm not prepared to do that this time.
My husband is fully on my side. I feel like the biggest problem between us is that I expect my husband to act like a man and take responsibility for his actions, whereas they strongly object to this for some strange reason. I am definitely forthright, and not afraid to stand up for myself, but controlling, coercive and manipulative I am not.
AIBU for wanting at least an acknowledgement from them if not an apology. I know I won't get it anyway, but AIBU for wanting it? What would you do??