Dealing with difficult family relationship

[Gogwuh]

Looking for some general advice/tips on how to manage a family relationship where a family member has caused upset through their actions, but they don’t want to talk about it and have suggested we move forward and forget about it. No apologies, or reflection on their actions, or even a willingness to understand things from my perspective to avoid future conflicts. I’m finding it difficult to move past this in the relationship and prefer to keep distant as a result.

This is a conflict with my MIL. She recently moved house close to us and seems disappointed that the move hasn’t lived up to her expectations (I got the impression that she was hoping for more support and contact with us). We are extremely busy and just don’t have the capacity for the level of support she wanted. I was clear to her and my husband about misaligned expectations well before she moved, but she decided to go for it. She’s now not accepting that this hasn’t worked out and is putting pressure on me to put this behind us and push forward her idea of what the move was to be like. But she doesn’t want to talk about what has happened or how to meaningfully repair things.

We don’t know what is being asked of you. Most of us do a little more for our parents as they age. She could have wildly unreasonable expectations. Or you could be refusing perfectly reasonable requests. We have no way of judging.

"Weekly help". Her MIL is VERY demanding.

Sorry, I know I'm being a bit sarcastic but OP, you really do sound terribly resentful about any time at all spent with MIL and you haven't said a single thing that demonstrates she's truly unreasonable. I've read some weird things on MN but I've never before seen this level of transactional thinking in a broader in law relationship. I'm sort of surprised you haven't said you'll help MIL once a week if your BIL and their famileis come down every second week to "make it fair".

@CurlewKate ah I see - so what I find interesting about this point that you make is that is it not appropriate for MIL to first speak to her child and their partner about whether they feel comfortable with providing support and also spend more time together (whether that is lesser or more?) before making a decision to move? Otherwise, could lead to massive disappointment and an expensive mistake?! DH made a decision to settle his family away from his mother, but she’s chosen to follow. Obviously is her decision solely, but don’t you think it would be sensible for her to have discussed first what she was hoping for in moving nearby? Right now, she’s asking for help with lifts, garden, house maintenance. But as we all know and is obvious, as people age there becomes more need for assistance. So why is it appropriate for her to make the decision for her child that he must be the one to help her without much help from his siblings, particularly where he hasn’t volunteered himself for it.

It seems to me that there is lots of other family dynamics involved....so just remain calm and kind....be busy turn off phone if needed....maybe you should consider moving yourselves....honestly you are married to her son...but it doesn't make you her carer x x my two adult children have their life......and I have mine....even my very frail elderly mum has her own Friends.....we do lots to help her...but she lives life 🙂

I was inclined to be sympathetic as in the past, my MIL had form for just sort of announcing that she'd be visiting (from another country) for 8 weeks on these dates... and we were expected to accomodate that.

But, reading your posts, I think you're being a bit unfair. You think she should have discussed it with you, but I would argue that it's not a weird or unreasonable thing for a parent to expect that her children would be relatively supportive if she lived nearby (barring some huge back story of abuse/poor relations etc).

If my dad announced that he was moving to live close to use, I wouldn't expect him to ask my permission, nor to outline exactly how much support he would expect before he moved. I would just be pleased that he would live closer and that we could see him, and help him. And yes, it might well be that we'd have to have some boundaries, "Dad, sorry, we simly can't help out in the evenings in the week as there's just too many kids activities going on", that's not the same as simply refusing.

Of course, if she's calling you daily demanding HOURS of your time, that would be a problem but nothing you've said suggests she is.

Your MIL was told when she first suggested the move that you all have a busy life, she decided to move anyway, she is trying to manipulate your H into catering to her needs and he only helps when he can. You’ve gone NC to protect yourself from the stress of her expectations of you all catering to her needs and your H is putting firm boundaries down, a big talk won’t sort out her expectations because she is finding new ways to guilt your H to drop everything and visit.
I think once she realises no matter how manipulative she becomes and how much she tries to guilt trip your H into fulfilling her expectations that firm boundaries from your H is the only way she will finally realise the move was a mistake and she may move back. Carry on as the busy family you are, let your H deal with her and the stress she’s putting on you all. Don’t let her demands come between you and H, when he goes to visit/help her don’t let your annoyance show as he is in your corner. Try not to stress too much, it won’t happen over night but there will be a time she realises she can’t get her own way, that she was better off where she was living before as she had friends and was closer to more of her family rather than living near you, in a town where she doesn’t know anyone and her son and family are very busy so she doesn’t see much.