AIBU - relationship with in laws

[LoftyRaven]

In need of advice please. I have been with my now husband for 15 years. We have always been in contact and had a relationship with his parents. I knew they were 'different" from my family very early on, and was occasionally very frustrated with the way they treated my husband, but always saw past it and managed to have a good time.
For context, I think the best way to describe it is that they treat my husband like an adult, rather than their adult child. They only have surface conversations, care a lot about status/income/keeping up appearances. They are very combative in conversation.
They are retired but have a very comfortable lifestyle, however have always expected us to treat them, even when we were straight out of university.
Anyway....we now have 2 children and they clearly love them. They look after the children half a day per week. However, they do not contact us outside of this. They never organise to meet up / do an activity. They are not interested in our lives. I would accept this if they did not make comments and snide remarks about our closeness to my family, who we socialise with regularly.
I am becoming increasingly frustrated and finding it difficult to spend any time with them without feeling annoyed. I don't want to impact my husbands relationship with them but unsure how to move forward with a relationship we are all happy with. HELP!

Contact them outside of the times they care for your children? Ask them if they want to do something social/an activity?

Agree invite them, make sure they know they are welcome. Some parents are worried about coming over as being too keen to be involved and so go the other way. Simply ignore the bad and enjoy the good.

Get in touch to invite them out. Keep offering, and ask what they want to do. Then if they make a remark, say you'd offered x, and what is it that they'd like? If you're polite and approach it in a curious, rather than challenging matter, you should be able to sort it out.

Thanks everyone. For years I was the one to arrange social events between us, dinners out, inviting over to the house etc. After having 2 children quite close together my capacity for this reduced. I then noticed that I was the one constantly doing this. Neither my husband or in laws were making the effort. I am wondering whether I just accept that this is the relationship we have.

I'd say that looking after your children for you every week is 'making an effort'. Is it perhaps your DH who is the problem rather than his parents? It seems he's the one making no effort.

Half a day a week is pretty amazing tbh. I’d kill for half a day a month

I have not commented on their relationship with the children, I said in my original post how much they loved them. My query is regarding our relationship with them.

Are you regarding their relationship with you as completely separate to the one that they have with your children? The effort they're making in looking after your children weekly doesn't count as 'making an effort' with you? Is that what you're saying?

I get the impression you are being purposefully argumentative. I don't see it as completely separate but would like to think we have a relationship outside of the children, that was established for 12 years before they arrived. My point is that I feel like when things became very busy for me (having two children in 2.5 years) and I wasnt able to sustain the same effort of organising all of our socialising, that the socialising stopped and the effort was not returned to maintain the contact outside of the children.

Why does there need to be so much "socialising"? Presumably you see them every week, because of the childcare - that's a lot!

I understand. You became too busy to be in charge of all the socialising/making the effort as you had done previously They shifted their efforts to helping with the children. So, my original question stands, what's your DH doing? I can see the effort you're making/have made. I can see the effort the in-laws are making. I can't see what effort he is making to see his parents. I think perhaps you're incorrectly placing the blame in this scenario.

I am at work when the children are being looked after and do not see them.

I understand your point, he makes very little effort if I am honest. I wonder if I am pushing my own expectations of the kind of relationship I would like onto his family, when in fact I should just let it be.

The point is, relationships change, or evolve over time.

As 4 adults, in order to maintain contact, you had to arrange to meet up to do something 'sociable'.

As you have now moved to a family of 4, plus Grandparents, you get to see each other EVERY WEEK without needing to arrange anything else. So there isn't the same need to "put in the effort" to arrange to see each other outside of that. Plus when you have a baby and a toddler, or now a toddler and an infant, most parents tend to be knackered just getting through the week, and have far less time to 'just socialise' than any of us did before having dc. That is even if you have babysitters on tap and and co-ordinate the babysitters and availability of all 4 adults.

It is very normal to have your social life curtailed when you are coping with little ones.

I understand your point and when I say socialise, I dont necessarily mean without the children. I mean anything outside of a quick pick up / drop off that doesnt allow dor any real conversation. I mean coming round for a meal, going for a walk, having a coffee...things we used to do before children and with our eldest (when I organised). Maybe IABU to want these things. My point is that our relationship feels very transactional at this stage and it appears (?) that everyone else is fine with it.