Do you feel like an outlaw as an in-law?

Parent Cafe
21

While your DIL should recognize this a bit, I think as @Hoggirl references, it’s also on your DIL’s mother to speak up and say, “I’m fine this holiday, let’s celebrate it the next week or something. Go see @deb922, it can be a nice get away and they should have some time with you too”.

I for sure always wanted to be sure that my mom, a widow, had family with her on every holiday. It KILLED me that first covid Christmas to think of her home alone. But it was one day. And she pulled up her big girl panties and said “really, I’m fine” and we talked on the phone and the day came and went and all was fine.

So I get DIL wanting to hover over her mom but also as adults we need to look at the big pic sometimes and put our needs aside for a bit of fairness. And that’s what I think her mom could do!

Clearly you have offered and traveled often. Family all needs to do their part.

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22

My MIL would never have said this…and my mom was a single mom. We were expected to show up at MILs home for every holiday…Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter. We invited folks to our home for the holidays repeatedly. One year DHs siblings all came for Thanksgiving. I think my in-laws were in some other country at that time. But MIL saying we should go elsewhere….never was going to happen.

Most of her kids just stopped showing up. First off was Christmas when we had our own kids and wanted to be at home. Then Thanksgiving and Easter because of the horrible travel issues both driving and flying during those holidays.

As a family, we visited the in-laws when it was convenient for us and them…not on holidays. Worked better.

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23

This is exactly what I was trying to say. The dil’s mom should he the one to recognize the need to share. Saying something like you proposed would alleviate any guilt the dil might have.

Now, @deb922 knows the situation far better than we, and it may just be that dil also only wants to spend holidays with her mom. I’m not giving her a free pass. Everyone should recognize the need to share!

Someone mentioned upthread their in-laws serve as a way NOT to be. Exactly. “You’re never useless if you can serve as a bad example.”

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24

I’d go a step further that the son should also be advocating for time with his parents for the holidays.

That said, navigating who gets what holiday was always the absolute hardest thing for me as a young married. Both H and I are the oldest so we were the only married couple, and we had the first grandchild. For a while we hosted and both sets of parents and our unmarried siblings came to us but then we moved away. And then sibs got married and moved away. It felt like a tug of war every year after that. My parents were always happy to share a holiday but that was not reciprocated so then my parents felt hurt when it wasn’t “their year” and they were excluded.

I pray I remember all these feelings when I’m a MIL. I’ve already talked to my brother and SILs that we may be inviting ourselves to their houses for the holidays when we start needing to share our D with another family.

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25

I’m not sure that it’s my place to know what goes on or who is saying what in my daughter in law’s family. I am also aware that my son should have some culpability in all of this. He has always been an unconfident and passive personality.

I know that when I got married, I was very aware that I married into another family that also counts and also wants to share time.

It’s another side of the coin, so to speak

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26

I said this above. But I also recognize it often just doesn’t happen. In MANY families, maybe most! But I think just as important is that anyone who does try to bring people together should not feel guilt that the results are less than desired. We certainly can feel neglected but we shouldn’t feel guilt!

(All easier said than done lol)

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27

I don’t really feel excluded. It’s more like sometimes we feel forgotten.

In a couple of months, DH & I will have our 30th wedding anniversary. And for 30 years, I’ve been the primary organizer of get togethers w/DH’s relatives. AND figuring out something simple with these people takes a miracle sometimes. None of them can make a decision. None of them communicate clearly with each other. There’s always all of these ridiculous sidebar passive aggressive comments towards somebody else from 1 person or another.

5.5-6 yr ago, a switch sort of turned off in my head. I had a double mastectomy, went through weeks of recovery, all the usual emotional turmoil with facing possible death. That was in the summer of that year. In September, the usual questions started from all of them asking about the holidays.

What should we do about Thanksgiving?
What should we do about Christmas?

I told DH to arrange it all with his relatives. Told him that we are happy to drive there to where they are (~6.5 hr drive) for either holiday, but he & they need to figure it all out and don’t ask me my opinion this year because I’m fresh out of spoons and I don’t have anything left in my emotional gas tank to deal with the total circus that occurs when they all get together.

Halloween comes around and nobody has made any plans. And my DH started to pester me a lot about how we needed to figure this all out.

Meanwhile, close friends of ours (who are also ~6.5 hr drive from us, but they’re about a 1-1.5 hr drive from where DH’s relatives were) invited us to their place for Christmas. These people are like family to us. SOLD! We had Christmas at their house and it was one of the best Christmases ever. Since that time, we went on a big family vacation to WDW with them and my kids consider them official honorary aunt & uncle now.

At the time, I told DH that he should tell his relatives (SIL+BIL, Aunt+Uncle) where we were going to be and to invite them all to meet up with us at Friends’ house (our friends had suggested this). He didn’t. He ‘forgot.’ Aunt learned about it about a week after Christmas, got mad at me over it. I told her to talk to DH about it since it was his job to inform all of them.

Them being upset over it is not my business nor was it my problem.

Over the years, we’d done multiple road trips from our home in AZ to southern CA where they live, often combining a day or 2 or 3 at Disneyland with a few days visiting all of them. After a few years in a row of that (where WE were the ones who had to go to them and accommodate all of their requirements/demands/expectations), my DH said, “I’m kind of done with us doing all of the driving all of the time. Next year, we’re just going to Disneyland and if they want to meet up with us, they can drive the 2 hr to Anaheim to have a meal with us.”

We’d tell them every single time with weeks of advanced notice. Every time, the excuse would be, “Oh that’s way too far for us to drive. You need to drive to us.” Yeah right. I know for a fact that you all will drive longer than that when it’s something you really want to do. So we stopped mentioning it.

Meanwhile, Aunt will go out of her way to move mountains to do holidays w/her family of origin, even though 2 of her siblings pretty much hate her guts. SIL+BIL invite Aunt+Uncle to their place for every Thanksgiving & Christmas…Aunt says every year that they have plans w/her family. Most of the time, those plans fall through last minute and SIL+BIL are treated as the back up.

To go on a ladies’ weekend with these people? I think I’d rather have a root canal. Seriously. Just a simple thing like “Where are we going to go out to eat?” is a decision that takes an hour for them to all discuss and decide.

Heck, Aunt+Uncle now are only 30 MINUTES’ drive from SIL+BIL and yet they only see each other a couple of times a year. It’s stupid.

When I become a MIL at some point, if we do a weekend trip somewhere, the non-relative ILs will be invited (the son-in-laws, for example). I am also NOT going to:

  • keep tabs of how many days my kids spend w/their parents-in-law and get mad because the ILs got more face time than I did
  • demand that my kids & their immediate families always come at least once a year to MY house and stay for at least a week in order to kiss the ring and pay homage. Oh, you don’t have that much PTO and/or have young children? Not to worry, DH & I will come to you and we will arrange our own transportation to/from the airport, too.
  • complain about how the guest bedroom doesn’t have a TV in it
  • demand that everybody comes to MY house for Thanksgiving and/or Christmas or else “it’s just not the same”
  • expect that my adult kids will bring me with them on every one of their family vacations and pout/get jealous when I’m not included
  • expect my adult kids to pay my way to join them on every one of their family vacations
  • expect to be catered to 100% of the time

OP:
Think about it. Do you REALLY want to go on a weekend trip with these people? Are you SURE? You have every right to feel frustrated. I mean, they’ve kind of treated you as an after thought for years. So the message is clear: you’re not that important to them and you’re not part of the Cool Kids Club. However, is that a club you’d actually want to be a member of in the first place?

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28

Just a counterpoint or “devil’s advocate” - do you think the remedy for an outlaw relationship and one that you feel left out could be actually spending more time together?? That is NOT around a holiday - holidays can bring a lot of pressure with them. Just a random night or weekend away, random, neutral place…

Just posing the question for thought.

Part two: how has/did YOUR family embrace your spouse/partner??

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29

My parents adored my husband and embraced us as a family. Totally the opposite of my MIL. We are always welcome at their homes, and no matter when we show up, one of my sisters plans a family dinner or picnic or something. And they are always welcome here…no questions asked.

Not with my MIL. If we decided to visit, starting about 15 years ago, we just showed up (we stopped staying at her house decades ago).

The last time both of our kids were here on Mothers Day (both were living out of state at the time), we drove up for Mothers Day. My husband’s sister was hosting and she knew we were coming. MIL was at the dinner…and toasted everyone else around the table except our family…I was annoyed that I didn’t get a shout out for Mother’s Day, but I was more offended that she toasted the niece and nephew at the table and never said a peep about our kids, and the extra effort we made to be there for the holiday. I told my husband, and he agreed…NEVER AGAIN.

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30

We have a wonderful SIL, and he knows that we feel that way. His parents have been wonderful to D right from the start. Holidays are easy, because we all live within a half hour of each other. D likes to host, so we go there. His mom won’t go to their house because they have a dog, so D & SIL will join them for brunch at their house or a restaurant, or they’ll go over for dessert. His brother works on holidays (doctor), so sometimes they’ll celebrate on a different day so he can join them. We realize how fortunate we are.

S had a longtime GF (they’ve since broken up). Her parents have left her every holiday to go to Mexico for vacation - she wanted to be home so she didn’t lose her job. She spent holidays with us, and we were always happy that she did.

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31

Oops - misread the assignment! My parents embraced my H wholeheartedly, and they were fine with sharing us with his parents. Of course, I have four brothers, so they always had kids around!

OTOH, my parents never liked one of my brother’s wives but adored the little boy she brought into the relationship. They were always nice to her because of the boy & later the girl she & my brother had. They had a rather intense dislike for another brother’s wife, and I think she could probably tell. But they all kept things civil, and my SIL speaks very well of them. She had pretty awful parents, though, so maybe the fact that they were actually nicer to her than her own parents had something to do with that.

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32

I’ll say that how I thought things would go and how they did go when my children were younger, living with us and as young adults who lived in a different city. Has been very different than how things are when they have married and had their own family. In their mid 30’s

I think that navigating this part of our lives has been a complete 180 than how I imagined it. How I planned it. And how much more delicate maneuvering there is

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33

Wow—I feel so fortunate. I adored my in-laws and I always felt that they loved me dearly.

We had three sets of grandparents for our kids (my folks were divorced) and it is true that one set travelled to us a lot more than the others did, but they were much younger (by about 20 years) than one set and much healthier than the other. All travel was 2,000-3,000 miles each way for all three sets of grandparents.

We also tried to travel to each of the three sets of the parents at least once a year, maybe twice, during the entirety of our married life (35 years and counting) — including the dozen years before we had kids. All across country.

Now as my kids are becoming young adults and we will be the older generation, I hope travel and visiting will continue to be harmonious.

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34

I’m not sure. I definitely wouldn’t want to go on this longer trip to CA. Primarily because one of the friends is just too much for me.

But something shorter (long weekend) with just mil and sil - I would. It really is the fact that I am never thought of for these types of things. The fun things. The ones that aren’t obligatory because they ARE holidays. We are always included on the holidays and holiday planning.

Maybe I should think of something and plan it and invite them and see what happens. I felt like I tried that when we lived in Florida, though.

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35

Part 1 - yes. This is what I sort of just wrote. I agree with you about the holidays. We (and I) are not excluded or overlooked for those. It’s the things like these trips that are not holiday-centric where I feel overlooked. So, they spend time with me when it’s obligatory/when it’s the whole family but not when it’s the fun, girlie things/trips.

Part 2 - I have virtually no family. I am an only child. My parents died before dh and I married. My dad was raised apart from his only brother - I don’t even know where his two kids (my cousins) are. My mom had one sister - Aunt Ruby - who also has an only daughter and one brother - who also has an only daughter. The brother (my uncle) was 18 years younger than my mom so I am not particularly close to him, though I am in contact with him, his wife, and their daughter. They live several states away. We just don’t see them. I will say that when dh and I first married, we always spent Thanksgiving with my Aunt Ruby, Uncle Harry, and my first cousin and her husband. They were all very welcoming to my dh, and they would also come visit us sometimes, too. We had probably five years of Thanksgivings with them. However, when Aunt Ruby died and Uncle Harry remarried, the TG tradition stopped. Uncle Harry died a few years later. I am still close to my cousin (Aunt Ruby’s daughter) and her husband. But, they are basically all I have for my side of the family. They have no children.

So I have one living uncle and four first cousins - two of whom I do not know at all.

Well, this was depressing to type out.

But, you’re making me realize dh and I need to plan a long weekend to go see my cousin and her husband. Or invite them up here.

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36

I just want to make it clear that neither my mil or sil are horrible or mean to me. They aren’t. It’s just not the close relationship I would have hoped for after so many years of being married to dh.

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37

That’s why I said you should just ask about it. People get used to the status quo.

A few months ago, one of my dearest friends talked about a vacation that she was taking with her also unmarried sister, an unmarried friend and her unmarried niece. She normally travels just with her unmarried sister. Then she talked about another trip with a slightly different cast of characters, and I asked her why we never traveled together. She looked at me stunned. I don’t think it ever occurred to her that I might like to travel with her. I’m not positive that I even would want to go on a trip with her (especially if it involved her sister, who I don’t love), but I just asked why it never happened. I wondered whether there was a reason she didn’t want to travel with me, etc. Anyway, now she brings it up occasionally. I just think that if this is something you want sometimes you have to ask.

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38

I think that’s a good idea.

39

People’s patterns change. They didn’t visit you " just because" when you lived in Florida…but maybe they’ll feel differently about “let’s do a spa together” now?

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40

My therapist often reminds me that if I want to see a change, I need to be the one who makes a change; I cannot change anyone else. (Candidly, I don’t always respond well to this wisdom).

It does help me take a pause and try to figure out whether I actually want to change the status quo.

Sometimes I do want to make a change (realizing it could go well or backfire) and sometimes I decide that while I don’t love the status quo, I’m also not ready to see how it might change if I make a change.

Might be worth reflecting on what you want (specific actions super important here), and whether what you want could be had from the people you are thinking about. And if you’ve thought about how the change would look positively and negatively.

Sending hugs, this the adulting my (young adult) children have started to realize affects every part of life and is almost never fun.

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