I guess a lot of people deal with difficult
in-laws and it's one of the off and on major stresses in a lot of my
friends' marriages, but I feel like my issues with mine are reaching a
breaking point.
My husband and I used to live far from my family and close to some
of his. Now we still live far from mine but live within ten to twenty
minutes of all of his immediate family, we all ended moving closer to
each other, which I thought would be nice, but I've felt like pulling my
hair out from the start. And I have to deal with two sets of in-laws
because his parents divorced when he was really young and his step-mom
and step-father were important parts of his life when he was growing up
and have been around all this time. I find their authentic parent-child
relationship to be a very beautiful thing but he only has to deal with
my mother (who lives far away), my father is not around, so I feel quite
outnumbered when we get together.
The thing is, I just can't understand why they insist on butting
into our business when my husband has told them repeatedly some things
are not up for discussion because he knows them ganging up on me can
make me very upset, and he hates to see it affecting my relationship
with his side of the family.
I know they love my daughter, but when they butt into my business
and use worrying about her well being as an excuse it makes me so mad. I
just recently discovered we're pregnant with our second child, and my
daughter will be five years older than this baby. Well leave it to them
to go over every financial issue that is raised and every inconvience we
face by having two kids who will be far apart in age. They've been
asking when we were planning on having another baby since my daughter
was born. Since the freaking day I brought her home from the hospital
they have been hounding us. It never stopped. I've seen them quite a lot
in the last year since we moved closer, they almost always bring it up,
especially when my husband's brother's wife was pregnant again, and
they hounded me about it every month over the phone before we moved.
Now that it's finally happened, all they can do is complain about us
not meeting the time table they find acceptable for having three
children. Not only that but they're already asking my plans for the
third and trying to persuade me into having more than three children.
It's ridiculous.
These are the most intrusive people I've ever met. I don't know what
to do about them. My sister in law dealt with them for ten years before
me and says trying to get through to them just makes it worse, that
they never change and we just have to live with it. She says I should
just breath and say I don't want to talk about this or just be a little
snide in my responses when I need to be, but to not start conflict for
the kids, since they adore their grandparents. I'm trying her way but
it's hard, especially when my husband gets tired of playing referee.
Every now and then he'll speak up say something like 'well it's nice
to not be buying diapers for two kids at a time ' or 'I'm glad we
waited so we could enjoy our first and give her all the attention for a
while', but it comes out half hearted. Sometimes I wonder how much he
agrees with them behind my back and if that's why they're so persistent.
I know he doesn't agree with them on more children, he only wanted two,
I convinced him that three would be right for our family and after a
lot of thought he agreed, but he did want to have them close together,
and was annoyed by me being put off by complications I did not
anticipate with my first pregnancy, months of trying for a second and
then ending up with nothing but a chemical pregnancy. I'm glad we waited
though, and he seems to be too, so I don't appreciate them re-opening
issues for discussion that used to cause fights between us.
What's done is done. Why can't they just drop it?