Aftermath on couples after family visits

[Anonymous]

You’re not alone, OP. I’m 27 years in and happily married but only because we had to team up and do whatever we could to manage our families. I had many years of frustrating visits with my surly BIL and borderline MIL that sucked and jeopardized our marriage. Do whatever you both can to work as a team: shorter visits, pregame (we used to keep track of how many times MIL threatened to disinherit us in each visit) etc. Hang in there!

[Anonymous]

DH and I have a rule to not fight within 48 hours of seeing my family. And we limit our time with them to no longer than 3 hours

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DH and I have a rule to not fight within 48 hours of seeing my family. And we limit our time with them to no longer than 3 hours

Good rule. Wouldn’t be able to get away with 3-hour rule though.

[Anonymous]

A week is too long.
We used to fight often because of our families but eventually we became a “united front” dealing with the families. Are you newly married?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We do, because my DH is that sad cliche of a man who thinks he is on vacation. It's exhausting because of all the skiing and keeping track of the kids stuff and all their outerwear and ski stuff and managing it all across my divorced parents' houses. He is sloppy with his own stuff and constantly asks me to help find things, which makes me ragey. He criticized me for not playing his family's weirdly complex card games, during that time I did all the laundry and most of the parenting work. I hate it.

.
DP, but I do love weirdly complex games.

[Anonymous]

I think there are conditions where a couple can be set up to fight. Some of those conditions include:

—staying in the childhood home of one spouse
—having children under the age of 10
—traveling a distance to get there
—staying more than 3 nights

If there’s any way to change any of these variables, you will lower the probability of a spousal fight. It’s very simple quantum DCUM math. 😬

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think there are conditions where a couple can be set up to fight. Some of those conditions include:

—staying in the childhood home of one spouse
—having children under the age of 10
—traveling a distance to get there
—staying more than 3 nights

If there’s any way to change any of these variables, you will lower the probability of a spousal fight. It’s very simple quantum DCUM math. 😬

We ticked off all on this list. No wonder we had such a nasty argument. I wonder if it would be different if all of us were rich?

[Anonymous]

All the time after/around his family visits. Sometimes around mine, but not often.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think there are conditions where a couple can be set up to fight. Some of those conditions include:

—staying in the childhood home of one spouse
—having children under the age of 10
—traveling a distance to get there
—staying more than 3 nights

If there’s any way to change any of these variables, you will lower the probability of a spousal fight. It’s very simple quantum DCUM math. 😬

We ticked off all on this list. No wonder we had such a nasty argument. I wonder if it would be different if all of us were rich?

I was going to add in
—staying in home under 2000sqft

Now is the time to plant the seeds for not leaving home. Start scoping out AirBnB’s for your ILs to stay in near your home. Or if you have to go visit them again, you stay in one. We started doing that, and it made a world of difference.

[Anonymous]

One other things we've done as our kids get older (now older elementary) is to minimize the amount of time each person spends with inlaws. So, I may spend a few long weekends with my parents and the kids during a given year, but spouse only joins us for one of those. He does the same. We pitch it as conserving precious vacation days but a lot of it is to take some of the pressure off the inlaw spouse during the visit.

[Anonymous]

For those suggesting Airbnb or hotel (especially when ILs visit), don’t you get pushback? We moved recently and tried to say we didn’t have a space set up yet and MIL brought old sheets and said she could use an air mattress, which she obviously wouldn’t actually be comfortable with and would just complain about her back pain if that happened.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For those suggesting Airbnb or hotel (especially when ILs visit), don’t you get pushback? We moved recently and tried to say we didn’t have a space set up yet and MIL brought old sheets and said she could use an air mattress, which she obviously wouldn’t actually be comfortable with and would just complain about her back pain if that happened.

I think that part of being an adult is understanding that sometimes people will "push back" or complain or not be happy or or or and just accepting that. So many DCUM posts are asking for advice on how to do a certain thing that you want to do while also keeping everybody happy (even though they don't want you to do the thing that you want to do). It's just an impossible goal. Maybe it helps to think of it like parenting - sometimes you have to do or make your kid do the unpopular thing they don't want because you've decided it's for the best and then just live with the negative feedback.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If I spent a week with my in-laws, someone would get shanked

[Anonymous]

Very very common. We used to do it a lot when we were newly married. We’ve cut down the long visits and tried to be less sensitive.

Also, sorry but your husband sounds like an a-hole. You should remind him that you were raised that way and turned out fine. What exactly is he objecting to? Non-organic food?

[Anonymous]

Yes family visits out a lot of strain on relationships for sure