SIL wants to cut ties with my family-WWYD?

[Anonymous]

Just ignore this and live your life. It's entirely possible that they really don't like you, or you have personal beliefs they find repugnant, or that every interaction with you is painful. Or your husband makes one of their children feel uncomfortable. Or your house is really messy and they think it smells bad.
You don't know and you probably never will. Just walk away.

One other thing, mothers who play favorites have children who hate each other.

Saying "it's family" with an exasperated tone is not a solution to this problem, forcing a reluctant square peg into a round hole because "it's family" is not a solution.

Just walk away.

[Anonymous]

OP, for your children's sake (for the sake of their relationship with their cousins, that you WANT)--take the lead.

Who cares if you put yourself out there and get ignored? At least you will know you did what you could.

I think you should deal directly with SIL because she's the one who has been trying, and you don't want messages filtered through your brother because he's not helping. So:

Just email your SIL and say something like

Larla,
I understand why you would want to not continue exchanging presents; you are right, we do not have a lot of contact these days. I'd like that to change. Why don't we start over, and commit to communicating and keeping the kids in each other's lives?

[Anonymous]

Is brother doing more for your mom than you OP? I would try to share the responsibility and try to maintain connection for your sake and sake of the kids. Cousins are great to have.

[Anonymous]

OP here. To address some of the questions/comments, my brother has always felt that my parents favored my sister and me, but my sister and I have always felt my mother favored him. As kids, we fought constantly, and it was my brother that my mother always defended, even when things got physical well past the age they should have. As adults, my sister and I are very close with our mother, but I think that is fairly normal in an adult mother/daughter relationship vs. a mother/son relationship. The most important woman in a son's life becomes his wife and not his mother.

All three of us help my parents financially. Whenever they come to visit, we pay for plane tickets and buy generous gifts for them for birthdays and Christmas. I know my sister has helped them out with cash when they needed it. I would do the same, but DH is by far the primary breadwinner in our house, and I don't feel comfortable asking him if we can do that. My mother moved into my house while taking care of DD, and we paid her for it, more than she was making at the job she quit, where her hours had been recently cut. When she was helping my brother, work was busy for her, and he didn't pay her for her work. Yes, they gave them computers and furniture, but you can't pay bills with used computers and furniture.

I agree that SIL is in the middle of this, and I'm sure it's a sucky place to be. I think in the beginning of her relationship with my brother, she was a lot like 15:13 suggests and pulled my brother away from our family, but when they had kids she decided to make an effort to be part of our family.

I think the best course of action is to tell her I would much rather have a relationship than not, and that I will just talk to my brother and take her out of the equation. I don't think anyone in this situation has done anything to warrant cutting ties entirely. It's certainly not that my kids need more gifts. I would much rather see my niece and nephew than exchange gifts. I don't know if that's possible, but I don't want to be responsible for my kids not knowing their cousins.

[Anonymous]

Your mom is a problem. Why is she so poor?

[Anonymous]

Just email your sil monthly or get on Facebook with her and maintain a relationship that way. You can try with your brother and spell out what you did here and see but don't cut off sil if he doesn't want to reconcile. Can't you guys split the cell phone bill 3 ways? There are some issues with boundaries. Can't your mom pay for her own cell phone? Maybe your parents need to downsize or find a way to live within their means.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Your mom is a problem. Why is she so poor?

+1. Your mom seems like she just relies on you guys for all financial support.

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure I'd lay all of the blame on SIL. You said your brother mentioned all of the things that have hurt his feelings, not SIL. And quite frankly, I agree with him. It sounds like they've done a lot for your Mom, she couldn't be a nanny for his kids but she's dropping everything and running out to be YOUR nanny? Do you really think he shouldn't feel hurt?
Personally, I think your Mom needs to get involved in this squabble. I know you'd love to keep her out of it, but come on, its clear that she's the pivotal problem here

[Anonymous]

Why can't you just have conversations directly with your brother, address some of the underlying issues, and let the family relationships sort themselves out as they will? It seems like you're trying to control some things here that really aren't within your control.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. To address some of the questions/comments, my brother has always felt that my parents favored my sister and me, but my sister and I have always felt my mother favored him. As kids, we fought constantly, and it was my brother that my mother always defended, even when things got physical well past the age they should have. As adults, my sister and I are very close with our mother, but I think that is fairly normal in an adult mother/daughter relationship vs. a mother/son relationship. The most important woman in a son's life becomes his wife and not his mother.

All three of us help my parents financially. Whenever they come to visit, we pay for plane tickets and buy generous gifts for them for birthdays and Christmas. I know my sister has helped them out with cash when they needed it. I would do the same, but DH is by far the primary breadwinner in our house, and I don't feel comfortable asking him if we can do that. My mother moved into my house while taking care of DD, and we paid her for it, more than she was making at the job she quit, where her hours had been recently cut. When she was helping my brother, work was busy for her, and he didn't pay her for her work. Yes, they gave them computers and furniture, but you can't pay bills with used computers and furniture.

I agree that SIL is in the middle of this, and I'm sure it's a sucky place to be. I think in the beginning of her relationship with my brother, she was a lot like 15:13 suggests and pulled my brother away from our family, but when they had kids she decided to make an effort to be part of our family.

I think the best course of action is to tell her I would much rather have a relationship than not, and that I will just talk to my brother and take her out of the equation. I don't think anyone in this situation has done anything to warrant cutting ties entirely. It's certainly not that my kids need more gifts. I would much rather see my niece and nephew than exchange gifts. I don't know if that's possible, but I don't want to be responsible for my kids not knowing their cousins.

So basically, you and your sister are the favored children who can't see that they were favored.

Also, I don't understand why you feel like you should just go to your brother and cut your SIL out of the loop. It sounds like she may be the only one of the pair that's actually willing to make any sort of effort toward the family, so she may be your best in-road.

[Anonymous]

It's very difficult once a sibling is treated like an outsider, to find a way back in. My MIL/FIL and SIL and her family spend all their time together and go on trips together, and they exclude their son/brother (my husband). They seem to blame me, but we all know it's been going on since their childhoods. MIL is literally afraid of SIL, and together they control everyone around them and sweep things under the rug. They stopped trying to work something out a long time ago. It hurts my husband who continues to offer invitations and make himself available to spend time with them. There are cousins who are around the same age that have gone several years without seeing each other. We continue to send gifts back and forth - it feels so shallow. I don't think your SIL is "trying to cut ties" at all. She probably, like me, just wants her husband to stop feeling hurt about being the outsider in your family. I know they didn't respond to emails for a while, I'm guessing that they were hurt about the situation wtih your Mom.

I don't know a way to make things better. But please don't blame this on your SIL. Talk to your mother and brother and try to arrange some time together.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is long, so apologies for that, but I wanted to make sure to provide enough detail, and this is an issue that is 16 years in the making.

My brother and his wife have always had a strained relationship with our family. Mostly, it always seemed like SIL wasn’t interested in having a relationship with our family, and that rubbed off on my brother. SIL's parents are both deceased, so it's not an issue of choosing her family over ours.

Things seemed to get better for a while, and up until a year ago, they did spend a fair amount of time with my parents and my parents were close to their two children (ages 7 and 5). Then suddenly, they stopped talking to my parents, and no one could really figure out why. Finally, my brother told my mom that it was because she moved to the DC area (from several states away) to come live with us and be our nanny for the first year of my daughter’s life.

My brother said that it upset him, because he’d asked my mom to do the same when his wife was ill, and my mom had said no. My mom does not recall him asking to set up any sort of formal arrangement. She helped out as much as she could, driving 2 hours to his house at least once a week to help out, but she did have a job and couldn’t miss work too much. My brother paid my mom for the work that she missed, but she couldn’t miss too much work or she’d lose her job, and the help my brother needed was temporary. My brother also feels that he and SIL do a lot for my parents (financially; I’m not sure of the exact extent, but I’m pretty sure they pay for my mom’s cell phone bill, they give my parents old computers, furniture that they no longer want but are still in good condition, and they do a lot for my parents on holidays. My parents, fwiw, have very little money, so this is all really helpful--we paid my mother for her time with us as a nanny because she can't afford to work for free.) My brother feels that my parents don’t reciprocate, and I think he feels used. I get the impression this is coming more from my brother than SIL, but since it’s his family, he’s going to take the lead. My mother is a good mother and an amazing grandmother (seriously, I tell her that she should give lessons around here on how to be a good and supportive grandparent after reading about some of the nightmares posters here deal with) and she is heartbroken that they've cut ties with her.

I have not seen my brother or his family since DD1's 2nd birthday, and she turns 5 next week. He and his wife don't respond to emails from me or my sister or interact with us in any other way (texts, facebook, etc.). DD2 is 18 months old, and they have never met her or acknowledged her, despite the fact that I spent much of my maternity leave at my parents' house. I invited them up several times, but they did not respond to my emails or texts while we were there, or on subsequent visits. SIL has visited the DC area a few times over the past few years, but has never contacted us about including us in the visit.

Last week, SIL emailed to ask for ideas for DD1's upcoming birthday. I replied and made a comment about being pregnant with baby #3 (due in March). She responded that first, she hadn’t known about the pregnancy, and it seemed like they were always the last to find out about things (which, I don’t really know how she expects to find out if she doesn’t generally engage when we reach out nor will she talk to my parents). Then she suggested that maybe we should stop sending gifts because it adds a lot of effort, we don't get to see the kids enjoy the gifts, and she doesn't know anything about our children. She said she would keep doing it if we wanted, because she doesn't want to cause any issues, but doesn't want to keep doing it out of a "perceived obligation."

I understand that it's probably a pain for her to be only one putting any effort into a relationship with my brother's family, but we're family. Our kids are all roughly the same age and I’d like them to know each other as best they can considering the distance. I also don't want the kids, on either side, to think it's their fault that they don’t have a relationship with some of their extended family.

I feel like she's trying to cut ties but put it on me. I am waffling between going off on her and pointing out to her that the reason she doesn't know my children is because they put no effort into doing so, and that she has never put any effort in trying to become part of our family, that the only reason I've kept up any semblance of a relationship is because it would make my mother sad if I didn't, OR telling her that I would much rather try to build our relationship so our kids would know each other. And that's my preference, really, to be able to put any bullsh*t behind us so our kids can be cousins, but I don't want to put myself out there if she and my brother are just going to continue to ignore me and my family. WWYD?

You can start by not being such a taker. Sounds like your brother and SIL are tired being givers as you sit there and take, take, take. Geez open your eyes.

[Anonymous]

whatever you do, do not "go off" on anyone. That will have the opposite your intended effect and you will lose them for good. Be calm, rational and nice. It also doesn't sound like SIL is the problem here, it's your brother. Treat your SIL like gold and you'll be more likely to have a relationship with the whole family. Figure out what help your parents need and split it 3 ways amongst you siblings. Just tell SIL you don't care about exchanging gifts, but would love to spend TIME with them. Then let the chips fall where they may. Do not bring up old hurts or old injustices or anything old. Focus on today and moving forward, not backward.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP I feel for your brother. Sounds like your mom went out of her way for you and not for him. Hate when parents do this as is really causes sibling problems. Your mom moved to be near you and was your nanny? Ouch..I can only imagine how that feels for your brother. I think SIL is probably sick of it all. What OP are you doing to be more proactive to them? FYI I hate when relatives who never see me or my kids send gifts it feels like they are checking a box off. No thank you.

+1,000

Sounds like your mom played favorites & now has to reap what she sowed. Doubt you'll see
it this way, the favored kid usually can't see it for what it is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:whatever you do, do not "go off" on anyone. That will have the opposite your intended effect and you will lose them for good. Be calm, rational and nice. It also doesn't sound like SIL is the problem here, it's your brother. Treat your SIL like gold and you'll be more likely to have a relationship with the whole family. Figure out what help your parents need and split it 3 ways amongst you siblings. Just tell SIL you don't care about exchanging gifts, but would love to spend TIME with them. Then let the chips fall where they may. Do not bring up old hurts or old injustices or anything old. Focus on today and moving forward, not backward.

+100