Reply to SIL wants to cut ties with my family-WWYD?

Forum Index » Family Relationships

Reply to "SIL wants to cut ties with my family-WWYD?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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?[/quote]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.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics