Reply to Estranged in-laws sent gifts for the kids...

Forum Index » Family Relationships

Reply to "Estranged in-laws sent gifts for the kids..."

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP, I'm sympathetic but I gotta say, when you first posted I assumed there was abuse or something much more serious than trash talk. There are a lot of lousy inlaws who say a lot of lousy things to and about their kids' spouses. I don't think I'd cut off my spouse's parents, or block contact between my kids and my grandparents, unless there was a more imminent danger than just some intrusive, overly opinionated older people. Your reaction sounds really extreme (obviously this is a response to what you've described, without knowing any of the specifics.)[/quote]

OP here.  I can totally see how, from one or two vague posts on an anonymous site, it doesn't really sound like a big deal. It really was.  I did a lot of work with my counselor, with my husband, and with my husband in a few joint counseling sessions to really unpack the matter and make sure it wasn't just a bad case of butthurt.  :-)  My in-laws have crossed way beyond the line of "obnoxious, meddling, annoying in-laws who criticize my cooking and make me want to drink", and have gone pretty deep into the realm of controlling, manipulative, emotional abuse.  It's really hard to describe years of this behavior in a post that isn't 20 pages long, but please understand that the behavior really was *that* bad and it really did need to be controlled in some way.  We had numerous conversations with the in-laws, verbally at first, then later only in writing because the in-laws would "forget" what they'd agreed to, or gaslight me and my spouse in other ways.  Even still, I did try to maintain contact with them in a safe way for the sake of "family."  But when they pulled my daughter aside and tried to poison her mind against her own parents?  When she came to me in tears telling me that the police were going to have to take her away from her family because her mother was a bad mommy?  When she told me that Grandpa/Grandma said she could come live with them and run away from her mean mean parents who never really loved her anyway?  Umm, NO.

Calling it "trash talk" may have oversimplified the matter for the sake of brevity.  It's abuse.  They're abusive people, probably always have been, and most likely always will be.  When their abuse touched my kids, they got completely cut off.

I explained the arrival of the gifts to my older child.  I explained why we would not be keeping them, and asked her to help me come up with a solution.  She suggested taking them to Goodwill, which is what we did.  :-)[/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