Anonymous wrote:OMG! I feel different! My in laws are my family!! my real family lives in another country.

and your point in posting here is to??

My husband and I have been married for 18 yrs. My mother died and no one in my husbands family called with condolences. Now I don't speak to any of them. My husband feels caught in the middle and wants me to accept his families apologies but how do I unring that bell.

same - right down to the illness, except for what I highlighted

Anonymous wrote:I had a blow out with my mil. I hate this woman. Dh visits her every weekend. I don't talk about her, or see her. If she calls and DH isn't home, I don't answer. When I was around this woman it was nothing but stress in my life, and actually feeling ill. My life is better without her. I do talk with my brother in law.

I have next to no relationship with my ILs, more so MIL than FIL (they are divorced). He visits about twice a year, she comes when babies are born or when someone buys her a plane ticket. Then she complains the whole time that she is bored and changes her flight to go home early so she can play Bingo. She's incredibly self centered and irritating so I think its better that I don't have to deal with her often. My SILs have visited twice in the 10 years we've lived here, for a bris and a baby naming. Its debatable whether they will show up for #3s bris. It will be cold outside and they are from Florida. We shall see.

I more feel bad for my husband, who is a wonderful man, that his family doesn't seem to care about having a relationship with him or his kids. Its all on us and we can't afford to fly all of us to visit them more than once a year. Probably better for my own stress levels though.

I have minimal contact. I do what I need to do to make my husband feel loved and secure. He does the same for me - that means he sees them and puts up with them and doesn't allow them to be an important part of our day to day. I deal the few times a year I see them. They take a hotel room.

We are both disappointed in how disengaged they are from their grandkid.

We have almost no relationship with his family, but it was like that before I came along. They have lousy relationships with each other generally. I tried for a while to mend some fences, but I felt like I was doing all the work, so I eventually let it go. It does make me sad that my kids will hardly know their paternal grandparents, but they really make very little effort to keep in touch - don't return phone calls, emails, don't contact us around the holidays or kids' birthdays, etc. (Oddly, this doesn't stop MIL from trying to guilt-trip us, that the kids won't go to her and "don't love [her]," but I mostly ignore it.)

OMG! I feel different! My in laws are my family!! my real family lives in another country.

I had a blow out with my mil. I hate this woman. Dh visits her every weekend. I don't talk about her, or see her. If she calls and DH isn't home, I don't answer. When I was around this woman it was nothing but stress in my life, and actually feeling ill. My life is better without her. I do talk with my brother in law.

Same situation. No relationship with inlaws. They haven't seen my DC or myself in 3+ years.

I haven't lost a minute of sleep over it from my DC's perspective. DC is not missing one single thing by not having a relationship with these self serving, manipulative, nasty people. DC has a wonderful life filled with parents, extended family and friends.

I do feel a bit guilty for my DH who seems to have a minimal amount of distress associated with it.

Of course, I am thrilled to not have the stress associated with their unreasonable demands and opinions. DH and I hardly ever fight anymore and life is so much calmer. I admit that DH was mostly to blame for never sticking up for him, DC or myself. But, I'm just happy to be free. Even if that is only temporary. Enjoy it while it lasts.

What was the blowout over?

op here...yes, i feel guilty, so i do try and make sure my husband keeps in touch with them (he wouldn't if i didn't remind him to). but i am at the point where i think i am ready to just give up, they have made clear that the kids are not the most important thing to them, and i find that so upsetting...

Been married 10 years, have a DD who is 8. DH's father has NEVER met DD. We have NO relationship with him whatsoever.

I know this is a sad and horrible thing to say, but with the exception of a select few family members, I really wish we would have absolutely no relationship with them. DH feels the same way; we we continue out of guilt.

If you feel you are to blame for the blow-ups then you shouldn't punish the in-laws by witholding the grandkids visitation. On the other hand, if the in-laws are unreasonable, rude, etc. then you have no obligation to them and should do what is best for your family. Do you want your kids around people who don't know how to act? I don't, which is why we have absolutely no relationship with our in-laws, to answer your original question.

I have had a few very nasty blow-ups with them and it has now been a year since we've had any real contact. My husband communicates with them about our kids, but he's not so good at communication in general, so they can't be getting much info about them. He's taken them to see them twice this past year, but that's it. They've made clear that they would rather not see the kids that often than reconcile with me. Should I just leave it alone? It just seems so awful that seeing their grandkids is not the most important thing in the world to them...right?