My relationship with them has steadily improved over 20 years. First off, I am no longer a newlywed who is trying to carve out my turf with regards to my DH. I have matured. Second, I came to realize that I married into a family and those people became my family - they are my DH's parents and my DCs' grandparents. Where I was raised, families try to work through things. Third, I saw how much the tension stressed out my DH. He is a good man and he did not deserve being placed in the middle. I had to swallow some pride and so did they, but we did because of our mutual love for DH. Finally and this is the kicker, they are absolute dreams with my DC's. They will do anything for their children and grandchildren.

In looking back on my situation and others involving relatives and friends, my mother would say that with IL issues, there is blame on BOTH sides. She was right.

Mine were awkward but fake nice to my face (and dirted me to DH behind my back.) After a decade of marriage, it went downhill, we all ended up taking a 2 year break from each other. We're now in family therapy as a group but it's still awkward and standoffish on a good day...ugly on a bad day. MIL finds fault with every little thing I do - for example, my house is clean, therefore I don't have my priorities in order (I should be spending more time with the family rather than cleaning); my kid has a learning disorder (it's because I didn't pay enough attention to him as a baby and now he's suffering) etc, etc, etc. She's a peach.

On the other hand, my family is awesome. They are semi nuts but incredibly fun and easy to be with and DH is very good friends with my brother and my parents.

My relationship with my ILs started out okay, not great, then it got bad because his mother wanted to basically run our marriage, but now it's great.We've been married 7 years. I think having kids turned our relationship around. My DH is not a phone guy or one to keep in contact, but I make an effort to send his family pictures of the kids all the time and comment on all of their facebook pics and posts. Now we seem to get along very well. We also go on vacation together.

Things are sooo much better if you have in laws you can get along with.

I think my MIL might fall into the "it gets better after kids" category. We'll see, my baby is still young. She always manages to throw a temper tantrum at the holidays, this year was no exception. The thing that changed was how quickly she stopped being mean in the aftermath. Years past, she would be icy and nasty for weeks or months afterwards while she was mad about some minor perceived slight. This year she seemed to bounce back in a matter of days. Progress! I think she's slowly realizing that if she's mean to me, access to her grandchild could be compromised. I'll take it!

I was okay with the status quo and we will be married 18 years this summer. Except my SIL decided to go off the rails this Christmas and it's left a very sour taste in my mouth and I have no desire to see her or my in laws anytime soon.

I'm sure things can improve, but I have no advice on how to make it happen.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When you are carrying their grandchild they are very, very nice.

Not always. My relationship started off poorly (I wasn't the daughter mil wanted) got better and blew to hell once our son was born.

Same here

Mine didn't like me at first because they didn't want their son to get married, but it wasn't personal that I know of. After we settled down our relationship got way better. I don't love them, but we tolerate each other.