Anonymous wrote:Wow. Oh my goodness. Not at all the reaction I was expecting.

I am being a bit selfish that I want my children to have all 4 grandparents and a normal life. Is that so bad?

I do not want drama. I was hoping that a large event like this would be the easiest time for no drama because we will barely see anyone. There would be no reason to speak with them one on one. We try to every year to wish them a happy new year and every year, they use the opportunity to respond about how I ruined their son's life or tell my husband that he is an awful son (yes, half the time, they blame their own child). I'm 45 years old and over all this drama and just want us to get along and put our differences aside for our son.

Well, has anyone repaired the relationship at all? To be clear, the therapist and my husband think any repair is a bad idea. I am sad for my children. I wanted something better for my children. Will we never see them again? Is that just "the facts of life"?

I don't understand why we can get along with my family, who have some problems, but we cannot get along with my in laws because they have bigger problems. It's sad.

Anonymous wrote:We haven't spoken to my ILs in about 10 years, since MIL told me to abort my 3rd child since we were overpopulating the world. A lot had led up to that moment but saying that to me in front of our two other children was the straw. The month before (when we were already pregnant but hadn't announced it), they told my husband to divorce me so she made it clear that the later comment about the 3rd child abortion was just to make it easier to divorce me. When I asked her not to talk to me like that and to talk to her son, she said that it was the woman's duty and she shouldn't have to involve her son. My husband's sister told my husband that she agreed with her parents and he should have never married me. They had openly disapproved of us dating and ruining my husband's "career" but things were manageable when we got married although MIL seemed to get worse and worse as the years went on. Since that huge fight 10 years ago, we have only spoken to extended family and we have never seen them since. When we have spoken to them, they have continued to insist that they did nothing wrong and that there were "two perspectives" on abortion and divorce, and they are entitled to "their perspective" and it is not wrong and they are "sorry" that we got overly offended by it. We have been told by multiple psychologists that my MIL has severe narcissism and my FIL and SIL are trying to keep her happy.

But it's been 10 years, we have a huge celebration for our family coming up in January (our oldest son's bar mitzvah), and my entire family and most of my husband's extended family will be there. One of my children has never even met their grandparents, and the other two do not remember them. My husband thinks I am stirring the pot by asking him to include them, and that they will ruin this event. I think it's been long enough and while I don't expect them to apologize for their mentally abusive behavior, I think we could handle inviting them to an event where we are expecting 200 people. To be clear, I do not want to see them on otherwise, do not want them to be a part of our regular lives, and do not think they should contact us, but I think that they should be included to a huge family event where aunts/uncles, 1st & even 2nd cousins are coming. Our psychologist has told us that he thinks this is a very bad idea and that I should respect my husband. I am taking that into consideration, but do not think this is a healthy dynamic either.

Has anyone repaired a relationship with an IL successfully? How did you do it? Did your IL have a personality disorder?

If we never repair or even med the relationship, which is the other option, our children will never see their grandparents on that side. How do we address that? They are at the age where they ask about them a lot. We show them pictures and try to answer as many questions as possible, but don't know what else to do.