You'd move too, if this happened to you!
August 20, 2015 5:46 PM Subscribe
Would you? Update to my post last week. Just checking in with the hive mind to make sure we’re behaving reasonably during the blizzard, and to see what your thoughts are on moving.
TLDR: I don’t think we’ll ever have the relationship with my in-laws we thought we did, and neither of us can imagine what would have to happen to make it worth staying. I don’t think we realised how much our being here was conditional on them as family. It’s kinda scary.
We’re homebodies – we don’t have a huge circle of friends, our friends here don’t have kids. We’re pretty sure we’ll be moving back to the US… but it feels so… extreme? Reactionary? I don’t know. I’m so tired. My family loves us, and loves our kid, and I want my kid to grow up with family who loves him. Moving with a toddler sounds… exhausting. There’s a whole bunch of logistics to it, and I don’t know how it will work out. I don’t know how the work/kid care/money etc. will balance out. It’s scary and it’s unknown. I haven’t spent a whole lot of time in the US as an adult. This feels so screwed up, and we’re afraid of screwing up again I think. I think I’d rather be surrounded by family who loves us and poor, than comfortable and isolated (worst case scenarios). Like in Away We Go… are we fuck ups?
In November brother3 is getting married and my sister is coming to visit; my mom’s visiting in December. We’re giving ourselves to the end of the year to think about it.
Details:
We’ve learned a lot in the past week. Responses from my husband’s brothers have been as follows:
1. Aw, you know how mum is. I’m sure they mean well. It’ll blow over in time etc…
2. Hm. This is tricky. Maybe just let bygones be bygones and start over with a clean state.
(I feel like we’ve tried this. It worked for me, but apparently not for them. So no.)
3. Hey, you guys should just talk about this! (*Headsmack*)
From recent conversations with my husband and brother #3, we/I’ve learned that:
They’ve been bitching about us to brother3 for years.
They think (my husband) is naiive, easily led, and doesn’t know what’s good for him, that I’m not family oriented, and that we’re just blundering through adulthood and have no idea what we’re doing.
Every time we’ve communicated with them about trying to sort this out, they’ve called brother 3. (He’s told them to stop.)
Conversations get wildly distorted. Last time my husband talked to his stepdad, this (which I heard first hand, on speakerphone):
Stepdad: “Saying you feel like you don’t fit in at Christmas really hurt your mother. If it’s too awkward for you, you don’t have to come. Nobody would mind.”
Hubby: “Oh. I’ve actually been working through a lot of this in therapy. I felt pretty good about last Christmas, even if I don’t really fit in. I guess I’ll think about it.”
Came back to us via brother3 as “Why are you refusing to come to Christmas?” Us: “What???”
(Many other issues here… why is this suddenly about his mom? Why didn’t she say anything? Are we being uninvited or what?)
Some of their complaints were “we feel shut out” and “we just want to be part of the family”.
They are also still upset about things I did eight years ago – the specific incident mentioned was me walking out of the room (rude) in the middle of a conversation (they weren’t listening and had started yelling at me, I think over wedding stuff).
Hubby has confirmed that they had disagreements over previous girlfriends and took early attempts at asserting his independence personally, but hadn’t thought it was still an issue.
They don’t want to have a social relationship with us for the immediate future. When my husband pressed, his mum said “Maybe in time”.
They made it extremely clear that they are never helping us with anything ever again.
Also made it quite clear that they are “…never discussing any of this with (me). EVER.”
When my husband brought up mediation/non-violent communication techniques/general idea that there are constructive *ways* to work through things we were told that this stuff doesn’t work, relationships don’t work like that, people don’t change, etc.
My husband has sent a very polite email to the effect of (paraphrasing) “Anytime you’re ready to try to work this out let us know. Here are some links to sliding scale family mediation centres we could use, articles on how to approach reconciliation etc. We want to model healthy respectful adult relationships for our child (plus, he’s an infant), so we expect anyone who wants a relationship with kiddo to have working respectful adult relationships with us first.”
Brother no. 3 has referred to the above boundary as “blackmail”. Super disappointing. He’s asked that we not talk to him about it anymore, so we’re not.
TLDR: I don’t think we’ll ever have the relationship with my in-laws we thought we did, and neither of us can imagine what would have to happen to make it worth staying. I don’t think we realised how much our being here was conditional on them as family. It’s kinda scary.
We’re homebodies – we don’t have a huge circle of friends, our friends here don’t have kids. We’re pretty sure we’ll be moving back to the US… but it feels so… extreme? Reactionary? I don’t know. I’m so tired. My family loves us, and loves our kid, and I want my kid to grow up with family who loves him. Moving with a toddler sounds… exhausting. There’s a whole bunch of logistics to it, and I don’t know how it will work out. I don’t know how the work/kid care/money etc. will balance out. It’s scary and it’s unknown. I haven’t spent a whole lot of time in the US as an adult. This feels so screwed up, and we’re afraid of screwing up again I think. I think I’d rather be surrounded by family who loves us and poor, than comfortable and isolated (worst case scenarios). Like in Away We Go… are we fuck ups?
In November brother3 is getting married and my sister is coming to visit; my mom’s visiting in December. We’re giving ourselves to the end of the year to think about it.
Details:
We’ve learned a lot in the past week. Responses from my husband’s brothers have been as follows:
1. Aw, you know how mum is. I’m sure they mean well. It’ll blow over in time etc…
2. Hm. This is tricky. Maybe just let bygones be bygones and start over with a clean state.
(I feel like we’ve tried this. It worked for me, but apparently not for them. So no.)
3. Hey, you guys should just talk about this! (*Headsmack*)
From recent conversations with my husband and brother #3, we/I’ve learned that:
They’ve been bitching about us to brother3 for years.
They think (my husband) is naiive, easily led, and doesn’t know what’s good for him, that I’m not family oriented, and that we’re just blundering through adulthood and have no idea what we’re doing.
Every time we’ve communicated with them about trying to sort this out, they’ve called brother 3. (He’s told them to stop.)
Conversations get wildly distorted. Last time my husband talked to his stepdad, this (which I heard first hand, on speakerphone):
Stepdad: “Saying you feel like you don’t fit in at Christmas really hurt your mother. If it’s too awkward for you, you don’t have to come. Nobody would mind.”
Hubby: “Oh. I’ve actually been working through a lot of this in therapy. I felt pretty good about last Christmas, even if I don’t really fit in. I guess I’ll think about it.”
Came back to us via brother3 as “Why are you refusing to come to Christmas?” Us: “What???”
(Many other issues here… why is this suddenly about his mom? Why didn’t she say anything? Are we being uninvited or what?)
Some of their complaints were “we feel shut out” and “we just want to be part of the family”.
They are also still upset about things I did eight years ago – the specific incident mentioned was me walking out of the room (rude) in the middle of a conversation (they weren’t listening and had started yelling at me, I think over wedding stuff).
Hubby has confirmed that they had disagreements over previous girlfriends and took early attempts at asserting his independence personally, but hadn’t thought it was still an issue.
They don’t want to have a social relationship with us for the immediate future. When my husband pressed, his mum said “Maybe in time”.
They made it extremely clear that they are never helping us with anything ever again.
Also made it quite clear that they are “…never discussing any of this with (me). EVER.”
When my husband brought up mediation/non-violent communication techniques/general idea that there are constructive *ways* to work through things we were told that this stuff doesn’t work, relationships don’t work like that, people don’t change, etc.
My husband has sent a very polite email to the effect of (paraphrasing) “Anytime you’re ready to try to work this out let us know. Here are some links to sliding scale family mediation centres we could use, articles on how to approach reconciliation etc. We want to model healthy respectful adult relationships for our child (plus, he’s an infant), so we expect anyone who wants a relationship with kiddo to have working respectful adult relationships with us first.”
Brother no. 3 has referred to the above boundary as “blackmail”. Super disappointing. He’s asked that we not talk to him about it anymore, so we’re not.
This post was deleted for the following reason: Heya, if this is basically just an update to the situation from last week, it's probably best just to post an update comment in that thread with the new developments so folks who've already read up on it can pick up from there. -- cortex
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