TL;DR - My SIL never thanks me for sending money/gifts to her kids and constantly blows off plans to hang out. I can't cut her out of my life so what do I do?
I've been married for 3.5 years, in a relationship for 6 years; this will be my 7th Thanksgiving with my SIL. She has two kids (9f and 3m). Every year since I've been married, I've sent a birthday card with a $20 note in it to my niece, just like my aunts did for me when I was a kid. Since I'm not invited to bday parties (I used to be, but now that she's older they're more like friends and friends' moms parties) I send money instead of a gift. Is that rude? Because I have never once received a thank you or even an acknowledgement that the card/money has been received.
Additionally, my husband (43m) and I went to Spain this year and brought back almost an entire suitcase worth of gifts for the kids. We left them with MIL to give to the kids since we don't see SIL and BIL very often. Again, no word of thanks or even a note of receipt.
More: I often (every 3 weeks or so) text SIL to invite her and her husband and/or kids to do something fun with me and my husband, or just with me. I've invited them to do fun kids stuff as well as adult stuff if they can leave the kids with granny. About 1/3 of the time she tells me yes and then backs out at the last minute (literally) and the rest of the time she doesn't bother to respond. I have no idea why I continue to reach out - I'm probably an idiot.
Even more - we get them presents every year at Christmas and they have never gotten us anything. Now this one, I hate to even bring up because I truly don't care about getting gifts. I only mention it because they say they're broke and that's why they don't get us anything, yet they have brand new cars and took two international vacations this year. I mean.... get us a picture frame or a box of cookies or SOMEthing just in the spirit of it? Anyway like I said, ignore this whole paragraph because I don't want to come across as greedy/entitled.
Now here's the icing on the cake. About a week ago, I told my MIL what I would be bringing for Thanksgiving. I'm vegan so I always bring a lot of food so that I can eat and no one has to worry about cooking something "special" for me. I told her I would bring a pumpkin mousse pie and she said "wonderful". Last night she texted me to let me know that SIL wants to make... a pumpkin fucking mousse pie. And not to worry bringing mine. Which is (1) the only vegan dessert I'll be able to eat, and (2) my idea in the first place. My plan is to bring mine anyway, and just take home the leftovers, but it's the idea of the whole thing that gets me.
If you've read this far - thank you and I'm sorry. I can't cut her out of my life because she's family, and she's never been overtly rude to me. She's always very very sweet when we see her at family gatherings. So I don't feel right being cold to her when I see her next, plus I don't believe in mind games. I'm also too cowardly to directly confront her about her kids' manners (which isn't her kids' faults, it's hers for not teaching them) but I don't want to stop sending them gifts and money because I love them. So how do I deal with this?
Submitted November 23, 2019 at 05:32AM by bhambetty https://ift.tt/37vbuDC
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