TL; DR: In-laws demand payment for gifts many years after gifts were given. This makes me hesitant to accept help from them. This offends them. My wife is upset when I say no to the help, because it makes them upset, and she wants to be able to spend time with them without fighting.
My wife and I recently moved a state over in order to be closer to one set of parents -- my in-laws. We have an almost one year old and thought it would be nice for her to have a relationship with grandparents, and also have help with her.
We recently bought a house. While buying the house we lived with my in-laws for about a month before finding the house and then again a month during closing. They invited us over to live in their house and did not want us finding an apartment ,because they thought it would be embarrassing.
The house we bought is older, and there are some things that need fixing. For example, we removed carpet and wallpaper in some rooms. My in-laws offered to assist so I said okay. Things went well, but I noticed they complained about having to do the work. Nevertheless, they were tons of help.
Backstory time... my wife has a younger brother. My wife received a full scholarship to university, where we met. Upon graduation (we were engaged at the time), her parents bought her a ca $5000 used car for her new job. When her brother graduated a few years later, he enrolled in graduate school in a major city where they don't need a car. He did not receive a car. However, he received a college education paid for by my in-laws as well as financial support during his graduate school term (living expenses, flights, cell phone, etc -- things my in-laws have never provided for us because we had money).
Now my mother-in-law and wife don't see eye to eye on organization. My MIL likes things extremely organized and she takes kon-mari to an extreme (for example, she does not like it when there is a paper left on a desk), while my wife is okay with things being a bit more cluttered. It's difficult to live in their home, because, being a minimalist, there are not enough hangers for our clothes (because MIL throws away hangers that are unnecessary for her and FIL), so sometimes, a jacket ends up on the closet floor. MIL hates this.
Back to the current time. We are having our house entirely rewired. Things are taking a bit longer than expected. Our original plan was to be away on a week long trip while the bulk of the work was being completed, and then stay in a hotel or clean up one part of our house to live in while the remainder of the house is worked on. Unfortunately, my wife got extremely sick before our trip and we had to cancel. Of course, having nowhere to stay and our in-laws being out of town, MIL gave permission for us to live in their house for a bit while my wife was sick. We ended up staying there two weeks. My wife's and my housekeeping annoys my mother in law. We offered going to a hotel or cleaning up part of our house to live in it (because frankly, having to keep your room pristine with a one year old is hard enough), but MIL would have none of it, saying it would be embarrassing for us to do that.
Nevertheless, while I was away at work, mother in law got irritated at my wife that the car they had gifted her in college was a bit packed with all our stuff. She angry cleaned the car, and told my wife that she doesn't take care of anything, blah blah blah, and how they paid for the car and it's not cleaned, and how they never paid for my brother in laws car. Now, my in-laws have more than enough money to pay for a car for BIL. They are not poor. One month that we stayed in their house was actually a favor to them, since they went on a month long vacation to Europe (they do this once or twice a year), and they didn't want to get a house sitter.
Nevertheless, while upset, my MIL tells my wife that we owe her and my FIL and BIL the money from the car since we don't take care of it, and they never gave BIL a car. Naturally, my wife was very upset by this. I was pretty annoyed as well upon hearing this, because honestly, we could have bought ourselves our own car at the time (and indeed, I did buy my own car for myself at the time). We never really needed two cars, and were planning on getting rid of one anyway, but apparently, her parents want the money back from the sale. In other words, this 'gift' was not a gift, and it's come back to bite us five years later.
My wife and I had a discussion about this and decided that it was in our best interests to no longer accept gifts from in-laws. They push money on us periodically (something to do with avoiding estate taxes), and we decided that, if we are forced to accept to keep them happy, we will simply put the money into our daughter's college fund. I do not want gifts recalled at various points in time and have to pay money in order to keep favor with my in-laws. We talked about it and decided that we shouldn't accept any offers of help for major home projects that we were planning on DIYing because, given the issue with the car, we wouldn't be able to know if they'd do the same for the house.
Yesterday, we had spent the night in our house, but my wife took our daughter to in-laws for the day. Mother-in-law asked my wife if there's any project we needed help on, and my wife said she'd think about it. My mother-in-law is insistent that she help out with something, and really wants to work on a home project with us. According to my wife, they'd be offended if they weren't included. My wife tells me all this upon picking me up from work, and asks to make a list of projects MIL can do that wouldn't upset me. I'm not going to lie, I got a bit annoyed, and reminded her of what we had talked about. This makes my wife upset, because, according to her, if she tells my in-laws that we don't need help, they are going to be upset. She says it's hard to say no because then there'd be a fight and she needs to have their home available for our daughter to crawl around in during the day. I say that it's better to spend money on a hotel room or airbnb to let daughter play around in than to accept a gift that we will always be afraid of being recalled at any moment, given in-laws past history. My wife says no because if in-laws find out, they'd be upset, and also, she doesn't want to spend the money. My wife gets upset by this and says I don't like her parents, and that she needs help with the baby and we can't make MIL upset or offended. She says in desperation that she's just going to cut her parents off. I thought this was just repeating what we had talked about together. I insist that she need not cut her parents off and that I enjoy spending time with them, but that we don't need to get too mixed financially (I keep this same separation from my family, for what it's worth).
This behavior on behalf of my in-laws makes me feel as if I cannot even make decisions about things I we own. We wanted to downsize our cars, and I thought we'd be able to get some money for the car we had been gifted (old and worn at this point), that we could put towards another car.
I like doing home projects, but at this point, I feel I cannot start one without causing a major fight in our family, because my in-laws immediately want to help, and if told we don't need help, get offended that we don't accept their help. To me it seems a bit ridiculous that I am not allowed to work on my own home without offending my wife's entire family. Moreover, even when I genuinely do not need help, they are disappointed. For example, my MIL offered pre-emptively to paint our closet while the electricians are here. We are not ready to paint the closets. We still have other, higher-priority tasks to complete (like cleaning the house after the electrician's are done, or fixing the walls). In another example, my MIL really wanted to fix our base boards while we were away for Thanksgiving, but I said we didn't need that done yet (which is true -- the base boards can't be put back until electricians are done). Moreover, when we first bought the house, MIL spent the first two weeks scouring craigslist for things to furnish our house with. She really likes buying stuff and bought a bunch of furniture and carpets for it. Now, I didn't mind the idea of her helping out here, but I thought she would only be looking out for things we decided we wanted. Instead of my wife and I deciding what we wanted to purchase, and then MIL looking around for it, I often came home to our house filled with items that I didn't really care for (including art that I didn't like personally, but my wife and MIL did, so they bought), and that I didn't even know we were looking at purchasing. When I asked my wife at the time to tell MIL to stop doing this, at least until we decided what we actually wanted, I was also told I'm making the in-laws upset. Several times, I rejected dining tables MIL had found because I didn't think they went, and didn't want to spend sometimes hundreds of dollars on a piece of furniture I didn't like. Of course, MIL was disappointed about these too.
All this behavior on my part is making my wife upset. As for me, I feel she is being drawn into what is almost emotional abuse. MIL treats my wife as if she is a child, incapable of maintaining a home. I have heard MIL brag to others about how my wife and I need her help because we can't maintain our own living space. This, combined with the car stuff, makes me really hesitant to accept help. While it was just mockery, I could hold my tongue, but now being asked for money for the car, this is something else. I feel my wish here should be respected, and I think it's ridiculous for my in-laws to get upset when their daughter and son-in-law say that the have things under control. My wife has said she feels like she can't talk to me without me getting upset with her. I feel that the only thing she wants to talk about is whether MIL can do something with our home. I feel upset that something I was looking forward to about home ownership -- home projects -- is no longer fun. Part of what I think is upsetting her is that my disappointment leads me to become reserved, and I stop engaging with her when she changes the topic to something lighter. I realize I need to compartmentalize better, but I can't help how I feel. We spent the last five years saving up for this house, and during that time, she knew that one of the things I looked forward to about home ownership was working on our house. While living in an apartment, I often channeled this desire into making furniture for us. I need time to process this disappointment, and during that time, I don't feel like I can engage fairly with her on other topics.
In other words, this spat has poisoned all our interactions. Please help hivemind.
Submitted December 03, 2019 at 11:12AM by That-Communication https://ift.tt/2rbm8z8
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