The inevitable visit.

[Cat of the Canals]

We've managed to hold unPD mil off from visiting us since we moved across the country in September 2019, but really only because a combination of covid and being extremely busy with work. She's already pushing for a visit now that she's been vaccinated - never mind that our state hasn't even opened appointments for our age group. I don't think her husband has been vaccinated yet either. Ugh.

(This is about 1 month out from her telling my husband she "wanting nothing from him" by the way. Ha.)

We've bought ourselves another few months because we have some repair work that needs to get done. But it really is probably inevitable. (Unless she gets really horrible in the interim and my husband decides he really has had enough...)

Anyway, I'm trying to brainstorm a list of boundaries for when the time comes. We already have a few we agreed on even before we moved:

1. We won't be allowing either set of parents to stay in our home.
2. We will not be entertaining them all day, everyday while they're here. We work from home and will let them know beforehand that they'll need to find things to do in the mornings and early afternoons so we can keep to our work schedule.
3. I will NOT be cooking for them every night. I might not cook for his parents at all. (His stepdad has been strangely rude during meals in the past.)

It probably seems like I'm overly anxious about this, and that's because I AM. Having people in my house at all is very triggering for me, because my unPD mother had to be Best Hostess Ever (and I had to be Best Hostess' Daughter Ever).

I think I'll be better off if I can see potential pitfalls in advance and have a plan in action that I've rehearsed in my head. So... any ideas? Things to be wary of? Games your PDs played during visits?

[Call Me Cordelia]

Ugh.... Man. So much for the silent treat. If it’s triggering, is it really worth it to you? I mean, why host them? You don’t have to! It took me way too long to learn that, even after I’d been raged at in my own home at nine months pregnant.

I believe that both of you get veto power. Guests have to be approved by both you and DH. If you are not okay having your IL’s in your home, that is a natural consequence of their behavior. (And Pepin, if you’re reading, that goes for you too!)

It’s obviously majorly stressful to you. And it doesn’t sound like much of a visit. Come from thousands of miles so you can hide from your guests as much as you think you can get away with and count down to when they finally leave? And hide your real feelings and try to let them play happy families at your emotional expense? No thank you. Been there, done that, got the therapy.

I understand that it’s a really hard thing to stand up for yourself in that way, but if it’s what you actually want, for your home to stay your haven, you have that right! Perhaps you can meet them somewhere out in public, outdoors, for an hour, whatever you ACTUALLY feel comfortable with. Your MiL has behaved in such an atrocious way she’s lucky you’re considering spending time with her at all. If what you offer is not good enough for her, that’s too bad. Maybe she’ll feel differently after another round of silent treat. Or not. You can visit when it’s a good time for you BOTH. Remember the 51% rule!

[bloomie]

Cat - your vigilance and need to think this through is wisdom. I am thinking your DH is not ready to say no visit, but that you are wanting to set the terms around your own home and your relationship for what you are willing/able to offer if/when the in laws do come to your town?

I like your boundaries. They focus on what you can control.

1. We won't be allowing either set of parents to stay in our home.

Nice! Protects your safe and sacred space.

2. We will not be entertaining them all day, everyday while they're here. We work from home and will let them know beforehand that they'll need to find things to do in the mornings and early afternoons so we can keep to our work schedule.

Healthy, reasonable, and necessary to protect your work environment and working hours. May need to be very specific with this and stick with it when the pressure comes.

3. I will NOT be cooking for them every night. I might not cook for his parents at all. (His stepdad has been strangely rude during meals in the past.)

I ask gently... did you agree to cook for them or is this an expectation you have gone along with? Cooking for people and sharing a meal(s) in our home is a lot of work on a work day/week and an intimate kind of experience. Is this something you want to share with them? There are great restaurants in most areas that could feed them.

Do you take on the itinerary?  Has it been the norm for your in laws come to town, stay in your home, be fed and watered by you daily, for you to design an interesting experience for them, and for them to still behave poorly toward you?

You could resign from your position of hostess with the mostest, party planner extraordinaire, the ever benevolent, always cheery scullery maid and let them figure themselves and their visit out.

You know how I know that... I did it! And you know what happened... in laws didn't like it! Not one little bit! No more staying in my home. No more lovely meals and flowing wine with hours of focused attention and attempts to entertain them and endure them. No more us treating for every single meal out because they decided on their own agenda to come to town and 'see' us.

Did we announce those changes? Nope. We lived them. We are coming to town such and such date... "Okay. We will try and meet up for dinner while you are here, but this is a really busy time for us so, no promises."

We didn't offer our home and when the subject was brought up we replied: "That won't work for us, but here are some lovely hotels in the area you might enjoy."

You get the idea.

When I stopped all of that, in time, they stopped coming to town. Why you ask? Because it cost them something and required of them to take responsiblity for themselves. There were unreasonable expectations placed upon us without even a hint of reciprocity or appreciation. Pure, unadulterated entitlement.

We couldn't change them, but we sure could change the messages we were sending about what we value and prioritize and how available we are given the ongoing strife in the relationship.

I have never regretted reclaiming my home, resources, and calendar from those who bring hurt, harm, discomfort and pain into my life and treat us with disrespect. 

Finding a chill position and holding it takes trial and effort and time, but it is a way to go forward and still have some vLC I have found.

Some thoughts and experiences that I hope are food for thought. Either way, whatever you choose to do... only you and your DH know what is right for you and we support whatever choices you make in what is really a tough situation.

[Cat of the Canals]

Ugh.... Man. So much for the silent treat. If it's triggering, is it really worth it to you? I mean, why host them? You don't have to! It took me way too long to learn that, even after I'd been raged at in my own home at nine months pregnant.

I believe that both of you get veto power. Guests have to be approved by both you and DH. If you are not okay having your IL's in your home, that is a natural consequence of their behavior. (And Pepin, if you're reading, that goes for you too!)

That's a good point and one I should think on. One of the issues here is that my husband's default mode when dealing with his mother is to "go with the flow and just hope it ends soon." He doesn't want her to come even more than me, but despite the fact that we've discussed many times that giving in to her demands NEVER benefits us, I think she ends up wearing him down with pure persistence. When he told her we couldn't think about visitors yet because we're getting the roof redone, she demanded to know WHEN we were doing that. Because in her mind, as soon as that hurdle is gone, she has a RIGHT to come.

But I should also explain that I am coming from a place of thinking it was expected of me to allow guests to come and stay in my home for however long they like, cook all their meals, take care of all their needs, entertain them the entire time - not because I've ever done it, but because it's what my mother does, and she treats it like her religion.

Just the idea that I could simply NOT extend an invitation to stay in our home (let alone the rest) was a huge revelation for me. Vetoing visits altogether seems... too big to comprehend.

But maybe that's the problem... PDs push everything to absolutes: always and never. And I think that pushes us to think that way, too. If we had our way, we would "never" say yes to her visiting. But we don't actually have to say no to visits "always and forever," especially if it feels too big right now. All we really have to do is say no to THIS visit. And we can continue saying no to THIS visit for as long as we want.  I feel like a lightbulb just went off. Thank you, Cordelia!

I ask gently... did you agree to cook for them or is this an expectation you have gone along with? Cooking for people and sharing a meal(s) in our home is a lot of work on a work day/week and an intimate kind of experience. Is this something you want to share with them? There are great restaurants in most areas that could feed them.

Do you take on the itinerary?  Has it been the norm for your in laws come to town, stay in your home, be fed and watered by you daily, for you to design an interesting experience for them, and for them to still behave poorly toward you?

You could resign from your position of hostess with the mostest, party planner extraordinaire, the ever benevolent, always cheery scullery maid and let them figure themselves and their visit out.

We used to live only an hour or so away, and thus visits were single-day affairs. They have not visited us yet since we moved away. So some of this anxiety is coming from the fact that having them in the vicinity for an extended period of town leaves us vulnerable to wayyyy more contact than we're used to, and we've never had to deal with it before.

I think we originally thought we'd take on the itinerary and even offer to pay for accommodations (I initially felt guilty about the 'no houseguests' rule). I've since changed my mind on that, as I realized my MIL would use it as an excuse to visit more often (she got a freebie so now she can afford to visit again!). Their trip. Their responsibility to plan it and pay for it.

Honestly, the only reason I've considered cooking is because it would give me something to do AWAY FROM THEM. But there's a lot of other things I could do with that time and energy, so maybe it's best to scrap that idea, should they ever come here. Any effort on my part ends up feeling like I'm reward people who always behave badly, so yes... I probably should let them sort more of it out.

Just now, the idea of telling them we've already made dinner plans or have already eaten, so they should figure things out for themselves... well, why not? We'd end up buying ourselves another hour or two of peace.    Thank you for the gentle nudge on that. It really does help to have people say, "But do you really HAVE to do that??? And if so, why?"

[Leonor]

"You could resign from your position of hostess with the mostest, party planner extraordinaire, the ever benevolent, always cheery scullery maid and let them figure themselves and their visit out."

Bloomie, as always, speaks the truth with gentle wisdom. That is *exactly* the role I had assumed with my in-laws and when I resigned, nothing got figured out, because they had not been interested in figuring anything out.

My dh used to say, "This is just as much about you" and I felt betrayed and wounded, and he has been wrong about a lot of things with the ILs that pushed our marriage to the brink, but he was spot on here.

Your insight that the pressure you felt to entertain your ILs at your own expense comes from the modeling you received from your own m is a very healing realization. You can recognize a pattern and feel the intensity of its pull, but once that happens you see you have a choice: I can do what my mom did, or I can try something else.

I sacrificed myself for my ils because my foo discarded me after I started speaking out about having been abused as a little girl. My foo was a shiny on the outside clan; my ILs were the opposite. I saw them as honest and expressive and close, and when I started to see the cracks in their personae, I thought I could patch those right up and bring happiness to them with love and family and children and Christmas dinners ... All the things I hadn't been able to do with my own foo.

I did it, then, to try to create a safe family for myself, but my ego was right up in there, too. "See?" I was saying to my foo and old friends who blamed me as crazy or cruel for their discard. "I'M not the problem! YOU are! I'm just fine! THESE people love me!"

And then when my ILsr refused to stop with the grousing and the manipulation and the crazy-making sabotages, I got mad at them. "What is the MATTER with you?" I thought. "Can't you see I'm KILLING myself over here trying to make you HAPPY?"

I know I'm going on about me and I don't want to hijack your thread. I just wanted to share that for me, it was a lot harder to drop the HWTM role that Bloomie identifies, because it meant I had to give up a fantasy about *myself* before I could let go of them.

So it's not easy. It's painful. But it does bring peace.

Peace to you!

[Cat of the Canals]

Thank you for sharing that, Leonor. I like to think of myself as a recovered people-pleaser, but in reality I am a recoverING people-pleaser. The urge is still there, and it can be quite strong sometimes.