“In August, my husband’s parents said they wanted to visit for Christmas. I’m not wild about this, because Christmas is my favorite holiday and I don’t want their whining and nagging here for it. We decided to discuss it. A lot of their visit was pending whether my husband could time off work. They kept pressing us for an answer. A few weeks later, my husband gets a text saying ‘We bought plane tickets for X date to Y date. We’ll see you then. Don’t worry about taking time off, we’ll see you whenever you have time.’ So hubby shrugged, was kinda mad they bought tickets without discussing dates with us first but decided to stop trying to get time off work since they clearly don’t care about his schedule.
Fast-forward probably about two weeks, and my mother-in-law asked my husband if he had managed to get that time off work…because she wanted to buy plane tickets.
Hubby was like ‘Uh, you guys told me you already bought tickets. What happened to those tickets?’
She said they had never said that, so my husband sent her a screenshot of the text. She continued to deny it because she’s delusional. Then she admitted they had never bought the tickets and asked again if he had managed to get the time off work.
He said, ‘No, based on your statement that you had already bought the tickets and to not worry about it, I didn’t take the time off work.’
She was mad, and said they would now be driving so they could ‘play their visit by ear.’ I pointed out to hubby that was a blatant manipulation to try and get the outcome she wanted and felt like she deserved it. He agreed and was angry at his mom.
Fast forward to yesterday. My husband gets a call from his mom and dad. Wanting to know AGAIN if he had gotten that time off work. He said no, he still hadn’t. Then they informed him that because of this they would no longer be visiting for Christmas. Oh no. We’re so sad. Neither of us had wanted them to come. Here is where things get dicey.
They told hubby they wanted a better relationship with us (which is weird because they never talk to us) and they wanted to see the kids more. They informed us there would be a family reunion this summer and they invited us and our children (10 and 8) to attend. Then, they told us while we were welcome to come, the kids WOULD be attending, because they would be coming to our home state and taking them back to theirs (1000 miles away) if we wouldn’t bring them ourselves. They informed us that they would no longer be accepting ‘No’ for an answer, so we had to agree. At this point, my husband was about 2 minutes away from work so told them they would talk about it later. He was angry. They have asked us to send the kids to them before and we told them no. We don’t trust them because they don’t watch the kids very carefully and take every opportunity to spite our rules for the kids.
I told my husband, ‘Were they somehow awarded joint custody and shared parenting decisions for our kids and we aren’t aware? They get whatever answer we give them and the answer is NO.’ He adrees 100%. He said he was so stunned in the moment, he just hung up with them. But they basically implied they would kidnap our children if we didn’t hand them over willingly. My husband was ready to go North Carolina with them, but he still wants things to work out. That tiny little unicorn in his heart won’t die, because he loves his parents even if they are awful.
I can’t get over the fact that they threaten to take our kids away. ‘I won’t accept no for an answer.’ YES, YOU WILL. No is the answer you get.”
