At dinners where the same people never help pay the bill (girlfriend, Christmas)
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Hand the leech a stack of quarters and directions to a laundromat.
Yeah! That's especially nuts! Maybe, maybe I could see if the brother came over to use the w/d every so often, but OP said DH actually does his brother's laundry!
The 35 year old brother is a separate issue. Given the OP's vitriol toward her ILs I cant help but wonder if there is more to the story there. Is he competent?
I also wonder if the OP and her husband come from different ethnic/cultural backgrounds.
In looking at you post history you do seem awfully focused on what others have that you don't and how various things are "unfair" and you are somehow shortchanged.
No and i dont plan to start. Dh and i have visited her in az before we had kids. I mentioned before that dh would help with her plane ticket but i dont think he does now. I also mentioned that BIL takes their daughter out of daycare for the month and MIL watches her. So they save money there big time. The daycare is 2500 a month.
It's also beyond me why the woman can't just buy her own plane ticket. She already gets free room and board for her and the boyfriend plus free meals. She's the one who moved away.
I predict you won't have to worry about this anymore in about a year. If you continue down this road of hating your husband's entire family, he will only assume you feel the same about him.
Don't quit your day job; you'll be a single mom, and you sure wouldn't want to put your husband out, would you? You'd feel like such a loser, you know.
I predict you won't have to worry about this anymore in about a year. If you continue down this road of hating your husband's entire family, he will only assume you feel the same about him.
Don't quit your day job; you'll be a single mom, and you sure wouldn't want to put your husband out, would you? You'd feel like such a loser, you know.
OP, I think this is fundamentally about your relationship with your husband. I'd say that needs to be the primary focus, and you need to discuss all the various issues related to his family and see if you can agree to mutually acceptable boundaries that you can both live with, and that he's willing to enforce. You are going to need to be flexible, but hopefully, if you can push back on at least some of it, you can come to an agreement you can live with.
and fwiw, I think his family does sound pretty bad. But it is what it is, and that's something you are going to have to accept. But some is seriously over the line, like doing laundry for a 35 year old! It may be that he's lost sight of just how much he's being taken advantage of, so perhaps a session or two with a neutral third party counselor would help him re-set some of his expectations of what's reasonable.
I predict you won't have to worry about this anymore in about a year. If you continue down this road of hating your husband's entire family, he will only assume you feel the same about him.
Don't quit your day job; you'll be a single mom, and you sure wouldn't want to put your husband out, would you? You'd feel like such a loser, you know.
I totally agree, convextech. Nobody would stand for the level of contempt you are showing towards their family - at least not anyone I know. My husband would NEVER put up with it. Nor would I. If you feel this much hatred towards his family, why in the name of all that's holy did you two even get married?
Do you want to be happy or right? Of course you are "right" if your main concern is fairness. But, is it really making you happy to fight with your husband over his family?
If he doesn't have a problem paying for the family, let him. Maybe he feels it keeps him on an equal footing with his financially "more successful" brother.
My advice to you..... LET IT GO! Enjoy your husband. Let him enjoy his family; even if it includes paying for the meals. For him, it's goodwill toward his family. For you, it's goodwill toward your husband. A small price to pay. Work on a happy and respectful marriage. It will pay you back more than any other investment.
Really, I hate the word fair. What does it even mean??? My father never allowed us to use the word. He said the world is not about being fair. Get used to it and get over it. I agree. If you are busy calculating the unfair bad things then how can you possibly accept the unfair good things? Do you have healthy kids? Some people don't. Unfair. Do you have a good husband? Some people don't. Unfair.
I don't see that a $300 total bill for 10-11 people falls into the "high class joint" category. Particularly in a large, high COL city like Boston.
I was under the impression that the OP's husband paid the bill of $300, not that dinner total was $300.
OP, I am sympathetic. While it wasn't the same situation as yours, I too had the same problem where my husband was throwing money to his mother who was such a spendthrift and she didn't feel "obligated" to curb it. She would cry and be such a victim, she didn't care that we actually shouldn't give her the money as we weren't that well off or that my husband was going into our child's college fund that was set up by MY family to give her money (she ran that well dry-- my husband and I nearly broke up over that). She even told me when I was in my 5th month of pregnancy and on ordered bed rest that I needed to get up and find a job. My husband started to wise up eventually because of her increasingly bad, entitled and cruel attitude and he was starting to get hurt and offended to the point his notions of "helping" mom and saving face started to change. OP, it doesn't sound like your husband is there yet. Your position isn't wrong, but what is your end goal here? Would you consider going to marriage counseling, even by yourself?
You complain that your MIL stays at her OTHER son's house. What do you care if he loves his mom and wants her to spend a month with him? Why SHOULDN'T she stay a month, especially when traveling is hard on older people as well as expensive? It is NONE of your business.
If your husband and his brother agree to split the bill when dining, again, why does that bother you? Are you poor? Are your kids going without?
If your MIL gets sick - and pneumonia is a SERIOUS illness even for younger people, let alone older people, who can DIE of it pretty easily - why do you BLAME her for that? Did you see her self-administering pneumonia bacteria? Blaming people for getting sick is just reprehensible.
Your husband thinks you are cheap because you ARE cheap. It's that simple. YES, you are off-base.
Counting up who spends more is shallow and self-centered. Gifts are just that - gifts. They don't have to be equal in value. If that's how it worked, why bother with gifts at all. Which probably explains why your MIL DIDN'T get you a gift this year. If you think she doesn't know how much you hate her - and you obviously do or you wouldn't be so vitriolic - you are very much mistaken. I wouldn't buy you a gift either.
No, YOUR attitude is not normal. No, other families do NOT behave the way you do. You ARE the bad guy.
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