Wife Wants To Skip Family Holiday Festivities After Hearing Her Mother-In-Law Doesn’t Want Her There

Nov 10, 2021 by apost team

Getting married is amazing. It’s a comforting and rewarding feeling to know that you have finally found the person you’re going to spend the rest of your life with. However, getting along with your in-laws is not always a walk in the park, as one woman on Reddit has come to find out.

The woman went to Reddit in October 2020 to express some concerns she was having about the upcoming family holiday festivities and asked Reddit users for advice. The original poster (OP) explained that she’s always felt like her husband’s parents don’t like her. When they were on a family vacation, she overheard her mother-in-law make some pretty rude statements about her where she explicitly said that she did not want OP coming to their place for the holidays.

OP is a very shy person and gets nervous when it comes to confronting people, so she didn’t bother to say anything to her mother-in-law. She did, though, tell her husband about what happened and explained that she did not feel comfortable going on another family vacation with her mother-in-law or to another holiday gathering with her. Fortunately, OP’s husband was on her side and completely understood her feelings.

When Thanksgiving began to roll around, OP stuck by what she said, but her husband was upset about this. He expected her to get over her feelings by now, but she still hadn’t. OP didn’t want to be somewhere she wasn’t welcomed but didn’t want to make her husband feel bad, so she asked Redditors for advice on what to do next.

Starting off her Reddit post, OP said, “I’ve always (gotten) the impression that my husband’s parents didn’t like me.” Even though they weren’t rude to her, they were usually cold and indifferent. OP described herself as the “shy nervous type” and explained that holidays always stressed her out.

During the summer of 2020, the family went on vacation to a beach house together. This is when the problems really came to light for OP. “I overheard my mother-in-law talking to her sister,” she said.” Since OP and her husband were newly married at this time, it made sense that the family was still getting to know her and getting used to having her around so much. 

OP explained that she overheard her mother-in-law saying: “I don’t hate her or anything, but honestly it sucks when for the rest of your life you have to invite someone you don’t want to to Christmas dinner.”

Knowing how emotional and deflective her mother-in-law can be, OP strayed from confronting her but told her husband about what happened when they got home. “He said it sucks, but she was probably just trying to work through her feelings,” OP said. “I told him that I didn’t ever want to go on another family vacation or holiday because of what she said, and he said he could understand.”

Fast forward a few months, and the holiday season was quickly approaching. OP decided to stick by her original plan of not visiting her in-laws, but her husband was upset because he thought she would have gotten over what happened. 

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OP explained, “He said I’m being unfair when she has always been polite and she was venting to his aunt, and then he said I’m a hypocrite because I don’t like her either. This has been causing a lot of tension.” OP turned to Reddit users for advice on the matter, and a majority of them agreed that she was right to want to skip out on the family holiday get-togethers. 

One user commented, “OP made it clear that she didn’t want to go to any more holidays to her husband and he said OK. Only for OP to find out months later that husband thought she’d just ‘get over it.’ So the husband just brushed off his wife’s very valid feelings and now is all shocked that she didn’t get over it just like he wanted to.” 

Another user chimed in and said, “When my in-laws offended us in a similar manner, rather than make it obvious we didn’t want to be around them, we just made new traditions for our own family surrounding all the holidays throughout the year. So conveniently we are busy when invited to see them for holidays.”

However, some users pointed out that while it was fine for OP to still be upset, she should reconsider completely cutting off ties with her in-laws. One user explained, “I can understand not wanting to go to MIL’s having heard what she said, but your husband is right, too. She was expressing a private opinion and it sucks that you heard it but she isn’t being insulting or mean to you… Sometimes you have to work at these relationships a bit.”

Do you think this woman should cut off her husband’s family for overhearing what her mother-in-law said? Or should she work on fixing the situation? Let us know, and be sure to pass this along to your family members and friends, too.