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I have been having issues with my husband's family when it comes to gift giving at holidays/birthdays and paying the bill at dinner. I am at my wit's end but my husband and my own mother think i'm wrong. My husband has 2 brothers, one is married with 2 kids, ages 7 and 2 and the other is 35, single and lazy. My DH and i have 2 kids ages 9 months and 2. Prior to getting married we'd often go out DHs family and when the bill came, regardless of who was there my dh and his brother who is married would split the bill. The brother, we will call him S's mother in law would often be at these dinners and she never would offer to pay or even thank us after the bill had been paid.
DHs mom lives across the country with her boyfriend. They come to stay for christmas and they stay with S and his wife for a month. I have no idea why they need to stay a month but this has been happening since 2014 (we got married in 2013) and i find them to be a bit much. They also stay for a month in april then again in the summer. Even though they dont stay with us we constantly have to be involved in what theyre doing, usually driving to S's house which is 45 min away, S's kids always seem to have a cold, then our kids get a cold, my mother in law, we can call her C always ends up getting sick it seems when she comes out. Last year she had pneumonia, then it was a stomach bug. I dont even want to see them because they are always sick!
Anyways that is one issue but the dinners and lunches bill is really what gets under my skin. Why should it only be us and S's family to split the bill? Why cant the 35 year old brother, S's mother in law or the boyfriend ever help pay!?? There was one dinner i didnt even go to recently and DH still paid half the bill for all these people and it was just he and my 2 year old son! Also S's mother in law at one point would give us a xmas gift and we'd get her one also but last year she got us nothing even though we got her one. This year DH still got her something and she got us nothing. It's interesting to us both that she stopped getting us something all of a sudden even though we get her something. In my mind im thinking oh yeah and we always pick up the tab for you at dinner too!! Double wham.
DH and i have had some fights about this. Ive said this is no longer fair or sustainable. We have kids, bills, and why has this just become a 'tradition' that the only people who pay the bill are DH and S. The other thing about S is that he is a VP of finance at a fortune 500 company and his wife is a finance director with an mba. They have a verry nice income, more than dh and i make by far and this gets under my skin also. S is perfectly content to have us foot the bill for HIS mother in law yet he's never paid for my parents for a thing. DH is too proud to say anything...but im starting to hate these people. I find it incredibly rude and obnoxious that they just think they dont have to be responsible for a meal they ate.
My mom tells me to be the bigger person and dh thinks im awful and that I am the one who is cheap. I am so annoyed everytime we have to even see these people because it always involves a bill. Tonight it was a $300 dinner bill.
I feel like theres nothing i can do. DH is not on my side and i feel resentful towards him. I liked his family at first but now i find them to be cheap, inconsiderate and a few of them are just lazy.
Am i completely off base? In my family it doenst work this way. We split the bill amongst all the adults when we do dinners. Theres no one who just sits there with alligator arms expecting that someone else will take care of them. I actually hate S's mother in law now because she is always going on these exotic trips. She has the money..but poor DH and i pay for her and give her xmas gifts and get nothing back! I just dont feel like giving to these people!
This has gotten long but the other issue is that DH alwaaays spends more money on S's family for gifts than they spend on us. Again maddening considering they make more than us. I am starting to wish DH was a lot less generous. Generosity is a wonderful quality but i really feel like a chump here. DH would probably divorce me if i ever dared say anything when the bill comes...there are times id like to say, oh ok so how are we splitting the bill tonight but that would just be awkward...i mean hello i know who ends up paying.
Is this normal? Do other families operate this way? I told some people at work about it and a few friends and they think it's ridiculous. I feel like the bad guy with dh and my mom though.
I'm definitely on your side. Your DH and mom are wrong as well.
I could care less if my SO was going to divorce me over it and not (and if she did, it would just prove that they weren't right for me), I would say something next time. In my group of friends, we always split, but I always subliminally mention who got what to pay their own share.
Well dh and i basically arent speaking right now over this. He wants me to just not mind i guess. I cant really talk to sister in law about it because it's her mom who is pissing me off. Also when C and her boyfriend come out for a month they take their 2 yr old out of daycare and C takes care of her and they save money. Everyone wins expect us it seems
My mom has her own issues with giving too much so i shouldn't be suprised. It maddens me what i see her do for her own siblings sometimes and no one does anything for her.
Also none of my husbands family does much at all for him. He goes out of his way to help the 35 year old brother, gets him nice gifts, gets nice gifts for S's family etc and they gifts they give back just suck. I have to bite my tongue but it seems like they dont know him or what he likes at all. He buys them top of the line stuff and every time he gets a gift from them it's obvious they just didnt want to spend they money. Really is gross. But he gets mad at me if i say anything. I know gifts are just that...gifts and no one is obligated to spend a certain amount on anyone but if you spend $150 on someone all the time and they spend $35 on you it starts to become painfully obvious. Im mad that my husbands generosity is overlooked or people just dont care. He works hard...he's a police officer, it's not a glamorous job, he's a good man who loves his family and i want to cry thinking about his brother and their fancy finance jobs and how they give so little to him. He could be dead next week with some of the areas of the city he works in. I just really feel that my husbands family does not appreciate him. They run him to the ground with wanting him to be around and spilt bills with it seems
OP, could be your husband sees this as a contest between him and his highly successful brother and he has to "keep up with the Joneses" as it were. He'll do anything to avoid admitting that your little family can't afford all this. Trust me, there's some family history here.
Talk to your husband and get to the bottom of his motivation. If he bristles and won't discuss it, in your place I would seriously consider not going to these dinners.
Pretty sad that your own mother is against you on this, because you're 100% correct. I am sorry for your heartache. It is tough being right, knowing you're right and having no one listen to you. The inmates are running the asylum.
First of all, yes, you're right. It's pathetic that nobody ever offers to chip in, especially since they're coming often and staying so long (too long). But, your husband sounds as though he's a bit competitive with his brother, and doesn't want to seem less successful. Since he's already made it clear he isn't open to discussing the way these dinners are paid for, you need to change tactics.
I would ask him to sit down with you and discuss your financial future. Are you saving for a house, college tuition, a family vacation, etc? Suggest a budget to reach the goal, and come to an agreement on discretionary spending. He needs to understand that what he gives to his family, takes away from the family you are building together.
OP, could be your husband sees this as a contest between him and his highly successful brother and he has to "keep up with the Joneses" as it were. He'll do anything to avoid admitting that your little family can't afford all this. Trust me, there's some family history here.
Talk to your husband and get to the bottom of his motivation. If he bristles and won't discuss it, in your place I would seriously consider not going to these dinners.
Pretty sad that your own mother is against you on this, because you're 100% correct. I am sorry for your heartache. It is tough being right, knowing you're right and having no one listen to you. The inmates are running the asylum.
I agree with you and FTWC.
When my family or hubby's family go out to dinner at restaurants (it is not very often) we always split the bill by family. Occasionally we might pick it the tab for his parents, or his sister may pick up the tab for his parents, but many times they paid for their own meal.
And , why in world would anyone pick up the tab for 35 year old man? Heck, he should be able to afford to pay for his own food, it is not like he is the 15 year old kid brother who does not have a job. Sheesh!
OP, could be your husband sees this as a contest between him and his highly successful brother and he has to "keep up with the Joneses" as it were. He'll do anything to avoid admitting that your little family can't afford all this. Trust me, there's some family history here.
Talk to your husband and get to the bottom of his motivation. If he bristles and won't discuss it, in your place I would seriously consider not going to these dinners.
Pretty sad that your own mother is against you on this, because you're 100% correct. I am sorry for your heartache. It is tough being right, knowing you're right and having no one listen to you. The inmates are running the asylum.
I agree with this - you should try to talk to your husband, in a non-confrontational way, to get an understanding of why he finds this acceptable. Maybe if you understand his feelings better, you'll be less angry. It won't change the situation, but it might make it more bearable if you at least understand how your husband is feeling. And ultimately, if your husband is firm not changing anything, all you can do is decline going to dinners with them, and don't ask your husband about it when he gets home - you're only setting yourself up to get wound up by it if you do.
Also, try not to let your anger about this turn into bitterness over unrelated things - the fact that they are sick a lot is not their fault. I can understand not wanting your kids getting sick, but that's just a part of life, and ultimately they're not doing it on purpose. Be fair, don't hold things against them which aren't their fault just because you're angry about something else they are doing. That's very passive aggressive.
First of all, yes, you're right. It's pathetic that nobody ever offers to chip in, especially since they're coming often and staying so long (too long). But, your husband sounds as though he's a bit competitive with his brother, and doesn't want to seem less successful. Since he's already made it clear he isn't open to discussing the way these dinners are paid for, you need to change tactics.
I would ask him to sit down with you and discuss your financial future. Are you saving for a house, college tuition, a family vacation, etc? Suggest a budget to reach the goal, and come to an agreement on discretionary spending. He needs to understand that what he gives to his family, takes away from the family you are building together.
That is an excellent point.
Maybe once he sees that spending all that money on family dinners means that you can't go on vacation, or have to go for a long weekend instead of a week he will realize what is happening.
This is a no-win situation. You need to figure out how to live with it and move on. Family squabbles never turn out well and they will linger for years.
This is a no-win situation. You need to figure out how to live with it and move on. Family squabbles never turn out well and they will linger for years.
Except, no, she doesn't have to live with it. Something like this would almost be grounds for a divorce (if nothing changed), at least for me it would.
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