Gmum, I started to respond to you with a long list of their complaints about me, and then realized that is exactly the type of post that would get me into trouble if they stumbled across it, because they would go down the list to argue every point. Lets just say when I met H he was 20. He lived with his parents, they supported him. They knew every detail of his life and he was very involved with aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc during holidays and family events. Well, then he met me. And moved, and got a job (actually has always worked 2 jobs) and got 2 masters degrees, and had children, and moved again, and guess what? He went from a 20 year old child, to a busy adult man who no longer had time for every single family event (although went to most of them), no longer had time for long chats with mom every day, no longer did whatever mom and dad told him to, mostly because he was living his life, not out of rebellion. However the blame is on me- I "stole" him and changed him from sweet and family oriented to a distant non-family oriented person. Makes no sense at all. Not at all. Ironically, his brother also got busy with life, all of his first cousins got busy and made lives for themselves, people do not stay the same as when they are teenagers or 20 year olds- sometimes they get busy with life. Not uninterested in their family of origin, or not even necessarily disconnected, but in the normal course of life you pull away and build your own life. And my IL's do not see this, they see it as I stole their son. They have said as much. I stole their son from his family. He is not the same anymore as when he was 20. They literally say this time and time again. The fact that I gave them their only grandchildren? Not even taken into account.
