One step at a time.........

[25yearsmlc]

BND,

just to commiserate a bit....my mil has not called once to check on the kids, UNLESS H is visiting and she calls HIM, and then might ask to talk to the girls or s20. I answered the phone yesterday and H was shopping so she was stuck talking to me....not one question about what is going on or why her son lives in Alaska...our kids are her ONLY grandchildren and always will be the only ones. She has so little to do with them and her questions are irrelevant. I shoved college info about d17 in her face so she'd have some idea that d17 is NOT d11, b/c ummmm, TIME HAS PASSED....???? And d9 is not d2, but anyhow. It is HER loss much more than theirs. And H has a funny thing about his mom as well. When we got married in the Catholic church I attended, H had no objectiong except he wouldn't promise to convert. No biggie since his church is Russian Orthodox, has same sacraments, etc. BUT H's mother was furious (I knew NOTHING OF THIS UNTIL 1 YEAR AGO) and insisted we marry in HER church, which H had Not attended in a decade and which MIL didn't attend more than once every other year for God's sake. Hypocritical....ANYHOW, H promised her that our children would be raised and baptized in his church, I guess in exchange for us Marrying in mine...??? ( I KNEW NOTHING OF THIS EITHER, UNTIL 1 YEAR AGO). SO, at first child's baptism, mil does NOT attend and it is b/c Son is being baptized Catholic, which mil says while on speaker phone....OUCH!! And H never says a word to me about his original promise, and lets the R between mil and me get worse and worse. IF he had not made the promises, OR if he had at least told me of them, our R would have been much better. He sees himself as being "Conflict avoidant" as if I ENJOY conflicts. Thing is, his behavior INCREASES the conflicts in the long run, and dumps them on others. H trying to please all the women in his life...ends up pleasing none of us in that regard.

His father and mother are divorced. His dad remarried and StepMIL and fil have been as supportive as THEY can be, meaning they don't want to take sides, but they call and write to us which is much better than falling off the face of the earth as MIL and BIL/SIL did. I was so close to bil, like a brother to me and ONE time I was so frustrated with H's family for having NO contact I said, "thanks for never calling the girls" and bil hung up on me....I ended up apologizing, and still haven't heard a word. Now I feel that they are all well.....3000 miles away and THERE ARE ADVANTAGES to that. Enough said.

Still feeling pretty good about the holiday in general and am glad H is here. Hope yours gets better soon, see my other post to you.

You know BND, if OUR children/sons/daughters EVER do crap like this, I just know we will speak up to them and definitely speak/reach out to the LBSer and especially our grandchildren. This boggles my mind. But sometimes in my worst moods, I get satisfaction from knowing that she is missing out on their lives and that it is her loss and even though I know, cognitively, that is selfish and only true to a certain extent, I still find myself being consoled by it. Just shows we all have our dark sides.....And if you read my other post to you MrsH, you'll read about the Christmas when we all had terrible food poisoning but had to travel to mil's in a rush, flying and driving b/c God forbid we spend more time with my family (34 cousins in my family for kids to play with, versus 0 in H's, just senior citizens who don't speak English and are bitter....FUN!!)...anyhow, mil did NOT notice us puking b/c she was too busy being pissed off at us for being late--plane was delayed an hour, so we spent time being critisized and literally had to go puke somemore, while she got all wound up again. Eventually even H had enough. But ahhhhh, the memories....come to think of it, we haven't spent many Christmas days with her since, actually....well, that's good.

God bless, and again, WHEN will H come home for good?
j-