she shouldn't be involved. Apparently someone died and made sil the manager of the universe! She is always trying to meddle in his affairs, and I truly believe that she does this in her attempts to sabotage his success.

When she and I use to be friends, she would say things to me to try to get me to be upset with him, or feel jealous towards ss, or just plain not be happy. When I realized this, I began to distance myself from her and not invite her into our life. Shortly thereafter, she began to cultivate a new found friendship towards bm...yes, the same woman who is routinely disrespectful towards her brother, and uses her nephew to use her brother. I believe that sil maintains a friendship with bm, to use her, to gain access to ss, just to meddle in dh's affairs. The woman doesn't have anything better to do with her life, but work to sabotage others. I have many more stories, I'll just leave you with that.

No, my dh has never told her to butt out exactly. He does let her know when he is irritated, and when she called, she was explaining how he really wanted something else and didn't have enough money...then dh shot a hole in that story explaining to him exactly how much he got for Christmas and the item he wanted was about 1/2 the amount of money he had in his pocket.

You're right though, I can't handle it for dh. He has to be the one to put his family in their place. He is just a man of very few words, and sometimes doesn't recognize when people are being dysfunctional. It's frustrating, so I come here to vent and be done with it. It is what it is...

Next year, I'm hoping for an out of State ski trip for us so that we can just leave gifts behind and not have to mess with his family for the holidays. We will see..

Thanks for your input..

Candice

he won't return it. Anything we do for ss is never appreciated, and we don't ever just hand him money, we do the gift card thing, but never straight cash. At ss's bday party this year that his mother threw, she had an argument with ss at his party...somehow when cash appeared in his bday cards, bm remembered that she had a loan with ss, and he owed her money....ss argued with his mother on this, but I think he lost and she got some, if not most of his bday money.

We just feel if he can't appreciate it, he can donate it just like you said, and next year, maybe coal will be in his stocking.

Thanks for validating my feelings, I thought it was really rude too.

Candice

although it's horrible to have bad in-laws, and I don't wish this upon anyone, it's just comforting to know that I'm not alone, and that my advice helped one person through the holidays!

Every year I keep saying..."we're not spending the holidays with them!" but for some reason or another I keep getting sucked into it. I guess it's because of my son. He is allowed to play with his brother and his cousin, and he just loves them to pieces. It just breaks my heart that dh is met with such opposition. At least when we were over there, we didn't have face to face drama, it was actually pleasant. The drama usually unfolds behind closed doors when we are gone. That way people can say..."I didn't say that.."

Not only are they rude, but they are cowards too.

Good luck with your in-laws, if you ever need support, email me!

Candice

That is the PERFECT solution to this!

I will say for ss, it isn't all his fault, like I said earlier, he is surrounded by idiots that tell him not to appreciate his dad. Deep down inside, he really does love his dad, but he has to show loyalty towards his mother. So, I still love him, but he just doesn't deserve $2k in presents for one Christmas!

Next year....I might just make a donation on his behalf

Now who is the evil stepmother?!!!

Candice

with his family, the unfortunate part about my dh is that he doesn't recognize when they are over stepping boundaries. This is a problem when you marry a person that was raised in a severely dysfunctional family.

It seems that I am the only one that is bothered by this. My dh is not even remotely concerned about this. When I questioned him about his feelings, he just felt that his sister was pressured to ask him about the return by ss, and that she just gave into him. He states that his sister agreed with him on the phone after hearing his explaination. I see things totally differently. I see a person who plays both sides of the fence, who is friendly to your face, then talks disrespectfully about you behind your back (as I have experienced first hand by sil), and a person who isn't honest with you (his sister lies to my face to manipulate to get what she wants and then doesn't even care about getting caught lying).

The way I see this situation is the sil probably saw that ss was disappointed (not b/c those are good gifts but b/c he is extremely spoiled), she questioned him and began a conversation with him about how we are bad people, and she encouraged him to confront his dad, and then offered to do it herself. I don't really believe that ss would have asked his dad to return the gift himself, but she probably said..."I'll call your dad for you..."

Honestly, I'm the only one that is bothered by it. My dh keeps going on as if it never happened. Me, I just keep getting reminded how unfaithful his family is, and it gives me more and more reason to keep distancing myself from them.

I wish he would tell her to just butt out, but he doesn't see that she is doing anything wrong. So what do you do?

Candice