My condolences on the end of your marriage and the sale of your home. However, congratulations on the kickoff of your new life adventure with the blend and related baggage fading into your rear view mirror.  Enjoy the life of adventure and take care of you.

As for leftovers. My IL clan is the left-over half of their children's families.  THE day is always spent with my BIL1, BIL2, and SIL's ILs.    Unless.... my bride and I are going to be in town. Then THE day is celebrated on THE day with my bride's parents, sibs, and their spouses and kids, and kids SOs if there are any active at that time. 
Every time, it causes a  storm of monumental proportions.  Whining MILs, ticked off FILs, crying about invading their traditions, etc....  My ILs never had THE day with any of their adult children and their families unless we were present.  We never asked, we informed, we also notified all of my bride's sibs what was planned, when it was going to occur, and let them know that there would be no changes to those planes and that they were included if they showed up but that we required a firm RSVP that could not be broken.

We do not spring this at the last minute. We inform many months in advance.

Invariably, there is an injection of drama, usually from BIL1's bovine bride, or from SIL's DH's mother.  Though SIL's DH has no compunction against putting and keeping his mother in her place when she pulls her crap.  His dad is a great guy. Though he will not contain his mate when she pulls her manipulative crap.

We are the only splinter of the IL clan who is not resident in their small town or surrounding environment.   It is very telling that our son will not visit with my IL clan as he has zero tolerance for how they treat his mom.  He has made it clear that he will never support his mom/my DW living there under any circumstance.  To the level that he has said a number of times to us both when we are all together that ~ 'When dad is gone, you still cannot ever live there. Ever.  If we are going to live near family, we will live near dad's family.'.

When we were expats, we did cycle alternating holidays if we were in the States.   We still make an effort to visit my ILs periodically throughout the year and do TG or Christmas with them periodically.  My parents and family are all reasonable about it. My niece and her DH alternate TG and Christmas each year between his family and ours.  One year is TG with my niece's IL, Christmas is with my brother and SIL which invariably includes my parents.   They flip it the next year.  

My parents and my aunt (mom's sister) joined us for Christmas last year which was also my mom's 80th B-day which is on the 26th.

We spent TG last year with my ILs.  It ticked my bride off so much that she refuses to ever do it again unless we received a specific invitation.  BIL1's bovine bride orchestrated a cluster flock of drama of such monumental proportions that my DW has declared that she is done.

Men will try to ride the backs of two horses generally speaking.  When confronted with poor decisions and placating the BM, Chef would tell me "well I can't make everyone happy."  In other words I come dead last. As a matter of fact I never had a relationship where a man did have my back.  Sorry to hear that you are going through this as well.

I can so relate to this. “Not fair” is SD’s rallying cry. SHE defines what is fair, of course.

I think the last Christmas we spent at her house she announced that their big meal had been the day before (without us of course) but we were welcome to leftovers in the fridge. There was no way I was going to go digging through her kitchen to make a sandwich.

Today she doesn’t speak to DH. Not sure exactly why, but I can guess—DH hadn’t been “fair” to her (again, her definition of fair) about a few things.

No more arguments with DH about gifts, travel, money, and time away from home. Peaceful!

I’m so sorry you are going through this. It sounds like a toxic situation. I recently left a relationship involving 4 skids and 2 BMs, and in-laws that didn’t accept me. In the end, what made me realize we couldn’t get married or move forward was my SO’s inability to set appropriate boundaries. It is heartbreaking when the person who is supposed to be your “person”, well, isn’t. In your case, you talk about these various people and it sounds like they were too big an influence on your daily life. Boundaries would have prevented that.

From my engineeric brain man-spective....  Many men, once upon a time including me, struggle with being a pleaser, conflict avoidant, and focusing on making everyone happy rather than understanding where the relationship criticality/priority matrix indicates their focus and priority should be.   Yep, the criticality matrix, an engineeric brain related term and tool for quickly assessing and identifying where to put in a critical effort, focus critical resources, and focus value optimization. Among other things.

I use the concept in many different applications professionally and personally.  People including spouses, s/kids, X's, ILs, and those with an ancillary transient occasional presence can be positioned within the criticality matrix. There are clear edges/boundaries of priority related to Urgency and Importance.  IMHO those boundaries are the hills to die on to defend the keep, so to speak.  Purge the unimportant.  Address the urgent and important instantly, deal with the people in the other categories as their importance and the urgency of the situation stipulate.  Not everyone or everyting is important or urgent.  Guard the resources of our own peace and quality of life rabidly and pretect those who are important to us.  Just because a person exists at some level in our lives does not give them value beyond their importance and the urgency related to them.  Effective management of a people/relationship criticality matrix requires periodic forced distribution of people  and their importance.  Other than a true equity life partner, everyone transitions within the matrix periodically as events unfold and the evolve as people. Kids, parents, etc....

I know, people are not capital assets, systems, or tools. But.... managing our personal relationships can be significantly easier when rapid assessment and mitigation tools and strategies are engaged. Even with people the fact is that not everyone or everything related to them is important or urgent.  There is only one top priority.  Focus on that one and good things happen.  Try to make it all the top priority and nothing is a priority.  Often it is the boundaries and the defense of those boundaries that are important and ugent.  Just as often, certain people are never important or urgent.  No matter what they may feel or think about that. If they actually do think. Know your peeps and categorize them appropriately I suppose is a key element of it all.  There is no feelings in assessing uergency and importants.  Deal with the feels after the analysis is done and actions are taken.



IMHO of course.

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Last edited by Rags (12/18/2025 7:04 pm)

I'm sorry that you are going through this.  His family sounds difficult to put it mildly.. 

This is why I have put myself in the category of "whatever.. think what you want".  

I don't try to host anyone for anything.  I don't bother with more than perfunctory presents for people.. if they think I spent more on someone else?  Shrug.. whatever you say.. I'm not wasting a minute of my life trying to defend myself.  
Hosting things around holidays is tough.. and complexities abound when you have adult kids that are now married and have their own new set of inlaws.. sometimes multiples.. and they have to figure out where they can and should be on those days. If you had never hosted thanksgiving.. it is highly doubtful it was going to end up with much attendance unless there were confirmations in advance .. sounds like they didn't respond.. I would have cancelled at that point.. just not bother.

I guess the bottom line is this.. if someone doesn't like you.. throwing them a party or showering them with gifts isn't going to do anything to change that.. so why knock yourself out?  And why take things to heart that you know are not true.. you may favor people that show up.. because.. they show up.. sorry.. that's the way that goes.
I would probably have been happy if my DH dealt with his side of the family gifts.. and as long as they were reasonable in pricing.. then I'm not going to be mad that I got out of that obligation.. haha