A tiny bit of background: My husband is the younger of two brothers. They have no other siblings. The brother is intelligent beyond intelligent, but severely lacking in social skills and graces. The fact that these two men were raised in the same household by the same parents at the same time boggles the mind.
The brother has married a woman from a different socio-economic background. (To put it less tactfully, she’s trashy.) She has 4 children (none of whom are my brother-in-law’s), one of whom lives with them. She is basically emotionally abusive to my brother-in-law and he almost divorced her once. (We were shocked and dismayed when he backed out of it.)
As far as geography goes, my husband and I live in the area where I grew up, just north of NY city. My parents-in-law live near Lake George, three hours north. My brother-in-law, his wife and her child live 2 1/2 hours east on Long Island (for the time being but that’s another issue). It makes logical sense that our area is the most central to all and therefore convenient for Thanksgiving.
My husband and I have too small an aprtment to host a ten-person Thanksgiving Dinner. My mother has beautiful house very nearby and very graciously (and without reservations) invited the whole crew to have the dinner there. My mother-in-law accepted on her own behalf and left it up to my husband to issue the invitation to his brother. My husband promptly did so and the the brother said “Well, we’ll have to see what we’re doing.” Keeping in mind her parents live way far away and the child might like to see his biological father, we were unsurprised by this answer.
It comes through the grapevine (read, the brother didn’t call us back, but he told my mother-in-law who told us) that he and his family won’t be joining us because his wife has to go to work at 4 in the morning on Friday. In other words, despite the fact they they’d be home no later than 10 p.m. and it means my parents-in-law will have to drive out 2 1/2 more hours in the opposite direction from home to see them the next day, they’d rather sit in their apartment and have turkey sandwiches than make life easier on his mother and enjoy a family meal. I’m pretty sure he’s planning to cook a turkey dinner on Friday and subject my parents-in-law to a second Thanksgiving dinner identical to the one eaten the night before. Not only that, but we’re all deeply suspicious that they will still drive 5 1/2 hours north to see her mother, a trip they take at least monthly.)
Is it me or is this anti-social? What about just plain wierd and slightly insulting? Am I just overreacting? This isn’t the first family holiday they’ve pulled stuff like this, btw.
Sorry for the length of the post, but for pity’s sake AAAARRRGGGHHHH! :smack:
I don’t think it is freaky, but then most of my family is of the “don’t pressure people to come to family gatherings” school of thought. With all that you have written, would you really want them to come given that they obviously (for whatever reason) don’t want to be there? And I frankly don’t see what the socio-economic background of your brother-in-law’s wife has to do with anything. Do you think that people that are less well off have bad manners?
You mention you are north of NYC. Are you in Westchester? I grew up in Putnam County and have relatives all over Westchester.
I don’t see it as your issue to to get worked up over. Everyone involved is an adult, right? Your in-laws can decide what they are and are not willing to do.
Lagomorph Yup, Westchester. And the fact is that this person does have bad manners, although I freely admit that they may be unrelated to her upbringing.
Qadgop True 'nuf. My post prolly makes it seem like I’m more worked up than I am. It just seems odd that I haven’t been at a family holiday where both of these brothers were present with spouses in the three years I’ve been married. :shrug:
I wouldn’t want to get home at 10pm and work at 4am either. Assuming her head hit the pillow and she conked out, she’d only get 6 hours of sleep after an all day holiday visiting deal. At any rate, what they do with their holiday is their concern, IMHO, and they don’t need to answer or make excuses for their decision.
Yes it’s not polite or the ‘done thing’ but not everyone is willing to subjugate their desires for the sake of social mores. If these are the sort of things that really bother you, perhaps try living in Africa for a while and watching people starve to death.
Has to be at work at 4 AM–not get up, but be at work at four. Would be home “no later than” ten PM.
Yeah, unless she has a five minute commute to work, this strikes me as a perfectly sympathetic bit of time-budgetting–I’ve got one of those bodies that suffers rather badly if I get less than six hours of sleep.
Correction: okay, “go to work at four” can certainly mean starting the commute at that time; I unconsciously laid the stress on the at instead of the go to. Still, the time-budgetting remains sensible to me–most people don’t just roll out of bed straight into the car and off they go.
What, it’s insulting that someone who has to be up way before the ass-crack of dawn the next day doesn’t want to drive a total of five hours to eat dinner at her brother-in-law’s inlaws’ house? Oh, the humanity. And what’s this about subjecting his parents to a holiday dinner the next day? If your Thanksgiving dinner is that horrible, you might want to consider changing the menu, and if it’s actually an enjoyable meal, you lose mucho points for melodrama.
What I really don’t get is why the reason they’re not coming is such a big deal. If they’d said they were staying home so the little boy could see his dad, you wouldn’t say they were being weird and anti-social, even if it meant they were eating turkey sandwiches by themselves. (For the record, not being with your whole family does NOT mean you’re sitting at home eating sandwiches in your torn, yellowed underwear. Plenty of people manage to have perfectly nice holidays by themselves or with just their spouses or friends, or in my case, with the critters.)
You say that you haven’t been to a holiday where both brothers and their spouses were there. You don’t say that this woman hasn’t been to a holiday, so I have to assume that at least part of the time you are the absent spouse. Clearly, this woman isn’t the only responsible for the situation. Also, I think it pretty likely that this woman probably doesn’t enjoy being around you, seeing as how you think she’s trash and all. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to go to dinner at your parents’ house under those circumstances.
Hey, that’s what I was going to say. Damn you CCL!!
It seems to me, DaisyFace (from the limited info we have here) that you are just looking for more ammunition to add to the stockpile of Why You Don’t Like BIL’S Missus. But I don’t think their decision here is deserving of your wrath.
You said it right in the title of the OP…It IS just YOU. :rolleyes:
You said that your brother~in~law is super intelligent , so I don’t think that your true feelings are getting passed him / wife , and they were at least social enough to give a reasonable excuse , if that is what it was. I think they may not want to spend Thanksgiving with you and your family , and that is their perogative.
I don’t see a problem with it !
Chay
I apologize if I came of as any or all of the following:
Snotty
Bitchy
Rude
Uncompromising
I’m sure I haven’t shown myself in the best light here and I never meant to make light of my sister-in-law’s work schedule. It’s been a long struggle trying to reconcile the two sides of this family and I suppose I’ve been told by my mother-in-law to “play nice” once too often.
I must say in my own defense that I’ve never (to my knowledge) been anything but sweetness and light to my sister-in-law when we do actually meet face-to-face but it does seem that she’s avaoiding me since, contrary to CrazyCatLady’s post I haven’t missed a family gathering, they just never seem to come, despite three years of opportunity.
I am fully ready to serve myself an extra slice of humble pie and count myself truly thankful to have as many people in my life who do want to gather on Thanksgiving as I do.
