Relations and Relationships

I have to preface this by saying that I have had very little sleep and I, therefore, am a giant cranky pants. All of my stormy emotions are just simmering beneath the surface waiting for someone or something to dig just a little too far and hit the emotional pay dirt. And by pay dirt I mean a fount of angry lava.

Needless to say, this is NOT the time for my in laws to contact me.

Okay, I need to say that I have two sets of inlaws. It's not really surprising in this age of divorce, but I need to say this so that I can distinguish between them. One set of them includes my husband's mother and my husband's step dad. True, we've had rough times in our relationship-Hubby's mother was...uh...hesitant to embrace me during the first four years of our relationship-but recently we have been doing great. She even admitted to my Hubby that while she and I may not love eachother yet that she has come to respect me as a good wife and mother. And that's enough for me, certainly for now. Noah's step dad is pretty stoic, but from what little I have heard from him he doesn't hate my guts or anything. I call this set of inlaws "hubby's parents" because he spent his life living with them and because the alternative group are, well, less than pleasant.

I call them The Inlaws. These people include Hubby's dad, step mom, and grandmother. Without going into too much nitty gritty personal detail, let's just say that these people treated my husband horribly as a child and continue to do so now. They also do their best to demean our children, undermine our parenting and our marriage, and put my husband in emotionally awkward situations. I have had it up to my EYEBALLS with these people, and frankly they make me ill.

The most recent situation is the death of my husband's great grandfather. He lived a very long and good life, however my husband was not close with him and had infact only met him a few times. We get an email from Hubby's dad informing us of his great grandfather's death...but he USES that email-the email about a death in the family!-to imply nasty things about me, and to try to pick a fight. I can't believe these people!

I think my opinion of them only gets worse because my parents are coming into town this weekend. I can't help but compare my parents with my In Laws-I know I shouldn't, but I do. Let me say this-my parents and I have not always gotten along. We by no means have a perfect relationship, I'm not a "daddy's girl" or anything. Hardly-my parents (my dad and my step mom) and I had some rough times in our relationship too. That's why I've lived on my own since I was 16 [but that's another post]. In the end though, we're still family. We still treat eachother with love and respect. We still behave like decent human beings. My parents are still good parents and good grandparents.

I wish The Inlaws behaved like that. I wish my husband could have a relationship like I have with my dad with his own father. I wish I could just fix it all--because that's the hardest part to me. I don't really care how they treat me because in the end they are irrelevant as far as I'm concerned. But watching the way they treat my husband, the awkward situations they put him in, the way they try to "make him choose" between them or me (not that he would). It just makes me so angry I want to pinch them!