[cybele]

Im very lucky to have fantastic in-laws.

I, however, do not have fantastic parents. Its at a point now where I am no longer on speaking terms with them, I have not spoken to them in 3 years and I do not plan to change that.

Unfortunately, you cannot change another person, only the way you react to them, which sucks when they are the ones acting in a ridiculous manner, you can physically distance yourself, view them as a source of humor, ignore them, scream into a pillow when you get home, whatever. What you cannot do is let silly comments, such as the one your mother in law made get to you.

On the topic of domineering relatives, my parents did the following:

Refuse to acknowledge my husband as my husband

Constantly put my husband down for his job and appearance

Gave my children new names that they called them by, Anindita was Mary, Azriel was John, Sundance was Elizabeth, Lux was Joan and Sash was Luke.

Refused to acknowledge that I changed my surname after marriage, because o course they did not acknowledge my marriage.

Refused to acknowledge that I had my first name legally changed (and all throughout my childhood they refused to call me by any nicknames, I went by Maggie and a child and Rita as a teenager, because I despised the name Margaret with every fibre of my being, but they would not call me a nickname)

Would bring meat over to our house because we were vegetarians.

Attempted to legally change Azriel's name.

Attempted to baptise Azriel and Lux.

Told Dita and Azriel that their parents are going to burn in hell and "Your mother is going to be raped by satan"

Kidnapped Dita and Azriel from school and drove them 8 hours away to a retreat for troubled Catholic teenagers, despite my children not being Catholic, nor troubled (police were involved here, because, of course, I found out by my children not coming home from school)

My mother mailed information for organisations that can "cure homosexuality" to Dita after she came out as gay.

After I confronted her about the mail she then mailed threatening letters to Dita (containing her good old fallback "you will be raped by Satan")


After all this I was still willing to mend bridges, because im an idiot. It took my parents coming over to my house, my father to pick up a sledgehammer from our backyard and swing it at my head, DH got in in between and it shattered his shoulder, for us to finally press charges and get a restraining order. Havent spoken to them since.