I’m from Europe and have been living in the US for approx 4 years. My husband and I married 2 & 1/2 years and live 40 mins from his family. They are generally nice people, but the thought of settling near them in the immediate future when we have kids scares the crap out of me. They have certain expectations regarding how they wish to be treated and when/where we need to see them (essentially every occasion that they deem ‘special’), and act like it’s the end of the world if we’re gonna miss a birthday dinner or something. It drives me crazy cos my family live on another continent and we miss 90% of special occasions but they just deal with it and are happy to see us when they see us. My husband bends over backwards to placate them, and I worry that forever it’s gonna be me fighting against them all to establish some boundaries and do things because we want to, on our terms, not because they’ve guilted us into it.