Hi all, I feel like a jerk for even posting this but I’m struggling and am reaching out for advice or words of wisdom. I’ve never been wild about my in-laws. I had really hoped once my daughter was born that maybe my feelings would soften and I could bond with them over the new baby but that hasn’t happened.

I have always struggled to enjoy their company. My father-in-law has strong narcissistic qualities. Many of the things he says and does are rude, annoying, or manipulative/abusive. Years of emotional abuse has made my mother-in-law quiet, submissive, and she acts almost like she’s chronically depressed. My sister-in-law acts very similarly and has lots of issues with her father (them being in the same room is tense). My husband has waxed and waned in how he feels toward his parents. During our dating years, he barely spoke to his dad and avoided visiting them. I never got to meet them until we had been dating for 3 years and his parents barged into his new house he had just moved too (needless to say it was the most awkward meeting/first impression). In the past few years I think my husband and his father have been trying to make amends however my husband’s approach to this is to completely ignore the past and act like it never happened when he still engages in manipulative and controlling behaviors. On top of this, his parents are super religious and his dad has very strong political beliefs that I don’t agree with. When we spend time with them, almost every activity we do has to center on a religious theme (if we watch a movie, it has to be a religious movie for example; if I get a birthday card, it’s a religious birthday card. When we listen to music, its religious music). They are also from a very small rural town and a lot of things in modern society kind of just blow their minds or they disagree with. All of this leads to me feeling like I can never be myself around them.

Since we’ve had the baby, they come visit occasionally. They live 3 hours away so they spend the night usually for a weekend when they come. Every time they come, they essentially refuse to leave the house the whole time leaving me feeling trapped. They also don’t like going to restaurants or ordering food out but don’t offer to help cook so my husband and I end up cooking every meal for them when they come. This wouldn’t be such a big deal if they wouldn’t give us a double message: when they come they insist they are coming to “help us” and don’t want us doing anything for them. But when they get here they don’t offer to cook or get groceries and when we suggest ordering food out they refuse. This makes me feel resentful.

They do play with the baby but my father-in-law knows nothing about doing anything useful (like changing a diaper), not that I expect him to. But my mother-in-law seriously disappoints me in this department too. I had her change the baby’s diaper one time before I put her down for a nap. When I got the baby up from her nap, the diaper had fallen off and she had peed everywhere. I couldn’t believe it when I saw she had put the diaper tabs on the very edges of the diaper. No wonder it slipped off while she was sleeping! When I ask for mothering advice like how she did things with her own kids or with her grandson, she just says “I don’t remember”. We tried to have my mother-in-law feed the baby a bottle once and the baby screamed the whole time and my mother-in-law acted like she had never held a baby before.

When I try to discuss some of this with my husband, he gets defensive and says “you just don’t like them”.

Any helpful advice or words of wisdom? Thank you for reading my long post.