Just to preface: my in-laws are generally amazing and I’m very grateful for them. But also, my husband (M29) is an only child so they can be a bit overbearing. Since they live out of town, they frequently stay with us to visit my daughter (age 3), who is their only grandchild. No problem, we recently moved to a bigger house with plenty of space. Unfortunately, my FIL has back problems and can only stay at our house on a special bed when they travel.
Well, this Saturday is my daughter’s dance performance. My in-laws missed her only other performance because my FIL was having some health issues. They were devastated and had asked my husband to let them know when the next one would be. Apparently time has gotten away from us, because the performance is this weekend. The same weekend as Mother’s Day.
Even though I get along with my in-laws on the surface, having them around is NOT how I want to spend Mother’s Day. My daughter is obsessed with my MIL and I just want to spend the day with her and my husband and just relax. And selfishly, I want the attention on me, not my in-laws. I always feel so excluded when they’re around. Not like they intend to do anything to make me feel that way, but they’re so close to my husband and they have a very different family culture than mine. I just don’t feel like I belong.
Anyways. My husband was very stressed about forgetting to invite them. He mentioned it in passing last weekend and I made up some excuse to dissuade him from inviting them. Nope. I guess it was more important to him than I thought. He was irritated with my “reason” so I ended up telling him the real reason, deep down scared that he’d disappoint me and choose to invite them anyways. He tends to get really defensive of his parents, so any disagreement related to them is a sore spot for both of us.
Sure enough, we argue about it and he invites them anyways. He feels that my reason is not worth excluding his parents and that we can celebrate Mother’s Day another weekend for me. But that’s not good enough for me. I don’t want to spend the day with them. Period. I feel embarrassed that he doesn’t see the importance of this day for me, and that I have to fight so hard to advocate for myself. I just wish he’d fight for me as hard as he fights for his parents sometimes.
Eventually, my husband has come around to my perspective and revoked the invitation, claiming he didn’t know it was the weekend of Mother’s Day and that we made other plans for that day. I can tell he’s not very happy with that resolution, and honestly, I’m not either. He made a choice and it wasn’t me. That hurts. Am I being unreasonable??
Tldr: my husband invited my in-laws to stay with us over Mother’s Day weekend to see my daughter’s dance performance but I don’t want to spend Mother’s Day with them