Help! My In-Laws Keep Forcing Us to Go on Lavish Vacations With Them.

[purlewe]

Q: I recently returned from a weeklong vacation with my in-laws and I’m exhausted! I love my in-laws, but a week straight with them in close confines was frankly torture. My husband’s family is very close; in fact, we all live on the same street! We see each other almost daily and my mother-in-law babysits our kids during the week while we’re at work.

The vacation we took was very extravagant and paid for almost completely by my in-laws, but not at all how I would have chosen to spend a week of precious vacation time. In talking to my other siblings-in-law, they all felt the same way. The vacation was also a “surprise” and we were all only given about two months’ notice. We know that if work commitments had not allowed us to go, there would have been HUGE problems and drama, so we all had to rearrange our work schedules and other days off in order to make a vacation that none of us really wanted to go on happen. This is not the first time this has happened either; my father-in-law frequently springs trips on us to destinations of his choice, on dates of his choosing, without any input from us, and we are all expected to be excited and grateful because he’s footing the majority of the bill. He does not appear to understand or care that this can create real issues for us at work when it comes to requesting time off.

My husband and I have not gone on a true vacation of our own, that doesn’t involve visiting family of some sort, for almost five years because of these “surprise” trips. I know my father-in-law thinks he’s doing something nice, but it feels more like he’s just trying to control us and the way we spend our time. I feel like a total jerk for complaining about being treated to extravagant vacations, but my husband and I are grown adults who are lucky enough to be able to afford to have nice vacations on our own with just our children, but we never can because we only get so much vacation time per year and it’s all taken up with these family trips. We spend so much time with them already that it would be nice to have it be just us for once. I know that my husband’s siblings feel the same way.Should we say something to my father-in-law? How do we tell him we don’t want to do these trips anymore, or would at least prefer shorter durations or less frequent trips, without making it seem like we are ungrateful and don’t want to spend time together? I am afraid that he will be irreparably insulted. Or are we all being terribly childish and we should just be happy and grateful that he wants to treat us to nice trips?

A: “It’s not a good time for me to take off work, so I’ll have to miss this one” or “Thank you so much for being so generous and thinking of us, but we’ve already made plans to use our time off to take the kids to Disneyland” should be enough of an excuse for any reasonable person. And if he’s not reasonable, well, he can have a tantrum but it’s not your problem. Because this would represent a change to the way your family does things, you can even warn him: “Just wanted to let you know that we’re so grateful for the amazing times we’ve had and we appreciate you, but we’ve planned out our vacations for the coming year so we won’t be able to go on any surprise trips. Let’s make sure to spend lots of weekends together instead.” 

 But I’m reading between the lines here to guess (based on the fact that he can afford to fund extravagant vacations for the whole family) that the real reason you don’t want to piss him off might be because you’re worried about being cut off financially or written out of the will. If that’s the case, you’ll have to decide whether the vacations are worth the price. 

Comments

[purlewe]

LW. Approach this as you would family holidays. You get some time with your family this year, you get time with your inlaws next year. I feel like that would make sense. "Hey we planned out next year's vacation for our family, we'll skip the big family vacation until 2023! Thanks!" would work just fine. Or it should.

But then I wasn't reading between the lines and thinking they would get cut out of the will. That didn't seem to be part of the original letter so I am ignoring it.

It could even be a rotation (depending on how many kids these inlaws have) You take a vacation with them in X year, your siblings in law get X+1, etc. That way everyone gets vacation with them but it isn't a FORCED FAMILY FUNTIME for everyone.

[legionseagle]

It strikes me LW is worried about a) the fact they see these people all the time even when not on holiday and b) the threat of "HUGE problems and drama" and I think Prudie might have done better to look at those actual issues which are in the letter than get distracted into talking about hypothetical disinheritings.

[purlewe]

yeah the "my father-in-law thinks he’s doing something nice, but it feels more like he’s just trying to control us and the way we spend our time" is the red flag I feel like Prudie is missing here.

[legionseagle]

Yes; the way he does it screams "manipulation": destinations of his choice, dates of his choosing, no input from the family as to planning the trip. It sounds absolute Hell, and just the fact that it's expensive Hell doesn't make it better. The absence of choice and the short notice (I realise I'm insanely lucky with being able to take time off at short notice, but I know I'm in the minority) are both turning the screw even more.

[oursin]

Father-in-law is the Patriarch of the Starkadders and they all have to be there for the Counting is the vibe I'm getting here. Are we sure it's actually a street they live on and not Cold Comfort Farm?

[legionseagle]

I have to say, if this is the standard of response LWs are getting, they'd be a lot better off writing to Flora Poste.

[laurajv]

*shrieking in appreciation of this thread*

[purlewe]

reminds me of a friend who's husband retired. He gave her a trip for xmas after he retired with the phrase "now you can retire too!" a) she didn't want to retire b) the trip was the exact opposite of the things she likes to do. He thought she would be thrilled. She was livid.

[xenacryst]

Oh, look, it's the Strange Case of The Missing or Spineless Husband, represented in both the letter and Prudie's answer. LW, kick your husband in the ass and tell him to deal with his family before you deal with him.

I mean, ok, perhaps you haven't laid it out to your husband in quite so plain terms, but you need to. You can't do this as the kid-in-law against the family patriarch. You can't even do this as a bunch of kids-in-law against the family patriarch. You need to do this as families and have the people who grew up with this patriarch take a stand with and for you. If they're not going to do that, then you have some introspection to do about how much of this you'll put up with, because it won't go away on its own.

[ambyr]

I am curious about the missing space between

"We know that if work commitments had not allowed us to go, there would have been HUGE problems and drama. . . . He does not appear to understand or care that this can create real issues for us at work when it comes to requesting time off."

and

"Should we say something to my father-in-law? How do we tell him we don’t want to do these trips anymore?"

Has anyone ever said anything to the father-in-law? If not, how does LW know there will be HUGE problems, and why would he understand that it can create issues? And if someone has said something to him, why isn't that mentioned in the letter?

[lemonsharks]

*Has anyone ever said anything to the father-in-law? If not, how does LW know there will be HUGE problems, and why would he understand that it can create issues? *

Look, it's 1:30 in the morning and I just picked my cat up from the emergency vet so I may not be my best self right now, but:

I grew up with a patriarch who threw screaming ranting violence-threatening man-tantrums every time he didn't get his way.

How do you know things will go badly when such a patriarch doesn't get his way, or feels "disrespected" or like his authority as patriarch is in danger?

The same way "but you never had a problem with it until now":

You know from every other time he hasn't gotten his way over some smaller thing and acted like this about it.

You did in fact have a problem with it before, but it wasn't worth dealing with patriarch in high dudgeon, so you bit your tongue and dealt with it.

And the thing is that this? Is really hard to articulate when you're steeped in it, so I'm not surprised it's not articulated in the letter.

(My advice to LW would be "Move across the country or possibly poison your FIL. Probably don't poison your FIL.")

[purlewe]

I, who also have a FIL who is.... hard to deal with, agree with this.

Which was why I started small and started asking for not every holiday with them (I am not kidding when I say every holiday. if it was a day off from work it was expected we would be in their house) Asking to trade off holidays gave the illusion of compromise. At first we had to have SOLID OTHER PLANS for this to be accepted, but now it is fine if there are no other plans. In fact before COVID we had it down to 4 holidays a year, 2 on, 2 off.

And no, it wasn't easy to get him to release the grip of control he had over our free time. It's a multi year, multi step plan. But slowly backing away helped me. If LW does like her inlaws it will mean that when she does do a holiday or vacation with them she will actually enjoy it instead of dread it.

[melannen]

It's weird that Prudie jumped right to inheritance when LW makes clear they're not hurting for money, and it seems like the more obvious pressing issue is losing baby-sitting! And frankly I think that does make this more complicated - it's one thing to say to your father-in-law "we don't want to do this thing you like with you" and it's much harder to say it to the person providing you full-time, presumably unpaid childcare! (One wonders if they *would* be able to afford their own nice vacations if they had to pay for daycare or a nanny...) It also probably sounds a lot less justified to say "we can't keep arranging our schedules for your convenience" to... the family who is currently arranging their schedule for your convenience five days a week. And it's not unlikely that they only reason they have the leave for long vacations at all is the grandparents being nearby - many of the parents I know who don't have nearby grandparents on call use 80%+ of their leave dealing with childcare emergencies.

Like, I don't think FIL is in the right here - you don't schedule people for something without at least checking the dates first!! But the five-day-a-week unpaid childcare has gotta be a pretty big factor in the dynamic here.

[purlewe]

Yeah. I did wonder about this. Very valid point.

[melannen]

I was tempted to advise that if they're feeling smothered they all get together and pool their resources to give the in-laws a nice long (nonconsensual, we pick the dates) vacation just the two of them in thanks for all their help with childcare! ....but then there wouldn't be anyone to watch the kids while the parents are at work, so I guess they can't do that.

(I have almost talked myself into wondering if FIL does these big "everyone comes along!" vacations because MIL tells him they can't go without the whole family, because who would watch the grandkids? - MIL is just as mysteriously missing here as the husband is.)