QuickTidal, on 08 June 2016 - 12:55 PM, said:
Ugh, my one sister-in-law (wife's brother's wife) can be such a cantankerous JERK. Because she and her husband essentially put their careers first and had kids anyways...both kids ended up with behavioral problems as a result of the lack of time spent with either parent for their first couple of years (coupled with moving multiple times across the country). They aren't awful or anything, but they can be really bad (much worse than any other kids I've seen and interacted with in my family or amongst my friends)...and so my sister-in-law basically has this attitude like "Just WAIT till YOU have kids! This will be your life! And you'll be annoyed with life too."...and of course now that we ARE having a kid this rhetoric from her has ramped up and she finds a way to fit it into every single interaction we have with her. It irritates my wife (all the time) but I've always been able to keep it at arms length before this...now it's getting to me. I'm sitting here like "We get it, you had kids, and you find them to be an interminable chore...that does NOT mean that our relationship with our kid will necessarily be that strained...nor do I feel like I'm going to look at having had children as some kind of horrible burden."
Like I don't get it. I get that being a parent is tough, and that your time to yourself is minimal...but this was a choice we made, and I mean to see it through and be the best dad that I can possibly be. I don't want to ever have her attitude about it. And she brought it completely on herself (again because they put their careers first) but now complains all the time. I also sit here thinking she WANTS us to be miserable so that she has company?
She's coming off like she's trying to reassure herself about her choices by lecturing you about yours. It has very little to do with you and your family, so yeah, the best course is indeed to tune her out and minimize the time. Maybe in a couple years, when things have settled down for all of you, you can speak your mind and let the fallout begin. (Hopefully, by that time, she's happier and so is her family)
I survived the Permian and all I got was this t-shirt.