After years of tension with his in-laws, a couple decided to go no contact with the husband’s parents, which led to a series of difficult choices.

When it came time to celebrate their kids’ milestones, they chose to keep things low-key, not inviting his siblings—who now demand an invite only if the family is mended.

Read on for the story.

AITA for not including my husbands siblings in life events for our kids?

To give some background my husband (m34) and I (f35) went no contact with my husbands parents about 8 months ago.

The first 4 months we were just “taking space” sparked by a phone call we had with them.

They opened the door on the phone call and said, “ I hope if there is anything we have done to hurt you we can talk about it in the moment” my husband has been extremely hurt by many of their actions and he took the opportunity to try to express those in a calm environment.

(My husband grew up in a house where he always felt he had to tiptoe around his Moms mood and his Dad would defend that. When I married into the family I was all but told who I should like in the family and who I shouldn’t if I was going to make his mom like me.)

Interesting…

Anyway, he told them about some past ways he had been hurt or felt lines had been crossed.

They ranged from, “you decided not to invite us to Dads 50th because we wouldn’t tell you if we were free without knowing what was going on”(‘they would insist on blind time commitments a lot) as well as… far worse situations growing up that I won’t go into here.

They didn’t apologize for any of it, but rather told my husband why he was to blame for all of the situations.

The conversation blew up on both sides and we decided to take space through the holidays.

4 months later we tried to meet up to reconcile (We initiated the meeting) but it went very bad and we continued on with no contact.

Oh. Okay.

During those initial 4 months there were a couple religious life events for our kids.

His parents love our kids very much but we didn’t want our kids to be used to relieve tension or for their events to be tense.

Now here’s where we may be in the wrong- as I said before there is a lot of tiptoeing and making sure mom is okay in his family.

His siblings are all young adults, but 2 of them still live at home and one of them lives very close to his parents and we thought it would cause a lot of issues for them in those initial few months if we invited them to the events for our kids but not his parents.

We felt even more sure of that decision after we found out his parents were ignoring any aunts or uncles who did go to them.

Oh boy.

After the reconciliation meeting there was a court date- I told you it went bad- and we had a no contact order with his mom which extended over one of our kids birthdays so we didn’t invite his siblings to that either but we have a couple more birthdays for our kids coming up.

My husband wanted to invite the siblings since the no contact with his parents has turned into a longer thing, but when he invited them they told him he is very rude for assuming they would want to see us after we didn’t invite them to those other events/holidays.

They would only consider it if we reconcile with his parents or find common ground.

We don’t want a relationship with his parents without boundaries being respected.

We completely understand why his siblings are hurt by not being invited to those events though.

AI(we)TA?

Boundaries are tough to navigate, especially when hurt feelings run deep.

Reddit has mixed feelings on this one.

This person says she is the (gentle) AH.

This person says everyone is in the wrong.

And this person says NTA.

Seems like no one’s quite sure where the line between family and boundaries should be drawn here.

It’s a tough one.

If you liked that story, read this one about grandparents who set up a college fund for their grandkid because his parents won’t, but then his parents want to use the money to cover sibling’s medical expenses.