This woman thought she was building a close relationship with her husband’s brother and sister-in-law…babysitting, showing up, and trying to include them in group plans.

Then, without warning, they went completely no-contact for over a year, refusing to explain why despite repeated attempts to reach out.

When they finally resurfaced, the reasons ranged from hurt feelings over tone to being overwhelmed by her personality.

Now, just in time for the holidays, they want to pick up where things left off.

AITA for not wanting to spend holidays with my brother and sister in law and their kids?

My sister in law (who is married to my husband’s brother) sent my husband and I a text asking what day we were planning on heading to my husband’s dad’s house to celebrate Christmas so that they could meet us there.

For context, they went no contact with us for a little over a year and decided to reconnect this year. We tried reaching out multiple times to find out why and never got an answer.

Fast forward, my husband’s brother finally reached out because he missed him and explained (I kid you not) that he was offended because I was surprised he had a Pinterest account and he didn’t like my tone when I showed my surprise.

Wait, what?

His wife also was offended by me for answering the multiple questions I was getting about when I was going to start having babies (the day after my wedding) with the following:

“I do want to wait until my mom can apply for her visa so that she can come and be with me during postpartum”.

This one I understand because her mom had passed away a year before that.

Okay, sure.

However, I wish they had told me that was the issue when I kept reaching out instead of ghosting us.

They also said my personality was too much for them and the constant invitations to do things was overwhelming for them and seemed fake.

My personality isn’t for everyone, cool. But the invites were group invites I was sending out to our friends and I was just trying to include them.

That’s odd.

Now this year, they reached out and said they realized they may have over exaggerated and want a relationship after all.

However, I simply don’t care to have one anymore. I tried to have a good relationship with them before they cut us off and would babysit and loved spoiling their baby girl. It hurt when they cut me off without any explanation. And at the time my own family was falling apart so I was excited to join theirs.

They also convinced my mother in law to cut me off and she spoke so much sh*t about me to all of my husband’s family.

Wow.

Now that they have two more babies, I recognize their effort in trying to have some sort of connection and we’ve had play dates and met up.

I simply don’t want to spend my holidays with them.

And it annoyed me that her text wasn’t her asking if we are open to celebrating Christmas together, but just asking for a date that would work with us.

Super annoying.

I ended up replying to them that “we weren’t really planning on going to their dad’s for Christmas when they were” and that we’re “trying to keep these holidays super casual and not overwhelming for us”.

I also said that “the assumption that we were down for that kind of threw me off and I just want to be transparent.”

Am I the one overreacting now and being the a******?

Although she’s been polite and even met up with them again, the emotional damage from being abruptly cut off (and publicly criticized within the family) hasn’t disappeared.

Now, she’s asking Reddit whether setting boundaries around the holidays makes her bitter…or simply honest about what she’s willing to give now.

This person votes NTA.

This person agrees, although her response could’ve been better.

This person completely gets it.

Moral of the story…

You don’t get to ghost someone for a year and then pencil them into Christmas like nothing happened!

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a daughter who invited herself to her parents’ 40th anniversary vacation for all the wrong reasons.