I really feel for everyone out there with in-law problems! I NEVER would have thought that I would be experiencing this kind of crap at this stage of my marriage (18 years on Dec. 4th), but here we are. Actually, its my DH that has it worse than me, as his folks have not spoken to him for around a year, and was a year ago in September for me. There has been an exchange of birthday cards and Christmas cards from them to him and vice-versa, but they do not acknowledge me at all anymore. We used to be so close, actually FIL walked me down the aisle in place of my late father. We did so much together for so many years, the four of us, and now this!
The real villian of this story, in my opinion, is DH's drunken brother. That is a story all in itself, which I won't bother with, other than to say that he has such a way of twisting things to suit his purpose, which is to put a wedge between DH and family. This is the second Christmas without Family, just going to be the two of us and the Boys. At least we won't have to put up with drunken hijinks and political arguements, lol!