No contact / Low Contact In-laws

Me and my hubby been married for 15 years. We are a blended family, and each of us brought a daughter into the relationship (his first wife sadly passed away not long after their daughter was born), and my child born was from a previous encounter while traveling abroad. Anyway; we went on to have 3 biological children together, and then even adopted another child together. So we’ve really kind of been through it all together. Every kind of tough family scenario you can think of. Anyway, his family of origin has always been very different culturally then my family. In my opinion, much more judge mental, superficial, less open, more passive aggressive, and they have family enmenshment issues, as well as codependency. Not to mention they were 3 times trumpers who have very different morals and ideaologies then we have in our nuclear family.

We dealt with them in the most gracious way possible but then right around 2020, during the end of Trump 1.0, and then Covid, they started crossing boundaries we didn’t feel comfortable tolerating, and ultimately the relationship started to dissolve. We moved our family several states away, and things got worse. They started feeling ownership over us because we enforced boundaries and moved and there were several incidents that just pushed me too far. I went no-contact with all of them. And my husband is low-contact.

My husband and I have been in therapy for various reasons over the years working on communication and boundaries (with our blended families, this was key). And I’m happy to say that even though my husband didn’t always enforce the boundaries with his family or protect us from their harm…. He has learned a lot and stuck with me, and in therapy, and he is solely committed to his family ( me and the six kids).

My question is this: about 18 Months ago an event happened in our home where I felt cornered and attacked by his mother, and that spiraled me into a panic attack, and ultimately a deep depression and anxiety after that due to this harm of her attempting to manipulate my family over the years, and years of triangulation etc.. I’ve maintained no contact, while hubby maintains the boundaries and low- neutral contact with his ageing parents and some of his siblings. We are for the first time going home for a few weeks this summer to visit with cousins and family members and yes of course my children want to see their grandparents (we have shielded this situation from them from the most part, although I’m sure all of them have picked up on the vibes that we aren’t close anymore - they do get “supervised” FaceTime visits with the kids regularly and maintain casual contact from afar through my husband). My MIL has attempted to apologize for her and her husbands behavior in my home on that visit but it still lacks substance, sincerity, and they have not really changed any of the behaviors that for us to this point anyway, my husband has just gotten better as acting as buffer between the drama and me. And also enforcing the boundaries.

Am I expected or should I visit them in person when we spend time at home? My husband is planning a BBQ with them, and wants us all to go so they can spend time with the kids, and the kids can see us all functioning in peace even if we don’t agree. The family has never truly attempted to repair with me, and at this point, I have no expectations of any real relationship with any of them. I’d rather just not be around any of them at all. But hubby thinks me going will be a healthy way for all of us to move forward. Not in a way that repairs relationships or heals: but in a way that is just a neutral middle ground where we can all coexist in a superficial way I guess for whatever time they have left on earth. He thinks it will benefit them and benefit me, and of course I want my hubby to be happy and have his parents in his life if that’s what he wants, I just don’t trust them around my kids unsupervised. One of us have to be there, not both of us. He really wants me to participate and move forward to this neutral space where we never talk about anything of substance and just check the box of “being together”, and I feel like this may be more about the optics that everything is fine in the family when it’s clearly not.

I’m having a lot of anxiety about how to keep my own boundaries and composure while being in their presence considering how much they harmed our family unit over a whole decade and a half. Do I owe this visit to my husband ? Do I owe it to myself to move forward? Or will it just make things worse, and make it all implode - once we finally have boundaries in place that seem to be working (at least for me).

Thanks for reading