Dear Yvonne:

We all, I believe, like to be liked. I like to be liked. I wish everyone liked me; I wish everyone would have a smile on their faces when they thought of me. But it is not so. Some people don’t like me. As long as I don’t spend time with the people who dislike me, as long as I don’t have- to spend time with them, then it is okay with me. Can it be okay with you that your “Sister in laws don’t like (you)”- the title of your thread?

It may be okay with you while you continue to have no contact with them and they continue to not visit.

The problem with trying to make them like you is that you have to contact them, and then you have to control not only your communication with them, but your husband’s communication with them: what he told them already about you (when angry, or drunk) and what he will tell them in the future, without your presence, including what he will be telling them from North Dakota.

I would let it go and work on my relationship with the husband. It is a good thing that you asserted yourself with his ex.

That 1% you mentioned, “that 1% that gets to be to much at times”- if he is loud, if there is fighting during that one percent and the young children witness it- that is enough to harm them. Acts of aggression 1% of the time are not cancelled by the 99%: the loud voices of the one percent keep playing, in a child’s brain, for the rest of the ninety nine percent of the time (and into adulthood).

anita