I’m married since 5 years and we never had any major issues or problems between us because we are on the same page on pretty much everything. The only major issues are her parents. Since the first time we met they have always been openly hostile with me because to them my wife should have married someone “more educated” then me but the thing is that i never once have been silent with their disrespect and always talked back. So you can imagine our relathionship. And my wife always suffered because of this because she wanted them, like normal people, to have a good relathionship between us and always tried to be the mediator by trying to calm them down and telling them to treat me with basic respect. So in all this my wife is on my side and i can accept the fact that she don’t want to cut them off completely.
But then things “changed”. See i worked for a big awning company for 3 years until seeing that i was good and that i could actually make good money from my job i decided to follow my ex boss advice to do the same work but indipendently. Which means that i would get paid a fixed amount for each owning i install in condos and all the costs are mine. Obviously it was an enormous decision to make and me and my wife talked a lot about this and at the end i decided to take the risk and with my bestfriend we decided to give it a try. Well here the relathionship with my in laws got even worst because i obviously made debts for this risk.(around 80k of debt) But i was sure that in 4 months of sacrifice and reducing every cost where me and my wife could we could pay the debt. Those 4 months were the worst of my life because i was so focused to just work with my bestfriend until we were tired that my wife and my parents were really concerned for my mental health but like i said i did it and by the 5 month finally real money started to pull in and in fact me and my wife started to do basic stuff like finally renovating the house, we changed our cars to new ones so all this things and nothing of too flashy.
All this said here comes the “issue” with my in laws.
Because like you can imagine when they saw that finally our financial situation was becoming better and better they “magically” started to change their approach with me. They started to ask about my day, how things were going, if i nedeed something, if they could help somehow, making compliments about the house and all this stuff that in almost 4 years they never did once. Never. But for the obvious reasons my approach with them didn’t changed at all and i always remained openly hostile with them like they always did for almost 4 years.
And the thing is that they really didn’t get how their “sweet tactics” aren’t working and how they try to be sweet but my replies are always the same as always and i didn’t buy their act at all.
To make a real and recent example, 2 weeks ago my wife invited them for dinner like always and they again started with the classic bs like “we are so proud of you and your hard work, we might not have been always pleasant but we always knew that you were the right guy for our daughter” and to this bs i replied by throwing at them their own words “oh really? Like you did for 3 years by calling my job for immigrants and people who don’t want to use their brain?”. Now this is 1 example and believe me i could make way more but you got the idea.
So the real question is: should i try to make things better and be the “bigger person” or should i be the same as always and treat them the same way they treated me for years so changing absolutely nothing?
TL:DR; i’m refusing to improve my relathionship with my in laws