My preferred option if they can’t act like mature adults will be to take the kids and move a long, long way away from the pair of them! Might take me dad along as well, he’s pretty sound.

😆
Do you have an empty room? Lock them both in there with a couple of nice big, heavy feather pillows and let them fight it out…
… While you adjourn to the pub for a couple of hours.

One day, you the local authority will own two houses in the village.

FTFY

both can be utterly selfish and ruthless cows when they want to be, and they bring out the worst in each other, constantly sniping, bitching and highlighting each others flaws rather than seeing the best in each other. Like a pair of spoilt brats.

Have you thought about showing them this thread?

me and the wife have no mums n dads
and our girls have no grand parentsc

make the most of it while they are here

hora – Member
Lifes too short to be bitter or show division.

Especially if you’re AB

guess we are lucky in that all the parents get on well

could be worse – you could live in a block of 8 houses middle of no where and have someone you dont like looking to move in……

I thought my friend moving in close by would end up being a night mare but this is worse and now i want him to move in !

I’ve just spent 7 months living with the MIL.

Have had a pretty good time, though the patio foundations were horrendous as I live in a 2nd floor flat…

Seriously though, you and your dad need to team up and try to patch this up a bit or you’ll have some serious resentment coming. I’d start by helping your wife understand why you feel some responsibility for the people who dedicated a couple of decades each to your care…

Another positive along with the babysitting is that if you do go around to see your parents for i.e. able to just pop around then your wife doesn’t have to go, where previously it may have been a day trip where as now it may only be a 5mins etc.

This has happened to me as don’t fully see eye to eye with my brother in law yet go months without seeing him as the wife and kids pop around for 30mins etc whereas when they lived further away it was a day trip and had to go.

Just to add my personal experience – mrs aracer’s parents have moved near us. For now it’s temporary, though they’re looking to do a permanent move. I do see a lot more of them than I did (which isn’t so bad, I get on quite well with them), but mrs aracer and the kids see a lot more of them than I do, as a visit is no longer such a big deal. Also when they come here, I don’t feel I have to drop what I’m doing to be sociable. It actually takes a lot of the stress out of visits.

Oh, and it is nice to have babysitters for the first time ever.

It’s at times like these that I can enjoy my little imagined dance of win that both of my parents departed this mortal coil a long time before I was expected to take up my ‘responsibility’ and look after them.
I am, actually, going to perform a real and not imagined dance of win in the kitchen when I’ve finished this coffee in celebration.

monksie, even he was never my Father in life I now mourn him and what he should have been to me. We can only learn from them though I guess. I hope to never be like him to hora junior.

Yep, having responsibility (or rather reciprocation) only really works if your parents were decent. I would hope that like Hora a small positive could come from poor parenting.

If they have moved that close to you I’d check you wifes underwear draw, you don’t want your inlaws cross contaminating underwear as well do you.

Oh and lock your door when they ask for a bowl of sugar.

My Dad is in the process of moving closer to us – 30 miles away instead of 200 miles away.

I’m really pleased about it, as I’m an only child and I know I’ll have to look after him at some point. I’ve recently witnessed another family member having to look after her dying mother who lived 150 miles away – all while holding down a very stressful job with a lot of responsibility. I felt awful for her.

I’ve been having a think and I’ve changed my mind.
I would have liked to have looked after them exc;isively for two weeks. I’d have taken annual leave from work to ensure no interuptions in the care I would have provided.
If they weren’t dead at the end of it, they’d sure wish they were.
I have very dark thoughts when theie based around my parents.
Bastards.