'AITA for obeying my in-law's wishes literally after they asked me to use a warmer tone?' MAJOR UPDATE

"AITA for obeying my in-law's wishes too literally?"

I sent my in-laws an invitation for dinner. We stupidly thought it would be nice if it came from me.

"[Religious Greetings]. [Husband] was thinking of inviting you next weekend, god willing. Would that work for you or do you have other plans?"

Ten minutes later, FIL called my husband to tell him they wished the message had been longer and warmer. Husband agreed to let me know for next time.

The next day, FIL called again over something else. Husband used the opportunity to point out they still hadn't replied to my message. FIL told him they would not be replying to me until I fixed it and made it warmer.

They also pointed out that at my job, I have to adopt a certain tone to be perceived as professional. This is the same in a family context. Since they wanted me to adopt the same strategies I use at work, I figured I'd use Ch-tGPT to get frustrating tasks out of the way as quickly as possible.

I showed the AI my original message, told it my in-law's complaints and told it to rewrite it super warmly as if I were the perfect [insert ethnicity] daughter-in-law. It came up with an absolutely ridiculous message with emojis everywhere. I copied pasted and sent right after my last, left-on-read, invitation.

Husband sent it with me and is okay with it. I first suggested to him I could write a genuine message about my grievances here, but he pointed out I did so over another petty complaint months ago and it led nowhere. We decided to go with the automated message minus some of the emojis.

FIL works with AI. I have no doubt he can tell this is Ch--tGPT. Even MIL will know there is no way either husband or I wrote this.

I do kinda feel a bit guilty about the passive-aggressiveness of our response. There's a very obvious cultural context here.

I understand my culture seems cold to them the way theirs seems over-the-top to me. But as God is my witness, I have unsuccessfully tried everything else to communicate with them. They have ignored the new message. No phone call to husband. I don't want this to go nuclear, I just want them to say "sure, see you next week" and pretend to tolerate my cooking. AITA?

Internet commenters did not hold back their thoughts one bit.

AlwaysHelpful22 wrote:

If someone told me to re-invite them in a more pleasant manner or they wouldn’t respond, I would NEVER AGAIN invite them anywhere (until they responded to the original invite). I wouldn’t be rude about it, I’d just ignore them until they responded. NTA.

BrokenCappy wrote:

NTA but you are falling for a huge, enormous trap.

Your in-laws are playing a sick game of Moving The Goalpost. It has already been decided that they will approve of absolutely nothing about you: your message was not professionally written and edited and not "warm" enough?

What complete, utter, stinking bullshit that is. But ok, you correct it, and then what? Too many emojis. Not enough commas. You used too many vowels. You did not highlight or bold your greeting. Your phone number ends in a number that reminds them of a aunt's cousin's husband's pet's passing, how dare you.

So now their Royal Holy In-Law Highnesses have accepted your invitation. But GUESS WHAT? You will make the wrong food with the wrong spice, served insulting too cold or not hot enough. You will be stupid, incompetent, and cunningly plotting against them - all at the same time!

I hope you will go get some cheap take-out instead of working over a homemade meal because they will say the same thing whether you work over it or not. You will be wearing the wrong clothes. The color of your shirt reminds your MiL of her MiL and you did it on purpose to be disrespectful. How dare you. You must beg for forgiveness. For the rest of their lives.

Let me save you time and tears, here: making you chase them for their acceptance and approval is the entire point of the entire relationship. And they never want the game to end, so they will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever approve of you. The entire point of the game is to make you run. To make you worry. To FORCE YOU to keep THINKING ABOUT THEM.

They are being unreasonable ON PURPOSE. You cannot use logic or reason here because the game is about power, not about peace. They have decided that your job in life is to chase them for approval they will never give until they die. Do. Not. Engage. Start getting really comfortable with telling them, "Ok. If that is how you feel we will respect that. Let us know when you wan to try this again."

You must stop letting the silent treatment feel like punishment or something you are supposed to fix: it is a golden gift! When they are not talking to you you have peace! When they have a tantrum, shrug and walk away like when a toddler has a tantrum because (as with children) tantrums only work when you give them attention. They do this because...it works.

CatchMeIfYouCan09 wrote:

NTA but I wouldn't have. But then I'm petty AF.

"Unfortunately the invitation to share a meal is contingent on your accepting my verbage use. Considering you do not, you can now assume the invitation is canceled."

"For future reference please feel free to police your own overly judgemental, controlling and inappropriate attitude and behavior prior to attempting to correct your perception of mine. I would also recommend reevaluating the importance of maintaining a good relationship with me as failure to do so could potentially cost you one with your future grandchildren."

"(Is this enough words for you, if not I could try again by adding the few choice words I voluntarily omitted )"

Then moving forward just send:

"Dinner. Friday. 7pm. - insert Restaurant. Word word word. Warm words. Word word word. Appreciation. Word word.

Exactly like that.

A few weeks later, OP shared an update.

I was here a couple weeks ago because my in-laws did not find my dinner invitation warm enough. Tldr; They refused to reply to me until I wrote a warmer invitation. I thought that was stupid so I sent back an AI-generated version filled with emojis and obvious AI lines. MIL did reply to my second message.

"[Religious greetings], Thank you for the invitation, we will get together soon, God willing."

I did not follow up and let the invitation expire. They did not come. A bit after that, we had a large family gathering at their place.

My husband's grandparents, his parents, their kids and grandkids. I kept the interaction with FIL and MIL to a minimum; I was polite, I greeted them, but nothing more. I felt I had made enough efforts trying to connect with people that did not respect me enough to reply to a text message.

In the past, they have always used my (lack of) relationships with the rest of the family against me. I was not close enough to SIL or I did not spend enough time with GMIL and it was proof I was not making any effort to integrate into the family.

I have tried to explain their family is very large and it takes a while to build a relationship with 10s of people who are already close-knit, but you might as well try and convince a mountain to move to a different spot. Well, not this time. The younger kids have always been easy.

They're not as set in their ways and they accepted me very quickly. I spent hours with kids playing all over me. The babies used to cry when they saw me - they hate strangers. Not only have they stopped crying, they smile and play with me now! My oldest SIL also married outside of their culture, so she's always been the most empathetic since she knows what her husband went through with them.

My other SIL is a lot more like MIL. Hard one to win over. But even she softened and we are now in a place where we get along. The final blow though were my husband's grandparents (FIL's parents). They are very conservative and would have clearly preferred if he had married within the community.

The grandmother barely speaks a word of English. I'm not what they wanted. But even they have moved on. They hugged me and they were clearly happy to see me. Between the fact I now feel comfortable with everyone else and the fact I stopped even trying with them, I guess it dawned on them that my problem was not their family, it was them.

It might seem like a small thing to the readers here, but such a level of actual awareness coming from them is nothing less than a miracle of God in my eyes. After the gathering, they called Husband again and asked him if I hated them and still held a grudge for the fact they opposed us getting married for a very long time.

Husband in his infinite patience argued for hours with them and tried to explain that when you treat people unkindly, they do not tend to love you back. He pushed back on the idea I was 'punishing' them and reminded them I have tried very hard for months to get along with them and all I got for it was criticism and ghosting.

Whatever else was said during that fight, it seems to have had some sort of effect.

They have stopped calling husband once a week to give a detailed report of everything I have done wrong during the last 7 days.

While they still cannot accept to see me wearing pants around them, they seem to have given up on trying to convince us I should never wear pants outside my own house (again, the 21st century reader may be confused by how this constitute progress, I'm grading on a curve here).

And for her credit, I think MIL has taken the mental load to try and fix the relationship. She's been the one texting me, giving news and inviting us to a restaurant; all the emotional labour that used to be mine.

FIL is still a piece of work but since his parents now like me, not much he can say or do. Ironically, his culture is now working for me.

TLDR; If you have a difficult relationship with your in-laws, have a chat bot answer their text for you.​​​

The internet continued to share their two cents on the matter.

YunnofYork wrote:

Way to bury the lede. Pants? PANTS? That's their f--king problem?

You have patience I never could nor would I ever want.

OP responded:

One of them.

One of many.

ssddalways wrote:

Aawww I'm glad there has been progress. Carry on wearing your trousers (pants?)!! But seriously good luck.

HighwayCommercial207 wrote:

Aww I'm glad there has been progress. Carry on wearing your trousers (pants?)!! But seriously good luck.

Shdfx1 wrote:

NTA. I’m shocked, shocked I tell you, that your MIL is now making an effort. That virtually never happens when they’ve waged such a war against you. It’s like a unicorn just poked her head through your window, said “beat peace”, and walked away. Having your husband argue with his family on your behalf surely helped.

It sounds like you’ve handled very challenging situation beautifully. You are also open to becoming closer to people who initially didn’t accept you, which means you’re able to forgive the past when people truly treat you better. Is there any way you could tell us which culture forbids pants? I’m invested.