I actually had a similar(ish) situation to yours. I read a book called "boundaries" and that's made my relationships with my family much better.
This all came about when I was getting married.
This was about 10 years ago now. Fast forward to wife + kids and I did something I never thought I'd do. I moved home to be close to family again.
I'm still fully self reliant but my kids get to grow up near gma and gpa which is amazing.
It wasn't until I entered into the group of my friends with kids that I realized there's a fair amount of isolation there.
Anyway, I followed a similar path. I moved across the country to get away from my family man, and now that I've learned to set boundaries I'm back and happy with our new relationship. Maybe that'll work for you and your family and maybe it wont.
We did have friends who were family where we used to live. The kind of friends you call when you're going into labor and they pick your kid up from daycare after driving for an hour. I miss them more than almost anyone else in the world. So, while you can make it work with family and it might be great, you can also make it work without them. That's just what I chose to do.
I suppose my problem is that I’ve tried to set limitations. The people I’m setting them upon don’t agree.
So that leaves us at a crossroads. I either grit my teeth and continue to put up with what I see as unacceptable behavior, or I enforce the ultimatum and refuse to engage.
This is hardly the first time I have ever had this kind of argument with any of the people involved. It goes, as many family arguments tend to, along a predictable and repeatable pattern: argument, agreement, repetition.
Eventually I had to realize that this has happened dozens of times and if I don’t change any variables we will just continue to repeat the cycle for the rest of my life.
All of that said, I don’t have kids. I don’t really want them, but I assume at some point it’ll happen. I do realize that having grandma and grandpa there is valuable. You’ve got a free babysitter and the family roots. If it came down to compromising my ultimatum and not having that connection... I would absolutely, 100%, without any question, tell my mother to F off again.
The whole thing ends up being exactly what you said - sometimes family are a blessing and built in friends, but sometimes they aren’t and you find other friends to fill in that gap.
I just can’t stand it when people say that family is all that matters.
This all came about when I was getting married.
This was about 10 years ago now. Fast forward to wife + kids and I did something I never thought I'd do. I moved home to be close to family again.
I'm still fully self reliant but my kids get to grow up near gma and gpa which is amazing.
It wasn't until I entered into the group of my friends with kids that I realized there's a fair amount of isolation there.
Anyway, I followed a similar path. I moved across the country to get away from my family man, and now that I've learned to set boundaries I'm back and happy with our new relationship. Maybe that'll work for you and your family and maybe it wont.
We did have friends who were family where we used to live. The kind of friends you call when you're going into labor and they pick your kid up from daycare after driving for an hour. I miss them more than almost anyone else in the world. So, while you can make it work with family and it might be great, you can also make it work without them. That's just what I chose to do.