That's a whole 'nother story there Grab, lol.
He and his dad aren't close, by my husbands choice, not his fathers. There's some bad blood and his father seems to be trying to make up for a lot of the stuff that went on (his parents have been divorced since he was 5 or so) but DH isn't an exactly forgiving person. DH's mom told me about a lot of it so I understand why their relationship is kind of strained.
So, since DH won't call his dad and tell him what's going on now that he's in Afghanistan, his dad calls me to find out...that part I don't mind, I understand he's concerned for his son and I'm not about to ask DH to call his father if he doesn't want to talk to him. It doesn't help that he's said some things about me to DH that haven't settled well with him, such as making comments about my kids or about the fact that I'm anti-social with his dad...gee, I wonder why
But, these calls start out with asking how DH's doing, and after I say that he's doing ok but is really busy, then he starts in on me with snide remarks and such. I'm trying to play nice since he's family, I don't want to just say "ya know what, none of your damned business" and hang up...but it's frustrating for me to have to hold back. I guess that the saying "if you can't say something nice" doesn't bode well with me.
When I first mentioned it to DH before he deployed his response was "Now do you see why I don't call him very often?" and said he'd deal with it. Now that he is limited to 15 minutes on the phone and needs to keep his head in the game, I haven't brought it back up. It's my job to keep him in the loop on what's going on at home, but I purposely leave out the stressful crap, ya know.
And as someone mentioned, had it been my family doing this, I would have told them to stick it up their butt (and for the record, I did just this with one of them that didn't like my personal decisions) and probably in a much more colorful way than that. Ok, no probably about that. But, I'm allowed to talk to my own relatives like this, and they'll forgive me eventually.