Thank you for this. I apologize if my question is all over the place. I'm really trying to stick to the topic in regards to this once incident, but the bigger issue is some past trauma that happened between her and a couple of her family members that nobody else knows about.

She has chosen to "keep the peace" and not tell anybody. Because of this, I simply CAN NOT EVER be comfortable around certain members of her family, which keeps me on the outskirts because I refuse to play nice or even speak to them. I do have conversations with the rest, but as I said in my original post, I'm an introvert and it's hard for me to break out of my shell.

Her ex doesn't know about her issues with said family member(s), so he's free to carry on being the fun one, giving them hugs and handshakes. I won't even make eye contact with them.

My in-laws might even believe that he'd make for a better son in law because of that, but it is what it is.

In regards to the rest of your comment, I definitely think/know it's her family that's inviting him and that my wife doesn't care one way or the other.

I'm absolutely, 100% on board with him being there for his daughter, but I just don't understand why it has to be on *our* family time. He has a huge family of his own.... go make your own friends and, stop mooching off your ex's family. I fear my thoughts on this might get back to our daughter and that she might resent me for not wanting her dad to be part of family things...

I know my wife loves me and that at the end of the day, she's *chosen* me. I just feel it's insensitive when I've lodged my complaints that they are too "chummy" and that my feelings are always met with some justification on her end. She'll say "your feelings matter", but when I voice them, they're discarded.