Funniest things I read in a while…
Survive Your In-Laws
Take a few tips from a WH editor who moved in with her husband’s parents and lived to tell about it
Jill Waldbieser
I recently had to buy my mother-in-law a new pair of underpants. Think that’s mortifying? Wait until you hear why: I threw an old pair of hers out. After I discovered that I was wearing them.
I had been in a bathroom stall at work when my gaze absently fell on the black bikini briefs I’d pulled from a stack of clean, folded laundry on my dresser that morning. “Hmm… Since when do these panties have a red tag?” I thought, and I leaned in closer to read the brand. That’s when I came face-to-face with the awful, stomach-churning discovery that they were not mine.
How could this have happened? The immediate answer is that my mother-in-law and I wear roughly the same size and that she has Martha-level laundry habits (and failing eyesight, apparently). The broader explanation is that my husband and I unknowingly bought a house straight out of The Money Pit and ended up moving in with his parents until we could make it habitable. One full year later, we’re still there.
As with all things that don’t kill you, the experience has made me stronger. Despite culture shock, a huge generation gap, and endless embarrassment, I’ve come to appreciate my own personal version of Meet the Fockers. Have your own insufferable relatives? Keep reading. Because if I can walk a day in my mother-in-law’s unmentionables, you, too, can learn to deal.
Welcome to their world
My husband, Joe, is Italian. A gathering of five of his relatives sounds like 50 of mine, and interruption is the only form of conversation they know. For years, I was sure Joe’s entire family found me boring–why else wouldn’t they let me get out more than a few words before cutting me off?
When I fumed to Joe that I felt invisible, he didn’t understand. “Just jump into the conversation at any point,” he advised. One night, when I uncharacteristically barked a rebuff to someone’s opinion, I realized he was right. For the first time, they actually heard me, and I was swept up into the debate. At first, cutting others off midsentence felt rude–but only to me. No one else even noticed. In fact, they seemed to like it.
Which brings us to In-Law Lesson No. 1: Each family has its own customs, traditions, and peccadilloes, from when to serve the holiday turkey to how to hang the toilet-paper roll (Joe’s mom prefers the dreaded undermount). The thing to remember, says Bethany Marshall, Ph.D., a Beverly Hills psychoanalyst, is that you’re not going to change his family just by marrying into it, so don’t even bother trying. The wiser tactic is to leave your version of reality at the door and accept that you’ve wandered into another universe. That leaves you with one option: Adapt.
Since moving in, I’ve started attending church on religious holidays, taking my shoes off at the door, and rolling my corn-on-the-cob over a communal stick of butter, sans holders. I’ve made it absolutely clear that I’m willing to bend to their ways, no matter how foreign they may seem to me. And even though these gestures are small, they matter.
“A little can go a very long way when it comes to your in-laws,” says relationship expert Andrea Syrtash, editor of the self-help tome How to Survive Your In-Laws. “Sometimes all they want is to know that you haven’t forgotten about them, that you respect them, and that you are making an effort to keep them happy.” The result–for better and for worse–is that you start to feel like you actually belong with these people.
Too close for comfort
Of course, in such tight quarters, awkward run-ins are still bound to happen. In preparation for our new living arrangements, I filled my Netflix queue with PG-rated movies. But eventually I forgot to update it, and one day Borat arrived in the mail.
Rest of the article at How To Deal With Toxic Family Members, Per Therapists](How To Deal With Toxic Family Members, Per Therapists)
…good one…
…