Hi everyone, i would like your opinion on my situation. My in laws live near by and i generally have a good relationship with them. They have done a lot for me in the past. When i first got married my in laws (esp father in law) used to drop by unannounced. He is retired and a handyman, and he used to help my husband with household chores and also renovated our current house( before my husband met me). He has a key to our house. Anyways at some point i discussed the unannounced visits with my husband and he discussed it with his dad and after a while the unannounced visits stopped. Either my in laws would call/text before coming or not come over at all.
Now we are selling our current house and moving into a fixer upper. So now my father in law has again started to drop by unannounced. Usually its to fix something in our house. So i talked about it to my husband and he had told my father in law but it continued to happen. My husband felt i acted cold towards his dad, and today husband and i had a fight about it. He told me to discuss it with his dad myself from now on. I feel i am not being unreasonable, also coz i have alopecia and i need some time to get ready. Also, what if he comes over and i'm in short clothing/ coming out of shower etc?
I don't mind them coming over at all, i would just like to know a little beforehand so i have time to get ready/presentable.
On the other hand , he is helping us out so am i being mean/ungrateful?
Talk to your husband calmly. Do not argue with him about whether or not you were cold to his dad. Instead tell him, ?I?m sorry if you felt that I was cold to your dad. I did not intend that and I don?t want to hurt either of you, so I?ll be more mindful of my words and body language going forward. Your dad is welcome to come to our home. It is just that if I knew the timings before hand I could better prepare for the visits such as making sure that I dressed appropriately, or that the house is clean, that there is food, etc.? Then see what he says and take it from there. If there is a cold war betwem the two of you, I think you will both have to talk it through. If you have a mother or sister-in-law and share a good rapport with them, perhaps you can broach the matter with them.
Or…another approach you can try is to have your husband ask his dad what times dad will be visiting? And that way you have a heads up. With this approach, you won?t be refusing his dad?s visits. Rather it is kind of a sly way of saying that you have nothing against the visits and just want to know the timings…which I guess would come across much nicer than outright telling him that his dad has gotta stop showing up like he does.
Apart from the above, you can also try to make some changes on youe end in terms of privacy. If your FIL is going to be around, maybe cover your hair? Or confine yourself to another area of the home, etc etc.
Do you mean he enters the house using the key without ringing the bell? Or doesn’t inform beforehand that he’s coming over but rings the bell and you open the door?
If it’s the latter, it’s okay but if it’s the former then as far as I know, it’s not allowed. One has to seek permission to enter.
Sometimes the solution is very simple, just tell them you got scared by some goofy looking guy and start using a latch, also you can use tracking on his cell phone. There are systems that ca n send alerts when someone is in the vicinity. You are getting thousands of dollars worth of labor for free and maybe a bit of an inconvenience should not become a big thing. Do you guys reciprocate his good gestures or is it a one way street? My mother lived with us for decades, they never gave us anything and were even abusive and yet she wore suitable clothing around my mother without complaining.
Yes the latch is a good idea thanks. My husband had suggested that for the new house. We do reciprocate, we visit them (announced) and help them out where needed and bring gifts sometimes. We live at walking distance from each other.
So do you think you guys going to visit announced and perhaps enjoying a meal there is a favor to them. I always take a gift if someone invites me for dinner, that is just showing appreciation for all the hard work they put into preparing dinner, that would not be reciprocation for handy man services.
When i read these threads it makes me shake my head, why cant people discuss simple things with their families. My boys are comfortable discussing anything with me. Why cant your husband tell him that dad maybe she gets startled, maybe she would appreciate some time to fix her appearance etc before you come?
Do you mind me asking if you work full time?
If my in laws came to fix my stuff for free even unannounced, I would make hundreds of threads in their appreciation.
Really? I see it as a lack of boundaries and respect for someone else’s privacy. Whether she gets startled or not, there is no valid reason for her father in law or any other person to enter her house unannounced like that, even if it’s because of a “noble” reason such as free handy man services. And if the couple already has mentioned this annoying habit to the father and he continues to drop by unannounced then maybe problem lies with him. If he has good intentions in helping out his son and DIL then wonderful, but then he should make sure it’s not ending up being incovenient instead.
Whether or not her husband can see that his wife has the right to complain about this issue regarding his dad without making her feel bad or guilty, there is no need to suggest that maybe OP is unthankful and creating an issue out of nothing.
If your wife didn’t mind adjusting to an abusive situation in which she had to live with your mother and cover herself up etc then good for you, but any other women is not obliged to accept a simular situation.
I see LP already posted some hadiths regarding entering someone’s house without permission
There are millions of Pakistani, Indian Chinese women living with in laws,The father in that case is there 24/7. I do not agree with him showing up unannounced but I think the bigger part of the OP should be how amazing he is in providing free labor, why do we cherry pick hadiths, that is what led to destruction of ummah to cherry pick for self serving reasons, where does hadith say u around in shorts? In any one day you have a million reasons to love people or hate people. Why cant the husband just talk to FIL, but my other part abouit ingratitude and thankless behavior is valid also, seen that so often, in my own family. My neohews wife, does not bring much value, married in millions, not educated, not good looking AND COMPLAINS ABOUT TRIVIAL STUFF ALL THE TIME. Sorry caps were just accidental.
Since it’s just her husband in the house, she can roam around in shorts or without anything at all. There’s absolutely no sin in that. But entering a house unannounced is not allowed.
In any one day people do thousands of things that are not allowed I saw this fire brand mullani who was yelling fiercely yet behind burka you could see she plucked her eyebrows. Yes I agree that he should announce but we have to also show gratitude and respect. If it is only complaints and little or no gratitude than it is not a good thing
what does religion say about hundreds of millions sharing a house with in-laws?
If you were truly agreeing bobby, there wouldn’t be a ‘but’ in the sentence.
Her question was pretty simple : whether asking for boundaries is being ungrateful or not. You can look it up in religion, or look it up in modern psychology and the answer would be the same.** Asking for reasonable boundaries is never wrong**.
Yes, one should be grateful if someone is doing us a favor but asking for boundaries is not equivalent to being ungrateful.
As for your last question, it is unrelated to the thread. If you are really looking for an answer to that, please go ahead and open another thread.
I don?t agree with lack of appreciation and gratitude and how it is mainly complains. I would like it to be like my fil is an amazing man devotes a lot of time doing free labor for us, however I have a small little problem
I see a lot of ungrateful youngsters who are just takers and complainers
like my nephews wife, received millions but still shows no gratitude and will find a reason to complain.
Plus why is it so hard to just nicely talk to parents
Also you can?t ride two horses at the same time you want Western rights than do Western work ethics, girls here work, fix things, mow lawns, shovel walks etc and then they demand rights. If you are financially being supported than you need to be able to live with a few inconveniences
Woah Bobby, something must have hit a nerve? Whether the OP works fulltime or not is not going to decide whether she is allowed to mind the unannounced visits or not. It’s called basic manners.
Nowhere in western culture either is it normal for in laws to drop by unannounced on a regular basis even if it’s to provide free services to the couple. They didn’t force the father-in-law, if he wants to do something kind but it’s becoming an issue for her and her relayionship with her husband he as the elder should have some shame man. Now the father-in-law needs to have aqal too that if his son said something about it multiple times then it must be important to not cross boundaries again, after all they do NOT live together in the same house. How difficult is it to call her before coming to her house??? But this is asian culture where there is no regard for such things as privacy and understanding from in-laws, instead we continue to blame the woman for complaining and being nashukri.
Also even if you feel very strongly about such things because they might be normal in your family or because so and so happened in your (extended) family, nowhere does it say that someone must accept a certain situation because Bobby or his wife or his dog even did so too.
I might argue that not following hadiths etc is what lead/s to destruction of the ummah. That’s why we have such nonsense issues in daily life which we could avoid if people knew and practiced what the hadiths teach us, instead they choose to follow man-made cultural rules.
The lack of (respect for) boundaries in any type of relationship will eventually lead to friction and worse, therefore we as humans maintain boundaries because we want our relationships to become and stay alive and healthy.
I just have mixed feelings about trying to milk both cultures, the western manners and the eastern culture are different, in east people show up unannounced, generations live together, respect is awarded to elders, men work, women stay home. women give up their rights and privacy but benefit from being taken care of, so if you want to be taken care of, provided for etc than you need to pay your duties as an eastern women.
In the west a man will live with a woman for several years, she has to pay her portion of rent and groceries, helps with all chores like mowing, shoveling etc and looks for privacy etc.
Let us not even start with boundaries and manners, I go to the desi restaurants all the time, people eating with mouthfuls, making noise while eating, scratching, coughing without covering their mouths, not smelling very good etc so poooooleeeeeeeeseee let us leave these boundaries and respect thing for someone who does not know this stuff. People dont even exit mosques in an orderly fashion, they push, shove etc.
