If you see your boyfriend’s mother more positively than he does, for example, you probably can’t talk him into giving up his resentment and criticism, and trying may well make him feel that you don’t understand him or can’t accept him for who he is. So don’t try to become a helpful peacemaker before thinking carefully about how your good intentions may affect the relationship that matters most—not his with his mama, but yours with him.
First, examine what he does with his negative feelings about his mother, noting carefully whether they make him mean, vengeful, sulky, or just politely distant. Watch whether he needs you to echo his point of view or is comfortable with your not sharing his feelings. You’ll have reason to be more optimistic about your relationship with him if he can behave well in spite of his negativity and doesn’t demand support or understanding.
If, however, their relationship is an open wound, his anger is overt, and his need for support makes him overbearing, you must find out whether he can control himself. One of your children is likely to resemble his mother, and you don’t want to spend your energy running protective interference between them.
Let him know you accept that he doesn’t like his mother and assume he has good reasons, but you believe it’s important to maintain a civil relationship through polite, brief, and infrequent interactions. So you think he should keep his cool and not expect you to share negative feelings that are just not part of your experience with his mother. Hopefully, you’ll discover that he can accept reasonable boundaries, knowing that you’re not taking his mother’s side but that you’re also unwilling to encourage angry behavior. If not, you now know that he has a character weakness that may impact you in other ways, even if you and he live far away from his parents.
If your girlfriend’s loving dad hates you, you have a right to be worried and disappointed. Don’t waste time trying to win him over, particularly if it appears that your efforts are futile and just make him meaner. Also don’t try to persuade your girlfriend that her father is a bad guy, because fighting for her primary loyalty will cause conflict and increase his influence over your relationship.
Instead, don’t make her relationship with her father your problem unless she does. You may share her disappointment that the two of you don’t hit it off, but never show that disappointment when he’s around. Behave well and make it clear that when necessary you can smile your way appropriately through short family get-togethers, but let her know that you don’t think longer stays are in the cards, given the unfortunate chemistry.
You hope, however disappointed she is that he doesn’t like you, that she doesn’t respond with blame or expect you to spend more time with him than necessary. You want her to know that you won’t be hurt if she spends somewhat more time with him than you do, but you also want her to regard you as her chief adviser and partner in your life ahead, not as a consort who stands by while she asks her father what he thinks.
If she meets those expectations, you can justifiably hope that she won’t let her father’s animosity interfere with the boundaries of her relationship with you. Otherwise, the problem isn’t her father, it’s her inability to define her own priorities and opinions, and you can expect your partnership to be troubled.
It’s creepy to discover that the family your girlfriend loves and admires is, in your opinion, a bunch of not-adorable, overbearing jerks. You and she have a basic disagreement that may also reflect a difference in the way the two of you judge people that may not be possible to resolve.
What’s most important, however, is not winning your girlfriend to your point of view but seeing if her admiration and love reflect a problem in her values or boundaries in all her relationships. You need to know whether her love for her jerky family means she’s also drawn to jerky friends who tend to exert too much influence over her life. If so, you then need to know whether she expects you to share her taste in friends. You hope to find that her friends, including you, are not at all like her family, and that, aside from her family, she is able to identify jerky behavior and protect herself when appropriate. If so, you may want to check out her family again and ask for a second opinion from a friend, to make sure you aren’t overreacting.
You also need to know that she doesn’t require you to share her love for her family and can accept that, if she chooses you, you and the kids won’t be spending more than the minimum amount of time required for good family diplomacy. Let her know where you stand, without implying that her family is at fault or that you feel anything other than regret that things can’t be different, and see if she’s amenable to your terms. Even if you can’t share her feelings for her family, you can determine whether her values are better anchored than her family’s and whether she can accept your thoughts for keeping your relationship with them respectful, even if it falls short of her ideal.
Sometimes a prospective partner’s close family is as wonderful and simpatico as described and you all get along like gangbusters despite every mother-in-law joke, previous personal experience, and Nate Silver–style probability that would indicate otherwise. More often, though, you all get along less like gangbusters and more like rival gangs, and complications ensue.
Whether your partner has a stable family or a sucky one, dealing with them is like being a politician; success depends on pleasing a large group with differing, conflicting opinions by being as pleasant and bland as possible during rare personal appearances. You can’t judge your partner by the sanity of her electorate, but watching how your partner manages them can give you valuable information about her strengths. More important, you’ll be able to gauge your ability as a team to manage and tolerate differences in the way you respond to people and the stability of the ecosystem of your relationship in the long run.
Quiz: Family Questionnaire—Are You a Fair Family JudgeI When It Comes to Prospective Partners?
1. Your boyfriend’s mother makes you feel genuinely welcome the first Thanksgiving you spend together, but you can’t help noticing that she seems much more comfortable with your boyfriend than with his younger brother, who sits at the other end of the table, says little, and is only addressed when someone remembers something critical to say to him. You decide to:
A: Return her obvious affection for you and your boyfriend in a bond-building exercise because she’s so sweet to you and your beloved that you can ignore the weirdness of the little-brother stuff.
B: Get so creeped out by the situation that you feign stuffing-induced diarrhea and spend the rest of the meal hiding in the bathroom, texting your boyfriend to sneak you a slice of pie.
C: At a later time and safer distance, ask your boyfriend if there’s a reason everybody’s so hard on his brother or whether this is part of a bigger problem.
2. When you first meet your girlfriend’s family at a birthday party they throw for her, you notice her brothers like to tease her in a way that doesn’t seem friendly and that she doesn’t much seem to enjoy. You would:
A: To strengthen your relationship with the family, give them the benefit of the doubt and try to convince the birthday girl that they’re just a couple of mooks who mean well.
B: Tell the boys they’re less funny than they think, and if they don’t like your speaking up, you’ll be glad to teach them respect outside and make this her happiest birthday ever.
C: Watch how she and her parents manage her brothers’ gibes, do what you can to distract them or remove her from their presence, and ask her later if they’re always this charming and how she feels about it.
3. When you first have dinner with your boyfriend and his mother, you’re unsettled by the way she drinks too much and then bad-mouths his father, from whom she’s divorced. You notice your boyfriend is so uncomfortable that he sits there about as silently as you do and drops out of the conversation. Your approach is to:
A: Give his mother some attention, support, and a bottomless glass of chardonnay in an effort to get closer to her and help her get all the feelings out so that she can find some sort of p
eace and catharsis.
B: Storm out, mortified by his mother’s behavior, then write a positive Yelp review of the restaurant to both apologize for your boyfriend’s mother and out her to the world as a bitter lush.
C: Find out later whether this woman “wines and whines” regularly (and maybe if drowning sorrows is a wider family tradition).
4. On a visit to your boyfriend’s parents in another city, you’re surprised to be assigned separate bedrooms in his family’s home although you’re both in your late twenties. You would:
A: Tell his parents how much you appreciate their kindness, hospitality, and efforts to protect your womanly honor.
B: Explain to his parents that it’s your body, your choice, and then find yourself a hotel room nearby (or a plane ticket back home, because this clearly isn’t going to work).
C: Look around the house for any curious or oversize or bounty of religious paraphernalia, then ask your boyfriend what the deal is with the sleeping arrangements.
5. You don’t meet your girlfriend’s older sister until your second visit with their lovely parents, so you’re surprised when said sister is friendly to you but openly insults her father, whom you find to be extremely nice. Her father says little in response, and everyone appears embarrassed. You react by:
A: Speaking separately to the sister’s father and her, telling them both you totally get how the other one is such a jerk and that you’re absolutely on each one’s side, thereby hedging your bonding bets and getting in with everyone.
B: Telling the sister she’s being a monster and if this is how this family rolls, then they deserve one another but you deserve better (drop mic, leave).
C: Changing the subject and waiting until later to get the scoop on what’s up with the sister, why she has a beef with her father, and how the family deals with it (or, seemingly, doesn’t).
If you answered mostly A’s . . .
You’re a born beacon of love who is wonderful at charming prospective in-laws and determined to get close to your beloved’s relatives. Unfortunately, your job is not to win their affection or take responsibility for their happiness but to find out whether they’re bearable in-laws, what possible traits they may have saddled your partner with, and if they can leave you and your prospective partner out of their bullshit. Stick with unconditional affection and you find yourself sucked in, stuck, and, sooner or later, targeted yourself.
If you answered mostly B’s . . .
You can’t stop yourself from seeing the worst in every ugly family situation, and, by extension, every partner, without first stopping to think about whether you’re overreacting or what impact these situations or dynamics would have on your relationship with your partner. You may be trying to avoid problems, but you’re more likely to cause them. Unless you can learn to be more patient, tolerant, and better at understanding and evaluating your prospective partner, your reactiveness to awkward family situations will keep you from being in any solid relationships, period.
If you answered mostly C’s . . .
You’re doing a good job of presenting yourself to your partner’s family as a pleasant, unemotional nonlunatic while carefully observing the customs and trigger points of the local natives. You’re learning important things about the strengths, weaknesses, and general marriageability of your current candidate.
Family Feud: How to Judge a Prospective Partner by How He Handles Family Crises
Whether your partner’s family is fancy or the first family of the trailer park, the important thing isn’t what they’re like or how much money they have, but what your partner’s like when they start to act up. Here are some common family-related social catastrophes, for families both bad and good, and the best- and worst-case scenarios for how a partner would handle the drama.
* * *
Situation
Good Family v. Bad Family Example
A Good Partner Would
A Bad Partner Would
Within hours of meeting them, you find yourself in the front row of a massive family argument.
A passive-aggressive snipefest filled with sighs and awkward silences v. a screaming brawl where someone ends up shirtless and the cops are called.
Keep his cool, propose something constructive, and, if diplomacy backfires, find a polite way to remove both of you from the area of impact.
Join in the fray, bring some other family member to tears, and eventually storm out, leaving you there to console his victims.
The parents make you an offer you must refuse, but you don’t know how to without seeming rude.
They invite you on the family trip to St. Barts that you can’t possibly afford v. they insist you try Grandma’s squirrel-meat stew and you’re suddenly vegetarian.
Invent an excuse on your behalf, create a distraction, or change the subject away from the too-pricey trip or rodent soup.
Say nothing, forcing you to stumble through an excuse like “I’m really honored, but I can’t because of a (previous obligation or rare allergy or imaginary religion).”
When you first meet, the mother immediately starts in on her hopes for your (shared, married, fertile) future with her son.
Many, many hints about how lovely a summer wedding would be in the Vineyard v. she instantly offers to give you her wedding dress (which was only slightly damaged when those fireworks burned down their old double-wide).
Deflect the comment with humor before changing the subject, or, if the nudging persists, declare his intention to keep discussions about your relationship from being dinner-table conversation.
Stay silent, leaving you to respond politely without committing yourself, and later, when you’re alone with your partner, you can ask why he hung you out to dry and let his mother plan your possible future on your shared behalf.
One parent makes a statement or joke or angry speech that any sane person would find offensive.
Any mention of “those people” v. the father inadvertently plagiarizes that one old Chris Rock bit that he really, really shouldn’t.
Without evident embarrassment either pivot to a semirelated, not-offensive topic (“Speaking of ‘those people,’ Steph Curry is killing it!”) or simply refuse to respond, declaring a lack of interest or opinion before changing the subject.
Confront his parents on their prejudice and vulgarity, somehow bring you into his new, two-person equality movement, and insist you’ll both storm out in disgust if no apology is forthcoming.
You inadvertently say something offensive.
The mother thinks it will always be too soon for Nancy Reagan jokes, as she was a true hero v. “Three generations of our family have worked at Taco Bell, or, as you just called it, ‘the bowel bomb.’ ”
Rescue you by redefining what you meant or taking the insult or blame for the misunderstanding on himself (e.g., “Ease up, Ron Jon, she didn’t know, and Grandpappy called it the Taco Smell his whole career”).
Throw you under the bus, blaming your poor sense of humor or mental health or manners, or leave you to attempt diplomacy, even though you have no one to blame for the crisis but yourself, which makes you angrier at your partner for not having your back.
Having Good Family
All children have a natural desire to fit in, respect, and avoid conflict with their families, and the lucky few are rewarded with a loving, reciprocal relationship. The very lucky have a relationship that provides moral guidance and lifelong support, love, and friendship (and, possibly, a writing partnership and a book deal). As an adult, however, you can’t let your basic need for your parents—their company, approval, help, or contact—get in the way of your relationship with a partner. That’s why having a partner meet your parents isn’t just about their approving your choice or your partner’s ability to fit in; it’s about both sides learning to still respect each other and be civil if approval isn’t in the cards. Hopefully, your family can trust that you learned enough from them to choose the right person to build a life with, but either they accept yo
ur partner or you accept your duty to protect your new partnership from their negative feelings, no parental approval required.
Here are three examples:
• I have a big, warm family that scares the shit out of every guy I bring home. They don’t mean to be so intimidating, but there are a lot of them and they’re loud, verbal, curious, and protective, so they wind up overwhelming anyone they think I’m dating. My goal is to figure out a way to date and still be close to my family without their interfering.
• I love my parents, and we’re close, but they’ve made it clear that they won’t approve of any man I date unless he’s Korean, like us. I want to respect them, but I also don’t feel it’s important to keep those traditions alive and don’t want to date only one kind of person. My goal is to get them to love whomever I love, just as they love me.
• I’m proud of my family and like to introduce them to my girlfriends, but they’re friendly and wind up getting close. Then, if I decide a girlfriend and I aren’t right for each other, I have to contend with my breaking up her relationship with my parents as well. They don’t put pressure on me, but I hate to hurt them, and I don’t want to shut them out of my dating life. My goal is to make dating decisions be less complicated.
Getting feedback from your family about prospective partners, especially if your family is close, can feel like a smart move; after all, if we’re supposed to get second opinions on medical diagnoses or possible used-car purchases, we should definitely get them on potential life partners. But just as you wouldn’t go to a barista to get a second opinion on your possible tumor, it’s sometimes just as unwise to go to your parents for their thoughts on whether that certain someone you like is right for you.
That’s why, if your family’s response to prospective partners interferes with your selecting, you must decide for yourself whether your family is a good judge of who’s right or wrong for you, and what you’re going to do about it.
F*ck Love: One Shrink's Sensible Advice for Finding a Lasting Relationship Page 15