When you got married, how much did you really think about marrying into your spouse's family?
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Anonymous
| My MIL is a nut job and I knew it going in. The one saving grace has always been that my husband is 100% aware of what's going on and runs interference for me ALL THE TIME. I think it's a huge relationship problem if you and your spouse don't see eye to eye on family members. My parents are a huge pain too, but DH and I don't fight about it (much) because we're both equally aware of the manipulation and deal with it together. |
Anonymous
It depends on how the question is presented, and if the questioning is one sided. It could easily be misconstrued. |
Anonymous
| ^^^onlynifbyou are hypersensitive and really immature. |
Anonymous
| I knew the IL's would be trouble, they were. Look'em over real good before hand. One of the few benefits of divorce was not having to suffer them any longer, and I know they felt that way about me. |
Anonymous
| The fact that my husband's parents were lovely human beings who were still happily married and had raised three great kids definitely made him more attractive. |
Anonymous
| As a part of our wedding, we asked those in attendance to vow "to stand beside us but never between us." DH's family made the vow but didn't honor it. It has been a living hell. |
Anonymous
Lesson learned: never let vindictive people see your hand. |
Anonymous
| I have been married almost 50 years and my IL are still alive and still do not approve of me. |
Anonymous
Not OP, but curious - do you bother seeing/talking to MIL, or does DH see/talk to her on his own? I tell my DH to call MIL all of the time, but he just is not interested. He goes on her annual "vacation", but it is exhausting for him (IL's do not help or engage with our children); and we have limited vacation time, and other rather big obligations, so making time for a vacation we don't really want is a stretch. We do our own holidays, but have to spend some time at MILs, which the children don't really like, truth be told. MIL makes it known, like a petulant child, that she "does not like" me. As if I like her  Curious what someone who has been married as long as you, PP, does; and how you handle the situation? I think some of us could use some words of wisdom!
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Anonymous
| My Mom told me from the get go to be careful who you married because you were marrying the whole family. You take on all the (dys)function of the family, even if they're not close. You deal with the fall out. I also think you need to watch how your future spouse treats his family because that is an indication of how he will treat you and yours. |
Anonymous
| Not enough. At the moment we live in a different country than MIL and crazy SIL, but we've recently been talking about moving there permanently for DH's job, and as a compromise between living where we are now and moving back to my home country. MIL brought SIL for a visit recently and it was hell. I am really convinced that living close enough to them that such visits are frequent will put a big strain on our marriage. |
Anonymous
Nothing like blaming the victim. |
Anonymous
Funny. I dated an orphan and think about him often. My ILs are awful people and one of them in particular seems to have an undiagnosed scary mental illness. |
Anonymous
I did, and trust me, that comes with its own set of baggage. |
Anonymous
Not at all. But it is a valuable lesson learned. Learning a lesson is NOT synonymous with begin a victim, to most people. |