Our kids are the only grandkids on both sides. Pre kids, they had little interaction, but now they see each other often as we tend to be central place for holidays and they attend kids’ activities. It’s really lovely, I have to say. They are very different from each other but it’s like an extended family now.

our parents have only met twice.

My 2 sets of grandparents never met each other, despite living in the same city.

In fact, despite our differences on the outside, humans are 99.9% genetically similar to one another

There is always anxiety as everyone is afraid of messing it up. More so if anyone involved has social anxiety or if there are some social, racial, lingual, religious or cultural differences but for what really counts, under all that fluff, we are all the same.

I'm not surprised that so many posters report that their in-laws have never met each other. That's to be expected when young people move away from home, but our experience has been different (not necessarily better or more desirable, just different).

We met our oldest son's girlfriend's parents when they helped her drive from their home in St. Louis to Philadelphia, where she and our son were in medical school. They'd been dating for about a year at that point and have now been dating for nearly four years. They're lovely people and since then we've hosted them for Thanksgiving a couple of times. Last month we met up for dinner in LA because we'd discovered that both sets of parents were going to be in LA for completely unrelated events.

We met our middle son's girlfriend's parents on that same trip to LA. They both live there and decided it would be a good time for us to meet. They've been dating for about a year now. Parents are also really nice and fun. DS commented later that he was worried about how the conversation would go, but found that asking us all to recount our experiences in the 1989 earthquake was a great ice breaker.

We met our daughter's boyfriend's parents at dorm move-in when they were first-year college students. Of course, at that time, we had no idea they would even become friends. They've now been dating for two years. Again, we're lucky -- the parents are very nice people whom we've seen here and there over the past couple of years at college events and move-in/move-out. When we drove to Maine last summer, we also stopped to have lunch with them near their home.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m married and my and my husband’s parents have never met. I’d like to keep it that way! (They are just so different - it would make me uncomfortable.)

Did either set attend your wedding?

We eloped!

We are having a baby soon - next month - so these days are probably limited, but…the idea of them all getting together just gives me the heebie jeebies.

Anonymous wrote:They met for the first time at the wedding. His are on one coast, mine on the other, we live in a third state entirely. There was no opportunity before then.

And in 15 years of marriage they’ve only seen each other twice more (when we hosted holidays and asked them to fly in.)

They met for the first time at the wedding. His are on one coast, mine on the other, we live in a third state entirely. There was no opportunity before then.