Anonymous wrote:I’m 30 and met the perfect guy for me almost 1 year ago. He meets and exceeds everything I want in a husband. The only drawback I keep trying to dismiss is that I don’t love his family. His parents are wonderful but his brother and wife are very pretentious and arrogant. They are fairly close and get together pretty often so I’m around them a far amount. I don’t see this ending us but I really would love some insight for people have been there. I’m sure I’m not the only one who is dating someone who doesn’t love their family.

You’ll be too busy to hang out with the brother and SIL.

What makes them so arrogant or pretentious actually?
They went to prep school or they’re racist?
They buy overpriced stuff they can’t afford or they are value shoppers and have opinion in product quality?
They gossip a lot?
They are shallow and superficial? (Those are everywhere jsut avoid and be civil)

How serious are your examples.?.

Anonymous wrote:In your situation, I would be a lot more concerned if I didn’t like the parents.

And a pretentious brother and sister-in-law is a lot better than if they were attacking you or disrespecting you in some significant way.

So, for me that would not be a dealbreaker.

+1.

But I’d also keep your eyes open. It’s not good that you think he’s perfect. Nobody is. Either he is keeping things from you and putting on a show of perfection (like many abusers and narcissists do early on) or you just need a LOT more time with him to really know him.

In my early 20s I was madly in love with a girl whose parents were blatant racists. They were well educated and upper income so it was pretty shocking. She tolerated it but I couldn’t so we split up.

Anonymous wrote:I think a big element is what your bf thinks about this. Does he see it too? Does he dismiss it? Is he defensive? This would be telling for me

+1 He can't choose his parents or siblings, obviously, but what does he think of them?

If he thinks nbd, then IMO, he might not see himself as arrogant if he turns out that way at some point.

If he agrees that they are, but that it's his brother and he still wants to spend time with him, then eventually, you can pull back a bit and let him see his brother by himself.

He might just be accustomed to it simply because that's how his brother has always been. But, tread carefully here. You are just his gf while he is the brother.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They’re not going away.

It will get worse as they get older.

How he handles them is everything.

All of this.

I’ll add that as long as you like his parents, not liking his sibling and their spouse is much less of an issue.

Not necessarily. Parents eventually pass on. Siblings are likely to be around for the duration.

Yes, but once parents pass on siblings can easily not spend time with the siblings they’re not close with. Pretty much never see my SIL anymore and I’m ok with that.

You will be interacting with the sibling & family a lot. Sounds like they live close by. Are you up to doing that for the next many years?

OP, your expectation to "love his family" or any one else's family is foolish. Stop with that. You should expect a relationship like any other relationship at arm's length: polite, friendly, respectful, respecting boundaries.

You can say no to most of these social gathering. Just do it. No need to explain or have conversation, just establish a pattern YOU can live with. Once a month? Whatever. He sees them at other times.

If after you taking control of your time, if the relationship isn't working, then break up.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You're 30 and you seem pretty immature. They sound annoying yeah but you seriously can't just roll your eyes at their ridiculousness and get over it? You're really willing to let go of the "perfect" guy because they are arrogant? They aren't rude to you right? They don't put you down? They don't make fun of you? They don't say mean things? They just think really highly of themselves and think they are the most amazing people and have the most amazing baby ever? Yeah annoying and I'd vent about them to my best friend. But I'd get over it. It's not that big a deal.

It is a big deal when you see them multiple times a week. The wife is always sending family group texts about their amazing baby and what new thing she bought..

She has never been rude but has definitely put my job down because I don’t make as much as my boyfriend or even close to it. She was a bigwig before staying home. I just hate spending several hours a week with them.

Not the family for you. Find someone else.

+100000000

They will probably have more kids since the first one was perfect. They will have less and less time to spend with you and your bf. Give it time.

I dont think there are all that many families where a woman doesn’t dislike at least one person in their in-law family and a man doesn’t love at least one person in his in-law family.

I think the % of couple who both love everyone in the others family is low. You have to learn to get along with people who don’t connect with, don’t like. You can’t expect him to cut off his brother because you find him arrogant.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t like my BIL’s fiancé. I’m sure she doesn’t like me either. Maybe she can be OP.

I’m a SAHM and DH is successful. I would be perfectly fine never seeing them. We are busy with our own kids and friends. BIL is the one who always invites himself over. It wasn’t so bad when it was just him. Now his fiancé comes also and it is awkward.

I don’t care that she stays home and he works. That’s perfectly fine for them. It’s just the annoying boasting that gets to me. She spends the entire time talking about herself and her genius baby who literally seems like a normal baby.

I’m not sure how any baby can be a genius. It is pretty normal for a new first time mom to be in love with her baby. Usually you gush and say these things to just your spouse.

DH and I often look at our children and say how perfect they are. Our DD is beautiful and so smart. I would not go around to others and talk about how smart she is. We live in an area full of smart people. I’m sure many parents love and adore their children.

OP seems like the one trying to stir up trouble when there isn’t any. New parents bragging about a genius baby? Most new parents will take a gazillion photos and videos of baby, toddler, child.

A couple of things:

1) Seeing them a few times per week is a lot. It should be fairly easy to drop this to once/wk or less without creating any drama- no reason you need to be there every time he sees his brother. Use that time for a planned hobby or workout, say you have to catch up on work, or simply that you need some downtime

2) common for some new moms to be obsessive and a bit smug. Usually life takes care of that over time.

3) you are young and so are BIL/SIL. You wont always have so much free time to just hang out like this, and probably neither will they. Life gets busy are you get older, especially if raising kids.

They do sound annoying but it wouldn’t necessarily be a dealbreaker for me.

If you say you hate your bf’s family, you just need to part ways with him. Period.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t like my BIL’s fiancé. I’m sure she doesn’t like me either. Maybe she can be OP.

I’m a SAHM and DH is successful. I would be perfectly fine never seeing them. We are busy with our own kids and friends. BIL is the one who always invites himself over. It wasn’t so bad when it was just him. Now his fiancé comes also and it is awkward.

I don’t care that she stays home and he works. That’s perfectly fine for them. It’s just the annoying boasting that gets to me. She spends the entire time talking about herself and her genius baby who literally seems like a normal baby.

It’s pretty normal for a new mom to be infatuated with her first baby.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You're 30 and you seem pretty immature. They sound annoying yeah but you seriously can't just roll your eyes at their ridiculousness and get over it? You're really willing to let go of the "perfect" guy because they are arrogant? They aren't rude to you right? They don't put you down? They don't make fun of you? They don't say mean things? They just think really highly of themselves and think they are the most amazing people and have the most amazing baby ever? Yeah annoying and I'd vent about them to my best friend. But I'd get over it. It's not that big a deal.

It is a big deal when you see them multiple times a week. The wife is always sending family group texts about their amazing baby and what new thing she bought..

She has never been rude but has definitely put my job down because I don’t make as much as my boyfriend or even close to it. She was a bigwig before staying home. I just hate spending several hours a week with them.

Multiple times a week is a crazy amount of interaction! Why?? Aren't these people occupied with their own (amazing!) life?

Agree with everyone it matters what BF thinks. It reflects his values and matters practically too in managing the relationship.

If she's putting your job down, that's not acceptable. She sucks and clearly has insecurity or other issues.

OP I broke up with someone in part because of his parents and his total inability to see any fault in them ever, to always take their side, and to scapegoat me to make himself look better to them. So unlike a lot of PPs IMO I feel like you are "marrying the family" in many situations.

For you. For some people family and spending time together is life. Not driving the kids to sports practice and going to the gym and spa