Women who have good relationships with their in-laws, how do you maintain them?

7 comments

1. We are not married but have been together a long time. I have a great relationship with his parents because they are genuinely great people. We all share a great love for my partner and that’s the most important thing to all of us, is that he is happy and loved

   If your in-laws are shit the only way to handle it is to draw clear boundaries and have a plan that your partner agrees on of what to do if they cross them, whether that be taking space, cutting contact, refusing to travel with them, not allowing them to babysit etc. you two have to be on the same page and enforce clear and consistent boundaries and consequences

2. For parents, I think it’s because growing up that was just what I was used to. My mom & her MIL are closer than my grandma & my dad are. So I’ve always viewed and treated my partner’s parents as if they were my own. Going grocery shopping? I always go with my own mom so I’ll come with you too! I think having the expectation that everyone will get along goes a long way actually because then the in laws will relax too.

3. fwiw both my parents are in prison, we’ve been married since I was barely 19, and I’m almost 41 now.

   MIL: I come from a…”much rougher” background than my husband did, dude basically grew up in what I half-jokingly call a Norman Rockwell painting come to life

   I could tell she was apprehensive or whatever at first, one part because of that, one part she had initially assumed there were significant cultural differences or whatever.

   (I’m Korean-American. Husband is approximately Casper the Ghost Irish.)

   Only real difference there is that I’m from NYC and their whole clan are born and bred Massholes. Biggest arguments is only ever really Sox vs Yankees lol

   Really got on the same page when we found out I was pregnant with Kid 1 early on.

   I was open with her and readily admitted I had no idea wtf I was doing (but was super excited nonetheless) and given the whole “my bio parents were two turbo abusive and neglectful shitbag addicts” part, she really helped calm me down on that.

   FIL: I met my husband in the Army. FIL is a retired career special operations guy, and I think I started to win him over the first time we met and I just slammed a beer with him.

   Dude reminded of Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino for the longest time at first, he had some…experiences, back in Vietnam that didn’t leave him thinking entirely too fondly of most Asians on default.

   He wasn’t doing it out of malicious intent but certain terms have certain meanings. Dude’s a walking PTSD diagnosis if he ever didn’t need to be forced to go do the bare minimum at the doctor’s office.

   ….anyways nowadays dude outright claims I’m his favorite daughter lol

   With my husband and I being dual military and us having a bigger family than his siblings ended up with, they got super super into playing the ProfessionalGrandparents^TM role once they officially retired.

   SIL1: his older sister, her and I have the same sort of fucked up black humor and life outlooks and all that shit and she’s genuinely my best friend even separate from the whole “I’m married to her brother” thing

   Like due to my fucked up family situation above, she was the closest thing to a Maid of Honor at our whambam courthouse wedding lol

   SIL2: get along with his middle sister easy enough, we’re just two totally separate personalities.

   BIL: honestly don’t have a particularly positive or negative relationship with him, he’s a lifelong bachelor with a travel addiction who’ll just fall of the grid for spells when he’s going on another sidequest

   SIL3: we went fully no contact with her. Sad case sort of, she got super super super political when she went to college. In the same “episode” (?), she:

   * sent an IG post I did of me and our daughter at the gun range as a fun mom/daughter thing, to CPS to try and report us

   * accused her brother of only being with me because of YellowFever^TM reasons

   * insinuated that she thought he was abusing me because of the whole “submissive Asian wife” stereotype (……I was the one who took him home in the first place back at Day Zero but 🤷‍♀️)

   * accused me of only being with him because I was a “traitor” who “hated my own people”, was “perfectly fine with rampant colonialism” and just really really really wanting 1/2 white babies

4. Im still really close to my exs parents. We dated for 12 years and were high school sweethearts, so his parents practically raised me as well. Even after the break up, they sat me down and said that I would always be their daughter and even now we still go out for dinner or ill drop by their place to chat a bit

5. ~~My husband is a mommas boy, but she is not a good person. When he retired, we moved back to his hometown to be near his aging mom. She she has the morals of a fruit fly, for example, when her husband died, she married his brother, a year later she met a 19 year old boy, and moved him in, and sent her new husband to a nursing home, all while taking his monthly pension checks. All this AND claiming to be a good Christian on her Facebook.~~

   ~~But….~~

   ~~I am the only person that she trusts to help her. I take her to her doctors appointment and her shopping. Her boyfriend (now 30 years old) is a drug dealer, who doesn’t like going to doctors offices. I do these things for her because this is why we are here, this is why we moved to this tiny stupid town. I do them more for my husbands sake than hers.~~

   ~~All his family lives here, his sister and brother and nieces and nephews, but none of them can stand to be around her.~~

   ~~So yeah its a good relationship, but~~

   Nevermind.

6. Understand that they’re human too. They can make mistakes. Plus they’re not going to be around for long so might as well compromise on certain aspects to keep the peace.

   Plus I guess I was just plain lucky, because they’re amazing.

7. For my nice in-laws – By understanding that yes I think they are annoying as fuck sometimes. Sometimes I can’t wait for them to leave but they probably feel the same way about me from time to time. That helps me to bite my tongue and keep the peace when they get super annoying.

   For my not so nice in-laws – limit the amount of time I am around them. Tune out when they are talking and bite my tongue for the comfort of my in-laws who are really nice.