In my study of more than 700 long-married older people, I often heard people say, You dont just marry a person; you marry his or her family. Indeed, many of the elders I spoke with regarded this statement as a fundamental truth. Despite the fact that most dating couples do not spend much time thinking about their partners family, elders will tell you that in-laws matter.
What should you do? I found three lessons for solving the problems in your relationship with each others families. These rules for in-law relations have been tested by hundreds of the oldest Americans for decades. And we should pay close attention.
1. Your loyalty is to your spouse. In a conflict between your spouse and your family, support your spouse.
Life is full of difficult decisions in which no solution leaves everyone happy. It is your duty to support your husband or wife and explain it to your family. Further, you must make it clear to your families from the beginning that your spouse comes first.
In couples where this does not happen, marital problems follow. In fact, some of the worst disputes happen because of a spouses inability to support his or her partner. When I asked Erin, 66, to describe a conflict in her marriage, she said:
"Oh, yeah, his mother. A lot of conflict. I had the impression she didnt like me very much. I could live with that, but my husband never protected me, so we fought about it. My husband would never say anything like, 'Hey mom, thats my wife, cool it (, ).' And arguments started. And after all we get divorced because of her.
When there is conflict between your family and your spouse, dont feel caught in the middleyour place is on your spouses side.
2. Remind yourself why you are doing it.
This tip is one that many have used like a mantra in difficult in-law situations. Tell yourself that the effort to get used to your partners family is one of the greatest gifts you can offer in your marriage. The best thing for motivating yourself to put the effort into in-law relations is to remember that you are doing it because you love your spouse.
Gwen, 94, who's been married for 67 years, put it clearly: "You may not like your mother-in-law or your father-in-law or your in-laws very much, but you certainly can stay close to them. Remember that theyre your spouses family. I learned to love them. I mean, I loved them because they were my husbands parents and I loved him."
3. Eliminate politics from the discussion.
Keep political arguments out of in-law relations. It can be the biggest bomb in the minefield, and elders say that these conflicts are unnecessary. There is simply no need to engage your in-laws in political debate.
You may not be able to avoid conflict over your in-laws disapproval of your marriage, job, lifestyle, or parenting approach. But you can make it a rule to take noisy and unnecessary political debates off the table. Lets return to Gwen for her advice:
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"My husband didnt care for my dad because my dad was a completely different kind of person. My dad was the boss of everybody and everything. He was never aggressive; he never hit us kids or my mother. But he was a total boss. What my dad said was law and order and we all knew it. And my husband was a gentle (), soft-spoken (, ), easy-going () person. He was a completely different personality. In particular, they argued about the government. My dad was a Democrat; my husband was a Republican. "So finally, I made the rule that there would be no discussions of politics when we were all together. And I said to my husband: 'If Dad starts in about the Republicans, Im going to walk out of the room and you come see whats wrong with me because I dont want to hear this anymore. Of all the big decisions we had to make, I think the most important was deciding that I wasnt going to listen to that problem between my father and my husband."
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