Forget all the tired, negative jokes about in-law relationships. Most in-laws are not tyrants – they are simply people who love your spouse and have a special bond with him or her, based on a relationship that predates your relationship with your spouse. Your in-laws have made some contribution into who your spouse is today – an investment that needs to be honoured.
When you marry someone, you take on a new set of relationships with your spouse’s family. A positive approach to those new relationships can go a long way towards easing the loss that some parents feel in letting go of their children.
That said there are in-laws who find that transition very difficult and sometimes seek to maintain undue control, particularly if they were disapproving of the marriage to begin with. Such relationships will need to be handled with large doses of wisdom and love. Communicating openly with your spouse about those difficulties and developing a joint strategy for managing both sets of families pays huge dividends.
Here are a few principles to remember when seeking to build healthy in-law relationships.
Loyalty
Loyalty to your spouse, whether present or absent, is an absolute requisite for successful in-law relationships. Your family’s tendency will be to be loyal to you, but your first loyalty should be to your spouse. This means speaking well of your spouse with your family and not allowing your family to speak disrespectfully of your spouse, under any circumstances. If you have marital difficulties, it’s not a good idea to share them with your family; find a trained counsellor who can walk you through them. Sharing your spouse’s faults with your family will skew their view of him or her and make it difficult for them to relate to your spouse, long after the issue is resolved.
Priority
The marriage relationship was designed by God to take precedence over every other human relationship. This means putting your spouse ahead of every other person – including your family. If your spouse has to vie for your attention because you spend so much time sharing with and talking to your family, things are out of kilter and need to be rebalanced. If you spoke to your mother on the phone every evening when you were single, don’t expect to transfer that habit into your marriage or it will leave your spouse feeling excluded. Your spouse should be your best friend.
Unity
You and your spouse need to be united in your approach to both sets of families. If a course of action is agreed between you and your spouse, don’t go changing your mind because of undue influence from your family. The locus of decision making must always remain within your family unit. If there is a difficulty with your family, don’t get defensive because they are your family. Be reasonable and understand why your spouse feels vulnerable. Once you are in agreement as to how to handle the situation, it should be addressed and resolved by you because you know how best to manage your family. Don’t leave your spouse to defend decisions you have made together with your family. That is unfair pressure. Sort it out yourself.
Look out for the second part of this post, ‘Principles for healthy in-law relationships’.
