They feel entitled to having things their way. You feel entitled to having things your way. It’s a lot to contend with. We spoke with licensed marriage and family therapist Melissa Dumaz, author of “The Love Challenge,” about the most common in-law issues that occur and how to address them.
As a newlywed, you probably want nothing more than to have a positive, loving relationship with your partner's family. Unfortunately, this eagerness to be accepted into the family and naivity can sometimes cause people in new marriages to overlook red flags.
Moms are fiercely protective of their sons. When they bring a woman home, they see her as trying to take their place. And they’re not necessarily opposed to some woman beside themselves taking care of their son, as they can’t be there themselves for him all of the time. But that woman must be, well, basically perfect
When the decision is made to marry and start to a family, priorities should shift, which may mean not always being available to relatives.
It's been said that when you marry a person, you marry their family. It's a sobering truth and if people were more aware of this reality and the influence that their in-laws can have on their marriage before saying "I do," they'd probably pay a little closer attention to their partner's relatives before marrying in.
Last week, Tamar Braxton‘s partner David Adefeso confessed that he took a stern approach when introducing his family to his lady love. Simply put, Adefeso told his relatives that they didn’t have a choice when it came to accepting the reality star — they could either accept her or risk losing him completely. Though his […]
As much as we love our parents, they can have traits that we’re glad not to inherit. In fact, forming our own identity is often a combination of picking and choosing which of our parents values and beliefs we take with us, and which ones we leave behind. As you’re reading this, you can probably […]
Some of us are blessed with kind and caring mothers-in-laws who naturally have a healthy sense of boundaries. Then, the are those unfortunate souls who married into families where the matriarch is a habitual line stepper. There are two types of mothers-in-law who fall beneath this umbrella: the oblivious and well-meaning mom who unintentionally crosses […]
Of course, you only get as much as you give with family. I had such an every-woman-for-herself mentality before. Now, I’m having to train my brain to do things like call them when they’re going through something tough, and to jot it in my calendar that I’ll be away on major holidays, visiting them. I had an awakening moment of realizing I had, by force of habit, become rather self-involved.
My partner works freelance, so he has to work when we travel. Though my parents have a big house with free Wi-Fi, my partner leaves and works at a coffee shop. The last thing he needs is people who judge his career looking over his shoulder while he works, or those same people listening in on his work calls.
If you see ways in which you could help his family—like a job recommendation you could give his sibling—do you help? It’s not like you’re actually harming your partner in any way by doing so, but you know he doesn’t actively want good things for the family members he hates.