I love my in laws. They are kind and amazing people. Often, to keep sane, I need to remind myself who I married: my wife and no one else So many things drive me crazy when with my in-laws, most of them are small details. Their high frequency and consistency drive me nuts, below a few examples: - Mother in law suffers from frequent hot flushes. Gets hot then cold then hot then cold etc then complains and asks to adjust the heater all the time. We re in a car, knowing that, I politely ask her to remove her jacket and layers while we drive so she does not get too hot. Refuses. Reasoning is that she is already seated and buckled up. “It s ok, no need to” I reply: this is for you not to suffer from hot flushes in a few minutes. Wife has to intervene to demand she removes her jacket. My eyes roll, drives me mad... - Part 1) Father in law is sick, goes to bathroom 7-8 times a day, splashes our bathroom all over with liquid poop. Seems like I’m the only one seeing the marks... Cant even fathom how to bring this up, so cowardly, I shut up. Cant even talk about it to my wife as there s no way for me to keep it calm and not present this in a polite way and not fighting over this - Part 2) We re at the end of dinner. Father in law, still sick, goes to the bathroom. We re in a small apartment. I m smelling shit and feeling disgusted. I m asking him if he closed the bathroom door on his way out. He answers immediately and firmly Yes I did! Mother in law presumably also smells it (thank you, my odorat sense still works) stands up and goes to close the door which was slightly opened. Dang, I was physically still at the dinner but my mind checked out after wondering 1) was I the only one smelling shit 2) why no one else reacted, is that a family thing to accept other’s poop smell? - Final part 3) Dad is sick and when he sweats has body odor. You know this feeling when you go to a friend s place or back to your home. Once you open the door, you can clearly notice and smell the unique scent of the place and after a a few minutes you dont perceive it anymore? Well, I go back home, open the door and could smell the strong body odor in the room which fermented for the whole day. My face is now a grimace so they can notice I dont like the smell. No one cared. Next morning, I ask my wife where I can get cleaned towel to take shower. She says: the one in the bathroom is clean. Awesome, thank you honey I replied. Guess what, hop off the shower started using the towel, it smelled arm under-pit. No big deal I know but still pissed me the hell off. - They enjoy when I listen to their personal stories or complains about their work but seem disinterested in listening to mines. I m not a great story teller but it sucks when active listening is not reciprocated - We spend the weekend together and the only thing they seem to be interested in is to go back home. Offering options to visit new places, walk around but no, “ let s go home”... but no, just let s go home... -This leads me to another question regarding my relationship with my wife: is one of the many meanings of love doing things for your spouse that you wouldn’t do or want to do otherwise? She knows I’m burning inside and because we fought so many times over this, I cant even tell her about those. Seems like a tacit agreement: suffer in pain, if you love me, suck it up and shut up... What is your experience with your in-laws? For the sake of love or avoiding confrontation, is keeping silent an appropriate approach to deal with those small everyday details which when accumulated drive you insane?
You’ll get a lot better answers in the Relationship topic. In this topic... queue the snark in 1..2..3..
Thank you, just reclassified it
Do they live with you or just frequently visit? If just visiting, can you set some ground rules with your wife? Perhaps you can meet at an outside location or their house, not always at your house?
living with us when visiting. dont want them to waste money in hotels
Live in a big house and dont be overly concerned . If someone feels hot they will remove jacket . You don’t have to tell them .
Just hearing about it all day makes me want to shout: « remove your dang jacket and shut up! »
This seems like your issue mostly. Just be more tolerant. It’s not that hard. Takes a lot more energy to fight it and as you see doesn’t help with your happiness. Sometimes you just need to change your approach. As one wise man put it, doing the same thing and again and expecting a diff result is foolish. Old people generally hard for them change. Same like kids, better to take the high road and do the right thing and be more tolerant.
It sounds like they’re old. How old are they? Out of curiosity, I’m guessing you don’t have kids. Just FYI, they put up with a lot more of your wife’s shit than that (and your parents with you). I’m not saying you have to like it. Just offering some perspective.
This all sounds incredibly normal. Anyone with in laws go through similar experiences. It’s ok to feel the way you are feeling.
Don’t let these kind of things get to you and take this as challenge to control your mind and keep calm what so ever. Easier said than done but patience is the key to relationships. Since they are only visiting and they are family at the end of the day; take it as a cost to maintain close relationship. You can easily give up on these relationships but if I would be you I’ll just ignore some of these things and keep calm. PS no one likes in-laws but they are family. Until you have very very compelling reason, never give up a relationship and be ready to sacrifice a little without much expectation.
> ... I need to remind myself who I married: my wife and no one else. I think this is the wrong assumption from people before marriage. You are indeed married to your in laws. Why is arranged marriage a norm in many cultures? So that the two families can pick who they want to be married to.
Stories like this make me post pone my marriage every year. Sorry to know this OP. Dont really have any suggestions.
My wife and i used to fight a lot about each other’s parents too and both of us worked hard on our parents and in fact we had our fights with each other’s parents too. My wife taught me to never burry an issue but bring it to the surface. It has helped. And after our fights with our respective in laws, our relationships with them got better too. See the bottom line is that they are Your in laws. You need to build your own relationship with them so that ur wife is not ur conduit or punching bag every time. However, at the same time your wife has to also help you out at times.
There is no approach that seems to work with in laws. Just pray that they don’t visit.
LOL. tried it didnt work. Giving up seems to be your recommendation, maybe a valid one at this stage to be honest. Is that correct?