What to Expect From Your Mother-In-Law

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Marriage joins families that are poles apart even when you marry the boy next door. You start off looking for faults and everyone battles uphill from there. This can improve with time. Familiarity will breed if not affection, at least acceptance.

Maybe  you are too young to know about mother-in-law jokes. They always used to begin, “My mother-in-law is so. . . . . and usually she was fat or ugly.”  I don’t think people make them now because mother-in-laws are good looking and physically fit.  Therefore, don’t be shocked if your mother-in-law is out for a night of topless dancing.

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What you can expect

There is this funny thing between daughters and mother-in-law and he is called her son. Mothers of sons always say, “If you have a daughter you have her for life, you have a son till he takes a wife.” It’s true really. A man can usually only manage one dominating woman in his life at a time and it’s a sensible man who makes that woman the one he is living with.

How well you get along with your mother-in-law is entirely dependent on your husband. If he loves and respects his mother above everyone, would never dream of offending her and his name is Oedipus, you are in for a rocky old time. You’ll be expected to be at her place for lunch every Sunday, every Christmas and other holy days, and he will drop everything at a moment’s notice to be by her side.

What you need is a man who has separated emotionally from his mother, who has an easy, friendly relationship with her and who isn’t frightened to say, “can we make that next week and not this minute?” Unless of course her house is on fire, in which case he should make it quite clear that your guest room is for temporary use only.

Probably, if you continue to like your husband and haven’t been completely beastly to him, you will get to like his family and perhaps have a good laugh with his mother. My mother-in-law, I’m sorry to say, is so dead that I no longer have a relationship with her. But I liked her a lot.

Why husbands turn out like they do

Whether he likes it, fights it or not, your husband has inherited his parents genes and so he will grow old and be just like one or  the other or a combination of both of them.

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Areas of discord

You are most likely to fall out with your in-laws over the children and your husband’s health. Your child-raising methods will almost certainly not be theirs and you will have to explain this to your children before or after they go to stay with them. Then the children will tell their grandparents what you have said and there will be frosty silences all around until your husband has a quiet word with you on the way home. Then his mother will complain about his poor health and you will tell her if she’s that bothered she can have him back.

They are his family after all – don’t force him to choose

Still, they are his family which makes them your family. And sooner or later, you will recognize them as your  family. You will throw their bad points at your husband whenever it suits you and he will throw your family’s bad points back at you. Therefore, it is a must that if you want to survive that you have some ammunition for sneaky counter-attacks.

Marriage might not be the way to go in our society but the relationship between connecting families is just as dodgy. There’s a rich vein of bitterness in the whole in-law set-up but having these tips will help you to start loving your mother-in-law from day one!