Anyone have advice for dealing with my wife’s extended family?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Ok here’s the deal… I love my wife’s immediate family, I honestly consider them my own parents and brothers/sisters. We’ve been married for 10 years, and I’m closer to them than my own family! I even get along well with the sister’s husband that nobody likes. I’m generally easy-going and can get along with anyone. There’s just one problem… My mother-in-law’s extended family gathering for Christmas!!

Every year, we are expected to drive about 7 hours (round trip) in a single day to visit family that my wife doesn’t even keep in contact with. My mother-in-law can’t seem to understand why we don’t want to go, and my wife is so afraid of hurting her mom’s feelings (she is VERY sensitive and gets her feelings hurt anytime her entire family isn’t there).

This side of the family is… ummmmm… basically ripped straight from an episode of Jerry Springer. Backwoods country folks for sure. The older adults are bad enough, but the cousins who are around our age are HIGHLY questionable. The girls all have kids with multiple (absent) fathers, drug addiction runs rampant, and overall they just give off the impression of being “trashy” people with no class. Some of them look like they haven’t bathed in weeks. Plus they barely even speak to me (I’m a “city boy”) so I would feel uncomfortable regardless.

My wife’s grandmother is an extreme hardcore Christian. I’m also a Christian, but not nearly as devoted as she is (not many people are). She makes us all sit around in a huge circle, and we go around the room and tell everyone what blessings we thank God for in the past year. I don’t have a problem with this, as I’m thankful for many blessings and don’t mind speaking in front of people.

HOWEVER, as soon as we get done with that, the uncle who is in prison for life for “supposedly” molesting his own daughters will call the house, and they pass around the phone so everybody can speak to him. I’ve never met the guy, but they all claim he’s innocent and his wife was evil and put him in prison just to be mean… YEAH RIGHT!! So I don’t feel comfortable talking to the guy and I’ll just pass the phone to the next person… and they ALL stare at me like I’ve just insulted every person in the room. I’m sure I do insult them by not participating, but I’m personally sickened by the crime he’s accused of, and honestly don’t care to ever speak to him. I feel EXTREMELY uncomfortable about this and it makes me dread the entire trip.

Somehow the other husbands (both my wife’s sisters are married) have excuses to miss this family gathering, but my wife is different… She will NOT allow me to miss, and gets very angry if I complain at all about going (even though she complains about my extended family nonstop). If I ever decided to stay home, I’d never hear the end of it, and honestly I might as well just move out of my house because the “scolding” will be almost unbearable.

Bottom line is that I REALLY don’t want to do this every year, but I don’t feel like I have a choice. Do I just suck it up and deal w/ it with a smile on my face, and accept that fact that her extended family is never really going to like me??:confused:

2

So don’t go. You’re an adult and that’s one of the benefits. Stay home and be guilt free!

3

^ Exactly this.

You do have a choice. Life it too short to waste being part of situations as you describe. You should be able to tell your wife you do not want to go and that should be the end of it. She should accept that.

4

Yes. As long as they are not being directly rude or abusive towards you, sometimes you have to be the bigger person.

But this right here is your real problem, and I think you know that.

5

Yes, I do know what the real issue is… Not sure if my kids would ever understand if I left though.

6

Search around your house and see if you can find where your wife hid your balls. Once you find them and get them back you should know what to do.

7

Yes I realize I’m an adult and COULD refuse to go… but there would definitely be guilt (or maybe it’s just me dreading the backlash) because:
A. My wife would be angry for a very long time, and I’d be punished in a number of ways (can’t decide which is worse… the family gathering or her being mad)

B. My wife can’t seem to handle our kids on her own, even though her sisters are both bringing their kids without their husbands
She already said if I don’t attend, she will refuse to attend any of my family Christmas gatherings in the future (even though my family doesn’t have traditions that would put her in an uncomfortable situation, plus they’re local and we only have to spend a few hours w/ them).

:frowning:

Yay marriage!!!

8

Are you happily married? Do you have an insecure wife with serious anger problems?? Don’t judge me.. Trust me dude, I fought with her for YEARS before finally giving up. All the arguing made me exhausted and depressed, so I finally just started biting my tongue and dealing w/ the BS. “For the kids”

9

If you want to give in to emotional blackmail that’s your choice.

Remember when you were a kid and couldn’t wait to be an adult so you didn’t have to do things you didn’t want to? Well I’d say not going to a gathering (where you’re forced to exchange pleasantries with a convicted child molester) is one of those things!

If not going could lead to the end of your marriage, I’d say there are much bigger problems in the relationship already.

10

Talk to your wife. See if you can work an arrangement where you take turns for whcih family to visit for Christmas. If going to your family is out of the question, then so is going to hers.

11

Hmmm I’ve never heard the term “emotional blackmail” before, but I’d say that’s exactly what’s happening here. And in many other situations. Yikes!!

12

Hey, you asked for advice. I gave it.

It takes two people to create this situation. One who is unmoving and relentless in her demands and one who caves in instead of working towards a healthy relationship.

For the record - Happily married for over 25 years. We each get emotional and angry as much as anybody. Sometimes she gets her way. Sometimes I get mine. Neither one of us decrees ultimatums and neither one of us totally capitulates.

Go back and read your own OP. You focus on your in-laws when the true problem is your situation at home. Your wife needs to fix her control issues and you need to grow a pair. You want advice? You want to find a solution? Then work on that.

13

Point taken. And it’s good advice… I guess the real question is where do I even begin?? We’ve done counseling, I’ve tried talking calmly, I’ve tried threatening, I even moved out for a few months last year because I couldn’t take it. Now here we are again!! Maybe it’s time to pursue other options…

14

Oh come on, everyone who says he should just not go or insinuates he has no balls. I can’t say my family gatherings are as bad as the OP, but they’re usually something I’d personally rather skip, but if I want to stay part of my family (and I do!) I have to suck it up and host or go to a Thanksgiving and Christmas gathering every year which is usually not how I’d prefer to spend my time.

Mr. Athena gets corralled into going as well, and he has an even worse time than I do. But we go, mostly for the sake of my parents, and because there are a few relatives I genuinely like seeing.

We’ve had plenty of heated discussions about why we HAVE to go, and I’m a bit like the OPs wife - my mother would be devastated if I didn’t spend Christmas with her, and I love my mother, and Mr. Athena loves me, and therefore, we go.

I guess what I would do if I were the OP would be to suck it up, realize there’s a part of the family that you’ll never get along with, and keep in mind it’s only one day a year that you give up for family reasons. Continue to not talk on the phone to the felon, and if they give you the stink eye, leave the room. Tidy the kitchen, take the garbage out, take a walk, whatever, just get used to being the “bad guy” in a bad situation.

Then I’d negotiate something with my wife to make me feel better about having to go. Mr. Athena and I do stuff like that a lot - “OK, I’ll go to <miserable family gathering>, but after that, you have to go <do something I like to do> to make up for it!” Not in a mean-spirited way, but more of a mutual acknowledgement that we had to do something icky because of my goofy family, therefore I’ll go to the brewery that I don’t especially like with him, or cook him something special, or whatever.

15

I think you’re going about this the wrong way. You need to try and convince your wife that it’s OK for ALL of you to miss this circus once in a while.

16

Thank you, Athena, for being sensible and realistic. I know in my gut that I can’t ever really get out of this gathering. It just sucks that the other husbands always seem to have an excuse!! Then again, my in-laws aren’t exactly fond of the other husbands, so part of the reason I do this is to keep my “good standing” with them.:wink:

17

First of all, it may help to realize that you’re not in a unique situation here. At all. Lots of people put up with family bullshit on the holidays for the sake of harmony. The real question boils down to this: is the discomfort you feel worth it in exchange for making your wife and her parents happy? Is there nothing she/they do for you that makes this worthwhile? It’s not as simple as just staying home. If you just stay home, your wife’s going to be pissed. Her parents are going to be pissed. You’ll be happy while she’s gone, but will you still be happy when she gets back and is pissy for a week? It’s not like she’s asking you to do anything horribly out of the ordinary.

If I were you, I’d suck it up and deal (and probably drink heavily/make her drive home, lol). It’s only **one **unpleasant day a year, and most of your time will be spent on the road anyway. This one day of misery lets your wife feel closer to her family, at minimal cost to you. It’s just not worth making a huge fuss about, in my opinion.

But! Regardless of what I or anyone else online thinks about the situation, you need to sit down and talk about this WITH HER–when emotions are *not *running high. If you think the current arrangement is too much to ask of you, then negotiate. Maybe she can do something nice for you in exchange for setting aside your discomfort and putting up with them for a day. Maybe she’d be amenable to letting you stay home if you trade/sacrifice something else for her instead.

For what it’s worth, I bitch about my born-again drug-addled cast-of-Jerry-Springer extended family fairly frequently. But they’re the only family I’ll ever have, I like seeing everyone at the family Christmas party, and I’d be fairly upset if my significant other refused to attend with me.

18

Does your wife need you along for appearances (not likely, given that her sisters’ husbands don’t show up either) or as a babysitter? If it is the latter, couldn’t you find another way? You could drive her to another cousin of hers, and they could go together and share the job of looking after the kids. In the meantime, you find something else to do in the neighbourhood. Like painting the cousin’s house, or your own, or something, so the women get something out of it as well. .

19

Well, there’s leaving and then there’s leaving…

Staying for the kids is admirable IF there is a chance this can be fixed, but only you know whether this is a situation that can be fixed or not. If it’s beyond fixing then things will likely go from bad to worse. You’ll know when you’ve reached your limit.

I’m not advocating that you seek a divorce. I could not possibly know if that’s the right course of action for your situation. But if taking an active role as a father in your children’s lives is as important to you as you say, I assure you that it does not have to end or suffer in any meaningful way if you choose that course of action. Most people who’ve been down that road will admit that there will be challenges, but I don’t know many who’ve regreted making the effort to overcome them.

All the best to you in the new year.

20

Thank you for putting things in perspective! I’ll go for my wife, my kids, and my in-laws.. I always do… but I’d love to NOT dread this day every year. It puts me in a bad mood just thinking about it!! But then again, that’s life…