Father-in-law to be. Fuck you very much

The BBQ Pit
1

Last weekend my girlfriend had a meeting with her family (father, sister, brother) to announce the fact of our engagement. Her family had been studiously ignoring the large solitaire diamond engagement ring on her hand for a week, so in order to drag the issue into the light, it was necessary to call the meeting.

To be blunt, I’m not very well liked by her father, although we’ve never met in all the 5 years that I’ve dated his daughter. I’ve tried to arrange to see him, but he will not entertain the idea and has stonewalled all attempts to do so. Why? Because I’m a foreigner.

To be fair, I can sort of see his side. Some pushy, loudmouthed, hairy, barbarian is coming like a thief in the night to take his daughter into a sordid life of misery slaving away in his house. I know how easy it is to imagine the worst about someone when you’ve never met them. That I can understand. The kicker is that at the meeting he related to his family that his reasons for objecting to the marriage are based upon anecdotes his friend has told him about English teachers’ nefarious motivations for marrying Japanese girls. To wit –

[list=1]1. Marriage to a Japanese national an easy way for a foreigner to get a visa for permanent residence,
2. Foreign men like to have submissive Japanese wives,
3. Hi Opal,
4. Social lepers and other misfits who have fled their homeland to Japan to teach English can get some financial security by marrying into a well-off family,
5. Foreign guys are only interested in using Japanese girls for sex and are quite willing to just toss them aside when done[/list=1]

When I heard that these were his reasons for objecting to the marriage I was just floored.

To my father-in-law to be:

You have destroyed any faith I had in the idea that I could be accepted in Japan. When people see me walk down the street I now know what they are secretly thinking about me. I know now why mothers usher their children away from me.

But I have news for you pops – listen up.

[list=1]1. Motherfucker, I am on the same visa that you are. Marrying your daughter will not get me a new visa because she is not a Japanese national and neither are you. Anyway, I don’t need a new visa. Your country is a joke and I’m only here on secondment for my company. The law firm where I work sponsors my visa. Fuck you,
2. Whatever. I’m not sure who would want such a wife, but if I wanted it I wouldn’t have to travel all the way to Japan to find a subservient girl. By the way, have you met your daughter? The one who attended to the Angela Basset finishing school,
3. Fuck you for good measure,
4. I don’t know what you have against English teachers, but in any event, I am a lawyer. I don’t teach English. I’m pretty sure I earn more than double what you do, so I don’t need you money. Suck on it.
5. Funny, I hear foreign guys complaining of this but vice-versa.[/list=1]

Even if I didn’t have money, but was at least hardworking and honest, your attitude shows that our marriage would always be viewed with suspicion and that pisses me off more than I can say. In fact it depresses me.

I don’t know what you mean when you grudgingly say that you will attend the wedding but then threaten that it will be the first and the last time you will ever see us. Well, I have just one question – What makes you think you are invited to the wedding? If you want to be absent from our lives because of your unfair and mean-spirited assumptions, why wait? I suggest you begin right away, and fuck right off.

2

I hope you feel better after getting that out. Damn that’s harsh.

The most important thing is your wife-to-be. What is her opinion of this mess ? How did she react to her father’s words ? What actions does she wish to take.

Her response will tell you volumes about her your marriage will be, should you both go ahead with it.

All the best :slight_smile:

3

  1. What Goo said.

  2. it’s not much comfort, but if you’ve never met your bigoted prospective father-in-law, then you haven’t wasted any useful time on the moron.

4

Geez, what a horrible thing to say to Opal…

5

Well, the important thing is: congratulations on your engagement!!

6

But the thing the future FIL’s friends warned him about that freaks him out the most…
You American men has such enormous penises!

This is tough, guy. A relationship with in-laws really can be a wonderful and enjoyable thing. I consider my FIL one of my absolutely best friends and treasure our relationship. I’m really sorry that your FIL’s racism appears to have gotton in the way of you enjoying a similar bond. I sincerely hope that someday he’ll grow up.

If he’d met you and didn’t approve, that’d be one thing. But to not even give his daughter’s choice a chance is despicably selfish and low minded.

7

My FIL is a great guy. His wife, which I refer to as an outlaw is a control freak from hell. Nasty comments right in front of me too, couple of years ago she said to my sig. other “Why can’t you find a nice Italian boy”? This crap went on a buch more and I finally had enough. I told her to fuck off and she doesn’t bother me much anymore. She constantly nags and picks at everyone else tho.

8

My maternal grandmother was not a nice woman.
Period.
However, my father had a decent relationship with her because he refused to put up with her overbearing attitude and general snarkiness.
Shortly after he married my mother, he ended up alone at lunch with said MIL.
She began her usual pattern of nasty verbal slanging and my father warned her that, should she continue, he would simply walk out.
This was back in the pre-historic days before credit cards and granny dearest had no cheque book and very little folding money on her.
She kept up the spiteful natter and my father promptly got up and exited-leaving her with the bill and no method of payment.
Oddly enough, she treated him better than her own daughter after that.

Congratulations on your engagement cankeristist-don’t let the nasty FIL get to you.

9

I agree, this is most important. If WtoB doesn’t tell Daddy to back down, and right quick, you’re in for a world of trouble.

How does Mum feel?

Congratulations, and good luck!

10

If this is blatant bigotry (of the ‘no damn Gaijin’s gonna marry My daughter’ variety) then I’m very sorry. If you are a good husband to his daughter, eventually he may come around to understand that Caucasians aren’t all born with horns & cloven hooves. But I wouldn’t hold my breath while waiting.

If this is ‘no one’s good enough for my daughter’ syndrome, please understand that most father’s feel that way (all nationalities and religions included). My father treated all my sister’s boyfriends like convicts on parole until after they were married. Then things would mend and eventually, he’d even start to brag about his sons-in-law.

Either way, may I please say Congratulations! I know you’ll both be very happy. May I advise you to ignore the problem, as it might go away? And may I further advise you that if it doesn’t, its his problem, not yours, and that it should never cast a cloud over your marriage?

That being said, kiss the bride already. (bangs spoon against water glass)

11

I have known 3 guys and 1 gal who spent some time in Japan.

All four said that Japan was extremely racist and closed minded. They couldn’t wait to get out.

Now 4 doesn’t make it a fact, but I would have no desire to go live in Japan. I certainly wouldn’t go there to help them…not unless I was paid a large amount of money :slight_smile:

12

Thanks for the congratulations and support everyone! I know of course how unreasonable FIY is being, but its so nice just to hear other people agree.

Godzillatemple – whoops! – I want to clarify that the invective was not directed at Opal but at the FIL.

Goo, glee, ivylass – I’m happy? to say that fiancé is quite ready and willing to just turn her back on him and walk away from him for good. In fact I was the one who was trying to convince her that we should do all we can to try and turn the situation around - after all he is family right? But that was until she told me what was going on in his mind. So fiancé is in there fighting in my corner, of course. Unfortunately this is closer to the literal truth than I would like, as at the family meeting fiancé hurt her precious foot when frustration drove her to kick a wall. [she should’ve aimed for a softer target - like his head]

As for mom, she died when fiancé was a little girl – so there’s even more reason why I’d hate for our marriage to cause a rift between her and her family.

quietman1920 – I really hope its just a case of ‘no man is good enough for my daughter’, but it doesn’t seem so in this case does it?

Anyway, I’ve had my rant, and I know what I’m going to do. There’s really no choice but to go to his house and confront him, something I should have done a while ago. If he is human he’ll see how sincere I am.

13

I had much the same reception from my Thai in-laws:
“He assumes you are some kind of bar-girl.”
“He’ll use you and dump you.”
“He’s probably some kind of loser.”
“He might be violent. Think about being married to someone that large and possibly sadistic.” etc e-fucking-cetera.

19 years later we are still happily married and the in-laws came around right quick when we moved away. We get along fine and the Mom-in-law is a sweety beyond compare. Father-in-law is a decent guy as well.
No need to hate them, just move on and ignore them for a while. They get over it and may even turn into allies and supporters.

Just my 2 cents worth but I’ve been there and know how you feel.

Regards

Testy

14

I’m in total agreement with Testy on this one.

Your experience in Japan has led you to believe you have a little understanding into this culture. But the truth is that you can never see into how families actually function in any culture.

I would suggest you block your ears to all you hear in this vein. What is said between parents and child about to marry is outside your ability to understand. Accept that this is how they are going to be and then have a lovely wedding and life together.

You have taken to heart words that are meant in an entirely different cultural context. Every father must protest, no one is worthy after all. He must reach for reasons. What you may intrepret as real bigotry could be in reality little more than spin.

In my own experience I have been inside an Asian family when the father spoke to the eldest son in a fashion that shocked me. But within two days everyone was over it. Words that would have caused years of estrangement in my own culture. Words that could never be taken back, words like swords. But they fell like water on a duck for the people involved. I thought I had a lot of familiarity with this culture, but came to learn. There are times when what they say is out of all proportion to their goal, or so it seems to a westerner. Yet it passes and no one seems wounded by it. Very unwestern indeed.

These in laws will come around, try not to take what you hear they have said to heart.

And:

Congratulations! May heaven’s finest blessings shower down upon you!

15

I’m in total agreement with Testy on this one.

Your experience in Japan has led you to believe you have a little understanding into this culture. But the truth is that you can never see into how families actually function in any culture.

I would suggest you block your ears to all you hear in this vein. What is said between parents and child about to marry is outside your ability to understand. Accept that this is how they are going to be and then have a lovely wedding and life together.

You have taken to heart words that are meant in an entirely different cultural context. Every father must protest, no one is worthy after all. He must reach for reasons. What you may intrepret as real bigotry could be in reality little more than spin.

In my own experience I have been inside an Asian family when the father spoke to the eldest son in a fashion that shocked me. But within two days everyone was over it. Words that would have caused years of estrangement in my own culture. Words that could never be taken back, words like swords. But they fell like water on a duck for the people involved. I thought I had a lot of familiarity with this culture, but came to learn. There are times when what they say is out of all proportion to their goal, or so it seems to a westerner. Yet it passes and no one seems wounded by it. Very unwestern indeed.

These in laws will come around, try not to take what you hear they have said to heart.

And:

Congratulations! May heaven’s finest blessings shower down upon you!

16

One thing dad may be worried about that he hasn’t spoken of: mixed race babies. Kids of mixed race might have a harder time with other kids, especially in Japan. I am dating a Japanese girl here in the US and its something I’ve considered at length. I think growing up here in the US being of mixed race might be much easier than doing it in Japan.

17

cankerist, I’m curious: why is it the family have visas? I take it they are not Japanese themselves? How long have they been in Japan?

18

My SIL is Japanese and her folks had a similar reaction to the OP’s soon to be in-laws. The fact that they had NEVER met a non-japanese person before my bro didn’t help.

Anyhow, SIL said yes, moved to Canada, MIL gave FIL a cuff upside the head becasue she wanted to know her grandchildren, and they wound up giving Brother and SIL $50,000 as a wedding present.

Anyhow - it all worked out in the end - they go to Japan, avec grandkids about 3 times a year to visit.

Good luck - hopefully things will work out as well for you - and congratulations! :slight_smile:

19

Not to nitpick, but I believe the “hi Opal” gag should only be used when you have a list of only 2 items and need a 3rd.

This is apparently from an old joke where Opal postulated a rule that all lists must contain at least 3 items.

carry on, and *congradulations![/] Thank God we no longer live in an age where you have to marry the family as well as the bride.

Are you planning to live in Japan? Or will you be going back home, distance may have the effect of lessening his rancor and/or your caring about his views.

Good rant.

20

Good question a35362, and something that I think may be relevant to this rant. According to their passports, fiancé and her family are all Korean. However, all of them, parents included, don’t speak a word of Korean, and were all born in Japan.

How can this be? Well, to cut a long story very short, as part of the Japan’s pre-WW2 plan for a “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”, hundreds of thousands of people were taken from Korea to take up manual labour jobs in Japan. These people were forced to adopt Japanese lifestyles which included abandoning their own language, although they were never accepted as part of Japanese society. Virtually nothing has changed today. Being born in Japan, Japanese is their first language, and while they must, of course, pay taxes along with everyone else, they have no voting rights and cannot be employed in the public service other than in menial positions and face many other social forms of discrimination. Pretty cool huh? It gets better. Because they are not citizens, they live on permanent resident visas which must be renewed every 5 years. There is also a really beautiful catch 22 which is that the government graciously permits them to apply for citizenship, which will be granted providing that they can show appropriate documentation of where and when they came from Korea to Japan – which is impossible since they were basically abducted. What’s really sad is that Japanese people are taught in schools, and believe, that these Koreans living in Japan ‘lost’ their Japanese citizenship due to the fact that Japan was forced to sign the 1952 “Treaty of Peace with Japan” (the San Francisco Treaty). So its really the USA’s fault (again). So sorry.

Bmalion - O.K. Thanks. I really put ‘Hi Opal’ there on the spur of the moment because it seemed as random a point as any other of the ‘reasons’ listed by FIL.