Just an informal survey here, folks. Anecdotes welcome!
Whose needs take higher priority in your life? The needs of your parents, or the needs of your spouse?
I’m not talking about cases where you’ve got to fly to Arizona to be with dad during his valve replacement surgery while leaving SO at home to deal with some extra childcare and housekeeping duties.
I’m addressing the case where both parties have significant needs. Who gets your first priority?
I’m raising this issue as a number of people I work with tend to hold quite fast to the idea that their parents will always be a higher priority than their spouse could ever be. They feel they owe far more to their parents than they could ever owe their spouse, as their parents will always be their parents, while the spouse might not be their spouse in the future.
I’m trying to get a sense for the relative ratio of parents first vs. spouse first here at the SDMB.
Spouse. This was easy for me as I’mnot very close to my one living parent. However, it was also emphasized strongly in our premarital counseling. The order was God, spouse, family (counseling sponsored by United Methodist Church). If I were to net it out, if God isn’t first, you’re not a Christian (I realized this perspective isn’t relevant to everyone) and if the spouse isn’t next, it isn’t really a marriage.
One useful perspective might be thinking about one’s own parents. Would you not want them to put each other first?
To my mind, your spouse should come first, your parents second, or third, after your children. When you marry, you create your own family, separate from your parents. Your first obligation is to that new unit. And I’d guess if you aren’t willing to put that unit first, you’r more likely not to have it for long, hence the “you might someday get a divorce” from your co-workers. I guess I feel you get out of marriage what you put into it, and if you aren’t willing to give it your all, literally, you porbably shouldn’t get married.
(God gave me my parents, thank God I could pick my spouse. I do love my Mom and my MIL, but Deb comes first.)
(And, QtM, I thought I saw you lamenting the prevalence of the rigidly Christian Right in your area in the last day or so. Are these the same people who are ignoring Scripture?)
I don’t have a spouse yet, but I am in a committed relationship that is much like marriage.
He comes first. I’ve never had to make a decision like that, but my parents have each other to lean on if, say, my mom gets sick, she’s got my dad. If I have a situation with Ardred, I have to take care of him first, and then go help my dad with my mom.
I can see how some people would feel just the opposite, though.
I owe a great deal to both my parents for my up bringing, however my parents will be the first to tell you; each of their kids have their own life to live. My parents always put each other first and foremost; they would not expect us to be any different.
What are you talking about, then? Without specifying what needs you’re talking about, the question’s kind of abstract and hard to answer. A healthy relationship between parents and their adult children doesn’t necessarily involve any needs-meeting at all; but spouses are interdependent and should expect to meet at least some needs of each other (e.g. sexual and emotional intimacy).
I’m not married, nor do I have kids, but if and when I do, I feel that one of the best ways I can repay all that my parents have done for me is to be the best parent I can be to my kids—to “pay it forward.” And duty to spouse and duty to kids are intertwined: if you neglect one, you neglect the other and forfeit having a healthy, happy family for your kids and spouse to live in.
It sounds like your coworkers don’t have the same attitude toward marriage as I do. I would only get married with the intention of staying married “until death do us part”; I wouldn’t take the attitude that “my spouse might not be my spouse in the future.” And if things took their normal course, my spouse, being younger than my parents, would outlive them.
I spend all of my time with my spouse. I will be with him for the next seventy years, hopefully. My future and his are entertwined. He’s my friend and life-mate.
My parents yelled at me for twenty years (because they wanted to make me a better person, but yelled at me just the same). We have little in common but a shared history, but we’re friends now. They still expect things from me. My relationship with them is good, but strained at times.
I think there is something wrong if a person rates either higher than the other. If a person answers “spouse” then they probably had an abrasive relationship with their parents. If a person answers “parents”, the the spouse is lacking somewhere.
An ideal healthy relationship with both parents and spouses would have that neither takes “priority” over the other. It’s like if you have three kids and you answer which one is more important to you. If you say one kid is more important than another, then something is wrong somewhere…
A woman’s mom no longer drives. The woman now spends much time running her mother around for multiple errands and ends up spending a lot of associated time as her companion. Meanwhile her spouse spends a greater amount of time taking care of the family’s needs than he had before. Husband notes and complains that the amount of time wife is spending with mom is negatively impacting the marital relationship. Wife feels her first priority is time with her mother, not her husband. Note that Mom is not disabled, has access to public transportation, and can care for herself. But Mom is happier with her daughter spending more time in her life.
On a really basic level, since I have been 18, I have rarely lived in the same city as my parents, and it doesn’t seem at all odd to me. On the other hand, I wouldn’t even consider moving to a different city than my spouse (except as a temporary arrangement, like one of us moved six months early because of a job or something). That alone seems to suggest that my spouse plays a much more central role in my life than my parents.
If I were dying of cancer, I would prioritize spending time with my spouse ahead of spending time with my parents, though I would, of course, want to spend time with my parents.
If my mother and my husband both needed a kidney, I’d give one to my husband first.
However, it needs to be noted that I am one of six kids, and my parents are still happily married. Furthermore, my mother is one of 12 kids. There is a wide family support network there, and lots of kidneys to go around. Were I the only child of a single, orphaned mother my reponses might be very different.
Now, both my mother and my husband are supoer-independent types, so it’s hard to imagene if it were just an issue where both were healthy but both wanted more of my time. I simply couldn’t imagene what I would do if I had been raised the only child of a clingy parent. I wouldn’t be me: I wouldn’t be anything like me. I have no clue.
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