Daily Blague

I disgree. I come from a family where in-law issues are thick, yet my parents share one of the best relationships I've ever seen. The bottom line is that some people are just disagreeable no matter what. Truly. I can testify to this. I don't think it has everything to do with how your relationship with your spouse works because some people just don't know how to behave with anyone much less their child's partner and frankly, some people never will come around to being socialized. Speaking in absolutes is always a tricky thing and I admire your ability to make potentially difficult relationships work, but in this case I have to object.

Hmm, an interesting theory. But I must add my own dissenting vote to that of Ms.NOLA.

My own sister's marriage is spectacular. She and her husband are well-regarded and successful professionals living quite large (yet unreasonably, within their means) They have spawned the traditional 2.4 children (minus the .4) who are artistic, frighteningly precocious and beautifully socialized in almost all regards. After nearly 7 years she and her husband remain visibly, giddily in love.

And yet...

The paternal grandparents and my mother continue their now decade-old slow motion game of emotional chicken and gift giving one-upsmanship, in a taut, shrewdly strategized emotional trade war that not even a familial NAFTA could ease.

"Oh, did granddaughter just speak of enjoying a wonderful time at the beach with Other Grandma? Why, that calls for US to install a Burger King playground sized ball-room with 6000 multicolored plastic balls, in our third garage bay! The Mayfair can just sleep OUTSIDE for now."

"And did Oma and Opa kidnap my sweet grandson to their opulent beachfront penthouse pied-a-mere for the weekend? Why, I simply MUST counter-thrust with a "spontaneous" SpongeBob licensed merchandise orgy of bedroom decorating.

All of this (of course), forces my sister and her suffering husband to officiate a slow and unending grind of brilliantly conceived "love" attacks across the increasingly exhaustingly guarded kiddie DMZ, where the WMD (Weapons of Mommy and Daddy) fire ever more futilely across the bow of nearly unrestrained rabid pre-school consumerism, now fueled by hi-def, satellite delivered, TIVO enabled, 24/7 access to day long programercials that play on the 46" flat-screen plasma tv recently installed in the erstwhile NURSERY.

And yes, she and her husband DO KNOW that having always present, loving, healthy, interested, capable, generous, devoted granparents IS a "good problem to have", as my British boss often says.

But they are also very aware that as great as the in-laws' common love for their grandchildren IS, seemingly greater is their concern of being outdone and outmanouvered by The Other Side, a worry made obvious as each side enlists unwitting allies (the kids) as they seek usable intelligence and hints of troop movement behind the Hello Kitty Curtain.

I should explain that this being The South, all the previously described actions take place in an obstensibly gracious theatre of operations, where the opponents regularly share meals and thinly lipped smiles, while the Security Council anxiously hovers in an adjoining room, as the "allies" casually dismiss one another's prep school preferences, causing the peacekeepers to maintain a condition of DefCon Orange at all times, should these regular minor border skirmishes unexpectedly (and evitably) escalate into open battles, where well-aimed verbal SCUDs obliterate hopes of both sides attending a Thanksgiving sit-down.

OK, I can't think of any more war metaphors right now, for which I'm sure you are very grateful. But hopefully I've made my position, while not entirely contrary to our host here, understandable.

My experience with in-law troubles is all anecdotal--fortunately, my mother and my mother-in-law (both my father and my husband's father died many years before we married) became fast friends at their first meeting (our wedding) and have remained so for all these many years. Still, based on second-hand experience, I must agree with RJ, assuming that I am correctly interpreting his point as being that 'in-law' problems become 'marital' problems only when the marriage itself is shaky. The marriage of a college friend broke up ostensibly over in-law problems; to be sure, the husband always put his mother first but we later discovered (when the ex-wife finally was ready to talk about the relationship) that there were a host of other issues that should have led the couple to conclude that their marriage was simply never going to work; on the other hand, I have another friend whose parents refused to attend his wedding because he was marrying 'out of the faith,' and his marriage seems (from all outward signs) to be very happy, presumably because his love for his wife is more important to him than the bias of his parents.