Cultural differences

Meeting that special person and settling down to have a long and happy life together seems to not be too much to ask, but where the Disney movie ends there are a number of realities which needs to be dealt with when the honeymoon is over. In many cases culture and religion are clear stumbling blocks which will offer some interesting problem solving possibilities, but these are not the only challenges you will face.

When meeting mister Right you might also meet Mother-in-law Wrong, Brother-in-law Obnoxiousness, Sister-in-Law Know-it-all and Father-in-Law Anal Retentive to name but a few possibilities. When you are in love you are however blinded to these delightful add-ons you get as part of the deal, I think that this is part of the survival of the species to ensure that you are blinded to the small print in for better or for worse.

Now lets be clear not all in-laws are from hell, but they all take some getting use to. Regardless of how well meaning or descant they are. In a nutshell THEY DO THINGS DIFFERENT – and regardless of how you look at it it is not the way you are used to having things done. It is as though you have landed on an alien planet and see a whole other world. Everything looks the same but they speak a different language which sounds like yours but have different meanings. They look like you but you are not able to understand them. In some instances these differences are not too vast – and you will find yourself settling in, in no time. In other cases however you will find that it never feels normal.

In some cases it might be easier to marry a person from an other culture or religion as this warns you to the fact that there will be differences and these should be respected, but when you are from the same “stock” so to speak you are blind sided to the possible differences.

The biggest problem you could have when you run into these differences is that you start thinking about “us” and “them”. It might still be fine if your partner is still part of the us but when you find them changing teams you might be in troubled waters. These waters are murky and dangerous and unless you are able to circumvent these they might sink your love boat and ultimately your marriage.

When you have children you might think that this will make it easier, this is not always true. You start seeing “them” in your children. You might wonder if your genes got missing along the way and thus you have given birth to Alien-Being-1. You have spore another of “them”. When you are here,  you might be close to going over the edge of happy parenting and blissful relationships.

What to do now?
First off – Breath! You need to get oxygen to the brain, you have spend too much time on focusing on the differences that you have not tried to find anything which might bind you together.

Next – Relax... You could not have been ALL wrong about your partner you have had blissful times and have seen eye to eye on lots of things otherwise you would not be here.

Celebrate the differences – You might have to celebrate your differences, if you unable to find something to celebrate in the in-laws. I mean would you not rather have verbal diarrhoea that be anal retentive ;-).

Look at yourself – Maybe wearing your heart on your sleeve is not always the best policy, and speaking of policies, you know honesty might be overrated where it comes to being pure nasty.

Respect – You have to face the fact that families are different maybe rather take the best of both worlds and combine then to ensure that you children come out “normal”.

When all else fails focus on commonalities – if the only thing you can agree on with your in-laws are how great your kids are, then stick to that. Try and introduce other points but if all else fails, you will always have the wonderful, beautiful, grand-child to hold up as a prize. All will agree that this little person is close to perfect.

Let us bury the hatchet and look to the future, remember one day you will be the in-laws...