How to Resolve Power Struggles with Your Inlaws
A reader participation post
Q: We’re struggling with my wife’s parents. They are controlling, and want to dictate every situation. Even with our children, they want to take them and raise them. We have stood our ground on numerous occasions, but they repeatedly provoke the situation. I’m struggling to work this out with my wife. She doesn’t like it either, but she also doesn’t want to be caught in the middle. Where should we draw the line? How do we set better boundaries? – Stuck in the Middle
Readers: this is going to be a juicy one, I suspect. I can’t wait to read your responses.
Here’s mine.
I recommend you make a few firm rules with your wife. For instance, here are some rules that might work:
1. If the in-laws make a request, neither you nor your wife makes a solo, on the fly decision. You say, “I need to talk to [the husband/the wife] about that. I’ll get back to you.”
2. You are in charge of confronting your parents. She’s in charge of hers. My husband and I use this rule (as with #1). I find this one particularly important because my parents are much more forgiving of me that they are of my husband. My husband’s parents, oddly, are also more forgiving of me than they are of him, too, but that’s a topic for another day. Anyway, if I lose my patience or tempter with my parents, it’s one thing. If my husband does, it’s another. So, for example, let’s say we’re visiting my husband’s parents and his mother starts telling me how to cook my scrambled eggs. My husband knows I hate being told how to cook, so he comes over to the stove and finishes cooking my scrambled eggs for me. That way he has to deal with his mother’s back seat cooking instead of me.
3. I highly recommend your wife have a sit down with her parents and tell them how uncomfortable she feels. Controlling people usually have zero clue as to how they affect others. They see themselves as being helpful. She might say, “When you do this, it makes me feel as if you think I am too immature/stupid/inadequate to raise my own children. I am a good mother and it hurts that you don’t see that.”
4. If all else fails, stop counting on them. If you depend on her parents to baby-sit your kids, help with financial things, or something else, you’ll always have a hard time standing your ground. More important, they will always see you both as children rather than grownups. The more independent you are, the easier it will be for them to release their control.
Readers: do you have advice for Stuck in the Middle? This couple needs your help. Remember: play fair. Be kind. Share differences of opinion, but do not single out others because they do not share your opinion. Oh, and regarding yesterday’s post, the true grudges were the turkey and the closet. Kelly J guessed correctly.
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