Couple need to clarify marriage vs. parents priorities
Adapted from a recent online discussion. Question: My spouse and I hope you can settle one of our disputes. I dread visiting my in-laws because they constantly ask us when we're going to have kids. We've been married for nearly three years but are still quite young and do not expect to have children in the foreseeable future. My spouse's brother has already decided he and his wife are not having kids, so the in-laws seem particularly eager for us to.
Adapted from a recent online discussion.
Question: My spouse and I hope you can settle one of our disputes. I dread visiting my in-laws because they constantly ask us when we're going to have kids. We've been married for nearly three years but are still quite young and do not expect to have children in the foreseeable future. My spouse's brother has already decided he and his wife are not having kids, so the in-laws seem particularly eager for us to.
My in-laws have also started insisting that I pick up on their native language, possibly out of fear that our kids will speak only English. My spouse and I are from completely different cultures, and my native tongue is nothing close to his (think Chinese and Greek). I've told my spouse many times this makes me uncomfortable, but spouse is pretty nonconfrontational and simply chooses to ignore these comments when they come up. I'm not sure how to proceed. I would like spouse to ask them to stop with the baby talk, but spouse thinks we should just ignore it, given that we see them only once a month. Any advice?
Answer: Only once a month - that's a lot of reminders that you're expected to live in a way that pleases your in-laws.
On the baby issue, because your spouse (I'll use "he" for simplicity's sake) doesn't want to speak up, presumably he's OK with your speaking for yourself? "I appreciate that you urgently want grandchildren, but we have no immediate plans for children. I'm telling you this because I don't want you to have false hopes."
Of course, you have to expect this to be heard not through your cultural filters, but through theirs, and so:
If he doesn't want you to do this - i.e., if he wants you to default to his way of handling his parents - does he also plan to default to your way of dealing with your parents? Or is he expecting his way, even though what is comfortable to him translates to a pebble in your shoe (irritating now, agony over time)?
And is one of you learning Greek while the other learns Chinese, or are you choosing, mindfully, to live fully in the language you have in common? If it's the latter, does he expect you to ignore his parents' entreaties forever - or does he know from experience they'll eventually drop them? Or has he not yet looked at this situation through your eyes at all?
I could keep typing out scenarios and trade-offs here, but presumably you already get the point: You're talking about one point of conflict, but the chances of keeping this conflict fully isolated to a single issue are slim to nonexistent.
You come from different cultures, and whatever bargains you've struck between you to reconcile those differences aren't expansive enough to cover all the areas touched by your lives together. Your deals don't extend to the in-laws.
It's time for a broader conversation about this, with a mediator of some kind if needed. Clear up your priorities on serving marriage vs. parents. Think of it as a tune-up: You've driven this marriage for a while, and you're seeing where it needs adjustments. Nothing unusual there.
Chat with Carolyn Hax online at noon Fridays at www.washingtonpost.com.