Your partner’s parents

Meeting your partner’s family isn’t a competition for approval. It is a mutual gathering of information.

The family shows you: which ways of having a conflict count as normal, how money and power are distributed, whether boundaries are respected, whether you are allowed to disagree, how dependants and the elderly are treated, and whether a grown-up child keeps the right to a life of his own.

A partner is not obliged to repeat his parents. Sometimes his whole adult life is built precisely on rejecting the family script. But such a rejection takes awareness and boundaries.

It is better to start living together where the decisions are made by the couple, not by the owner of the flat, the parent who pays or the relative with a key and an opinion on everything.

Financial help from family is not in itself a problem. What matters is what rights it buys. Free housing can turn out to be the most expensive option if round-the-clock management comes with it.

In a conflict between your partner and your own family, automatic support for either side is dangerous. Basic loyalty to the couple is needed, but it doesn’t require declaring your partner right in all circumstances.

Attacking your partner’s parents is just as useless. A person may criticise them himself and still react painfully to the same words from outside.

It is better to talk about the specific effect:

I find it hard when decisions are made without us.

I don’t agree to live in these conditions.

We need a shared rule for dealing with our families.

Fleeing to one’s parents after a row doesn’t automatically end a relationship. What matters more is whether leaving is used as punishment, whether the person can come back to the conversation, and whether the couple has its own way of resolving conflict.

The family of origin stays important. But an adult couple shouldn’t operate as its branch office.

What tells you the most isn’t the holiday dinner but the first small mishap in front of guests: oversalted soup, someone arriving late, a badly timed question. Within a minute you can see who gets assigned the blame, whether you may disagree with the head of the table, whether people joke about someone in his presence and what happens to the one who takes offence. The answers are usually prepared in advance: they have been rehearsed for decades, and the guest has simply walked in on another performance.

Watch not only the parents but your partner beside them. An adult who turns back into a teenager at home — going quiet, making excuses or instantly taking someone’s side — will most likely do the same in a conflict where the other side is you.