Toxic In-Laws: Loving Strategies for Protecting Your Marriage by Susan Forward

Author:Susan Forward [Forward, Susanl Frazier, Donna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-06-203144-0
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2001-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

4. They Believe There’s Not Enough Love to Go Around

Problem in-laws operate from a deprivation mentality. If their child loves you, your in-laws believe you’ve stolen that love from them. They don’t see love as an infinite commodity that replenishes itself the more it’s given. And because they’re fighting for what they think is a rare and diminishing treasure, each conflict becomes a loyalty test. Your partner must constantly prove that he still is an integral part of their family by preferring them to you, by making them top priority. If your partner doesn’t, he or she is in for a barrage of sullen or angry disapproval and hurt feelings from your in-laws.

John, the lawyer you met in chapter 3, gave me a good example of this after he’d tried suggesting that his parents couldn’t stay at his house.

“Let’s see—some of the choice ones were: ‘How can you let her turn you against us?’ ‘We don’t know who you are anymore,’ ‘This woman has taken your love from us.’ When I tried to tell them I still loved them, they wouldn’t hear it. Then came the capper—‘If you don’t have room in your house for us, you don’t have room in your heart, either.’”

What John’s parents were saying to him, was: “If you love her, you don’t have any love left over for us, and not letting us stay with you proves it.”

In order to make any sense of these unreasonable demands and absurd accusations, you need to understand how your in-laws really view your marriage. To them, it’s just another version of playing house. Even if your partner has been living on his or her own for many years, they still don’t take your marriage seriously—they’ve been with your partner for a lifetime, and you’re just a newcomer, no matter how long you’ve been married. Reduced to its fundamentals, your marriage was an act of mutiny—thus the in-laws’ constant demand for loyalty tests. The only way for your partner to pass those tests, and avoid awful feelings of guilt and disloyalty, is to override you. Problem in-laws are constantly setting up situations in which your partner is faced with a lose-lose situation. If he puts his parents’ wishes first, you feel hurt and neglected. If she puts you first, she hurts her parents.

Saying, in words or actions, that his or her parents count, and you don’t, provides the constant reassurance that your in-laws demand. It is as if your partner defines their very life, no matter how accomplished or intelligent they may be. They live through her or him. They are not about to let you take that away.

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