In-laws or Out-laws

The in-law, extended family situation has always been interesting to me. I have only one brother and I married into a family of 8 children. My parents were divorced and my mother, brother and I lived with my grandparents who helped raise me while my mother taught school. My husband grew up with a domineering Italian Catholic father and a mother who was a member of our Church. Because of these totally different backgrounds, it was quite a challenge for me to feel comfortable around my husband’s family. I always felt lucky that we didn’t live near them during the first part of our marriage, but now I understand that perhaps I could have made a better connection with them if I had been around them more. Unfortunately, when we were with the family it was easy for my husband to fall back into his position as son and brother and I never felt that we were considered to be a new family of our own.

There is only one girl in my husband’s family and her husband has had the challenge of integrating with her brothers. He and I have always had a joke that we aren’t the in-laws, we are the out-laws, because he seemed to feel as out of place as I did. Now my husband and I live in the same town as 5 of his siblings and their families and we have managed to sort out the relationships and I feel very blessed to have some of them in my life.

I tried to keep all of this in mind as my children married because I wanted to have a better relationship with their spouses than I did with my mother and father in-law. Again, they come from different backgrounds and religions, or lack of religion, but rather than see this as a negative thing I appreciate what they add to our family.