cereta: Danae, Let me guess, this is an "experiment" for your sociology class. (Danae experiment)
Lucy ([personal profile] cereta) wrote in [community profile] agonyaunt2015-11-03 09:09 pm

Carolyn Hax: How do I get my son and DIL to stay at my house?



Dear Carolyn,

I believe that one way that family becomes close to one another is sharing space and making the best out of any situation. My son and his new wife are always warm and cordial to me and my husband and our other kids, but they seem to go out of their way to make sure they don't spend lengthy time with us. For example, we were attending a family wedding and I suggested we all take one car, as I have one big enough for all of us. My son declined, and when I pressed, he said that it would be too crowded and they like to leave whenever they want. Second example, for Thanksgiving they are driving to our house, about 3 hours from where they live. My son said they are getting a hotel room, and I asked why. He said our house is too crowded and uncomfortable for overnight visits. I genuinely feel like there is a distance between my son and his wife and he rest of us because of these choices. I offered a compromise, that they stay with us one night and get a hotel another. My son said no, they were getting a hotel both nights. I feel uncomfortable with this situation and desperately want to be closer with them both, the kind of closeness that you get from sharing space and making compromises. But I feel like I am the only one compromising! Why do they just get to decide how our relationship is, and I just have to go along with it? Why is one comfort level deferred to automatically? I'm almost positive that they stay with her wife's parents when they visit them, and I really want to know why they are so resistant to staying with us. I am in the process of drafting an email to my daughter-in-law to ask her about this, but first I wanted your opinion.


A: Carolyn Hax

NO! Don't send the email!!! You're falling victim to one of the classic blunders.**

I understand that you want to be closer to your son and daughter-and-law, but not once in the course of writing this column (nearly 20 years, yikes) have I seen in-laws become closer as a direct result of complaints that you're not being allowed to be as close to them as you think you deserve.

Go ahead and feel sorry for yourself. Bemoan their denying you this chance to wake up to them in your kitchen and go to sleep with them watching your TV. It stinks, it hurts, it wrecks something you likely envisioned when your son was still a kid. Go kick a non-injurious rock in rage and frustration.

Then, dust yourself off and start learning to like what you've got. They visit you! That's good. They don't make promises they later break! They say they're hotelling it and then they do it. Okay. At least you know where they stand. They're happy in each other's company! Phew. Right?

If a closer relationship is going to happen, then it's going to happen when BOTH of you, you and your daughter-in-law, accept each other as-is. You can make that process take decades to happen, if ever, or you can do everything in your power to make it happen sooner. Such as: Being happy to see them. Not criticizing their way of doing things. Not seeing yourself as the victim of their getting their way. Looking for common ground, and things to admire about their choices. ("You aren't afraid to go get the privacy you need--good for you." Said out loud or in your head.) Paying attention to what they say, verbally and non-, so that you don't miss cues about their likes and dislikes.

These things will contribute to an environment where they are comfortable, and where they are comfortable, they will visit longer and more often, if possible. And that will bring you closer.

Perhaps in the course of this process you will have a chance to ask your son--ask, not accuse--if he's willing to share why he stays off-site. It could so easily not be personal, and just a matter of mattress lumpiness or self-consciousness about snoring or introversion in need of a quiet place. But, again, only ask if you're to the point where you can ask without sounding hurt or wounded.
recessional: a photo image of feet in sparkly red shoes (Default)

[personal profile] recessional 2015-11-04 03:46 am (UTC)(link)
Short answer: patriarchy!

Longer answer: because there is a model within the model of "women do all the emotional labour" which takes it as far as even "men don't HAVE strong or relevant opinions or feelings about this kind of stuff, this entire sphere of human experience rests with women."

In this model (which is generally totally subconscious: ofttimes, if you pointed OUT the weirdness of this, they would not have even consciously noticed it before), in much the same way that daughters pass in "possession" from father to husband, sons pass from the emotional guidance and control of mothers to the emotional control and guidance of wives.

And so anything in this kind of social sphere that doesn't fit what the mother wants must, by default, be the daughter in law's fault/job to fix, because she's the one who is the seat of emotional and relationship management. The son has no meaningful opinion - rightly, he has no opinion at all, and if he does, it's his wife's job to make sure that it's the "right" opinion.

It's a weird, weird way in which this model teaches women to dehumanize the men in their lives, at the same time that it's teaching men to dehumanize and objectify the women in theirs.
the_rck: (Default)

[personal profile] the_rck 2015-11-04 04:02 pm (UTC)(link)
My MIL and SIL still want to communicate with me exclusively in planning family gatherings even though it's my husband's schedule (which is unpredictable) that dictates when and whether we can visit. He's also the one who bakes the apple pies if they want us to bring one. I cc him every time I reply to an email, and they delete his name every time they reply to me (it's not just that they're hitting reply instead of reply all because they're still including both whatever other women are involved).
recessional: a photo image of feet in sparkly red shoes (Default)

[personal profile] recessional 2015-11-04 05:39 pm (UTC)(link)
My mother has spent the last ten years or so very explicitly deconstructing this model in my father's extended family. There has been a lot of "I don't know. You'll have to talk to your son/brother about that." and subsequent flail. (It does not help that my father is actually terrible at maintaining relationships, but that doesn't really matter: they're still his relationships.)
havocthecat: (avengers sif freya sisters in arms)

[personal profile] havocthecat 2015-11-04 08:34 pm (UTC)(link)
I just deleted a very long reply where I started mentioning flaws wrt my in-laws on an unlocked post (which I never, ever do, and even only very rarely in locked posts), so let me just make the reply short and sweet: I understand exactly what your mother has been doing and I am very impressed with her for doing so. I can be very difficult.
adrian_turtle: (Default)

[personal profile] adrian_turtle 2015-11-04 05:45 am (UTC)(link)
Recessional's reasoning is excellent, but another possible answer is just that the mother already had a relationship with her unmarried son. Now that her son is doing something different (staying in a hotel at Thanksgiving, not letting his mother drive the relationship), it must be the daughter-in-law's fault. She can believe she would still have her younger and more compliant son if the daughter-in-law hadn't changed him.
havocthecat: the lady of shalott (Default)

[personal profile] havocthecat 2015-11-04 03:17 pm (UTC)(link)
That seems to me that it's still piling the emotional labor on the daughter-in-law by saying that there is a problem with what the status quo is and the DIL needs to fix it. If the mother has a relationship with her son and wants to change or improve it, she should be able to ask him questions about it. Instead, she expects the DIL to basically translate her son's feelings.

Either way, though, it's not fair for the DIL.
recessional: a photo image of feet in sparkly red shoes (Default)

[personal profile] recessional 2015-11-04 05:34 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah, it still assumes that in some way DIL is responsible for son's feelings/relationships.
recessional: a photo image of feet in sparkly red shoes (Default)

[personal profile] recessional 2015-11-04 04:01 am (UTC)(link)
I feel like somewhere out there - possibly at Captain Awkward - is the letter from the son and d-i-l asking for help maintaining their boundaries in the face of this LW's ~*feelings*~.

Why do they just get to decide how our relationship is, and I just have to go along with it?

I found this really interesting, mostly for the fallacy in it, which I see from a lot of people. Because they're not deciding how the RELATIONSHIP is; they're deciding how they are willing to act in the relationship. Now it's the LW's job to figure out how she is going to act in the relationship in relation to the conditions THEY'VE set out.

Although fundamentally I don't think it's unreasonable for her to say to them, in as many words, "the fact that you never share space with me/us hurts my feelings." I wouldn't recommend it to this LW because I think the chances of her being able to do it as a pure statement of feeling which from then they will work to an actual compromise/understanding is about nil, but. Fundamentally: she is in fact allowed to have these feelings, and to communicate them.
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)

[personal profile] kaberett 2015-11-04 07:47 am (UTC)(link)
I am kind of impressed that she's framing "don't want to be in a completely full car" and "want to sleep somewhere they can have noisy sex" as "refusing to share space", tho.

Also completely with you on the Captain Awkward thing, heh.
greenygal: (Default)

[personal profile] greenygal 2015-11-04 04:54 pm (UTC)(link)
Conveniently, today's Captain Awkward is titled Difficult Mom Wants To Be Closer! Not that it's the same thing, but it made me laugh.
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)

[personal profile] kaberett 2015-11-04 05:08 pm (UTC)(link)
yeah, I sniggered gently >>;
recessional: a photo image of feet in sparkly red shoes (Default)

[personal profile] recessional 2015-11-04 05:31 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah, I actually know people who'd do that, mostly because for them the expense of the hotel/having an extra car (and thus extra gas) are, for one reason or another, A Big Deal.

Which means the only reason you would go to that expense is if you Just Can't Stand Sharing Space with those people. So for them the refusal has the subtext "we don't actually like you that much".

That they may be staying with her parents because her parents have a LARGE HOUSE that actually has space for them, for example, has no emotional compellingness for people with that kind of background: unless you literally do not have the spaces for people to sleep on, there is Enough Room, and you only go to a hotel if there actually isn't that kind of Enough Room . . . .or you can't stand the people you'd have to share space with.

It's not a view of the world I agree with, but it's one I've come across where yeah, if you were raised in that and accept that view of the world, it starts becoming an Issue. It's like conflicting cultures of what it means for a guest to help with the dishes: for some people it's natural, assumed helpfulness, and for others it's a huge insult to the hostess's hospitality.
Edited 2015-11-04 17:33 (UTC)
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)

[personal profile] kaberett 2015-11-04 05:37 pm (UTC)(link)
It is a worldview I have a lot of sympathy with tbh and am slightly prone to myself, but the way I handle it is to remind myself that Not Everyone Is Poor Or Perpetually Afraid Of It and this is actually no bad thing, so.

I think the part where she doesn't actually say that (but then of course she wouldn't, because talking about money is Not Done) is what's bothering me most, largely because I'm having the kind of week where watching people handle anxieties & awareness of same differently to me is scary because What If I'm Doing It Wrong, heh.

(thank you as ever for words!)
recessional: a photo image of feet in sparkly red shoes (Default)

[personal profile] recessional 2015-11-04 05:43 pm (UTC)(link)
It used to be pretty prevalent in both my families, until serious special needs hit - as with many things, my mother was actually the lead in going "okay, no, we need a separate room where [middle sibling] can be COMPLETELY AWAY FROM PEOPLE, and if that's not available at someone's house we need to get a hotel room."

And then we discovered that in general sanity was better when we observed some of these boundaries, so. We still negotiate it, but. I have flipped to the point of assuming space is good.

And yeah, not only is talking about money Not Done, it's also . . . if you're literally never accustomed to thinking about other people having other points of view/experiences, it may not remotely occur to her that it NEEDS saying. It's a taken-for-granted context.
azurelunatic: Vivid pink Alaskan wild rose. (Default)

[personal profile] azurelunatic 2015-11-04 07:40 am (UTC)(link)
oh god oh god oh god oh god I do not ever want to "compromise" with this person.
azurelunatic: Vivid pink Alaskan wild rose. (Default)

[personal profile] azurelunatic 2015-11-04 07:49 am (UTC)(link)
ANY COMPROMISE IS HER WINNING FULLY
kaberett: Trans symbol with Swiss Army knife tools at other positions around the central circle. (Default)

[personal profile] kaberett 2015-11-04 02:21 pm (UTC)(link)
YEP

impressed by her failure to recognise that "we're seeing you at all" IS them compromising!
ysobel: (Default)

[personal profile] ysobel 2015-11-04 06:51 pm (UTC)(link)
I genuinely feel like there is a distance between my son and his wife and he rest of us because of these choices.

Why yes, yes there is, it's called Healthy Boundaries.
amadi: A bouquet of dark purple roses (Default)

[personal profile] amadi 2015-11-05 12:01 am (UTC)(link)
What is this idea that the only way for a family to be close is to ride in the same car to events, or sleep in the same place? Why isn't closeness built by doing things together? Conversations, meals, games, heck even Black Friday shopping? This reminds me of people who say that dads have to bottle feed breastfed babies sometimes otherwise they can't bond. It's like this weird tunnel vision about how humans develop relationships with one another that people don't know how to shake themselves out of.
xenacryst: Peanuts charactor looking unimpressed (Peanuts: isn't impressed)

[personal profile] xenacryst 2015-11-05 08:22 pm (UTC)(link)
Son. New wife. It doesn't take a genius to figure that out, I'd think. But let's look at your end of things - you seem to be mortally afraid of losing some kind of relationship with your son that ... well, you probably never had but desperately wish you did. Because if you had that kind of relationship, you'd be able to realize it wasn't all about you, and you'd be able to talk to each other. Yes, talk to each other, not talk about him at your new daughter-in-law.

But pretty much yes to everything Carolyn said, with the added helping of o.O at writing to the DIL. That always works so well at drawing families closer together.
sathari: Anakin-Palpatine confrontation; caption: Anakin objects violently to Palpatine's taste in art (Anakin's an art critic)

[personal profile] sathari 2015-11-06 01:40 am (UTC)(link)
Oh, dear sweet Cthulhu, do I have FEELS about this one.

Firstly: Not everyone finds "sharing space" and "making compromises" to be warm fuzzy bonding experiences. There are people, me included, for whom sharing a crowded house with limited kitchen and bathroom facilities with a lot of other people I don't know well is one of the surest ways to turn the "cool in-law/cousin/other-relation that I have great conversations or snowball fights with or cook cool things with or who plays an awesome game of pinochle" into "that jerk who got the last cup of coffee/used the bathroom for half an hour JUST as my own digestive tract was making itself felt/other petty annoyance that I can blow off just fine once I have showered, dressed, and consumed caffeine but will lose my shit about if I have to deal with before that". That stuff that is bonding for LW may be destructive-of-bonding for DIL, and DIL may be doing all the things she can to ensure that she is able to bond with her new in-laws or at least, you know, not end up resenting them for logistical annoyances that can be averted by not shoehorning everyone into various crowded spaces on tight schedules.

Secondly: Okay, getting my personal bias out of the way here, and being aware that I might be reading a lot into this/extrapolating excessively, but: I also feel like in addition to different bonding-needs going on, there might be an issue of different ideas of hospitality, too--- and here comes my personal bias, because my mom and her mom who lived with us for most of my childhood drilled into my head at a very unconscious level that the whole point of inviting someone to share your space as a guest was to see to their comfort--- not for guests to "make compromises". So LW's lovely happy bonding experiences of compromise from guests could feel downright inhospitable or unfriendly if DIL got the messages about A Host's Duties that I did growing up! (Not to mention that my first thought was more along the lines of, "If LW thinks that her guests making compromises with each other is this lovely cozy bonding ritual, I'll best bet that translates to it being okay if there aren't enough clean linens and toilet paper because, oh, compromise, fun family stories about that time cousin Susie had to wrap herself in the shower curtain because Aunt Linda used the last clean towel!" AAAAAAAAAND THEN I went back and unpacked my OWN GODDAMN STUFF around Hostly Duties To A Guest's Comfort and had many a-ha moments instead.) (The fact that LW thinks they stay at DIL's parents' home when they visit is adding fuel to my comfort-versus-compromise fire, because I am imagining all these ridiculous scenarios around the couple (LW's son and DIL) visiting the wife's parents and the husband being like, "Oh, my god, your dad cooked that dish that I once mentioned in passing was my favorite, and... wait... is that the one-and-only-brand of hand soap I'm not allergic to in the guest bathroom?" and wife being like, "Well, duh, my parents asked me if there was anything they could do to make us feel more at home....?" LOL, I am now writing RPF about advice column families; this is some kind of new low in fannish behavior, I think.)

Thirdly and lastly, and more like tl'dr'ly: I wonder exactly what kind of "compromises" LW is talking about and on just whose shoulders they are falling and in what way, because I can think of a lot of things (acceptable degrees of privacy for bathroom use of all sorts/changing clothes, and stuff around medicines or other health needs are the two that spring to mind first) that don't necessarily lend themselves to on-the-fly or after-the-fact "compromising", and LW... does not give me the impression of someone who would be happy to sit down with a new in-law and agree to boundaries around dealbreaky things in advance and then help to enforce them in the moment.
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[personal profile] eleanorjane 2015-11-06 09:54 am (UTC)(link)
All the issues around conflicts in hospitality duties, compromises, boundaries, space, etc etc aside:

when has "My feelings are hurt and I'm going to WRITE YOU A LETTER ABOUT IT" ever ended well?