5 Ways In-Laws Can Affect Your Marriage
You marry your person and you couldn’t be happier. You are ready to embark on your life
together and create the life you envisioned. Have you thought about how you not only marry
your person, but you also marry his or her family as well. Your spouse’s family will now be your new family, rather you have much contact and a close relationship with them or not. In-laws can be a great addition to your life and bring a new found view of how life can look, a totally different perspective.
However, sometimes marrying into a family isn’t the most picture-perfect storyline and it can
be a major transition for not only you, but also for you and your significant other. It can
challenge your relationship in areas you didn’t think would be an issue. All relationships have
struggles to overcome, but it can be challenging when it has to do with in-laws and
relationships that the other person has grown to become “used to” and have lived with their
entire life.
Your significant other may not see the relationship as a problem, or maybe they do,
but they don’t want to deal with the aftermath, so they choose not to address it. However, if
the relationship is adding extra stress to your marriage or relationship, it needs to be
addressed. Let’s discuss how in-laws can potentially negatively affect your romantic
relationship in more than one area.
How In-Laws Can affect your Marriage
–Involvement in relationship decisions: Having in-laws too involved in your daily decisions as a
couple, big or small, can be a real struggle. You may value their opinion, but ultimately it is you
and your spouse’s decision. Make sure you both are making your voice heard and asking
yourself, if it is something you believe or something you were told to believe.
–Communication issues may lead to a lot of misunderstanding between in-laws and couples.
Simply making sure your voice is being heard and directly communicated in a way your in-laws
can understand may prevent future issues. For example, when it comes to the holidays, make
sure you are clearly communicating plans and they truly understand.
–Differing Expectations between you and your spouses to in-laws is a major challenge a couple
can face. In-laws have expectations for your marriage, rather they voice it or not, or even if they
notice it. They may voice them or silently grow resentment with the different ways you parent,
live life, or treat their child. You have to focus on ensuring your spouse and you are on the same
page, and then letting the outside voices fade to not allow interferes.
–Boundary overstepping from in-laws can lead to major effects on your marriage. Similar to
differing expectations, boundary overstepping can build up resentment and a loss of respect on
each side.
–Favoritism, with one side of the family getting more attention than spouse’s side of the family
is another affect in-laws can have on your relationship or marriage. While it’s pretty common to
be closer to one side of the family than another, you want to make sure your partner isn’t
building up resentment with spending more time with your side than theirs.
Now that we are aware of the a few areas in which in-laws can have an impact on your
marriage, stay tuned for another blog post where we will discuss how setting boundaries can
actually help your relationship with both your spouse and in-laws; increase marriage overall
and unity between you and your partner; reduce the amount of stress and conflict on both
ends; strengthening your relationships with all sides; and increase self-esteem and well-being
overall.
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