Wednesday, 21 November 2012
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When Parents Disapprove
Two of my close friends got married to one another in Central Park over the summer. They chose to have a small wedding so that they could save money, and therefore, their immediate families were the only people in attendance for the ceremony. The ceremony itself, I’ve been told, was very beautiful, and, like at most weddings, many of the family members cried.For the bride’s family, they were tears of joy; for the groom’s family, they were tears of anguish.
The groom’s parents very image conscious: they were millionaires and felt that their family deserved the very best of everything just because they were rich. The family lived in a multi-million-dollar mansion with a four-car garage. They held fancy parties in other countries and only invited their richest friends and family members to join them. The mother recently got breast implants and the father shamelessly bragged about his wife’s implants to everybody in his extended family. They maintained their social status by only spending time in the company of other rich families.
The groom’s father was also extremely arrogant and acted cold and unfriendly to others that he deemed were not important – particularly those who were not rich. He felt that only hard-working people became rich, and everybody who was not rich was merely lazy; therefore, he was not too pleased when he found out that his only son was dating a girl whose family barely lived above the poverty line.
There were a lot of ups and downs in my friend and her now-husband’s relationship. Most of the downs involved dealing with his parents. His parents were against the relationship from day one just because she did not come from a well-to-do family, and they were therefore never particularly kind to my friend, especially the father. The parents thought that my friend lacked ambition because she was in college and had not made up her mind about what she wanted to do with her degree when she was done, whereas their son was going through undergrad as a means of preparing for law school. They had always made their distaste for my friend known to their son, who ignored every one of their comments. My friend made him happy, so why should he care if his parents disliked her?
Four years into their relationship, he proposed. News of the proposal brought joy her family, but utter terror to his. Their son was only in his first year of law school, and she was just about to graduate from college: why couldn’t they wait longer? His parents tried to convince them to hold off a couple of years on the wedding, hoping that the extra waiting time would somehow break them up. Ultimately, though, my friends decided that they wanted to get married right away so that they could move in together and not have a conflict with their moral beliefs and living situation, since neither of them believed in the idea of living together before marriage, but they wanted to live together to save money on rent costs.
My friends are now happily married and live a ten-hour driving distance from their families. The groom’s parents are still displeased about the marriage and still act cold towards their now-daughter-in-law, but the good news is that my friends only have to put up with their antics when they travel home for the holidays.
Does parental approval of a relationship matter? Many people argue that no, parental approval of your relationship should not make a difference. After all, it is your relationship and your life, so shouldn’t you be the one calling the shots? Your parents do not know your significant other as well as you do, so how can they really make a fair assessment of your significant other’s intentions or whether or not this relationship is in your best interest?
On the other hand, others say that parents are wiser because of their age and experience and have witnessed examples of both lasting and failed relationships among their family and friends. What if your parents see a quality in your significant other that could seriously prove to be detrimental to your relationship or dangerous to you later down the road? Would you trust your parents’ judgment?
What happens if you’re dating a person who your parents dislike? Would a parent’s disapproval of your relationship affect whether or not you remained in that relationship? Has a situation like this ever happened to you before?
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- From: iamnotyourgrandma
- Name: iamnotyourgrandma
- About Me: I'm 24 years old, and, as my username implies, there is a 100% chance that I am not, in fact, your grandma. I enjoy discussions about relationship ideologies and examining how a person's background/upbringing affects his/her views about how relationships work. Feel free to leave me a comment or subscribe to my site!
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Comments (12)
That's easy: tell your parents to suck it. Their opinion doesn't, and should not, matter. You are your own person, they do not own you, and therefore you have no obligation to please them. Period.
In the case of your friends though, the husband's parents seem pretty narrow minded and seem to seek interest in their views rather their son's happiness so I feel that your friends did the right thing to get married and may they have wonderful babies and an awesome life.
lol, sounds like a wonderful reason to get married.
I think it is important to listen to your parents. While it's not their life, parents are often right more times than their children would like to admit. Also, your parents are going to be in your life forever - if they don't get on with your partner, expect a lot of difficulties further down the line, especially if you get married and have children. I'm not saying that your parents should have the final decision, but I think it is important to listen to them - they just don't want to see their children getting hurt.
I dated 2 guys my parents did not approve of.. Had I taken the time to listen to them, i would have saved myself 3 years of abuse. Lesson learned. Thankfully they love my husband.
His parents, on the other hand, do not approve of me... they never have and never will because I stole their baby boy away and forced him to move to a different country.. Oh and I stood up to them when lies were being told about me. His dad didn't even bother coming to our wedding. 8yrs later they still don't approve of me, or anything we have done.. and we are fine with it. We have my parents support.
Well, I'm gay so I don't think my parents will approve of any boys if I bring them home @_@
This definitely doesn't apply for every parent, but most parents simply have your best interests at heart. & sometimes, when you're blinded by infatuation, you can't see what an outsider can. I am thankful I have a family who may not be pleased with the decision I make in a mate, but would accept them no matter what. Prime example is when my brother married this girl, who he hardly knew & none of us had really met, after not even dating a year. Then when we met her, she was this horrible drama queen who caused so many problems with out family because of her insecurities. At first we tried to tell him what we were seeing, but he didn't care. He accepted those flaws & still loved her anyway. So we accepted her, too. These days she's calmed down & grown up a bit, & while she can still be an insecure drama queen, she's still part of our family.
So I will always take my family's advice with a grain of salt, because they may see things that I can't, but if I love them enough to look past those things, I know my family will be behind me every step of the way. Family is important. They'll be there when everyone else leaves.
To be very honest, I actually totally understand where his parents are coming from. They don't sound like they're handling it nicely, but being financially stable before marriage is an incredibly important thing for both men and women getting married. Financial security takes care of a ton of marital problems. I'm surprised they didn't ask for a pre-nup; unless they did and you didn't mention it or don't know.
Marrying into a rich family from a labor-line status is a tetchy subject. My family emigrated here less than 10 years before I was born and therefore were once at the poverty line so they know it's not "laziness" all of the time, but I know they wouldn't be at all happy if I chose a guy with a family trying to get out of it.
They would be afraid for me, and also afraid that, even if I had an excellent job with a decent paycheck and benefits, he'd be unable to simply -help-, and that he'd be leeching. It wouldn't even be a criticism of his character either; they would just be afraid that he would be -unable- to get out, even years into the marriage, and then -have- to leech.
The post makes it sound like an unreasonable thing, bringing up their "social status" upkeep, and the slightly awkward breast implant thing (though is that -really- any different than showing off your Coach and your Gucci bags? Than showing off your Jimmy Choos?), and maybe his family is a horrible bunch of WASPs (or whatever race they are. *shrug*) but the bottom line is that this issue isn't a "My parents hate him 'cause he's not my race" thing.
My in-laws are very conservative and religious. I'm a liberal atheist. They've hated me from the start. My husband and I have been married for six years, and his father still encourages him to go out and play the field. His stepmother only speaks to me if she's got some kind of sermon for me, otherwise it's as though I don't even exist.
We don't visit them much, now. And that's fine by the both of us.
tell em to suck a bag of u know what
Thankfully my parents LOVE my current boyfriend, and his parents absolutely adore me, so we got incredibly lucky. We've been together now for 3 1/2 years, and it has definitely helped that our parents approve of each of us. We bought a house together last year, and we're starting to talk about getting married/having kids, so I'm optimistic for our future.
My only other major boyfriend that I was crazy enough to bring home was another matter entirely. It wasn't that they didn't like him right off the bat, but they saw the way I reacted to him, especially after being together for more than a year. I was constantly jumpy. I didn't want to say or do anything to make him upset, mostly because I knew that he would threaten to break up with me if I did. It wasn't healthy, and my parents saw that. I'd bend over backwards to keep him happy, but god forbid I wanted anything in return.
His parents didn't help. His mother loved me, and included me in everything. His dad couldn't stand me, and made sure his son knew it, even if that meant telling him in front of me. Every time I saw his dad, I would go home crying. Since my ex's mom and dad were still married, it meant that I was seeing him a lot. He felt I was leeching off his son because my ex was working full time, and I was only working part time because I was going back to school so that I could get my degree and not work in dead end jobs like my ex was going to be working for the rest of his life.
I paid all my own bills and made sure whenever we actually went out (which wasn't often), that I was paying my fair share. But god forbid my ex came to pick me up for one of his family functions, because apparently that meant I was "leeching" off him. Never mind that I used public transportation to get everywhere and didn't have a car to save money, so getting anywhere was a million times more difficult than it is when I had a car.
The problems with my ex's dad wasn't the straw that broke the relationship camel's back, but it definitely didn't help. I eventually realized (after 2 1/2 years) that things were never going to change between me and my ex's dad, which meant that things were never going to change between me and my ex. Even though he swore he didn't believe anything his dad said, I could tell that he resented me for wanting to go back to school and doing so well at it (I maintained a 3.9 GPA), and eventually it just got to be too much. We broke it off and until I started dating my current S.O, I couldn't have been happier.
All that to say, sometimes parents see things that their kids don't and/or won't see, but parents should allow their children to figure that out on their own, especially if they are adults. Its one thing if your kid is a teenager/still living at home, but otherwise, they need to trust that they raised their children to do the right thing.
This happened to me just recently. I was in a relationship with someone I cared deeply for and my parents hated him. Hated him enough to get him in trouble with his parents as well as other authorities...Either way, I can't ever be completely happy if my family can't support my relationships. Especially because I value their opinions and respect that they are just looking out for me. I agree with the perspectives you wrote about: How could they possibly know my significant other more than me? vs. Could they really see something in that person that could be dangerous to the relationship?
It was really hard. I'm not completely over it and I've just had to accept their point of view. My ex and I really tried to make it work without their support but in the end the pressure was too hard on me.