Tips for Couples - Spouse Doesn't Get Along with Family

Relationships: Spouse Doesn't Get Along with Family - as part of the expert series by GeoBeats.

Most people do not realize that when you marry another person, they may assume that you are also marrying their family, and this may be a radical point of view, but I want you to remember that you have married or partnered with one other person. You have not married that person's family, and you actually can create the kind of relationship that you want with your partner's family or other relatives that may be different than what you grew up with, and may be different than your partner's relationship with his or her family.

We have had a lot of experience of that in our thirty-two years together. We have made lots of different arrangements for different kinds of family occasions or the kinds of vacations that we all celebrate, you know, Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Years and those kinds of places where families generally get together. I want you to give yourself permission to let your relationship be primary and to hear what it is that your partner wants and to also share what it is that you want. We do not really advocate compromise where each of you settle for less.

We were once working with a family where they did not get along to such an extent that the only thing that they could come up with for example, for going for a vacation, was to go somewhere where nobody wanted to go. That was their idea of a compromise, and what I want to suggest instead is that if you keep tuning into and really getting curious about what it is that you really want, you will come up with a solution that allows both of you to have breathing room and both of you to have the kind of primary relationship with each other where resentments do not build up.

If you compromise and do something that you do not want to do with your partner's family, it is going to take a toll on your intimacy and your liveness with each other. There may be feelings that need to be shared about it, your partner may be disappointed, but what we have seen in working with thousands of people is that if you really honor what your partner really wants and what you really want, it strengthens your relationship, and it also lets your family know that you value each other and that they need to value you 'you' as a partnership that is separate from them, that you are adults and you are creating what you want to create.

And you can also choose times where you do really want to be with your family or your partner's family, and make those a time of real celebration that you create memories together that they can draw on, as well. So nobody needs to compromise if you really breathe and communicate.