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Transcript
Automatic transcript; may contain mistakes, especially in Hebrew.
This week's question is, I am really close with my family, but feel that they treat my husband really poorly. I want to maintain a positive relationship with them, but I feel stuck in a bad position. How should I approach this? It's such a painful question because especially as a wife and as a daughter, you really do have a dual allegiance and you really want for your family to love and embrace your husband and to bring them in and to make him feel part of it. And especially if there's bad feelings and they're treating him poorly, it can be so deeply uncomfortable, not only for your husband, but I'm sure for yourself as well, as you feel stuck in the middle. And as with all of these things, I would encourage you strongly to breathe deeply, call upon your courage, and have some really difficult conversations, assuming that the relationships are there to have them. It sounds like you really do care about your family, and it sounds like you want them to treat your husband better. Would it be an option for you to sit down with your family without your husband and to share with them how much you care about them?
And because you care about them so much, it's so important to you that they really embrace and accept your husband as one of the family members. At the same time, I would also encourage you to sit down with your husband and acknowledge the pain that he's in, because I'm sure it's uncomfortable for him as well. And it might be difficult sometimes to negotiate this very narrow terrain where you're stuck between your husband and your family, and perhaps your husband, since he may feel uncomfortable in that situation, might not want to engage in the way that another husband would if he was embraced by the family. I will share with you that I think perhaps the most important thing, even after you have a communication with your husband, and even after you have a communication with your parents, assuming that the relationships are there in order to have those difficult conversations, I'll share with you that perhaps the most important thing is to have a healthy separation. Yes, it is your family, but it's not you. You are not the one treating your husband this way, and you are not responsible for the way that other people act. If you want to ask them to behave differently, you can, but ultimately you don't control.
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them, and it's important that you share that with your husband. As you're having this conversation with your husband where you're acknowledging his pain and how uncomfortable it is, it's important to let him know that you're with him, and that this is not the way you feel, and that you disagree with your family because you love your husband. Ultimately, the relationship with your husband is the priority, and so it's your job, even emotionally. To separate yourself, to make sure that you're with your husband, and to make sure that, that you're not being dragged down by the way that others are treating your husband. That's their issue, and it's not yours. It's always important to have a healthy understanding of what's really going on. You are not responsible for the way that other people behave. Having said that... there are going to be times likely where there are uncomfortable things in any marriage even when people do get along with their in-laws there are times when things are uncomfortable things will maybe be needed for your family but they may run counter to the things that your family needs yumtiv is a very common problem especially as families get bigger parents may want kids to.
come over and you may not want to go over as much anymore because it can be very difficult to get all the children out so these things will come up even in a positive relationship there's always going to be a sort of tension between these two allegiances while we have a mitzvah of kibra vayim and we certainly do our best to please our parents ultimately the priority is to build our own family and to raise them in a healthy environment unfortunately over the years so many people have come to me and discussed with me this exact issue my parents don't get along. with their parents and i don't get along with my parents, and it's it's something that does go from, generation to generation and so we want to role model for our children respect that we have for our parents so that they see that and ultimately that becomes the message that's passed down and so even though it can be really difficult to repair these relationships not only for the sake of your husband but even for the sake of your children to be able to see that there's healthy relationships in the family and role modeling healthy relationships is so.
important so to sum up healthy communication with your parents if that's possible healthy communication where you confront the real issues with your husband making sure to let him know that you do not take ownership for the way that other people behave and emotionally inside of yourself say this is not my issue but it's something that I'm struggling with and I'm going to work together with my husband to repair this so that we can build our relationship for many years to come
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