The in-law I can’t stand
WHEN two people join together in love, or whatever else is the stimulus for their attraction, the last thing they want is for any man, woman or in-law to put them asunder. But too often someone, who perhaps doesn’t value the union as much as the couple does, tries to split them up, leading to much ill feeling.
Who is that person in your life — that ‘Doubting Thomas’ who is the bane of your relationship’s existence?
These people name the in-law they can’t stand, and explain why.
Aneka, 29, married three years:
I can’t stand my husband’s mother. She lied and said she couldn’t come to our wedding because she was feeling ill, but another relative told us after that she said she wouldn’t come because we had invited her exhusband, my husband’s father. So she missed her only child’s wedding because she was carrying feelings for a man she divorced 15 years ago. She has tried to make amends, but I can never forget how much her actions hurt my husband, and almost ruined our big day.
Teka, 37, married 10 years:
My brothers-inlaw are just embarrassing. They are always getting into trouble with the police, and then call on my husband to help because he’s a member of the security force. It’s so embarrassing trying to live like a decent couple, and then being associated with these bleaching waste men who believe that life owes them something.
Kay, 44, married seven years:
I despise my husband’s sister. A few years ago she saw me at a restaurant with my ex, who is the father of my son who died, and she went back and told my husband that she saw me at a guest house with him. It was nothing like that — I didn’t even know that the place had lodgings upstairs. Anyway, my husband asked why I still needed to talk to my ex since we no longer shared a child, and got really upset, and we separated for about a week. I was upset with both of them, to be honest, but more so at her for misinterpreting what was a totally innocent meeting of two grieving parents, and turning it into something dirty.
Nicolette, 42, married 20 years:
I can’t stand my husband’s parents because they’re pretentious and classist. They acted nice in front of my face, then slaughtered me behind my back. It was only after we had been married a few years that my husband told me how they had threatened to disinherit him, volunteered to pay me off to leave him alone, and all kinds of other things to try to convince him not to marry me because my family was poor. Then if that wasn’t enough, after our first daughter was born the mom said to my face that she didn’t look anything like my husband and if I was sure he was the dad, and right in the hospital, hours after I had given birth, encouraged him to do a DNA test. The mother is worse than the father, but I can’t wait for them both to kick the bucket and get out of our lives.
Theo, 35, married five years:
My wife’s mother told her not to date me because my family was “cursed”. My father was jailed for fraud, so I guess that made my whole family a failure to her. She didn’t attend our wedding either, and didn’t participate in our lives at all until after our children were born. But everytime I see her I walk wide, because she’s a disgusting person.