In-Law Zumba Class
Why in-law-drama is the it-girl of relationship problems.
Dearest Bedheads,
Last week your girl came down with the bubonic plague (RSV) and she (me) has spent the last eight days residing in the fiery pits of hell. I apologize for starting our pen-pal relationship out on a bad foot and being a Frosted Flake with my lack of correspondence last week. But guess who’s back, back again… If you don’t get that reference…it’s an Eminem song. You’re welcome for the culture. But it’s Friday, the weather in LA is shit (just how I like it), I’m eating a donut from a Portuguese bakery down the street, I had a glass of wine last night that woke me up at 4am, and life’s good.
Yes, RSV is most well known for being a virus only babies and old people get, but given that I resonate deeply with both of those demographics, it didn’t come as a surprise. But let’s be real, getting sick has never, ever come as a surprise to me. My M.O. is to catch every virus known to Western man like an outfielder, something I’ve been doing professionally since the tender age of two, when my ENT (ear nose and throat doctor…again, culture) recorded my first official upper respiratory infection. Since then, if there’s something going around, you can bet your ass it’s going to come around to me.
I thought I had accepted this about myself, had made peace with the fact that no one was attracted to me in middle school because of my perpetually red nostrils and the snotty tissue I kept clenched in my fist. I thought this was just what it meant to be alive, but then I met my husband. Last week, I’m lying there, dying of RSV like a zombie with hair extensions, and this man is not even a little bit worried about coming down with something.
“It’s a mentality,” he says to me, while I’m on my back seeing Christ and slowly passing away. “If you think, I’m not getting sick, then you simply won’t get sick.”
If I had been physically capable of screaming at that moment, I would have. His cockiness in the face of illness is absolutely maddening. Obviously I’m not a germaphobe with a germaphobe ‘mentality’ because I want to be, I am this way because I have to be! Because my immune system is shot to pieces from all the antibiotics I was spoon fed as a child (thanks Mom), and also because of my tendency to isolate from the rest of society (rendering me extra vulnerable when I do venture out, as I did one time last week, to Sugarfish, where I happened to sit next to a woman with an ominous cough…the rest is history).
“Wrong,” says my dutiful husband, tapping his head, “it’s all up here!” Keep in mind, this is a guy who doesn’t know shit from Shinola when it comes to nursing someone back to health, bless his heart. His only contribution this past week was to put a wet washcloth in the freezer and then let it melt all over my bedside table. As two ‘youngest children’ playing house together, we’re always vying for priority over who gets to be taken care of, so I guess I have to be thankful…Can you imagine how quickly we’d be in divorce court if we were sick at the same time? That’s one thing I don’t have to worry about. Dylan is literally never sick, and neither is anyone else in his family. When I first met them, I was like, who is this Ashkenazi LA family who never catches a cold!? Maybe it’s because they’re from the valley? And people from the valley have been hardened by the commute? Or maybe they’re too hot over there to even notice when they have a fever, so they power through instead of butt chugging penicillin like the rest of us.
Even though I’ve long since enmeshed myself into this tribe of never sick in-laws, I still vividly remember the growing pains when I was first trying to squeeze and contort myself into their family culture nearly a decade ago. So many of my friends complain to me and so many of you DM me about this particular flavor or drama, and I fully understand why absolutely hating your in-laws is the it-girl of all relationship problems. How could it not be? It’s a tale as old as time: Melissa and Teresa, Megan and The Royals, vintage-Scott Disick and the Kardashians, etc., etc., etc.
When two people start dating, they bring two entirely different sets of banged-up baggage to the table. Once they’re at the table, love can begin, and by love I mean peeling your skin off to expose every nerve, and then letting your partner pour salt on the nerves (albeit sometimes accidentally) all while constantly resisting the urge to sew yourself shut. Love is making room for your partner’s flawed past while still reeling from your own and becoming responsible for a pain you had no part in creating. Maybe even more perilous than that, entering a new family is like walking into a Zumba class a half hour late and trying to keep up with the choreography of dynamics and history, only the Zumba class lasts the rest of your life…But as someone who has grown to annoyingly love my in-laws, I’ll leave you today with some thoughts I have for how to gracefully mesh (car crash into) another clan.
Understand your partner’s childhood was totally different than yours, and be open to his or her family’s way of life, no matter how different it might be from your own shit-show. Chances are there’s something there you can learn or benefit from among all the garbage. For so long I rejected the parts of Dylan’s family that were different from mine, because I firmly believed that my family’s way of doing things was the right way. In reality, I was starving for many of the things that made up his family’s constitution, like being part of a birthday family. You know, the kind that from the moment you open your eyes on your birthday, everything is about celebrating you. I’ll take it further by telling you Dylan comes from a HALF birthday family. I’m the youngest of four, and my birthday is the day after my sister’s (9 months after my dad’s birthday..ew). It’s not that birthdays were a non-event, but the world didn’t seem to stop on our special day. We celebrated with a family dinner and gifts, but otherwise everyone went about their day as pretty-much normal. Although I ~live laugh love~ attention, I never thought I needed to be celebrated, and in fact birthday families always struck me as a bit too indulgent, but the first time Dylan’s grandma sent me a half-birthday card with a long letter and a check inside or his dad left me a half-birthday voice note (see below for actual evidence of this sweetness) I have to admit it felt pretty damn good. Sometimes it feels better to convince ourselves we don’t need something when we’ve never had it, but it can also feel really good to open yourself up to something your inner child missed out on.
Avoid glorifying the dysfunction of your own family and get your partner to do the same. For example, I constantly find myself saying “neglect is good, it shows your kids there are things more important than them…” aaaaand while there might be a grain of truth in that, it’s also why I’m in therapy twice a week. Do as I say, not as I do.
Let your partner hold the reins with their fam. Only THEY should ever confront or argue with them even if it’s on your behalf. Your job is to just deal with the annoyingness, vent to your therapist about it, talk shit on the way home from the BBQ, write a scathing letter, and then throw it out. Because the bitter truth is, you don’t have the same right to be an asshole with in-laws as you do with your own family. Part of loving your partner is forgiving them for their family’s shortcomings and hoping they do the same.
Having and pointing out issues with your partner's family MOSTLY means that you are causing your partner to suffer even more than they already would when exposed to those childhood triggers. Let them realize the ways in which their family sucks on their own and then, when they inevitably do, revel in it.
Soften yourself, give your partner a safe place to heal from familial traumas, and let them do the same for you. The idea of fully healing yourself before you enter into a relationship is bullshit. No one emerges from childhood unscathed, and letting your partner show you the ways in which you are totally fucked up, i.e. lead you to self-awareness, no matter how painful, is one of the most beautiful and miraculous things a relationship can do. This brutal process is happening in every solid relationship, even if those perfect anniversary Instagram posts would like you to believe otherwise.
Focus on healing the future instead of the past. If your sister-in-law says something scathing, ask your partner if they agree. If your mother in-law parented in a way you find less-than-appealing, ask your partner if there are any parenting patterns they want to break from when they have a kid. Most of the time we don’t agree with the bad things our family does, we've just learned to cope with it. As long as your partner and you are on the same page, the rest is just noise.
So now, as you can see, I’ve emerged from my illness and have metamorphosed into a good and well adjusted person! Just kidding. You can take the girl out of physical illness but you can’t take the mental illness out of the girl. Tune in next week for a list of my favorite things and my take on the classic NY vs LA debate with a twist—which city is best for the depressed. Any thoughts?
Love you mucho,
Jade
