How Important Are the In-Laws?

 

How important are the in-laws? I mean who are you marrying, anyway?

Remember the straight-laced lady who asked awfully difficult questions to everyone but me because “it isn’t done” to ask me?

I recently asked my mother whatever happened to her. My mother sniffed disdainfully. “I wouldn’t let you go out with her son even if she wanted you to.”

“Um, why?”

“You don’t want a mother-in-law like that.”

“Someone who asks searching questions?”

“No – someone so rigid. You know, she told the shadchan that the girl’s parents are supposed to support the couple for five years, but since her son wants to learn for longer, she’ll agree to bend the rules and go 50-50 for the term.”

I considered all my friends with learning husbands and tried to imagine which of them might be supported solely by their parents. Where do people get these idiotic “rules” from anyway?

“Meaning, she cares a bit too much about ‘how things are done’?”

“Exactly. How are you going to survive?”

“Do you think she’d be scandalized if I said I’d rather live in a cardboard box than leech off any of our parents?”

“I really don’t think you’ll get along.”

“Her son might be different, you know. And he’s the one I’d marry.”

“Doesn’t matter. You still have to get along with your mother-in-law.”

 

Another conversation:

“Would you consider someone with divorced parents?”

“Why not?”

“Well because… well what if they were both remarried?”

“You mean two sets of guilty parents to buy us wedding gifts? Four sets of grandparents to buy our kids stuffed animals? Sounds great to me.”

 

And one lovely visit to a shadchan:

“Would you consider someone with irreligious parents?” she asks me.

I consider the ramifications carefully, from English transliterated bentchers at the wedding to family reunion handshakes.

“Yes, I think I would,” I say finally.

“No, you don’t want that,” she contradicts.

“Excuse me?”

“It’s very hard – you won’t be able to eat by your in-laws – “

“ – They can order in and we’ll eat on plastic – “

“ – And they’ll want different things for your children – “

“ – If they want to see their grandchildren, which most people do, and if they’re reasonable, which most people are – “

“ – and your kids will get mixed chinuch – “

“ – they’ll ask questions and get answers. They’ll be religious because it makes sense and not because they don’t know an alternative. They’ll force us to examine our own beliefs, preventing us from becoming complacent Jews. If we can’t handle irreligious relatives than we have serious religious issues.”

“No, you really don’t want irreligious in-laws.”

“Grghmph!”

OK – I didn’t actually get a chance to say the italicized lines—I was too flattened by her roughshod treatment of my answer. Why are you asking me if you aren’t accepting my answer? Just go ahead without asking me.

 

Anyway, in all three conversations, the point was that I shouldn’t want to marry unpleasant in-law situations.

But who are you marrying – the guy or his family? Why not just date the entire family, already? You don’t have to spend your life with them. Worst case scenario, you organize a Lakewood kollel for Cambodia and take off for inaccessible parts.

I was grousing over these thoughts one Shobbos when the young married woman across the room burst out, in an unrelated conversation, “They say you don’t marry the family, but you do. And if you want my in-laws, you can totally have them.”

 

Sigh. OK – so add “perfect in-laws” to my list of “what I’m looking for.”