Me and my In-laws (part deux)

When I look back at the person I was when I got married, I am amazed at how much I have changed. I married at the age of 25. At 25 I still had a lot of issues that had developed whilst I was growing up. I was incredibly shy, in fact I spent a lot of my wedding day cringing from embarrassment and worrying about what people were thinking. If we were to get married today, we would have a completely different day and I would enjoy every second of it.

My shyness stems from my mum. Even at the age of 57 she struggles with change and new environments. I am very close to both my mum and dad now but I did most of my growing up on my own. My sisters are quite a few years older and my parents were living a youth which was interrupted by the arrival of my sisters. I don’t blame my mum and dad for having a good time rather than being a parent.

I am definitely a stronger person now and I know that I am not perceived as shy. I can stand in front of an audience of 130 people and give a lecture, I can speak my view in a meeting and I can look after myself in a variety of situations however, there are occasions when I revert back to feeling like the person I was when I married.

One of those occasions is happening today. On my suggestion we are having the in-laws round for dinner. I have spoken about my ILs before here and I have been trying to keep away from talking about them again but I just can’t. You see, the problems is that my ILs make me feel like a child. In the past I have held a lot of resentment towards them for making me feel this way, but now I am beginning to wonder whether it is actually me that is making me feel like a child.

When I was growing up my dad was always strict on the whole politeness thing. Please and thank-yous were uttered when they weren’t even required through fear that my dad would pick up on any impoliteness. I was to be nothing but polite to everybody whether I agreed with them or not. This proved kind of difficult in my career and it has taken me a number of years to conquer. Now I have opinions in abundance and more often than not I will voice them but, not where the ILs are concerned. They are very much of the opinion that their opinion is the only opinion and if you choose to voice an opinion which is different to theirs then they just ignore you. I’m not kidding, they just move on to something else and make no comment on what you have just said.

My MIL has an image of the kind of daughter-in-law that she would like. That image is the one she knows. She doesn’t know me at all. I wish she did. I will spend an evening of pretending that I am this person (because it is easier) and only when I start to get tired and drunk will I start to rebel. What can I do to stop myself reverting back to a child whenever I see my in-laws? I thought having my own child would help but obviously that isn’t going to happen. How can I politely make her see that I am a 33 year old woman who is not like her but is still OK (even if I do watch such disgraceful TV programmes like East.enders)? I have been trying for 8 years to improve the situation with my ILs but sometimes I just feel like it is getting worse.

We hardly see them. We argue about them (although not so much now). I don’t want to stop my husband from seeing his parents; I don’t want to argue with him about them. I want to invite them round and enjoy their company instead of spending the entire week building up to the visit and conjuring up all sorts of scenarios of things that they will say that will piss me off. Does anybody else have a difficult relationship with their in-laws? Because at the moment I feel like the only one.