I'm marrying into a family of extremely nice people who all say "I seen". I don't want to seem like a snob to them but this makes me cringe and widens the divide between his family and mine. Any advice?
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Oregon
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Re: Help! Need in-law advice
Thu, December 27, 2007 - 9:57 AMmarry up, not down, darlin ;) -
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Re: Help! Need in-law advice
Thu, December 27, 2007 - 10:37 AMYou're marrying him, not his family. Yes, they're part of the package, but since he's apparently still on good terms with them, you can assume they made him the lovely person he is today, and thus being kind, good-hearted, and decent trumps grammatical accuracy. Your spouse, you can correct (and should!) His family, you accept on their merits. Every one of us does something that makes other people cringe. When we love them, we make exceptions.
I mean, my god. My sister married a Republican. That almost caused a permanent rift in my family, but we have come to accept him as a kind human who loves her, and had some political delusions. Once they had kids and he had a reason to care about the future, his politics changed. If we had rejected him outright, we never would have gotten to see the change. And yes, it almost killed my father to have his daughter go over to the dark side, but 15 years later, it's a worked out. Unschooled grammar ain't nothin' by comparison . . . -
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Re: Help! Need in-law advice
Fri, December 28, 2007 - 11:45 PMYou're absolutely right, and they are kind people I love dearly. I'll just concentrate on the positives.. By the way, he's getting into lierature, tearing through all the great American classics, all of his own volition with no needling from me. What a guy.. -
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Re: Help! Need in-law advice
Sat, December 29, 2007 - 1:23 PMBe yourself, above and beyond any other desires. Your attempts to "change" to meet their expectations may be perceived as ingenuine. They'll get used to your vocabulary, and I can't believe you'd make fun of them for theirs. -
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Re: Help! Need in-law advice
Sat, December 29, 2007 - 5:54 PMI'm not making fun of them, nor would I. It's just hard to get used to.
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Re: Help! Need in-law advice
Sat, December 29, 2007 - 8:15 PMWell, when I was about to be married, my now-ex joked that I should watch Jerry Springer to get prepared to meet his family. I had never met any of them, only talked on the phone at holidays and such. Well, he was right. It was bizarre. Most of them lived in trailers. One of his sister's had a child with another sister's boyfriend at the time who also had a child with her. Yes, they are sister-cousins.
And many of his friends were from similar backgrounds. He himself read constantly and taught himself many things and was great with conversation about just about anything. He had never even finished high school, but was definitely very intelligent and even used proper grammar... well, most of the time. Our relationship troubles had nothing to do with this stuff. It's hard to explain, but maybe some examples will help. When we bought our house, he would fix things with duct tape and superglue and the general make-do kind of repairs, where I wanted to have everything nice and work to enhance the value of the property.
Overall, the grammer and intelligence issues worked out well. Over time, everyone came to see me as a resource.... asking questions and all that. One friend asked me what does UN mean and similar questions. I really think it turned out quite well.
My only advice is to keep an open mind and just roll with it.
