Welcome back to Father Knows Something! Real People. Real Stories. Real Dad advice with a dash of ADHD, and maybe a couple of millennials chiming in from time to time to add their takes. This weeks episode has dad and Justin discussing stories involving the significant other's parents. Issues are commonly brought up regarding the in-laws but what about your boyfriend/girlfriends parents? From things like favoritism of specific grandkids to working in the family business, thee relationships can get tricky at times. Thank you all for being here and providing your advice in the comments to these listeners! Submit your write-in ! https://forms.gle/8G2e4ockyZLNoiuX7 Bonus Stories on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/fatherknows !! Our P.O. Box: Father Knows Something. 5042 Wilshire BLVD. #470. Los Angeles, CA. 90036Follow up on Instagram @ Father Knows Something UPDATE US!! If your story has been read respond here: https://forms.gle/6CP9KoWvJ4NMKewa7 Video version available on YouTube: YouTube.com/fatherknowssomething Be sure to subscribe and tell us what you would give for advice! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode?
Hey, everybody. Welcome to this episode that Father's Gone Nuts. Not sometimes, but always.
It sounds like you're speaking, you know, through an intercom.
I don't know what I'm speaking for, but this is like my inner voice. And we are very quietly and calmly and enjoyingly being here with Justin. Yes. And Justin, we have a theme.
The theme. Yes. The theme. is not necessarily in-laws, but it's your significant other's parents. So whether it's your boyfriend's parents, your girlfriend's parents, or your wife or husband's parents, or whoever your significant other is, it is their parents. Got it. So it all revolves around that. There's not really a term for your boyfriend, girlfriend's parents.
They're just kind of your boyfriend or girlfriend's parents.
Right, but it's your significant parent. It all makes sense.
Ready to start? I am almost ready to start.
I'm going to get comfortable, get rid of this.
I guess you have experience on both sides of this. On what side of what? You've been a Significance parent, and you've dealt with Significance parents.
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Chapter 2: How to handle in-law relationships?
Right. And, you know, ideal, I'll come here, figure out how to deal with these weird comments and maybe help him get her to open up. Honestly, any advice would be great. Additional info, I'm super open about things of sexual nature, but my husband would be so uncomfortable with this. So it seems it's probably easiest to...
be on the same page as your husband, but then go back, maybe if it's a, I don't know if you're interacting over a call or the next time you see him, your father-in-law, maybe just say, hey, just, you know, if he brings it up even, I think you guys should go do this. But that's as far as your involvement should go. Because you're walking on, it's a sketchy territory.
With the blessing and the full knowledge of your husband that you're doing this together.
Yeah. That's the way I would do it. But, but husband doesn't need to get involved.
No, no. He's, he's got to still stay remote, but she can let him know, you know, how she did with it. I don't think she should keep it to herself. Yeah. That's the, that's the, the bottom line here.
Yeah, then I guess it's just more, it's good he knows and not necessarily, your husband doesn't need to know that necessarily your father-in-law told him this stuff. It's more that your husband is aware that you are aware that there's marriage issues with his parents. I think that's the bigger piece here. Because, yeah, he made the comments about the sex life and things like that.
But really, the husband, what he needs to be aware of is probably just that there are some marital issues. Because then if something happens, it's not, you know, then you don't, like you were saying, you don't end up in the position where, oh, you knew this.
I think that your conversation with your husband should be open, literally without boundaries with him because you use your husband and say, obviously, dad did not feel comfortable coming to you. And we don't want your dad to feel any more discomfort than he feels. And we both have one goal. We want to see them successful in their relationship. Yeah. Yeah.
And that keeps you a hundred percent clean and it's up to your husband now not to fuck it up.
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Chapter 3: What to do when facing favoritism among grandkids?
Before the children start taking notice.
You're going to have to outfox her. So rather than having a confrontation where you're forcing her to love somebody, set it up in a way that she doesn't know what the hell you're doing and outfox her. And then she'll accept her other grandchildren. Okay, let's go.
Anyone else out there, let us know what you think. And as always, add the comments in the YouTube.
There you are. And what number are we on now? Let's see if you can guess.
Four. Let's go do it. Okay. On to number four. On to number four. Dear Jerry, That'd be me. Morgan and Justin. That would be you. I love both shows and have been binging FKS lately. I will try to be brief, but it's a long story. I'm a mother of two little boys, 19 months and four months. They are my world. My oldest looks just like my husband and my youngest looks just like me.
The women in my husband's family do not like me. They are obsessed with my oldest because of who he looks like. They want nothing to do with my youngest. Lately, my mother-in-law has been making comments about how I must have cheated on my husband because my youngest looks nothing like him. He looks like his brother, just with brown hair and gray eyes instead of platinum blonde and blue-eyed.
On top of that, they're constantly belittling me as a mom saying I raised X amount of children. I know what I'm doing better than you do. My husband is constantly telling me that they aren't trying to be malicious, but at this point, the favoritism is very obvious. What would he call it?
I mean, I'm not trying to pick sides here, but what would he call it if he's not trying to be malicious?
They always have brand new clothes, shoes, and toys for my toddler and don't even acknowledge my baby. They have always spoiled my toddler and we thought the same treatment would happen for our baby. I've already been the grandkid my dad's parents didn't like. I have an older sibling and two younger and don't want my baby to go through the same self-worth struggle I go through every day.
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Chapter 4: How to address family favoritism?
Now I'm having doubts if I made the right decision or not. My ideal outcome is to find ways to get through the next few months. I will stop working most likely in September sometime to go on maternity leave unless anything happens sooner that requires me to stop working. I guess I'm just looking for advice on how to not be so stressed and filled with anxiety about this job.
Don't profess the failure. If you profess the failure, you're going to believe it and you're going to fail. You know, obviously there is some disconnect in your confidence. And it's interesting, the last read we said, these people should get some assistance. Yeah. Assistance is not bad. And it is not weakness. Assistance helps you get yourself in a place where you can properly cope. Yeah.
If you're having issues in coping, Seek some outside assistance to put the wires back on the right posts. So you're not processing these things to put yourself into pandemonium, for lack of a better word that I believe will fit. But I do believe there is some assistance for you that would help you in your future if you tried it. Don't worry about screwing up. We all screw up.
Yeah.
I mean, I screw up. I did a screw up yesterday. I decided to go pay for something. I went on Zelle. I found a name I believe was the name of the person where I bought my last thing up. I sent money out, $225, and then I realized the right person didn't get it. And I wrote back to the person, I sent you money and you're probably wondering where it's from. It was a mistake.
They didn't acknowledge it. I went to their place of business and I said, I'm the guy that's been sending you these emails. Can you return the money? And he goes, I couldn't figure out what this was for. And let me tell you. How many times did you do it? How many times did I send the money? How many times did I request to go have it? Did I make contact to try to get it back and call the number?
Oh, no. How many times did you accidentally send the wrong? Oh, one time. Oh, okay. I thought you were saying it was recurring.
No, I did it one time, 225 bucks yesterday morning. And I said, all right, it's cost of doing business. I screwed up. The guy, I walked in and I explained to him what happened. He goes, I saw this. I just thought that somebody was trying to hook into my account and get me to bait. And I go, I understand. I'm real. This is how I got you in my phone. And he says- Not a problem.
He returned the money immediately. And I said, you know something? I will come by from this guy again. He was legitimate. He was understanding.
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Chapter 5: What if your in-laws don't acknowledge your child?
If you guys can afford it and your husband's fine with you not working. But staying at home, mom, is work. Yeah. Life is work. That's reality. There's no way that we're not going to have responsibility and having to do things.
I don't think there's an aversion to working here. I think it's like, no, I'm excited to be a stay-at-home mom. I'll take all of that. I'll be working my ass off. But it's, I don't like the work I'm doing now.
Right, because she's afraid of failing and disappointing the family. Right now she's in a position that she can do something for herself, give it a shot and succeed. And then once you have had that success, again, you're not saying here's a life of that, you got to be here. We're talking about four months.
Yeah.
Go take it as a hockey season. Go enjoy and do the best you can and show yourself that you can. You're not showing anybody else. This is all about yourself. Yeah. That you've taken this, it's like looking at, one time when I was 14, I went to the Matterhorn in Switzerland. And I looked up and I saw this huge mountain. And I said, I'm going to go walk to the bottom.
Little did I know that it was such a large mountain that looking at the bottom was not a mile. It was 12 miles. And it looked like it was, I'm going to walk a mile. I'm going to be there. I walked for six hours to get there and six hours to get back. We got back just as the sun was setting. And it was a journey. I never forgot it. Conquered it.
There's times sometimes we get involved in things in life that we don't like. Take it as a challenge. Do it. Conquer it. And then you can do whatever you want for the next one. Yeah. I don't take it as negativity to say, gee, can I quit today? I don't like it.
Yeah, I guess it's a balance between do you truly, absolutely hate what you're doing every day? Or is it the worry and the anxiety that's making you hate it? And if you can sort that out, I mean, I think you can get through the next few months. I don't know. Even if you open up to mother-in-law and explain how you're feeling, there could be a really, a deeper connection there.
Don't let the worry and the anxiety force you to fail. And that's, I want to see you succeed and take the challenge. Again, this is not a lifetime. This is a hockey season. Give it a shot. You'll stay busy. Your mind will be busy and learn what the family does.
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Chapter 6: How can I communicate effectively with my spouse about family issues?
Hi, FKS family. Hi from Australia. I love Australia. Hope you're all well and having a great day on the pod. Here's my dilemma. To put it simply, my husband expects me to have the same relationship with his parents as I do with mine. My husband and I have been together for almost five years, married for one, and as much as I love my in-laws, they are not my parents.
We have a great relationship, and after hearing so many in-law horror stories on Two Hot Takes, I know how lucky I am with mine, and I do not take them for granted. Every now and then my husband makes comments about how my in-laws see me like a daughter and that they're my parents too now.
I've never called them mom and dad, only ever referred to them by their names, and they've never asked me to. My husband also does not call my parents mom and dad. I don't expect him to, and neither do they. He's made comments in the past that he wants me to be closer to his parents, and I've made the effort to do so, but I also don't see any issues with the relationship I have with them.
It's no different to the relationship he has with my parents and I feel like it's almost unfair of him to expect it to be. My mom and I are very close and she calls me almost every day to chat. I am not a phone call girly, so literally the only people I speak to on the phone are my mom and my husband.
He's very much a phone call guy and has asked me in the past to just randomly call his parents to chat. I will always say hi when he's on the phone with them, but I just don't feel comfortable calling and chatting with them like I would with my mom. He's made comments in the past like, you call your mom all the time. Why can't you call mine? It'll mean so much to her.
As much as I get where he's coming from, because he does call my parents to chat, I also get quite annoyed that he's expecting me to show my love and care for them in the same way when he knows it's not something that comes natural to me. I've noticed that he makes these comments mostly when things like Mother's Day or Father's Day come up,
I'm the eldest daughter, so of course the gift-giving and planning falls to me rather than my younger brother. So when I tell my husband that I've organized a gift for my mom, he'll ask what I've planned for his mom.
I've made it very clear that he needs to organize presents for his family, and he usually does with the help of his brother, but he will always make the, they're your parents too, comment first. It's almost as if he's trying to guilt me into taking on the mental load and task of looking for and buying a gift, and I hate it.
I'm so stuck on how to address this with him because I don't want to upset him or disrespect his parents. Ideal outcome to have my husband understand that our relationships with our own parents are different to what we have with our in-laws, and that's okay.
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