Don’t let them meet the extended

It was not intentional, but boy did it work in my favor. It just so happened that my soon-to-be husband was never able to meet the extended family, before he vowed to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, till death do us part. Looking back, this may be one of my husband’s biggest regrets, but was one of my wisest moves.

If you have a perfect, functioning family, you should skip this part. For the rest of us, if you ever plan on getting married, you might want to learn this valuable lesson. Don’t let them meet the extended family until after the deal is done, and make sure the ink has dried. You may even want to wait until after you have your first child …

It all comes down to the gene pool. You have met someone so special that you want to spend the rest of your life with them, you want to reproduce, have little versions of yourselves running around, live happily ever after. Then the day comes to meet the distant relatives. You want their approval and their acceptance, but instead your world is shattered. Somehow it is all quite different from what you had imagined.

They are loud and rude, as opposed to reserved and dignified. They are intoxicated and obnoxious, as opposed to sober and agreeable. You may wonder if this is the wrong family: how could your perfect someone come from such imperfection? This can raise a series of troubling questions. Do I really want to be related to these people? What will our children be like? Doubt after doubt will fill their mind, until they run off, never to be seen again. It will all be traced back to the day they met the extended family.

Most men who have married into our family have done so without fully understanding what they were getting into. I look at it not as deceit, but as the decent thing to do. You will have plenty to fight about once you’re married. Enjoy your courtship, your wedding day, your first year as newlyweds. When they’re intoxicated on your love and cannot remember life before you, then the time is right. But until that day, don’t let them meet the extended.