Chapter 15
 Assertiveness Among Relatives

Are you among the many people who have longstanding miscommunications with your relatives? By relatives I mean parents, mothers-in-law, fathers-in-law, uncles, cousins, nieces, and nephews, whether they are of the first, second, or once-removed variety. Vast numbers of people have problems in this area. If they didn’t, Hollywood movies and endless TV sitcoms wouldn’t profit from milking “mother-in-law” scenarios and jokes decade after decade.

In this chapter, I’ll take a look at your ability to be assertive with different categories of relatives, including your parents, your spouse’s parents, uncles and aunts, nieces and nephews, cousins, and other relations, both near and far.

Getting Your Parents to Listen and Respond

If you’ve ever stayed at your parents’ home after years of living on your own, undoubtedly you found yourself falling back into familiar communication patterns. Perhaps your parents have house rules that you don’t fully agree with. Perhaps they criticize you or nag you, and you respond. Perhaps your communication pattern even reverts back to when you lived there as a child, a teenager, or young adult.

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 Make It So
With all the exclamation in the world, you can say, “MOTHER!” or “FATHER!” and your mother or father will give you rapt attention. If your parents are like most parents, tell them that you really have to talk to them, and you’ve got their attention.

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Nevertheless, for many people, being assertive with their parents is among the easier tasks when it comes to assertiveness. Why? They cut you more slack. They give you more latitude.

The way to get your parents to listen and respond is much the same as you’d proceed with your spouse, children, or anyone else you’re close to. You can go back to Chapter 14 and reapply what you’ve already learned to situations with your parents.

Steer Clear, Paul Revere

There are a few nuances to asserting yourself with your parents. If you can steer clear of some of these pitfalls, then you greatly enhance your ability to get your parents to listen and respond.

• Speak to your parent adult-to-adult. Don’t fall into any role you might have played when you were six, 11, or 19. If you revert back to childlike communication with your parents, chances are it will evoke responses from your parents similar to those of the past.

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   Make It So
  Be secure in your role as an adult, and your parent or parents will have no choice but to respond to you as an adult.

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• Avoid being manipulated by guilt. You call your mother. She answers and says, “Oh, hi. I was so surprised. You hardly ever call anymore!” This is the part where you don’t fall for it.

  If your mother (or father, just as well) wants you to call more often, she needs to buy this book, practice assertive behavior, and pay homage to the principle that rewarded behavior tends to be repeated. If she wants you to call more often, each time you call she should say something like:

  “It’s wonderful to hear from you.”

  “I’m so happy when you call.”

  “The sound of your voice is comforting to me.”

  “How are you doing; I’ve been thinking about you!”

  If you’re face-to-face with your parents and they attempt to make you feel guilty, don’t respond to it. Suppose your father says, “Is it too much to ask you to blank blank blank.” If you say yes, you contribute to a climate of potential hostility and hurt feelings. If you say no, you capitulate to his wishes and set yourself up for further manipulation and feelings of guilt another time. What would be a more appropriate response? How about:

  “What’s the real issue behind all this?”

  
  
• Don’t allow your parents to offer prolonged criticism. Because they’re your parents, they may feel entitled to criticize you, and some criticisms can actually be objective, valid, and even helpful.

  It’s much too easy to fly off the handle in the face of criticism from your parents, especially when you’re an adult. “You never approved of anything that I . . .” Don’t reciprocate with anger or criticize in return. Instead, assert yourself! The more balanced and even-toned you remain, the more your parents get the message that you’re not willing to engage in the same old unproductive behavior patterns anymore.

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 Make It So
Tired of being criticized by your parents? Try making a request about how you’d like to discuss the issue. Tell them how you’d like them to offer recommendations that they think might be helpful for you in the future.

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Dealing with In-Laws

You’d think the more you get to know your spouse’s parents and vice versa, the less potential there is for any misunderstanding. But I have not encountered a study correlating the length of time you know your in-laws with your ability to communicate effectively with them. Indeed, some people naturally hit it off in a matter of seconds, while others don’t seem to connect effectively, even after years of knowing one another.

The possible causes for the difficulty you may have communicating effectively and/or being assertive with your in-laws are as numerous and diverse as personality characteristics among human beings. Here are a few of the possibilities. Perhaps your in-laws:

• Regard you as an outsider, someone who has invaded their nuclear family (even if their son or daughter is a full-fledged adult in society, left their household more than a decade ago, and chose a partner wisely).
  
• Are insecure about their relationship with their son or daughter and feel you may represent some type of threat to that relationship.
  
• Never warm up to anybody, and you just happened to marry into their family.
  
• Have unrealistic expectations about the kind of partner their son or daughter would find in life, and try as you might, you’ll never live up to those expectations.
  
• Can’t concede that you had a life before you met their son or daughter and hence, regard you as something less than a fully functioning human being.
  
• Have always had trouble communicating with their son or daughter and now are extending that inability to include you.
  
• Subconsciously never wanted their child to marry. After all, that’s a signal that they’re aging.
  
• Liked someone else their child dated before you and wanted that person to be part of their family. Thus, anyone who comes after, in their minds, will never completely live up to their expectations.
  
• Are prejudiced about your background, education, religion, social status, ethnic origin, or some other personal characteristic. There are Archie Bunkers in the world, even though, miraculously, their children sometimes grow up to be nice people.
  
• Connect you with someone else who made them feel uncomfortable, or they simply don’t like your looks.
  
• Resent compromises their child has made to be in a marital relationship with you. For example, you may have ended up moving far from the in-laws’ home, or you’re in a profession that demands odd hours or prolonged travel.
  
• Feel they never see their child enough, and now they will see him or her even less with you in the picture.
  
• Feel their ability to communicate with their child was unique and special and that anyone else in the “channel” is a distracting or disruptive element.
  
• Have not had a happy marriage, and they project onto your marriage the same misery and misfortune. Thus, without knowing you or attempting to get to know you, they surmise that you will be the cause of such misery for their child.
  
• Vigorously disapprove of some aspect of your life; for example, you have been married before, have children, smoke, drink, have a large dog, or drive a pickup truck, and they have let this single factor cloud their perception of you.

You can see from this extensive list above—and it could have been much longer—that many of the reasons why you may have communication and/or assertiveness problems with your in-laws have little to do with you.

Of course, there are things you could be doing to create the difficult situation—perhaps you expect them to be more like your parents, or blame them for difficulties their child has, and so on. Getting along is a two-way street!

Don’t Push Here

In their book How to Keep People From Pushing Your Buttons, Dr. Albert Ellis and Dr. Arthur Lang note that the first step in not letting others upset you is to accept the fact that they can behave like “real creeps.” This statement doesn’t mean that they actually are creeps, but rather that they can behave that way. Moreover, there’s nothing particularly wrong in feeling nervous, angry, concerned, guilty, upset, flustered, embarrassed, grief-stricken, displeased, or edgy on occasion, even in the proximity of your in-laws.

The key, say Drs. Ellis and Lang, is to realize that other people don’t really control these emotions within us. We’re in charge of the emotional control room of our lives, and we need to remember that. “When we worry too much about what others think of us or about getting respect, failing, or making fools of ourselves,” say the authors, “we forget we’re really the ones in charge of ourselves.”

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 Just the Facts
Abraham Lincoln once said, “It is difficult to make a man miserable while he feels he’s worthy of himself.” He also said, “Act well your part; there all the honour lies.” Sage observations and advice from more than 130 years ago.

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Being Assertive with Your Spouse’s Parents

Let’s look at a variety of encounters you may have with your in-laws, keeping an eye on how you can assert yourself when you need to and still have a life and a wife or husband.

First, I need to lay down a couple of ground rules. You might want to examine this list closely because these are non-negotiable:

1. You don’t have to earn the right to be your spouse’s husband or wife. You already did on the day you married.
   
2. You’re going to have to be forgiving and forgiving and forgiving. As the late Dr. Norman Cousins once said, “Life is an adventure in forgiveness.”
   
3. Relax. If you are calm and relaxed, you’ll be perceived as being more emotionally intelligent, regardless of what else you do. In addition, if you intend to be married for a long time, you’ll need this capability.
   
4. Give up the notion of trying to become what you think your in-laws want you to be.

Okay, now that you’ve fully absorbed these ground rules, here are some scenarios in which you can be assertive with your spouse’s parents, and still live to eat at their dinner table another day.

The Polite Decline

You’ll undoubtedly be asked to do many things, such as have another helping of some food you cannot stand, spend another two hours with “Dad” tinkering with his car in the garage, or stay far longer at a family function than you can possibly stand.

Assuming that you’ve talked with your spouse in advance about your parameters for the endurance tests posed by your in-laws, offer a brief apology and excuse yourself. For example:

• “It’s been great, but it’s getting kind of late.”
  
• “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize the day was passing so quickly.”
  
• “As much as I’d like to, I simply couldn’t force down even another bite.”
  
• “Thanks, I’ll take a raincheck on that one.”

Don’t start apologizing left and right for things over which you are not sorry, or over choices you’ve made about your time or level of participation. Do not compromise yourself. Remember the essence of assertiveness conveyed in Chapter 1:

• Conveying appropriate self-interest
  
• Maintaining integrity
  
• Upholding your rights as a person

You Can Leave Me Out of This One

Suppose you’re drawn into an argument between your spouse and his or her parents or into an argument between the parents themselves. If you don’t choose to be part of the encounter, you have a variety of options for bowing out gracefully:

• “I don’t have a well-developed opinion in this area and, so, won’t offer one.”
  
• (Said while smiling) “Sorry folks, I’m just not going to be drawn into this.”
  
• “In all honesty, I don’t see a part for myself in this particular discussion.”
  
• “I’m going to bow out.” (Then physically retreat from the scene by stepping out or simply walking away.)
  
• “I’m positive that I can’t be helpful here.”
  
• “I wish I had something worthwhile to contribute here, but I don’t.”

These kinds of statements enable you to withdraw from an argument probably as gracefully as can be done.

Don’t Tread on My Spouse

Suppose you encounter a situation where one or both of your in-laws dump on your spouse. Perhaps they tell you anecdotes about what your spouse did when he or she was younger. Perhaps they reveal some “deep, dark secrets” they feel you ought to know. If this is within earshot of your spouse and you want to have a long, happy marriage, you probably need to quash this mode of communication as quickly and courteously as possible.

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 Handle with Care
If insights about your spouse are offered outside of his or her earshot, you need to quash this as soon as possible, no matter how juicy or enticing the anecdote is. Why? Turn the tables. Suppose your parents said the same to your spouse when you were not present. How would you feel if you found out later?

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Parents and relatives sometimes feel they have the right to dispense such information because, after all, they’re talking about their daughter, son, brother, or their sister. They feel that they know this person best and have observations that are long-term and seemingly helpful. Don’t fall prey to this maneuver.

You may ask one of your in-laws for help in a particular area in relation to dealing with your spouse, but a major issue arises when they open up the broadcast channel and dispense whatever information they want to about your spouse and you willingly listen.

Here are a variety of potential responses:

• Ask, “Why are you telling me this?” (Wait for their response.) If the response is that your in-law thinks it will help you in your relationship, tell them something along the lines of “I’m already aware of this,” “I prefer to find these things out for myself,” or “I appreciate your concern but I prefer not to hear this.”
  
• Change the subject. If this works, fine; if it doesn’t, change the subject again. If your in-law still doesn’t allow you to do this, try excusing yourself and leaving, using the restroom, or going for a walk.

Here, actions indeed speak louder than words. You send a clear message to your in-laws that this is not the kind of conversation in which you intend to engage. If they don’t understand this time, they will the next time you leave.

Are You Talking to Me?

Suppose your in-laws have a nickname or pet name for you of which you don’t approve. Or, suppose they label you in some way behind your back that is less than flattering. In the former case, simply saying, “I prefer to be called Bob” should be sufficient. If it’s not, try suggesting, “Please, call me ____.”

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 Handle with Care
If you know your in-laws call you something behind your back or refer to you in some derogatory manner, going out of your way to convince them that you’re just the opposite won’t work. You’ll then mute your own personality and capitulate to their erroneous notions.

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As for labels your in-laws may use to refer to you (behind your back or told to you by your spouse), the best advice in terms of standing up for yourself is to ignore it. Such labels might include egghead, dizzy, fashionable, homeboy, and so on.

You need to be yourself, with them and away from them. Hopefully, their labels will drop off as they learn more about you, but if they don’t, you’re better off ignoring the issue. If you challenge or question the image your in-laws have of you, you may never live it down.

Leave Me Out of This

I wouldn’t wish this on you, but suppose one or both of your in-laws are non-stop complainers. Almost every time you encounter them, they yap about the government, economy, media, neighbors, or something else. Suppose they feel the need to place blame on everything large and small for the things that are not going right with the world or their lives.

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 Handle with Care
Misery may or may not like company. The psychic toll that results from complaining and blaming behavior is not worth any fleeting feelings of camaraderie that might surface in your relationship with your in-laws if you decide to join in.

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Some people constantly fuel their conversational fires by complaining and blaming. For some, this has become such an ingrained part of their daily routine that they no longer recognize how much of their conversation and thoughts are consumed by negative thoughts. If you start playing their game, hoping to win them over, yours will be a shallow victory.

Social Psychology 101 tells us that if parties A and B have a common enemy C, parties A and B are united. However, that unity lasts only as long as C is present. Suppose that A is your in-laws, B is you, and C is every little thing they like to complain about, or someone in particular. Remove C, and A and B may find themselves at war with each other. Otherwise, they need D to come along, so they can renew their common dislike of a single target. This approach to forming a relationship does not create much of a union.

Realistically, you’re not going to change your in-laws. It took them 60 years to become who they are, and they’re perfect at it. They’re not going to change in 60 minutes, 60 hours, or 60 days, even if you have a Ph.D. in psychology. You can politely decline to participate in their complaining and blaming routine by pointing out something to the contrary, as you’ll see in the following examples:

• They say, “The government is always trying to squeeze every nickel out of us.” You say, “It seems that way sometimes; but the government has sponsored some good programs such as the XYZ.”
  
• They say, “TV is worse than a vast wasteland; it’s a sludge pile of porn, violence, and inane sitcoms.” You say, “Much of TV is; but, with all the channels we can receive today, there are some good programs on. Do you ever watch The Learning Channel, The Discovery Channel, or the Public Education Network?”
  
• They say, “I don’t think that doctors have any clue about what I’m experiencing. With all the money they’re making you’d think they’d have some answers.” You say, “It’s hard for anyone, no matter how educated, experienced, or equipped, to fully understand somebody else’s health problem. There are things we can do for ourselves, such as ___ ___.”

By now, you get the drift; no matter what their lament is, you can offer another way to look at the situation. The larger issue is, why bother offering them a counterpoint? Your argument may help, but then again, it may not. If you offer a counterpoint, it might start an argument. If you don’t offer a counterpoint, then politely try to hang in there or change the subject. The choice is yours. At no time, however, should you become a party to their gripe-and-blame game.

Could You Say That Another Way?

Suppose one of your in-laws is notorious for his or her use of profanity. Every other word or sentence offends you. You’re not sure if they use profanity for shock effect or if they simply talk this way to everyone. The point is, you don’t like it.

It’s hard to think of something to say to lessen this person’s use of profane language. No matter what you say, you’ll sound like a prude, a persnickety person, or a holier-than-thou type. One possible strategy, and this is certainly not for everyone, is to let the other party know you’re also fully capable of using such language although you normally choose not to.

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 Just the Facts
In his book Pulling Your Own Strings, Dr. Wayne Dyer says that if you’re offended by someone else’s swearing, “Give it back in spades just for the shock value, and teach that you are capable of being assertive.” After the next couple of times you let out a string of four-letter words following profanity from one of your in-laws, don’t be surprised if you see him or her use it less frequently. Maybe they got the message.

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If you’re not comfortable with the idea of letting out a string of four-letter words following profanity from one of your in-laws (or anyone), and chances are you’re not comfortable with this approach, try excusing yourself from any conversation where you’re subjected to language you prefer not to hear. You can always go to the bathroom, the front porch, the backyard, the car, or take a walk around the block.

Previously, you learned that rewarded behavior tends to be repeated. Likewise, you can help extinguish another person’s behavior by saying something like, “That kind of language makes me uncomfortable.” Or you can withdraw. If mother-in-law X swears profusely in your presence and so you disappear, mother-in-law X may realize that to continue talking to you, she needs to clean up her act. She may not get your message, though. Either way, you won’t be subjected to such language.

Getting Anyone Else You’re Close to to Listen and Respond

With anyone else with whom you are close, you want to avoid old, unproductive communication patterns, listen carefully to what’s being said, and use assertive language when you want or need to speak or stand up for yourself.

Remember, the longer you are with anyone, the more easily you fall into communication routines. Therefore, it becomes more important to vary the structure of your sentences as well as the substance of your communication. Disarm your listeners on occasion by using bright, bold, colorful language that moves otherwise routine discussions to a new level.

For variety if nothing else, change your sentence patterns constantly. Instead of saying to someone, “I think I can help you here,” try, “I see myself striding side-by-side with you as we take control of the situation and devise a system to make things stay in place.”

Also, instead of saying, “I’ve heard what you said, and I’ll get back to you,” try something like, “What you’ve said is provocative and certainly merits considerable thought. I’m going to give your words serious attention and offer my plan as to where we can go from here. I appreciate how you’ve gotten the ball rolling and promise you won’t be pushing it alone.”

Too exuberant, you say? Disarming? Your communication partner will hardly believe it’s you? Fine. That means that your words are likely to be all that more effective!