First topic message reminder :

Yeah, in the ongoing saga that is my life - my fiancee's Orthodox parents officially disowned him when he told them we'd set a date last week. For obvious reasons, he's not taking it well. He really didn't think they'd come to that. He is in need of talking to people in the same situation - everyone telling him to forget them is not what he needs to hear right now.

In another note, it's awesome to be the party that caused this disowning because I'm a dirty shiksa. But not. Yup. Talk about feeling really mixed about being Jewish lately. Planning a very traditional Jewish wedding and displeasing my parents by doing it while being disowned for putting on a "carnival" and killing the Jewish spark inside my fiancee is awesome.

Thanks, Bee. You're very candid and I appreciate that. I'm not kidding myself that it will be stars and roses (wedding day, day we announce we have a kid, etc, etc), but we seem to have made it this far and it's based in a deep friendship (relationship came after ten years) so I have reason to believe that I'll follow your path.

Thank you. <3. Shana tovah.

There's a reason why the Bible says that a man is to leave his family and cleave unto his wife and vice versa; too many cooks spoil the soup. If you have two sets of in-laws and both adults trying to all have an opinion about one household or how to raise the kids, the odds are, everything will turn out worse than if you just have the two adults trying to take care of everything (even then, coming to a consensus is not easy).

Right now, just hope that time will heal this wound. My mother didn't like my husband at first, and she said some ugly things that scarred our relationship permanently, but she's mostly over it. No, the scars won't go away, but we still have a relationship (although now that I'm converting, there might be more difficulties and more scars).

Your husband-to-be just needs to be consistent in regards to you. As long as he shows consistent, unwavering support of you to them (and you do likewise with your family), life will be easier for both of you, and things will typically settle down sooner. Just like when dealing with kids, you have to show a united front and not capitulate. They smell weakness and attack.

Big, big hugs!

I can only hope that your in-laws' hearts soften with time. The fact that his father is still calling him Erev Shabbos is a good sign. It could be that they think their disapproval will make him change his mind and once the wedding is over and they realize it is only losing them a relationship with both of you, they will reconsider.

I think my situation was the opposite of yours. When my husband and I married, his Chassidic family embraced me. They loved me even before I decided to convert and it was partially their love and acceptance that made me consider conversion. It was my own family that disowned me. A big part of it was that I wanted to be religious at all and it turned out that my father had some antisemitism that he was hiding while we were dating, but once we set a date to marry, he would have nothing to do with his daughter marrying a Jew. We had a very small, secular wedding and my husband's family came and were happy to support us.

Since then, they've relaxed a little. My father still doesn't speak to me much and my mother simply pretends it never happened. We've learned to limit their role in our life without returning their anger. It helps to think of it as a sickness that has nothing to do with you or your relationship with your fiance/husband.

It has only made us closer as a couple.

Geekima,

This was quite an old thread, but I appreciate your response.

Everything you said has actually come to pass: his parents have completed a home they built in Israel and are looking for him and I (very specifically) to come visit them. They email me on occasion about this and that and he has a multi-days a week phone conversation with them.

Nobody has brought up what they did, and I told him that if we do make a trip to Israel to visit, despite everyone in his family being averse to confrontation, there really needs to be some kind of understanding about what happened -- I don't do fake nice-nice very well.

<3. I am glad you are both well, too.

I can understand not wanting to simply pretend that nothing happened. It seems like your husband's family and mine follow the same playbook. ;)

For us, it simply isn't worth it to try to confront them. I know from past experience, it won't do much good and won't help the relationship. In other families, it might be worth the conflict and might lead to the first steps of really repairing the relationship, rather than just maintaining a nice surface. I know, from offhand comments my mother still makes, that my parents still harbor resentment, but I see that as their issue to deal with, or not, as they will. My coping strategy is to reinforce healthy boundaries with them, but it's always a challenge.

I think the key there is that it's you dealing with your parents. I think my husband could do the same, but in my family, you SAY what you think so you can move on. Without that, I can't pretend to enjoy their presence in my life.