Anyone else married to a mutant who could not possibly be from the family they came from?
I will kick it off.
My ILs are hard working people who have made a multigenerational science out of repeating bad decisions while expecting a different result and being continually smacked in the face by the same crappy outcomes.
My wife... oh my beautiful, amazing, wickedly/scarily brilliant motivated successful incredible wife. There is no possible way she is an unfiltered product of her gene pool. Either side of her gene pool... and... she has demonstrated herself to be immune to the same kind of influences from her StepDad's gene pool as well.
My engineeric brain has landed on three options for how she has turned out so very different from my three pronged IL clan.
1 She is a mutant.
2. Switched at birth.
3. Alien implant.
Nothing else could possibly explain it.
Disclaimer: I like my ILs. I don't really respect them, but I do like them.
Differences, but certainly not perfection.
My SO has qualities very much like his parents and I suspect I am also much like mine.
Of course, being myopic, I think I inherited only their good qualities, LOL.
I do know that I am completely different from my two older siblings. I often said I felt like Marilyn from The Munsters, being the only one who was actually conventional yet considered an outlier in the family.
This ultimately served me well as I went on to have a fairly successful and happy life, compared to siblinga. My sister turned out to be an actual monster who I now avoid completely.
Not married to but had one in
Not married to but had one in our family. My father’s family were a dour, humourles bunch from the north of Scotland, and deeply religious to the point of bigotry. I don’t think my grandfather ever spoke to me in my life and my grandmother was of the opinion that children should be seen and not heard. Anyway, amidst all this grimness was a ray of sunshine, a bright, loopy, funny and fun-loving auntie who I adored. One day, I remarked to her that either there was a mix up at the maternity when she was born, or she was a changeling because she just didn’t fit in with the rest of them. She laughed and agreed and then told me that one day she’d asked her mother how well she knew the milkman. I can just imagine the fit of vapours that granny had about that.
My MIL once made a comment to
My MIL once made a comment to my wife "We really do not understand you or what you do, but we are very proud of you.".
That about sums it up. My IL clan at some level all treat my wife like the family idiot. She alone earns more than her parents and her three younger sibs and their spouses combined. Her family find her/us to be frivolous in our life style.
Probably the defining moment for this was during my BIL1's wedding. When we were flying to SpermLand for that event our flights were canceled when we landed at our transfer point. All flights going into Portland were closed due to an ice storm. We got the last three seats on a flight into SETAC (Seattle) and they shut down the runway lights as we taxied to our gate. We were the last flight in. We rented a 4x4 and drove from Seattle to Portland where we were the last vehicle allowed through on I-5. I watched them close the swing arm across the interstate in my rear view mirror
as we drove past. We overnighted with DW's cousin until the roads opened at about noon the next day. Our bags were still on our first flight at DFW.
That evening was the rehersal and the rehersal dinner. We got to the Mall with an hour and a half left before trhe rehersal and did a 30min power shopping binge to get enough clothes for all of us for a few days including clothes for the wedding activities. 30mins and $1000 later we walked out of the dressing rooms at the mall and headed for the Church for the rehersal. BIL1's then fiance and my SIL met us at the mall and watched us slack jawed as we powershopped. We all walked into the rehersal.... everyone was in field hand clothes and looked at us like we were freaks.
We attended the wedding the next day. A few days later as we checked into our flight home, we picked up our bags at a huge pile of luggage that had been separated from passengers during the ice storm.
They to this day will tell that story at family gatherings all while shaking their heads about how we spent $1000 in 30 mins.
My MIL struggled for years with envy of my wife. We bought our first home together when she was 20. A nice starter home but... definately a starter home. My IL clan visited us less than a year later. The whole time they were with us my MIL was distant and sullen. My DW was heartbroken and did not understand what her mom;s issue was.
A few weeks later my FIL called her and told her that they could not visit anymore because my MIL would not stop grousing about how spoiled my DW was and how it was not fair that MIL did not get her first house until she was much older than 20 like DW was when we bought our first house.
They did visit again when DW finished grad school. By then we had bought our next home which was very nice. My MIL was in a near walking comatose state during that visit. It broke my wife's heart even worse the second time. She understood what was happening. My DW and my FIL had several evening 1:1 back deck discussions during that IL clan visit. FIL was not my DW's biodad. Her biodad was killed in a car wreck when my MIL was pregnant with my bride. FIL was her StepDad. MIL and FIL married when DW was 3mos old.
FIL and my DW were extremely close. Much closer than he was with his BKs (DW's three younger half sibs) and in many ways closer than even MIL and FIL were. DW and her daddy just clicked.
I'm the mutant
By reading your post, my first thought was that your wife has come a long way and part of that maybe the reasons you listed, or that she saw that cycle in her family repeat itself and worked hard to break free of that. Kudos to her!
Oh, the fear I had being introduced to my DH's family years ago when we started dating. He comes from a hard-working family. Dad from South America and worked hard his whole life with limited education and ended up achieving more than the American dream. Mom is very similar and they are retired now. His ex is extremely wealthy making my SD wealthier than me, DH, ILs combined. All families tight knit.
Me, 2 dead parents by the time I was in my early 20s. Dad was an alcoholic con man who once got sued by the US Navy and regularly beat my mom and sisters. I'm the youngest child and spared from much of his violence, money mismanagement, and alcoholism because I was born 20 years into their marriage and my mom finally was able to leave him when she realized she couldn't go through that again with me. I'm estranged from my 2 sisters, sadly. I'm almost 20 years younger than them, grew up without abusive dad. I think they resented me for it. They grew up to be abusive too, one is also an alcoholic. Grew up in poverty with a very unstable living situation. My mom though, was a gem in a lot of this. She did everything she could to put me on the right path and I miss her everyday. I wish I could have introduced her to my DH and SD. They would have loved her and she them.
When it was time to meet DH's family and my SD, I was terrified. With my background, the estrangement, addiction running in the family, I saw myself as just not the type of person you bring home. I had put myself through college and grad school, already had a solid career, independent, lots of friends, but I felt like I was just from the wrong side of the tracks. DH, his family, and SD and even her BM accepted me openly and compassionately. I had no idea how to function in such a nice family. But, those who love me reminded me that I had worked hard, spent years in therapy, and built a network of friends and extended family. It was me who had to accept that I was worthy of love and that I had actually spent years trying to improve not only my life situation, but my heart and soul as well. I'm so grateful to be part of this family now.
b_p,
b_p,
What an inspiration you are. Congratulations on livi g such a great life.
Thanks for sharing your story. Similar in many ways to that of my wife.
Wow!
I am so impressed by you! What a journey you have had. I'm glad you are on Steptalk, blue plumeria.