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Not good enough for FMIL
I relatively new to all of this, so please excuse me if this ends up being too long/detailed...
Just to get it out of the way, my FI and I are both young... very young. Like, young enough to where most of the repliers would tell us to wait about seven years before getting married. BUT he has just enlisted in the military, and about eight months from now, he'll be stationed halfway across the continent. We've decided that we're going to get married in early July, hopefully. My parents are totally on board with this decision, and understand that any decision pertaining to my future is mine, and mine alone. I'm currently paying my way through college and as of October 5th, he'll be in basic training for two months, and then tech school for the next six.
Unfortunately, despite everything else, his parents don't like me. His mother thinks I'm too, um, ballsy, and that I shouldn't speak my mind whenever I so feel like it, nor does she appreciate the two tattoos I have (both of which I drew myself and have sentimental value to me). And his stepdad doesn't want me hanging around the family at all, not even for FI's graduation in two months, because FI confided in me when his stepdad assaulted FI's little sister. (Personally, I think he's trying to save face, and he's embarrassed that I know that he's crazy.)
I just want some advice as to what I should do to try and repair any sort of relationship I had with his family, because at one point, they were giving me hugs and talking to me. Now, things between us have reduced to a stoic silence.
FI has flat-out told me that if it came to it, he would have absolutely no contact with them and choose me over them, and I've both seen/heard him tell them how much I mean to him, and that he's not leaving me because they don't approve. I just don't think it's necessary that it comes to that. My family absolutely loves him; I want to have that with his, as well.
Re: Not good enough for FMIL
So is this ONLY because you guys have decided to get married at a young age? And because of the stepdad abuse thing?
I don't get why you feel the need to get married because he's entering the military. You can't wait for each other a while longer? Perhaps his parents feel that you're making a big mistake and that's why they're unhappy with you. Being a good parent doesn't always mean sitting back and letting your kid do whatever they want ... it means speaking up if you know they are doing something that's not wise. I wouldn't exactly be happy and smiling if my under-21 kid announced that she was getting married because her boyfriend was joining the military and moving away and she just had to follow him.
But, anyway, if you're both 18+ and can support yourselves, then it's your choice and your right. And since you say your fiance is supportive of you and will pick you over his family ... then why do you care about having their approval if you've honestly said/done nothing to earn their scorn? If they're truly just being judgemental and mean for absolutely no reason, then nothing you say or do will change their minds, so why bother?
Actually, we haven't even told them about the impending marriage. Earlier this week, his mother flat-out told him to break up with me because he could find someone better. >_>
And the military steps in, because for the first year of enlistment after training, you MUST live in barracks unless you have a dependent. Idk about you, but spending the next eight months and then another year after that seeing him only sparingly would drive me crazy. I once was told that love is not about whom you can live with, but whom you can't live without. Honestly, I can't picture myself feeling complete without him being near me on a daily basis. I can suck it up for training, but waiting until he leaves the Air Force in 8+ years is more than I care to handle. And since I'm young enough and not exactly established anywhere, I personally think now is as good of a time as ever to move, before I have to worry about severing roots at a University or with a career. As is, my waitress job won't be hard to replace, and I'll be graduating with an Associate's in May.
Trying to understand this:
You're choosing to marry before he leaves because otherwise you won't be able to live with him?
He'll be enlisted for 8+ years and if unmarried as of day 1, he must live in the barracks the entire 8+ years, even if he becomes married at some point?
The above confusion aside, a year and 8 months is really not that long. The fact that it's such a huge deal to you is worrisome to me, in addition to the fact that you feel incomplete without him. I stongly suggest you use the year and 8 months to grow, experience life, and find yourself as much as possible.
Really?!? These three sentences alone tell me that you are not ready to be out on your own, let alone be married to someone in the military.
First, you are either extremely dramatic or stupid. You SHOULD know that you do not have to wait 8+ years until he leaves the AF right?
So why did you even go there? It doesn't make me want to support you, it makes me want to tell your BF to run, since he will need a calm, intelligent partner to help him in both his military life and life in general.
Second, which sort of ties to the first one, you can get married at any time after Basic and can then move out of the dorms. Again, the fact that you do not know this and did not take the time TO learn this means that you are not ready to handle the real world.
Third, what the hell are you going to do when he either gets a 1 - 2 year unaccompanied tour or worse he gets deployed? If you cannot "be complete" without him now, how are you going to handle that?
And more importantly, what will your neediness do to your SO then? He CANNOT BE WORRIED about your mental/emotional help when he is overseas. YOU WILL BE PUTTING HIS LIFE AT RISK.
I know I sound harsh here, but your lack of understanding AND the motivation to get fully informed would make me question if you were the right partner for my son or daughter. CLINGY, NON SELF-SUFFICIENT,SELFISH SO are not what I envision for my kids.
You would probably go alot farther in closing the gap if you would slow down a bit. Let him go to basic and focus on that. THEN start looking at getting married. That way you can have a better idea of what his future is going to be. I mean, at this point you do not even know what his AFSC is going to be yet.
And in the mean time. Get out of your parent's house, get a career job using your Assoc degree. Become as selfsufficient as you possibly can so you will be able to take care of things when your future DH is deployed.
Be sure that you are happy with YOU.
"His mother thinks I'm too, um, ballsy, and that I shouldn't speak my mind whenever I so feel like it"
One other thing, you need to learn the difference between being confident and being rude, its called tact.
Adults do not get to say whatever they want when ever they want to. It shows a lack of common sense and empathy. Hurting other people's feelings because you TELL IT LIKE IT IS is just a rude way of saying YOUR FEELINGS/BELIEFS are more important than anyone else.
I would not want my son to marry someone who is mean-hearted. Nor would I want that person to be the mother of my grandchildren.
I bet that as soon as you start thinking before speaking, your relationship with your SO's family will lighten up a bit too.
This has big immature mess written all over it! His parents can probably see how desperate and dependent you are on this kid and that is why they are trying to get him to see the light. Your parents on the other hand are seeing him as someone who would be able to take care of you and get you out of the house.
If you can't live without him and arent complete as a person you have no right geting married since you arent mature enough.
But pumpkin, he will be leaving you. For basic. For tech school. For when he gets deployed overseas. You won't be going with him. You will be by yourself. You won't be seeing him every day. Do you really not get that?
And please tell me that "when he graduates" means from college and not high school or some GED program.
An associate's in what? Did somebody tell you that you needed an associate's degree to flip burgers at McDonald's? Because that's all about 95% of them are good for.
Seriously- you have a LOT of growing up to do. A LOT.
~Benjamin Franklin
DS dx with celiac disease 5/28/10
This is horribly naive. If you can't live without someone, you are codependent. You absolutely MUST feel complete on your own before you can be in a truly healthy relationship with someone else. And really, if you feel this way, military life is just not for you. Aside from the fact that we are currently engaged in two different wars (and, depending on the timing, there's a good chance he could be deployed to both), he will have to leave periodically for training for long periods of time if he wants a chance in hell of working his way up the ranks. My husband has been in the military for 17 years, both active duty and National Guard. In that time, he's been deployed six times for nine to 15 months each time, and he has to go out of state for weeks at a time for school every time he gets a promotion. It bears repeating: if you just can't stand being apart from your significant other, you need to find someone who is not in the military.
All of the reasons you've listed for getting married despite being so young are exactly why the divorce rate is so much higher among the enlisted in the military than among the general population. You are not any different than all of the other young people who do the same thing, only to end up divorced or stuck in a long-lasting but completely miserable marriage. No, this doesn't give his parents the right to treat you the way they do, but that should actually be the least of your concerns right now. You need to be more worried about the choices you're making and what their long-term impacts will be on your life.
First, I think there is more to the story as to why they don't like you.
Second, as a military spouse, wait. As a PP said 2 years isn't all that long. Finish school, and maybe continue with your bachelors if that is your one of your life goals. I say that because I know many people that married their military SO and then they moved to places that didn't have schools or the schools didn't have their degree.
You are coming off as immature. What are you going to do when he is deployed or off training again? Once they are done with basic they don't stay home all the time. What will you do if he gets orders somewhere and it's unaccompanied. Trust me it happens.
Just wait.
I'm with the others; I want to know more about your "ballsiness" and how it translates to rudeness.
Next, you say you want any advice on how to "repair" the relationship with his family. Do you honestly think that secretly planning a wedding is going to help that? It doesn't seem you're actually interested in trying to build or develop a relationship or you wouldn't be keeping such big secrets.
I know you don't want to hear about being too young, but I think you need to consider where you are in your life and if this is the best thing for your future. Generally people who are mature enough for marriage are not justifying that decision based on an antiquated quote about living with somebody vs living without somebody.
Send your BF to basic. While he is gone, start working towards your BA. Find a job; make some friends; explore the world and yourself. If you two are as meant to be as you seem to think you are, everything will be fine in a few years and you can get married then.
His stepdad assaulted your FI's little sister and he is still around and his opinion on anything matters to anyone in the family? Sorry, no matter how much I luuuved my BF/FI, I'd never knowingly attach myself to these people.
And from your post, no you are not ready to be a military spouse. At all.
Here's my advice: Finish your Associate's degree. Figure out what you want to do for a living. If possible, go get your Bachelor's degree. Get a full time job in your chosen career field. Live on your own, as an adult. Learn who you are as an individual, independent person. Learn to enjoy being on your own. Then, you can make a choice to spend your life married to someone because you want to instead of being with them because you are to scared to be alone and without them.
As a military spouse, you will *need* to be able to live alone and support yourself and, if you have them, your kids, without your DH being around for months/years at a time. Until you can do the list above, you aren't ready to take on the role of a military spouse.
If your fiance really, truly didn't care about what his family thought of you, he wouldn't be so hell-bent on keeping your engagement a secret.
Despite all the romance-novel Phantom of the Opera hype, a secret engagement is not romantic or charming. It's spineless. If you're willing to commit your entire life, till death do you part, in sickness and health, in plenty and need, forsaking all others, to somebody else, you're willing to shout it from the rooftops, not hide it because you fear what Mommy and Daddy are going to say.
And what is wrong with your parents that they think it's A-OK for their under-21, undereducated daughter to run off and get married to an uneducated guy who wants to join the military? You don't even KNOW that he's going to make it -- plenty of people wash out of basic! And since he doesn't have an education either, if he washes out, then the two of you are trying to support yourselves on next to no education and next to no income. What happens if you get pregnant and he's not in the military? Who's going to pay for this kid's health insurance? Your health insurance? Your rent, if you can't work? Your childcare, if you can?
The biggest thing, too, is your stated inability to cope without seeing him, or only seeing him sporadically, for 20 months. Ask any military spouse -- you have to go for longer than that quite frequently. You have to be able to run a household and parent on your own with a smile on your face because you don't need to add to his worry.
Seriously, your future in-laws are the least of your problems.
I'm agreeing with pps - your "ballsy" and "speaks my mind" probably translates in the real world as argumentative and abrasive. Learn to consider others' opinions, learn to express yourself more respectfully, learn some tact and diplomacy, learn to think before you speak. People will be more apt to listen to your ideas when you respect their ideas.
Also, you sound very naive about life in the military. If FI is looking at a 12 yr commitment, he is likely going to flight school. He will be gone for missions/deployments and such for 9-12 months at a time. Even when he is stationed at "home", he will be gone for training and practice missions. And you'll be stuck in some remote location, without any friends or family.
Finish your degree. Get your Bachelors (Associates are worthless in today's job market). Get your own apartment and try living on your own, keeping the relationship long distance. If you can handle long distance for a few years, then you will know you can handle being married in the military.
Wow. I didn't even take the time to read all of the replies since I feel so strongly about this- but YOU, my dear, are headed for divorce.
You want to get married NOW so that you don't have to spend a few months seeing him on weekends only? What are you going to do while he's in basic, when he gets a phone call maybe once per week and he is calling mommy and daddy? He then goes to school after that, which will be for months also. The most you will get to see him is when he graduates bootcamp, and there is probably no more than a week or two max between that and school. He is going to be gone. He is going to be meeting new people, including new women, and doing new things. You are going to resent him for enjoying life without you while you sit at home by the phone pining for him.
His living in the barracks is NOT the end of the world. One of my best friends had a couple serious relationships with some military men while she was living in an apartment on her own and they were living in the barracks about 100 miles away. They were still able to carry on normal relationships and see each other every weekend, all while maintaining their independence. She even ended up marrying one of them; they were married for less than four months before he was deployed to Afghanistan for 12 months. Recently they went 29 days without any kind of communication whatsoever, and it was not by their own doing.
I said all of that to say that you should not marry a man in the military just because he is going to basic and "you can't picture your life without him." Because guess what? A huge chunk of the life of a military wife is without her husband. If you can't carry on life without him and learn how to do for yourself while being secure in your relationship with this man, then marriage is definitely not the best option for you. You have no idea of what you're getting into.
Not to mention that I can't even begin to tell you how many marriages end in the military between two people that got married when one of them enlisted, or just wanted to do it before the first deployment. Do not think that you two are the first to have this idea, and do not make the mistake of thinking that it will magically end well for you. These relationships do not end well.
As a military wife, I would also encourage you to wait.
As PP stated, living in the barracks is not the end of the world. In fact there are REALLY great reasons for having jr enlisted living in the barracks, and not just because the military wants to control their lives and tell them what to do. You should also think about how very little jr enlisted people make. Its not really that much, and really isnt enough to support a family on. Money is a very stressful aspect of marriage, especially when there isnt that much of it.
As someone who was engaged to my H while living very far apart, I can tell you that it really strengthened our relationship. I was in grad school while he was at the Air Force Academy. We learned how to communicate with each other. We learned how to be independent and responsible. We learned A LOT about each other, and when our schooling was done and we were able to get married, our marriage was that much stronger because of it. Living apart wasn't a big deal to us because we knew neither of us was going anywhere.
You really need to be on your own and learn to stand on your own two feet, because regardless of his MOS, you will be apart. If he doesn't deploy, you will be apart from time to time. He will need to go to different trainings, he will need to go TDYs, he might be on a swing or mid shift that is opposite your working shift, lots of things.
Finish your education, find yourself, figure out your own life. If you haven't figured out your own life, how the hell can you figured out a life with your partner?? If your relationship is strong, it will withhold the distance.
I changed my name
Oh, also, just because he is in the military for the next 8 years doesn't mean you can't get married in that time. People who are active duty get married ALL the time. Its not a big deal. At all.
Its not now or in 8 years, that's ridiculous.
I changed my name
This! I am also a military wife. I met my H while he was already in the military, so that was a fact I had to come to grips with right away.
And the Air Force has a very high retention rate compared to the other branches which means fewer promotions. Fewer promotions = less money for a longer period of time. Definitely go to school and finish your degree before jumping into this lifestyle.
Currently Reading: Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes
Why is this man still in the picture if he assaulted a child? Doesn't matter what kind, he shouldn't be around anywhere, so I wouldn't be too concerned about his opinion.
As for the rushing to get married, its' your choice, you're going to do what you want, but marrying him just because he'll be stationed somewhere else and living in the barracks for a while isnt the right reason to do it. I'd honestly wait a bit to make take that next step. How long have you guys been together?
A few things. One, while living in the barracks may seem like this horrible jail sentencing, its actually a great way for him to experience bonding with other airmen and is something I believe all jr enlisted should experience. DH was 23 when he enlisted and he went from living in his own apartment to living in the barracks for 3 years before we got married. While yes, it can suck, its a part of the military experience and should not be a reason for getting married.
It is hard to been in a LD relationship. Anyone who has been through it will tell you that (well anyone being honest will). But it isnt all bad. LD can mean learning how to really talk to one another, appreciating the little things, etc. Yes, I married DH so that we could end the LD portion of our relationship, but we also did it for 2 years and I had my degree and 4+ years of job experience under my belt.
As an E-1 or E-2, even with you as a dependent, he wont be making much. There's a reason there are WIC offices on base to set people up on foodstamps.
There is an exception to every rule, but not everyone can be that exception. And the "rule" would say that teenagers getting married, especially when one is in the military, end up divorced. Yes, it sucks you will be separated, yes it sucks to live in the barracks, yes it sucks to only have weekend visits, BUT, none of that sucks as much as being 20 and divorced, maybe with a kid.
I realize this post was to ask about mending a relationship with your F ILs, however being someone who does not have a great relationship with my own MIL...I'll leave that one to the "experts". GL
So, exactly what are you prepared to do if he is deployed?
This is a really really bad reason to get married. You'll do it anyway, and go down in a blaze of "But I'm SO mature!", "I've experienced a lot more in my life than other 18 year olds!" "You don't know me" "We're so in love!"
And then when it gets hard, and you realize that getting married was a terrible idea, you will reach into your sleeve for the next trip to prop up this relationship, a baby! Babies save bad marriages all the time, right?
And then, about a year after the baby is born, you will finally pull your head out of your a$$ and leave him.
So, see you in five years when you grow up. In the mean time, Mazel tov!
Ok. I'm actually going to try and answer your question. If you want to improve and/or rebuild a relationship with your FI's parents, here's what I suggest:
1. Do not plan a secret wedding.
2. Finish your degree, and work towards a Bachelor's degree; create some clear career goals for yourself
3. Do not interfere with your (now) BF's training
4. Keep your mouth shut about politics, religion, race relations, gay marriage, any and all socio-economic topics, anything that might be covered on Fox News; do not criticize, judge or comment on anything that you have no first hand knowledge or formal education on; smile and listen twice as much as you talk
5. Do not monopolize your (now) BF's time when he has it, appreciate that he has a life outside of your relationship
6. Do not encourage any animosity between your (now) BF and his family
7. Dress with respect, cover your tatoos if appropriate
One last thing. Since you seem to appreciate cliches on love, consider this one: "if you love someone, set them free; if they come back they're yours, if they don't they never were" -Richard Bach
Why on earth are your parents supporting this decision?
Sure, you're 18+ and they are letting you "live your life", and all that, but really why do they support it?
I think they are doing you a real disservice and I wonder why.