Hey LuvDoc,
While I’ve been seeing the same girl for about ten years now, this weekend I’m attending a wedding where I will be meeting her parents for the first time. That’s all fine and good in and of itself. However, my girlfriend has been hanging onto some serious issues and has been estranged from them for quite some time, so I’m afraid there will be some tense confrontations that will overshadow the matrimonial proceedings. Any advice on how to keep the drama to a minimum?
– Jesus
First of all, Jesus, if you have been dating the same girl for “about ten years,” those people aren’t just your girlfriend’s parents, those are your in-laws. You might as well … as Beyonce says, “put a ring on it.” It’s also a safe bet that the first tense confrontation that will overshadow the matrimonial proceedings will be the question of when you’re going to make your girlfriend an honest woman and start paying for your milk, so to speak. Go ahead and buckle up your chin strap for that one right now, even if you and your nearly common-law wife are jointly opposed to the oppressive Victorian standards that traditional marriage imposes. You can probably bet that your matrimonial foot dragging will be a hot-button issue wherever you might run into the in-laws, be it during a weekend at the beach or on an African safari, but the fact that you’re going to see them at a wedding is likely to make that topic the 800-pound gorilla in the room. Plus, given your description of your girlfriend’s relationship with her parents, it sounds like there will be other 800-pound gorillas in the room as well – maybe even a huge, smelly, grunting mosh pit of 800-pound gorillas, some of which you won’t even know about. Warning: Things could get really hairy. If you don’t want all those 800-pound gorillas to overshadow the matrimonial proceedings, you’re going to have to dance – metaphorically at least, if not literally. If Westerns have taught us anything, dancing isn’t always fun – especially when someone is shooting bullets at your feet – but one thing holds true: Dancing is always better than taking a bullet. So, you’re going to have to do the side step and maybe even the jive and the hustle. You’re going to have to be a strong lead – both conversationally and otherwise – and make sure to steer your wife and the in-laws around all those gorillas with effortlessness and grace. If I were you I would brush up on some diversionary topics and tactics for those moments when the conversation takes a turn for the worse. If things get really ugly, drag your nearly common-law wife out on the dance floor and boogie your ass off. Oh, and if it’s a fundamentalist Baptist wedding, you’re pretty much screwed.
This article appears in August 24 • 2012.
