Marriage brings to us a whole new level of "family." While we husbands are told to leave our fathers and mothers in order to cleave unto our wives, what many of us fail to realize is that we marry more than just our wives - we marry into her family as well.
Fellow husbands, we will do well to realize that we now have a bigger family with us. In addition to our own parents and siblings, we now have in-laws that we will consider our own family. Our respective wives' parents and siblings become our own parents and siblings, and we become part of their lives.
Many of us will face challenges in relating to our in-laws, but we should always remember that the rewards for treating them well are worth the effort.
That said, here are a few things we Christian husbands would do well to remember when building relationships with our in-laws.
1) Know your boundaries
Just because we're now part of our wives' families, it doesn't mean we can treat our in-laws the way our wives would. We should still erect boundaries and stay safely within them.
Boundaries protect our marriages with our wives and help keep us safe. Here are some examples of boundaries we should have when relating to our in-laws:
- Marital privacy: we must commit to keep our issues with our wives between us, and not with our in-laws.
- Financial boundaries: we must never mingle or interfere with our in-laws' financial issues. Our financial issues with our wives are to remain between us, not with our in-laws.
- Relationship limits: men, just because we are married and committed to our wives, it doesn't mean we can be off-guard with other in-laws, especially sisters-in-law. We must commit to maintain a standard of purity, righteousness, holiness, honesty, and integrity in our relationships with them.
These are but some of the boundaries we should set up.
2) Strive to build up, not to tear down
No matter what happens, we must choose to build people up, not tear them down. The same goes for our relationship with our in-laws: no matter what happens, we must choose to lift them up before God and avoid putting them down.
This point here will be a great challenge to many of us. Our in-laws are humans just like us: imperfect, flawed, in need of the Saviour. Our differences and character flaws will create friction that will either offend us, or cause us to grow and become better.
As such, we must always choose to build our in-laws up. We may get offended or hurt by their words or actions at times, but that shouldn't make us want to retaliate and destroy them.
3) Prioritize your marriage
Friends, in-laws are but "in-laws." We only have one wife, and she matters the most. Though it may be good to have healthy relationships with our in-laws, our relationship with our respective wives is still the one that matters the most and as such, she is the one who deserves our best effort and best behavior - not only her parents!
Men, I say this as a personal conviction that I want to share: let's always choose to side with our wives, protecting them and helping them, even in the face of our in-laws. Our wives are the ones God entrusted to us in marriage, and it's but right to prioritize them.
